The Burrow just joined the Hipster generation!

Today is the first race in the New Balance / Super Jock 'n Jill Winter Grand Prix! The series runs for two months and involves cross-country, road, and one track race. We run rain or shine. Today I invited family friend Gareth to join us.

back: Rachel, Isabel, Dory, Naomi, Veronica. front: Gareth, Étienne

They started the warm up with mountain climbers, and the open/close gate exercises.

Each race has a mass start, Gareth et alia are somewhere in that pack.

On the first lap, all are happy. Gareth gives me a smile, quick wave, then gets down to business. I love these shots with the submarine fins in the background. The rain started just as the race got going. It was light and did not bother the contestants.

Lap two and Gareth is still smiling. That is Joel right next to him. Joel teaches science at Salmon Bay and knows Étienne very well. I also got a shot of Isabel.

You can just catch the time for Étienne and Gareth here. Great job boys! Here is a picture of Ballard High School girls to watch for at the cross country events next year. Nell, Anastasia, Ruby, and Sophie. Come out for the next Winter Grand Prix event. Join the fun or cheer on these great athletes.

The Ballard High School marching band performed their halftime show for the Homecoming football game!

friend one, Carlton, and friend two.

Cindy, Daniel, Veronica, Judy, and Steve rode the metro bus to Memorial Stadium for the Ballard football game. This is the only game of the season were the marching band takes to the field for halftime. The line was long to get tickets and we made it into the stadium minutes before halftime. Great timing. We got to see the band, and could leave before the second half. Here are a few more pictures, and the full video. The Space Needle has a cover over the bottom because they are adding a glass floor.

The next day, LYONS had a hamburger run for the high school youths. The kids dressed up and bussed between five of the Dick's Drive-In hamburger restaurants.

Veronica, Daniel, and Carlton. Veronica caught the eye of neighbor Nancy and is modeling a fur wrap! Veronica decided hamburgers and rabbit fur were not a good mix and did not take it for the event. By the end of the evening, Veronica consumed five hamburgers!

Étienne has been running cross country with Rain City Flyers for two months now. Today was his second meet of the season. He ran 3k meters in the Cascade Striders Cross Country meet at Wilburton Park, Bellevue WA. RCF has a strong team this year and for the first time in 5 years it was sunny and not raining at this meet!

Here, Étienne sports a fresh haircut and just to his left in the gray shorts with orange stripe is a new friend of his, Simeon. The two of them are planning to Trick-or-Treat together this fall.

The course goes up this long hill twice. This is a picture of his first loop.

Here is the final 100 meters. Go, Étienne, Go!!!

Today I drove Wella and the boys to Mount Rainier. We visited Paradise to view the mountain and falls. My last trip here was on a bicycle with Jeff. This time I am in a car!

If you zoom in on Carl's right shoulder, there is a dark object in the greenery just above it.

Today was crystal clear and the views were spectacular. We enjoyed the weather, sights, and sounds.

Here is our picnic lunch and again, in the background a very popular black bear. Yikes!

We opted to take a trail in the opposite direction of the bear. Myrtle Falls. The third picture shows a view from below, and the fourth is a small fall just above Myrtle with Rainier in the background.

Here is Narada Falls with a view of the trees just West (downstream) of the falls. What is going on with the branches on these trees? All the trees in this local area have branches on one side only!

Our final stop is Christine Falls. Carl and Wella hiked to the base of the falls while Étie and I stayed with the car just above that bridge. What a beautiful day!!

On Saturday, Carl left for Idaho with the church youth group. For one week they will be having fun and working community service projects. Before dropping him off, we loaded up with submarine sandwiches and spent lunch at Gas Works.

Here we are on the North side of Lake Union with the Seattle Skyline to enjoy.

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The lake was very popular with the Ducks tours, a pirate ship with Boeing's yacht Daedalus in the background (center picture, blue hull on the right), and even Police tours! Just in front of the police boats it a man on a paddle board with his dog. The crowds were just right while we enjoyed blue skies, a gentle breeze, and 72 degrees.

Ileana, Étienne, Carlton, and Sofia

Today we headed off to church because Veronica was Assisting Minister.

During the summer months at Ballard First Lutheran, Veronica and Carl will perform some music between readings. In two weeks Carl may sing! Today Veronica led the congregation in prayer and parts of the liturgy. Way to go Veronica!

Yuma will hit 108 degrees F next week. Everyday is over 100 degrees F. So, tonight we are making pulled pork tacos and a rhubarb pie.

I asked Sofia and Iliana to roll the dough, pick clean and season the rhubarb, and build the pie!

