This is a sample of my pictures off my phone from Saturday June 15th, 2019. There are more on my camera I’ll get to later. Click on the picture to get a higher resolution version.
Spring wear
Barb has some new and cool clothes for spring:
Signing some papers at the courthouse
Last Thursday evening Barb, some friends, and family members went to the courthouse to watch as Barb and I signed some papers.
This was our point of view:
This was their point of view:
Photo by Mark.
Photo by Jaime.
Check out the judge’s boots! It was because of the Snowpocalypse.
The next two pictures were after we had finished.
Photo by Jane.
Photo by the judge.
Then most of us went back to our house for dinner and cake.
I would have been certain “it would work out” had we gotten married after the first couple of months we were together. After several months the topic of marriage would occasionally come up and Barb didn’t see the point and then after a year or three she was quite clear that she did not want to get married. It wasn’t my preference but I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it and it almost never came up between us.
Then last June she proposed to me. There were some tax and other issues to resolve and we finally sort of settled on Valentines Day by the November/December timeframe. Valentines Day saves some hassle because you have one less card and/or gift to worry about during the year and you are less likely to forget about it. A bonus is that it is the 65th anniversary of when my parents got married.
Snowpocalypse
The temperatures weren’t anything like what recently happened back east but Seattle had it’s own extraordinary weather over the last couple of weeks. Here in Bellevue we had snow over 16 inches deep. The weather historians said it was the most snow since the winter of 1968-1969. With all the hills around here there were lots of cars which didn’t make it home and were abandoned on the side of the street. Some of them were badly crumpled.
We were without mail service for about 10 days. No Amazon deliveries for a simlar timeframe. No garbage or recycling pickup for three weeks. Our power stayed on except for a few outages that lasted no more than 30 seconds. Others, within a quarter mile of us, were without power for a couple days.
I worked from home for about six days as no one else on my team could make it in to work. I could have made it with my car. I could even walk to and from work if I really wanted to. But I didn’t see a point to it. Just stay put and don’t risk getting smacked by someone who didn’t have the proper tires on their vehicle.
Barb’s brother had a surgery scheduled for last Friday in downtown Seattle. His wife had little or no experience driving in the snow so Barb and I volunteered to bring them home after another snowfall. He lives on a hill close to the hill Barb and I live on. The street we live on had not been plowed and had several inches of snow on it. With no idea what his street conditions were like I took off the all season tires which would have been adequate for our street and getting into Seattle and replaced them with studded mud and snow tires. We had no problems traversing the snow and made the trip to and from downtown Seattle without any unexpected adventures.
What was odd to Barb and I was the run on groceries. The shelves of bread, milk, meat and fresh produce were almost completely bare. We got a few things before the snow came but not really much more than usual. I did fill the gas cans for the generator and topped off the tank in my car but we would have been just fine without the extra supplies.
The only issue we had was the snow damaged a gutter as it slid off the roof over the deck.
The Seattle Times reported heart warming stories of people helping others. Daughter Jaime, also in Bellevue, spent many hours shoveling snow in her condo parking lot to help clear a path to the street. She also helped numerous people get out of their car ports with cars poorly equipped for the adventure.
Below the break are pictures of the snow around our place. Continue reading “Snowpocalypse”
Whidbey Island plane crash
Today started out fairly typically for me as I went to Whidbey Island for a pistol match at Holmes Harbor Rod & Gun Club. The weather was beautiful and I took a few pictures on the ferry and, as usual, tweeted one of them:
Beautiful day for a ferry ride to Whidbey Island for a falling plate match. pic.twitter.com/t6O6v7k92l
— Joe Huffman (@JoeHuffman) January 12, 2019
We started shooting on time and things were going fairly well for me considering nearly everyone else was shooting Open class guns and I was shooting Limited.
Then about 11:15 a plane engine could be heard louder than usual and changed tone. Perhaps it went from moderate power to full power?
I wasn’t paying much attention. I was under a shelter and couldn’t see the sky. Others, at the end of the shelter could see in the direction of the sound and looked at the sky. They announced that it went down and very shortly after that we heard the thump as the plane hit the trees in the woods.
