Description: A morning haze lingers over the Snohomish Valley on a bright, September day. The Snohomish River finds its headwaters in the distant mountains.
This image had help in editing. Specifically, in Lightroom 3.0 I adjusted: Recovery +49, Fill Light +11, Blacks +19, Brightness +34, Contrast +59, Clarity +45, Vibrance +25, Saturatin +27, Blue Saturation +25. I also painted in a brush adjust for the mountain range to take off some of the glare by adjusting Exposure –.61, Contrast +48, Saturation –25 Then I painted the foreground and a bit of river and increased exposure just +.42. Lastly I painted another adjust for the sky itself and went Exposure –.52 and Saturation +25 to bring out more of the color in the sky that morning.
Description: I had a shoot this week for Washington Magazine that included a piece on Ethan Stowell, owner of the newly opened Staple & Fancy Mercantile restaurant in Ballard. The food was excellent and that’s my dinner on the grill. Yum.
Description: Lunch time the hillside town of Moulay Idriss means meat, and lots of it. The shops along the main streets are filled with a grill up front and seating in the back. Picking your food is as easy as pointing (if you don’t know Arabic) and smiling. And the spiced flavors mingled with the wafting smoke let me eager to devour the scrumptious meal when it arrives fresh off the grill.
I think I found the man who stole my dreams. Not all of my dreams, but the one where I use more renewable resources and live a good life. The man in questions is Todd Shuster, owner and skipper of Gato Verde Adventure Sailing in Bellingham, Washington. Even the company name appeals to me. Adventure. But what’s up with the Green Cat reference(gato is Spanish for cat and verde is green)?
Todd has been a sailing instructor for over 20 years including time spent teaching at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Mexico. He has Coast Guard certifications and all that, but that’s not what impressed me. It’s his boat, an extension of his life philosophies.
Quick backstory: I am royally frustrated at the total lack of a diesel/electric hybrid car in the USA. While gas/electric are ok, they aren’t as efficient as diesel/electric. Also, I like the ability to run on biodiesel when it’s made in something resembling a sustainable fashion (I acknowledge there is a long road ahead for biodiesel and making it out of soybeans is a really bad idea, but it works for now). I’ve looked and looked, but you can’t get one in the USA.
And that’s why I love Todd’s Gato Verde. Cat is short for catamaran, a twin hulled boat that tends to offer a smoother ride over the water. Gato Verde can run on either the diesel engine, fired with 100% biodiesel in the summer (20% in the winter due to gelling concerns) or on a bank of batteries, much like World War II era submarines. The Green Cat is the only chartered diesel/electric hybrid on the West Coast and possibly in the whole USA.
I really like that our two hour sail as part of an adventure tour sponsored by Bellingham/Whatcom County Tourism used only electric power and the wind. The power for the batteries comes from dual shore hookups to the main power grid. Figuring that power is coming from Puget Sound Energy, that means about 42% of it is produced by renewable resources. I could get long winded about how the other sources could become more ‘green’ but that’s not my shtick on this blog. 42% is a good starting point. And during our cruise we used about 2kWh to shove off and return the 42’ catamaran to dock. That’s $.20 of power. And with zero pollution from the Cat itself. Most of our time spent on the water was under wind power. $.20 for a day of sailing.
The diesel side of things helps the Gato Verde stay out for tours as long as seven days. As a certified sailing instructor, Todd often takes clients out for long hauls around the nearby, idyllic San Juan Islands, teaching all skill levels the ancient art of sailing. Over 200 islands to explore but they don’t all have shore power. That’s when Todd can switch on the diesel engine to help dock as well as in times of low wind. While it has less energy per measured unit, biodiesel does have a distinct advantage in producing far fewer smog producing emissions. You can also look at the whole lifecycle of a carbon atom and point to the fact that it’s better to capture it out of the air (rapeseed, algae, etc…) to make fuel than to pump it out from inside the Earth. Down from my soapbox, I’ll state that moving towards more biodiesel use is, in general, better for everyone who breathes.
