New York City, Day 2. After a long spring term, Bree is finally on summer vacation, so she sleeps in while Angela and Jan head out to breakfast. It’s a gorgeous day in the city — sunny and pleasantly warm, not hot — so they go for a long walk in Central Park. As they walk past the Conservatory Water, there are people sailing remote-control sailboats a la Stuart Little. Happily, there’s a concession with boats to rent, so they stop to take turns sailing a miniature sailboat around the pond.
When Bree finally wakes up in the afternoon, the three head down to the new location of the National Museum of Mathematics. It’s a fun museum, with lots of well-designed hands-on exhibits — and since the museum’s fairly new, most of the hands-on exhibits are even working.
Bree and Jan spend a while at an exhibit with 2000 numbers along a chain, arranged such that it’s easy to see how every even number greater than 2 is the sum of two primes. A museum docent stops to point out that it’s not a theorem — it is instead one of the oldest unsolved problems in mathematics and called the Goldbach Conjecture. Afterwards Bree wails, “Now the math museum woman thinks I didn’t already know about the Goldbach Conjucture!”
In the gift shop, Jan buys a set of rubberized dodecahedral (12-sided) magnets. One is a slightly disturbing flesh color; Bree dubs it the “fleshahedron”.
Later in the evening they have dinner with our long-time family friends Fiona, Peter, and their daughter Talulah.
New York City, Day 3. Bree once again sleeps in. Angela has breakfast with her friend Janice, then she and Jan take the train out to the New Jersey suburbs to have lunch with friends Owen and Nicole Snyder. It’s been a few years, so it’s wonderful to see them again.
Returning to the city, they meet back up with Bree, who’s happily shopping at fabric stores in the Garment District. We have time to return briefly to the hotel before an early dinner at an Italian restaurant (Tricolori, just okay).
Then it’s time for our second musical of the trip, Hadestown, which recounts the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The show is enjoyable, with good music, a great set and lighting, and a fantastic actor playing Hermes in a shining silver coat and tails. It appears that not everyone in the audience is familiar with the tragic myth — when Orpheus turns around to ensure Eurydice is following him, he dooms her to stay in the underworld. When Orpheus turns around on stage, there are audible gasps in the audience; the woman behind us gasps and says, “Bummer!”
New York City, Day 4. Angela has breakfast with Fiona while Jan and Bree eat out together and then visit the nearby Museum of Broadway. The museum features a number of costumes from famous shows. One interesting exhibit showcases the study for a dress (made simply in cheap muslin) standing next to the final dress used in the show.
After a quick lunch, we take a cab to JFK Airport for the flight home.
We’re very tired by the time we finally get home. Bree walks into her bedroom to find a mysterious shipping box on her desk chair. She opens it up to discover a graduation present: a Lego set for the Rivendell setting from The Lord of the Rings.
Bree has been thinking about this set since it first came out, and is excited to throw herself into the substantial project of building it.
Bree hopes to convince Moxie to accept a leash so that she can take him on walks. He’s mostly freaked out by the leash, but is at least happy to accept the many treats she gives him.
Evan arrives from Taiwan for two weeks of vacation at home.
Evan proposes that we eat lunch at Marinade Ma Kai in West Seattle. The three of us (Bree declines to join) get there just as the lunch rush is building. We get a nice table looking out over the water toward downtown Seattle, and the Hawaiian-inspired food is as good as we’d hoped.
Lyn’s friend, Raj, invites Jan to join the two of them and some other friends on an evening sailboat cruise through Lake Union, the Montlake Cut, and Lake Washington. It’s the first time Jan’s been on a sailboat in a long time, and a beautiful evening to boot.
Meanwhile, Liya comes down from Vancouver for the weekend, so we have the rare treat of having all three children at home for a few days.
Evan continues his tourism of Seattle with a visit to The Connections Museum in south Seattle. He’s joined by Jan and Liya. Jan had visited a precursor museum many years ago, but the current incarnation seems better set up and gives a very informative — if lengthy — tour. Above a docent shows Evan how to use a switchboard operator’s panel to connect a phone call.
Later on Liya takes a call routed through the tall banks of circuits behind her.
In a more modern wing of the museum, Jan’s delighted to see some old landline phone models that he remembers from his childhood. There’s also a prehistoric video phone, which Evan and Liya try out.
In celebration of Father’s Day, the kids prepare a dinner of a charcuterie and cheese board. Liya also makes a fantastic chocolate cake.
Since it’s Sunday dinner, Ly joins us as well. After dinner she captures the rare family reunion in both a normal photo (above) and a silly one.
Evan and Jan’s Whidbey bike trip, Day 1. A month or so ago, Evan had proposed to Jan that the two make a short bike trip somewhere, and the two settled on nearby Whidbey Island as a destination.
Jan rents two e-bikes from Rad Power Bikes in Ballard. These bikes are quite powerful and so fun — but also very heavy.
To cut out some city biking, they bike to King Street Station in Pioneer Square to catch the Sounder commuter train to Mukilteo. When they reach the station area, the streets are curiously packed with people. Unbeknownst to them, a World Cup soccer match between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Qatar is just letting out. They turn onto the side street that leads to the train station — and the soccer arena — where they meet the oncoming edge of a titanic tide of people surging homeward from the arena. The crowd is almost entirely dressed in the blue jerseys of the Bosnian team. Evan and Jan have to slowly make their way upstream through this crowd and to the train station and platform. They have only a minute in which to heft the heavy bikes up onto the train before it departs.
