Saturday during my bike ride along Gold Creek Road I pondered the problem of roadside trash. Because they have a vantage point on the road shoulder and travel at a much slower speed, cyclists see a lot more trash than people in cars. And although cyclists aren’t the source of the litter—at least not while they are biking—the trash seems more personal. Go out for a ride, whether it is for exercise, scenery, or just to get outdoors, and roadside trash is everywhere.
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A Beautiful But Trashy Ride
Rocky Point’s Private Roads
Private Road Sign
There are five marked private roads in the 2-mile stretch from where Rocky Point Road angles off from Marine Drive to its dead end on a high bluff overlooking Dyes Inlet. That doesn’t include the dozen city and county roads it also spawns. While 17 cross streets may seem ample for pinpointing addresses in the area, many of the numerous unmarked shared driveways along Rocky Point Road might also qualify for (and perhaps benefit from) private road status.
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Posted in Mud Bay & Rocky Point
Mud Bay’s Mysterious Bubbles
Double, double toile and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
My sister first noticed the Mud Bay bubbles (see photo) during a visit a couple of years ago to see my new house. Since then she keeps asking “Have you found out what causes them?” When conditions are right – high tide and calm water – an area maybe 40 yards out from shore seethes like the cauldron tended by Macbeth’s witches (OK, an exaggeration but you get the idea). And apparently this has been going on for years, at least according to the former owner of my house. “It’s just air bubbling to the surface,” he said. Sure. But why there and what causes it to be released?
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Posted in Mud Bay & Rocky Point
A Race to Z?
In the contest to write a woman-detective mystery for each letter of the alphabet (A to Z), it is pretty much a dead heat between Mary Daheim and Sue Grafton. Both women will publish a “U” entry (the 21st letter of the alphabet) this year: Daheim’s The Alpine Uproar is due out at mid-year, while Grafton’s U Is for Undertow is scheduled for December.
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Posted in Books & Movies
The Return of Mud Cat
Pi in Rain
“Mud Cat” is short for Mud Bay Cat, a six-year-old Bengal who lives with me. His real name is Pi—after the young man, not the Bengal tiger, in Yann Martell’s allegory, Life of Pi—although he answers to kitty. Bengals are noisy and demanding. They are also affectionate and operate best as one-person cats. Pi was born in a cattery in Port Angeles. Other than early kittenhood, he has lived his entire life on or near Mud Bay. Last year about this time he disappeared.
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$3 Grocery Store Items
If you pay cash at the grocery store like I do, there might be times when you want to estimate how much the items in the cart are going to cost at the checkout stand. So here’s a simple formula: Count the number of items in your cart and multiply it by $3. That should cover the total and, most of the time, leave enough left over for a latte. A few caveats:
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How Did It Get There?
Cactus Fern
Ferns thrive in the Pacific Northwest. Take a walk in Bremerton’s NAD Park and you will find an astonishing variety of ferns growing in the park’s moist shady areas. Prolific as they are, I had no idea ferns can germinate without human intervention in a houseplant pot that has never been outside. Apparently they can (see photo). The answer to how this occurs may lie in the fern’s reproductive cycle.
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MUDDBAY
I Can't Spell
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Posted in Mud Bay & Rocky Point
1958 Pontiac
1958 Pontiac Catalina
It’s spring, the weather last Sunday was great, April starts tomorrow. Definitely time to start thinking about collector cars. I’m hoping for another glimpse soon of the gorgeous black 1958 Pontiac two-door I first saw at Silverdale Transmission a few years ago. Since then there have been enough sightings of the black beauty on Rocky Point Road to conclude that it lives nearby. I have looked for it a few times on my bike rides, but given Rocky Point’s many long driveways and steep terrain, I haven’t had any luck so far. Plus common sense says the pristine Pontiac is tucked away safely inside a garage, making the task that much harder. Even my friend Willy, who seems to know just about everyone in the neighborhood, can’t help me find it.
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Posted in Cars, Mud Bay & Rocky Point
A Connection to Trails End Lake
A horrific crime that occurred in late February at Trails End Lake in Mason County has a connection to Mud Bay. The story received extensive coverage in the Kitsap Sun and on Seattle TV stations. To summarize, a 46-year-old man beat a woman severely in her home with a chair and cane. Although she was bound with duct tape and bloody, she managed to escape and run to a neighbor’s house. The neighbors called 911 and sheltered the woman until sheriff’s deputies and medics arrived. Her injuries were serious enough to require an airlift to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. The Kitsap Sun described the neighbors, the Goldbergs, as true heroes for opening their home to the woman so she could escape her attacker. The man returned to her home, where he died in a fire he set after a standoff with a sheriff’s SWAT team.
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Posted in Current Events, Mud Bay & Rocky Point
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