The event director, Steve, stopped the match and someone ran off the 200 feet or so to the restaurant to use the land line. The cell service is poor to non-existent depending where you are on the range so that was probably the most reliable means of calling it in. There was another plane in the air and circled the area where the plane went down. We talked about it for a bit. What should we do? What could we do? The woods were very thick. I wasn’t even sure we could make it through the woods from our direction to the plane crash area. Surely the airport, on the other side of the woods, would be the better approach. I told the event director, “I don’t think there is much we can do.” He agreed. And we finished shooting the match.
We just finished, and hadn’t even figured out who won the match when someone in firefighter clothing showed up. He asked us to shut down the range. They couldn’t find the plane from the other direction and wanted to try from our direction. “And can some of you guys help us search?”
We immediately agreed. As we started toward the woods where the plane went down we could smell the fuel. The firefighter told us that if we found the plane we should stay away because of the fuel. We didn’t want to risk starting a fire or getting caught in a fire.
We walked at a brisk pace down the road from the falling plate range past the open pistol bays to the trail that led into the woods. There was an archery target set up about 50 yards from the end of the road at the bottom of a draw with a trail to it. The walking was easy enough to there but the trail then disappeared.
Continuing straight was light brush and easy enough. But my impression from where the other match participants had indicated the plane went down it was off to our right. No use in us all staying in a group and since we didn’t really know where it was at spreading out was probably the best plan even if the going was rather tough. I was wearing thermal underwear, blue jeans, a t-shirt, a sweat-shirt, my Boomershoot M-65 field jacket, gloves, eye and ear protection. I was basically “armored” against the brush. It was just below my chin. I could see over it for moderate distances. Most of the other people in the group were significantly shorter than I and would not have been able to see more than a few feet had they tried to navigate through this brush. I had to push it away and step over small fallen trees and watch for holes and ditches. It was slow going.
It was probably only about 225 yards into the woods when I came out of the thick brush into relatively thin brush within about 100 feet of the plane ahead and to the right of me:
The picture below shows more context:
I yelled several times to announce that I had found it and kept my distance for a while.
There was no smell of fuel so I approached a little closer. The plane was badly mangled, upside down, and backward from the direction of flight. It had flipped after hitting the trees.
From the time the plane went down to the time I arrived at the site it was just under 30 minutes.
There were no sounds and no movement. I figured the pilot was dead or unconscious. I couldn’t tell if there was more than one person in the plane.
I took a picture and waited for the search and rescue people to arrive and take control of the scene:
The firefighter was the first to arrive after about two minutes and he radioed to others and informed them there was one person alive and one dead. I then saw the person moving their left arm occasionally. He asked me to use my cell phone call 911 so they could get GPS coordinates to guide other rescue crew to the site. He radioed that there was no way for a helicopter to get in and to send in someone with a chain saw to cut a trail out.
A woman showed up from the west and began helping. I used my knife to cut a few cables holding the left wing to the body of the plane and then she and I moved the wing to get better access to the people in the plane.
More people showed up. Some were from the pistol match and some were wearing emergency clothing and radios:
We continued moving small trees and debris from the body of the plane and made plans to move the plane to get access to the female passenger.
When the plane was clear of debris we lifted the tail of the plane straight up. The engine of the plane was mostly broken off and the body hinged on the remaining metal that attached to the engine area. We held it directly on it’s nose while the rescue workers cut the seatbelt on both sides and pulled the woman from her seat. She moaned and cried out about her leg. They worked her free of the debris as gently as they could and moved her away from the plane to examine her as we tipped the body of the plane on over and gently set it down. Someone examined the male pilot for 30 seconds or a minute and announced, “There’s nothing.”
A man with a chainsaw arrived from the west and the original firefighter asked us to help the chainsaw guy clear a path. In part, I think he wanted us to leave so he and the other rescue people could examine the female passenger with a little more privacy. There were about 10 or 15 people onsite now and that was more than enough to help clear the path to the road to the west.
I headed back to the range to collect my gear and report to others that I was going to be later than expected for my appointments that afternoon.
As I drove away I came across two people from the match just outside the main entrance. They had walked out to the west and then down the road to the gun club. I drove another couple hundred yards and found a group of three walking down the side of the road. I offered them a ride, which they accepted and I took them back to the range and their cars.