Our tour was short-lived as fog kept us close to the shore that day. But I found Todd to be a fun guy, quick to smile and quite personable. His boat is equipped to handle nine passengers on overnight trips (photo of the cabins below) and has a full galley, two heads (with a cool view into the space between the hulls) and, in general, is relaxing. He also takes folks like us on shorter tours of the bay. I especially enjoyed the hammock between the hulls on the front of the boat, which made me feel like I was gliding over the water without effort. Probably because that’s exactly what I was doing thanks to Todd and his Gato Verde.
Title: Irish Seaside Location: Donegal Peninsula, Ireland Description: The Donegal Peninsula is a one way trip along some of the rockiest coast in Western Ireland. Dotted with stone fences and farmhouses, the peninsula is a wonderful drive. This photo was taken on St. Patrick’s Day and the weather was perfect. Photograph Copyright Peter West Carey Would you like to purchase this photo or license it? Email me! Subscribe to Photo Of The Day: Enter Your E-Mail Address Subscribe in a reader
I couldn’t tell if my taxi driver was insane, sadistic or had a lump of coal for a heart. Probably all three. I gripped my travel bag close to my chest as some form of imaginary airbag and hoped we were close to the hotel. I also prayed that the roads would magically clear of all people, carts, cars, motorcycles, loris, tuk-tuks, families, cows. Targets. The targets zip by at 40MPH, a seemingly impossible speed in our Suzuki Micro-Compact Somethingoranother. Thankfully my driver sucks at the game, because, since leaving the airport, he’s managed to not hit anything. Somehow.
I want to curl into a ball and yell, "What the hell are you doing??" But, being a good when-in-Rome type of traveler, I sit back and white-knuckle my way through the next 25 frightening minutes until I’m allowed the bliss of exiting the certain death trap. My driver doesn’t smile as I pay my fare, pick my stomach up off the ground and waddle through the Kathmandu haze to the hotel’s front doors.
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That was one of my first experiences careening through traffic in Kathmandu, Nepal. I’ve been back once and things haven’t changed. It’s still crazy busy. Everything seems like a near miss and chaos rules. But I’ve found it’s an organic type of chaos and there is a rhythm to it. One key element in keeping it going seems like a state mandate for what I call "passionless driving".
Here in the USA it’s hard for us to adapt to how they drive in Nepal. We take every minor event on the road as a personal affront to our very nature. If someone comes too close to our car, maybe touching the thin, white line imaginarily dividing us, we talk to the other driver as if they care, "Whoa buddy! Watch what you’re doing!" Buddy never answers because our windows are rolled up and NPR is telling us how ethanol will save the world. In extreme cases roadrage erupts when we take things way too personally.
If you drove with those same ideals of personal space, that the world is out to get you, in Nepal, your head would explode. There’s too much crowding going on, all the time. Close calls, bumper taps, horns and lights flashing, brushing by pedestrians. But here’s the rub; they don’t seem to take it personally. It’s just part of life, part of getting from A to B and for the taxis, part of making a wage.
On my last trip I rode in many taxis across Kathmandu, both day and night. I started getting accustomed to the fact that the way to survive, mentally, is to drive without passion. That guy that cut in front of you? He doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t even care about you. He’s just going the same direction. And it’s ok that he doesn’t care about you, really. For now he’s just an obstacle to get around. Once you get beyond him, he’s in the past. Again, not some evil villain and certainly not in your head any more, causing you your own grief.
I’ve tried applying some of this same mentality to my own driving. I make it impersonal when I’m on the road now (for the most part, I’m not perfect). The guy who is going slow in front of me when I want to go fast is not doing it because he hates me. Yelling at him really won’t help. Getting worked up won’t help. Not at all. When I pass by him I don’t glare or flip him off. As a matter of fact, when I pass people now I don’t even look over, because, honestly, it doesn’t matter. They are in the past, fading in my mirror.
To be sure, not caring about other drivers’ actions or imagined intentons in this sense doesn’t mean I hate te drivers. It doesn’t mean I think the cars are inhabited by zombies and I can just push them off the road. It means there’s nothing to get worked up about if I drive passionlessly. If no one hits me, and I hit no one, there’s nothing to get worked up about. Close calls are just that, close and nothing else. A moment in time, now in the past. It also doesn’t mean I’m a jerk when I drive because I’m not trying to get back at anyone for some ‘wrong’ they committed five miles ago.
I’m still courteous to other drivers, but I’m learning to drop what is typically considered the negative side of driving; taking everything so damn personally.
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