Last year I wrote a lot about this event, I thought "This is cool shit!" Turns out others thought the same, and it became a "thing". The very most important thing to know is the url, r2ak.com. The premise is a race, by any means, from Port Townsend to Ketchikan, Alaska. No motors, no support crew. The winner gets $10,000, second place a set of steak knives. Those are the rules, so it's a simple game to understand. No one has a tried an overland...
The color of the day this morning was sky blue, though it hazed up after a while. It looks like we'll have a few days more of dryness. I tackled the job of repairing one of my window shades today, which involves re-threading the strings that control it. After months of preparation I had a decent work space and reserved many hours for the task. It didn't take all that long, and I think it came out great. It's one of those things that once you do...
Over the weekend, Washington State added a second ferry to the Port Townsend--Whidbey Island route to handle the tourist load for the summer. I usually get here while the Brant (like a Canada goose) are still hanging out on that tiny gravel spit at Point Hudson. It's only about 100 birds, but the flock is reliable. They packed up and left for the north the other day. They won't be seen again until Fall. The boatyard is looking empty now. The...
The governor signed into law 2 bills that dealt with some miscellaneous, though important, issues dealing with the state's marijuana regulations. I highlighted the most significant points earlier. It cannot be said that the legislature is advancing the state of the art in cannabis regulation; very little will be of interest to other states in any significant way. Part of this is likely because the lawmakers are taking a wait and see approach...
I like how Nevada is handling it's new recreational marijuana laws. Like a few other states, their initiative passed last fall with a deadline of January 2018 for implementation. I think all states would say 1 year is too short a time to get operational. Nevada's approach is that the tax collection system is now ready to go, and stores can open July 1. The rest of the boring stuff can wait until January. This will create a rush to pay the...
The color of the day around here is white. It's a combination of fruit trees (apple, mainly) and ocean spray, a completely nondescript plant unless it is blooming. Some years they all seem to bloom at once, which is spectacular along the roadside, but usually the show is spread out over weeks. That looks like this year. Yellow is coming on fast, lupine and Scotch broom. The Fruit Stand has opened this year, this time in a real building rather...
When Colorado and Washington passed legal marijuana they had to write the rules from scratch. This hadn't been done since the end of alcohol prohibition, far beyond the memories of those writing the new de-prohibition rules. The first guesses and bad assumptions were quickly seen as errors, and corrections made fairly quickly. Oregon and Alaska learned from the original states, and added their own twists and turns, mistakes and accidental...