Run 542

Before I get anyone's hopes up with that title, I want to say upfront that I did not attempt the 8.5 miles and 1,500 feet of elevation gain today as I have been saying I would for the last week. So this post will not be a re-cap of my experiences up there, as I initially thought it would be.

I chose not to run, and here's why.

For anyone not familiar, Run 542 is part of the larger event known as Festival 542 that is taking place this weekend along the Mt. Baker Highway (state route 542). The focus of the event is a 24.5 mile bike ride that starts in Glacier, WA, and ends at Artist Point; roughly 4,000 feet from the ride's beginning. The run starts near the beginning of the bike ride and winds its way up to Artist Point on a series of trails in the Mount Baker Ski Area and the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

Here's a map of the run. The steepness of some of its ascents really cannot be expressed accurately in words.

When I was first given the opportunity to participate in the run one week before it was scheduled to happen, I was hesitant but still extremely excited. Though my trail-running experience was almost nonexistent, I still felt, based on my previous backpacking experience, I could do the run in a reasonable amount of time. The friends and co-workers to whom I told the idea seemed surprised at my decision to do the run but also generally supportive.

Plus, I had never been up the Mt. Baker Highway. I felt the trip was one I needed to make to be a real Washingtonian, and I could not imagine a better way to do it than the run.

As the event drew closer, however, self doubt began to grow within me. I knew of a trail near Fairhaven in Bellingham, the Pine and Cedar Lake trail, that would just about simulate the conditions of the Mt. Baker run. The P and C trail is 1.6 miles and goes nearly straight up in the beginning, reaching an elevation gain of 1,300 feet. I thought that if I could do this trail a few times comfortably, I could just make the Mt. Baker run.

Though I had traversed this trail in the past with a friend, it seemed steeper than I remembered when I attempted it again last Wednesday. By about halfway, I had to turn back. My leg muscles were aching, and I was getting a little dizzy. I drove back home that night feeling disappointed in myself and more than a little sore.

As the weekend drew ever closer, I began to seriously think about why I felt the need to do this. I realized that from the beginning, I was never really doing this for me. I think because of all the people I told about it, I felt I would be letting them down if I decided not to go through with it; even as the reality of the Mt. Baker run being eight times what I could not do on Wednesday set in.

I finally made the concrete decision Saturday morning to not attempt the Mt. Baker run. I did, however, return to the P and C trail and completed one circuit. I was able to make it up and down again, about 3.4 miles, in roughly one hour and 15 minutes. Achieving this made me feel less bad about not going through with the Mt. Baker run. I averaged about 2 miles per hour, which is pretty good for me.

I returned to the P and C trail because, despite my self-disappointment, jogging the trail on Wednesday was genuinely fun. Trail running, I confirmed this morning, is definitely something of which I want to do more. Therein lies another reason I did not attempt Run 542: I did not want to start my experience in trail-running with a trip that would have most likely all but destroyed me. I did not want to have that sort of negative association with this budding hobby of mine.

Put simply, I just did not think I was ready for Run 542. There's always next year. Until then, I plan to keep running.

Friday Night Lights

On the evening of Friday, September 3, I attended my first ever, and I do mean ever, high school football game. Sports in general never really interested me as a high-schooler. I had also always thought of  the games as just another excuse for the popular kids, of which I never really was one, to coagulate into their predefined cliches. Of course, looking back at my time in high school now, I had no way of knowing if that actually took place, seeing as how I never attended one.

Last night changed all that.

As part of my new job at The Northern Light, I had been tasked with taking pictures at Blaine's football games while a freelancer with whom the paper had worked before wrote about them. In addition to the game being my first, the evening also represented my first experience with taking photos where that was my sole responsibility; as opposed to shooting something and also being expected to write about it. I was also more than a little excited to use my newly laminated press pass for the first time.

The evening could not have been a better one for shooting a game. The sky was absolutely clear and turned nearly all the colors in the visible spectrum as the earth rotated to reside deeper and deeper in its own shadow. Mount Baker stood like an immense referee in the far off distance. The smell of hastily made popcorn hung in the air and mingled with the sounds of myriad high-schoolers gossiping (at least my teenage impressions of high school football games were partially right).