Look at the beautiful lattice work! Watch out mom and dad, pies are in your future!

Bellissimo!!

This week is All Shakespeare, All The Time.

On Thursday, we went to the Greenstage's production of Comedy of Errors. Veronica performed this show a few years ago, so we were familiar with the plot: two sets of identical twins separated at birth, mistaken identity, hilarity ensues. This was the first time we had seen the full scale production in Woodland Park, and we brought a picnic dinner and really enjoyed it. The red hats said Make Ephesus Great Again!

We were serenaded before the show. See the two sets of twins?

Meanwhile, Carl has been doing the Taproot Theater Shakespeare Camp all week. This year's production is Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Carl was cast as Proteus. The director went with a pirate theme, so he put on a long black coat when he becomes Evil Proteus and betrays Valentine and Julia.

The entire cast:

Steve taped the whole show:

Finally, the Greenstage Backyard Bard productions at Salmon Bay Park are this Sunday. The Backyard Bard shows have four actors playing all the parts, and the show is cut down to 45 minutes. This year will be Hamlet and Midsummer Night's Dream. We will walk down to see the shows this weekend!

First and foremost, Carl made it home. The family and I were touring Hanford B Reactor all day so my good friend Erin picked up Carl. Thoughtful Erin even had a lunch sack packed knowing he would be hungry. He got off the bus about 8 PM. Thank you Erin.

One more delayed update, Veronica played the Cello at church on Sunday. Afterwards we headed over to our favorite sushi bar Billy Beach. Bria has been living with us while her house is up for sale. She moves to Denver later this week. Keeping with a longstanding Redpath tradition, we welcome all and this has been a truly spectacular month with Ileana, Sofia, and now Bria who is recovering from four tooth extractions. I got high marks from her mother Brooke for our care during Bria's recovery. The Redpaths earned high praise from Bria's dentist during a follow up today.

Steve, Veronica, Judy, Karen, Richard, and Étienne in front. Tuesday evening was a wonderful visit from Veronica's and Carl's grade school teacher from Price Harris in Wichita. We all look back on teachers that nurtured and jump started our love of knowledge, learning, and life. Karen tops our list. Veronica's love of reading, music, and filming all got a jump start from Karen. We do not thank Richard for inspiring Veronica to learn the banjo! Veronica still has the finger picks but has moved on to cello and now the Ukulele. Carl enjoys the sciences and paleontology. From the looks of him after Camp Orkila, I think he spent the two weeks digging! Thank you Karen and Richard.

Now the great trip to Hanford.

Some great trips begin with a bus ride. After waking at 7 AM and driving three and a half hours, Sofia and Ileana enjoy yet another 45 minute ride, "backtracking" the route we just drove, to get to the site. The B Reactor tour is incredible. The docents all worked there and love to share their depth of knowledge.

The tour starts with a short lecture right in front of the working face of the reactor. I got a real feel for what it was like for the men and women to load the uranium into the unit. This front face was relatively low radiation and of course now, completely safe. 16 slugs of uranium are loaded into each of those tubes. The slugs weigh about 8 pounds each. After about two weeks of reaction time, the uranium has gone through several reactions and becomes plutonium. The plutonium product was not so safe. These were pushed all the way through the reactor to the back side where they fell into a pool of water. A later picture will show the transportation containers on a rail car. The containers were submerged in the pool of water on the back side of the reactor and loaded with the plutonium.

Sofia and Ileana examine a mock up of the reactor. The second picture shows all the plumbing required to control the heat from the reaction. In this unit, heat is a byproduct not used for production of steam or electricity. Finally, the railcars with those transportation containers used to move the plutonium from Reactor B to the Purex facility.

This was a Atomic Energy Commission facility complete with very military processes. Here we have Sofia and Veronica displaying the Broom Stations found throughout the facility.

Sofia and Étienne take turns sitting at Reactor Control. This station was manned 24/7 from the moment the reactor went online till the day it was shut down 30 years later. The water temperature for each reactor tube was monitored and manually adjusted for optimum production. Étienne stands in front of that board, Watch Out!

What a great tour. This brought back so much of my live story from growing up in a military family, working in the Air Force on nuclear bombers, and being on the design team for a nuclear defense missile.

After another bus ride back to our car, we set out on the three and a half hour ride back home. 107 degrees is a far cry from the 78 degrees waiting for us at home.

After two weeks, I found one picture of Carl.

Yes, that is him in the background. He survived kayaking!! Judy just pointed out that although this was taken Sunday about noon, that is the shirt he was wearing the day I took him to camp ELEVEN DAYS AGO!!!!!!!