News stories about the crash:
- 1 dead, 1 injured in small passenger plane crash on Whidbey Island
- Small passenger plane crashes Saturday on Whidbey Island, killing 1
- Everett man dead, woman critical after Whidbey Airpark crash (I’m on the far side of the airplane body in the picture shown)
- At least one fatality reported after plane crash on Whidbey Island
Maddy goes to the range
After suggesting, for years, that Maddy learn to shoot she agreed and yesterday we went to the range. On the way to the range I quizzed her on the gun safety rules. At first she struggled with rule one but had them down by the time we arrived. She had never touched a gun before yesterday but did awesome! You could see her improve, literally, from one string of five shots to the next. It was incredible to watch.
I started her out, as usual, with a suppressed .22 at about 10 feet from a simple paper target. I first taught her the proper stance, then grip, dry fire, then one round in the gun, then two rounds, then more…
This is her first, approximately, 10 shots. The first round is in the white six-ring at about 6:00. The second as in the 9-ring at about 4:00. With only one other “wild” (for moderate definitions of “wild”) shot the rest all stayed in a tight group in the black around 6:00.
She is cross eye dominate and after shooting right handed for about 20 shots I had her shoot left handed to see how that would work out.
She was more accurate:
She said it felt more stable but a bit awkward and went back to shooting right handed.
As she improved I changed the game to make it more interesting. I had her put five shots on four targets with no two shots sequentially on the same target and no concern for accuracy beyond touching the target. I was trying to emulate a steel challenge stage. At first I just let her shoot at her own pace with no encouragement for speed. She was nailing it:
I then asked her to speed things up. She continued to do well and I got out the timer and switched her to unsuppressed.
Her times for the five shots were in the sixes.and I told her I was guessing she could be under five and still get all the shots on target. A couple strings later and she had a 5.00. Then she blew it away with a 4.48:
Then a 4.41:
A few strings later it was 4.25:
It was amazing to watch. Nearly every string was more consistent and the splits tighter without a single miss. The hits were nearly all in the black.
She blew past my prediction of something under 5.00 with a 3.77! The last time I did this type of exercise with almost new shooters they best they did was 4.44 and 5.15. And what I didn’t mention in that blog post was they that would frequently have strings with one or more misses. Maddy didn’t have that problem and completely blew them away on time as well as accuracy.
I could detect some fatigue, which she verified, so before going home, I moved her on to try a few shots with a center pistol. I gave her some low power 180 grain loads in .40 S&W and had her shoot my STI Eagle:
She fired about five shots, all in the black, then we cleaned up and went home where her mom marveled at how well she did and I announced she was “competition ready”.
Captain Picard and First Mate Barb
Barb and I went to a Halloween party last night:
Hike to Lake Ann
A couple years ago Barb and I hiked to Annette Lake. A couple weeks ago we hiked to Lake Ann. Since it was late in the year we expected there would be few people. We were wrong. Short of national parks, this was probably the most crowded parking and trail we have ever been on. Still, the weather was nice, the views were great, and we enjoyed hike.
Mount Catherine
Last Sunday Barb and I hiked up Mount Catherine. We were hoping that by driving east of Snoqualmie Pass and getting up near 5000 feet in elevation we could get out of all the forest fire smoke around home. No such luck, but it was a nice hike anyway. We probably will go back sometime when the air is clear and we can see something in the distance other than the haze.
The drive to the trailhead really requires a high clearance vehicle. Even with my Ford Escape we bottomed out once on some particularly high rocks. The trail is pretty nice. It’s not a walk in the park with a wide smooth path, but it’s not one of those trails which “you have to believe it in order to see it” either (been there, done that, got lost, it wasn’t our favorite outing). The last little bit near the top is steep and it little more than dirt steps in the side of the mountain. No big deal when it’s dry but it could be treacherous when it’s wet.
Idaho visit
Last weekend Barb and I went to Idaho. We delivered more chemicals for Boomershoot 2019, trimmed some trees along the road to Boomershoot Taj Mahal, and attended my high school reunion. The weather was a little on the warm side but not bad. We took a few pictures during the trip:
I believe this was west of Colfax on Highway 26. We found the clouds quite pretty.
This is the lentil field just south of Boomershoot Mecca.
I”m planning to repair these steel targets at the tree line before Boomershoot 2019.
I was trying to do the equivalent of this one from almost exactly 10 years ago:
Another view of the hay bales with the shooting line in the background.
For many years Barb had digestive issues with wheat. Those issues mysteriously went away a few months ago (Barb is skeptical of my suggestion it was Dr. Joe’s cure for everything, and I’m skeptical of her hypothesis of a spiritual/energy something or other healing). Here we have her next to a field of Huffman Wheat.