During the week before the game, I had asked a photojournalist friend of mine who graduated from Western a quarter before me for some pointers on shooting sports. All her advice, high shutter speed, wide-open aperture, rushed through my head as I took test shots of the game to make sure the settings on my borrowed Nikon D50 were right. I knew, of course, that they would have to be continually adjusted as the natural light waned and the towering floodlights bathed the field in a synthetic glow.

Then the high school band struck up the school's fight song, and a crash of stampeding football players uniformed in black and orange, Blaine's colors, surged onto the field. Introductions for both teams commenced and ended. The game was about to begin.

Once the game started, my friend's advice kicked in once again and informed me on where to stand to get the best shot; that, and a little bit of following the lead of the four other photographers who were there. I eventually learned who among Blaine's team got the chance to touch the ball the most. As the  night wore on, the most stressful bit was continually tweaking the camera's setting to cope with the hellishly lighted time of twilight. I unfortunately had to sacrifice a quick shutter speed, and being able to stop the fastest action, for properly exposed shots.

I finally understood how tough of a job shooting sports can be. Not only do you have to be aware of most everything going on around you, your camera has to be constantly adjusted to fit any changes in light conditions. All this while hustling up and down the field in order to find the best shot.

Overall, the experience was an incredibly positive one for me. I think I came away with some pretty decent shots, at least for my first time. Future games will hopefully only improve my skills.

Besides the experience of shooting sports for the first time, something else hit me that night: the realization of how much I had missed out on during my high school days by not going to football games. A brief conversation with an employee of the school district I had met in the first few weeks of my time at The Northern Light really stuck with me. He made the comment that this is what Friday nights are like in small-town America. I regret never having experienced it in my hometown of Las Vegas, but I am more than excited to be a part of the experience in my adoptive northwestern Washington home.

As some of my more astute readers may have noticed, I have not mentioned the 100th annual Northwest Washington Fair currently going on in Lynden all this week.

Put simply, it's because I don't plan on going. I would certainly like to, but the tickets are a bit pricey and my days are being taken up by work and the moving process in which I am currently involved.

With that said, this headline from The Bellingham Herald simply made me laugh:

Cooler mishap causes Moo-Wich meltdown at Lynden fair

The Whatcom County Dairy Women came to their booth at the fair Monday morning to find nearly 6,500 of their Moo-Wich ice cream sandwiches had melted due to equipment failures. Volunteers had apparently worked hard in the days before the fair to prepare the treats for eagerly waiting customers.

Now before anyone gets up in arms for me poking fun at this truly tragic occurrence, it should be known that a nearby Haggen supermarket had replacement cookies in the oven within  hours of the mishap. 650 Moo-Wiches should have been ready for customers by this afternoon.

I am of course glad to hear this tale had a happy ending. I just hope the Whatcom County Dairy Women didn't loose any moo-ney because of this unfortunate state of affairs.

If any other tragically hilarious mishaps occur at the fair, you will most definitely be able to read about them here. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with better puns by the time that happens.

St. Francis Antique Car Show

For my inaugural post on From Bellingham to Blaine, I'm presenting a few photos I took at the St. Francis Antique Car Show. The show took place at the St. Francis of Bellingham nursing care facility near St. Joseph Hospital.

The show featured about 15 classic and antique cars, some living up to the "antique" moniker more than others. The cars varied in age from the 1910s on up through the 1960s and 70s. The people at St. Francis also provided free food in the form of hot dogs and chips. Even without the cars present, I found it difficult to pass up the opportunity for free food.

My paltry 23 years on this planet put me in the younger age range of the roughly 30-strong crowd at the show. Hell, all the cars were even older than me. Car show culture is always something with which I've been incredibly fascinated. The love of the automobile and the freedom it brings its owner seems to be uniquely American.

Without further ado, here are some photographic highlights. You can check out the entire album here.

This was one of the three Ford Model-Ts in attendance.

The oldest car at the show: a 1913 Model T Speedster.

Controls don't get much simpler than that.

A 1958 Corvette. According to the owner, 1958 was the only year they offered the car in this "Panama Yellow."

A classic Ford Thunderbird. 

Well, that's all the pictures I'm going to cram into this post. Once again, you can find the entire album here.