Cascajun

Outside Magazine ranked Bellingham, WA the Best U.S. Paddle Town in it’s August 2006 issue. The Bellingham Herald has more in a July 11 article.

An interesting coincidence, just this weeekend I started reading Spirited Waters : Soloing South Through the Inside Passage by Bellingham resident Jennifer Hahn.

The Hezbollah threat, as it later turned out, was nothing like the UNIFIL had reported. We can only hope that the world is being better served by Mohammed el-Baradei and the IAEA.

Read it at the Belmont Club: Recon By Fire

I took these photos yesterday morning up in BC. It’s filmmaker Bjorn Enga’s newest creation, which I hear will be feartured in the upcoming freeride video Kranked 6: Progression.

The views were just too good for me to focus on riding any of the stunts.

Ramp to wall to log/dirt tranny.
Mountain bike “tressel”
Film can, Boyko #4

Oh my!

I spent the past weekend up on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, Canada.

I’ve yet to venture more than 4-hours drive from Bellingham and each time I’m amazed with scenery like this.

Horseshoe Bay, BC

Pender Hill, BC

I even bumped into a local rider/trail builder/race promoter who took me on a 2-hour tour…

Rod’s Red Baron

Wretchard, down in the comments:

Hating one’s enemies is sometimes a sign of character. Betraying one’s friends is always a sign of its lack.

Watch out, you could poke your eye out on this one!

Newspaperman Don Surber wonders why, after all of Bill Keller’s recent puffery about freedom of the press, the NYT has yet to come out in defense of Robert Novak.

Hat Tip: Pajamas Media

My family recently registered 720 acres of property with the Louisiana Natural Areas Registry. Located in Beauregard Parish, the property includes five rare and imperiled Louisiana natural communities: flatwoods pond, western hillside seepage bog, bayhead swamp, western acidic longleaf pine savannah, and western upland longleaf pine forest.

Here are two photos I have from a recent visit to this unique place I can proudly call home.

Flatwoods Pond & Western Acidic Longleaf Pine Savannah

Western Hillside Seepage Bog

Update:

Here’s a link to the PDF version of an article from The Advocate, a Baton Rouge, LA newspaper.

Moral crusades don’t solve engineering problems.

Robert Samuelson has a piece about the global warming debate over at Real Clear Politics. He points out the enormity of the engineering challenge the world faces in trying supplying global energy demands while also cutting CO2 emmissions. Rather than address these challenges, the doomsayers have turned the debate into a moral crusade which in turn has fostered political grandstanding.

Tying in nicely with that piece, Donald Sensing discusses alternative energy sources over at Winds of Change. The reality is, except for nuclear power generation, presently there are no alternatives to oil that are practical solutions on the scale needed to supply significant quantities of our global energy needs.

Wretchard speculates about North Korea’s unsuccessful test launch of an ICBM. Might an airborne laser weapon system brought down the missile?

I find the possibility especially intriguing because I work for SPIE. Technologies like chemical lasers and adaptive optics are researched, developed, and applied to real world problems by members of the society.

I bumped into a group of guys I know from The Hub Community Bike Cooperative today on my way home from breakfast. They were outside the shop, gearing up for a ride. After chatting a bit, they invited me along on the ride.

“Where?” I asked. “Sumas Mountain logging roads,” was the reply.

I took note of the bikes: 3 touring cycles with skinny tires and a hardtail with 29-inch wheels. All were sporting gears. Since I had planned to go cycling anyway, I quickly decided to grab my commuter and join them. I ran home (next door) and returned 15 minutes later with my bike and a hydration pack, ready to ride.

That snap decision turned into a 53 mile round trip, 5 hour bike ride from sea level to ~3,000 feet elevation and back. We took 5 miles of urban bike paths to the outskirts of Bellingham, 8 miles of rolling paved country roads to Nugent’s Corner, then up the side of Sumas Mountain on gravel roads to a saddle and then back down. The gravel road section was 12 miles round trip and started at approximately 500 feet elevation.

The ride was sanguine. The climb was gruesome. The views were inspiring. The swim in the Nooksak was invigorating. And, the day was memorable.