When the train reaches Mukilteo, they transfer over to the Whidbey ferry. On the island, they make a short ride to the town of Langley where they’ll spend the night. The island is quite hilly, but for such a short distance they can use the bike’s highest power setting so it’s very easy riding.
The hotel hotel in Langley has a nice view over a stretch of Puget Sound toward Camano Island.
Two of the best restaurants in town happen to be closed today, so they settle for pub fare at Spyhop.
Evan and Jan’s Whidbey bike trip, Day 2. Evan and Jan have breakfast at the hotel, then a good coffee from Langley Kitchen. The cafe has changed owners since the last time we visited, but the new owners seem nice and so far have kept the same basic format in place. Evan and Jan take their coffees down to the shore. Two seagulls are walking around together in a small circle screaming their heads off — it’s unclear whether this is some form of argument or they just enjoy incessant screaming.
Today the two have a somewhat longer bike ride to the small town of Coupeville. They stop at a taco truck in Freeland for burritos, then continue riding up the west side of the island. After some six miles, they reach South Whidbey State Park, where their progress is blocked by a “Road Closed” sign.
A park employee explains that the previous day there had been a house fire further up the road. Apparently the owner had been stockpiling hundreds and hundreds of fireworks. After fire crews arrived to combat the blaze, the house exploded. Some firefighters were injured, as were some neighbors. Some adjacent homes were burned, but the original home was completely destroyed down to its foundation.
Evan and Jan hope there might be some way around the road closure, so continue on until they reach it. A security guard repeats the story, and tells them they can’t go through. (Later it’s learned that today investigators are completing a search of the area to confirm what happened.)
Whidbey is a long, thin island with very few north–south routes beyond a busy highway, so this road closure forces Evan and Jan to backtrack six miles to the last junction, then take an alternate route up the east side of the island. The problem with this is that now they have to be conservative about how much battery power they use.
Even using the lowest power setting, Jan’s bike has just barely enough power to reach Coupeville. At the end of the afternoon, the motor is contributing very little and Jan’s legs are aching. Evan, meanwhile, weighs less than Jan, and Evan’s bike weighs less than the one Jan’s riding, so Evan has ample power even at the end of the day and zooms straight up the hills.
After checking into a cute AirBnB, Evan and Jan walk a couple of blocks into town. They browse for a while at the Kingfisher Bookstore, then have a good dinner at the Front Street Grille.
Evan and Jan’s Whidbey bike trip, Day 3. Evan and Jan start their day with breakfast at the only restaurant that’s open: the Sunshine Drip cafe, which happily has good food and coffee. The two also explore the Coupeville Pier and its shops.
Rain is forecast for today, and while there are plenty of clouds, thankfully there’s no rain all day. Evan and Jan ride back south to Freeland, this time taking the reopened westside road. They stop to look at the house that exploded two days ago.
In Freeland they stop for lunch at the Freeland Cafe, where they take the opportunity to sit at an outdoor table. A power outlet nearby lets them add some charge back to their bikes’ batteries. The lunch highlight is a blueberry hand pie served with ice cream.
After biking back to the ferry terminal at Clinton, they ride the ferry back across to Mukilteo. Evan takes advantage of the short crossing to purchase some traditional ferry popcorn.
In Mukilteo the next train to Seattle won’t leave for three hours, so Evan and Jan have time to kill. They read for a while at the cute Red Cup cafe, and when that closes at 4:00 pm they walk to the nearby Rosehill Community Center and read there. They also get to watch a group of people slowly trickle in for a wedding that’s starting just as it’s time to leave for the train.
The Sounder commuter train signage on the platforms is terrible: there are two platforms separated by tracks, but it’s not at all clear on which side the southbound train for Seattle will arrive. There are people on both platforms heading to another World Cup soccer match; both sides insist confidently that their side is the correct side.
Evan and Jan eventually work out that the far side is the correct one, so laboriously make their way through the slow elevator up to the bridge, then across, then down to the other side. A number of people move with them. A short while later, a solitary station employee announces that plans have changed, and the Seattle train will in fact leave from the opposite platform. Evan and Jan once again make their way slowly over to the other platform.
Having recharged the batteries in Mukilteo, from the station it’s a quick ride home at maximum power.
Murder mystery game night. Evan recently enjoyed playing a murder myster role-playing game in a Chinese style called a jubensha. He had such a fine time that’s brought a copy of that game for us to play. This one has a sci-fi setting and a pandemic theme; it was written during the covid pandemic. Each player in this particular game is identified with a color, which Evan indicates by marking each place at the table with a colored dinosaur or other stuffed animal.
Jan turns out to be the murderer, but the highpoint of the came is the moment when Liya, Bree, and Jan have to gently break the news to Angela that her character is a robot.
We drop Evan off for his afternoon flight back to Taiwan. His flight is delayed, then delayed some more, and then again. The three of us (Bree, Angela, Jan) drive back to SeaTac so we can have dinner with him. Evan walks over to meet us at the 13 Coins restaurant across the street from the airport, and we have a decent dinner together.
After dinner, we drop him back off at the airport, where his flight finally leaves after 10:00 pm. He’d originally been scheduled to arrive the following day around 8:00 pm, giving him plenty of time to sleep before classes the next day — but instead his flight lands around 2:00 am.