The race is on!

The summer is officially over now and with the beginning of autumn/fall, the weather has decided to turn for the worst. However, this did not stop thousands of people, including myself, from attending the first Red Bull Soapbox Race held in Seattle. The Red Bull Soapbox Race is a race with 36 teams of amateurs racing their creatively designed human-powered carts to race against the clock in a downhill sprint to the finish line at the end of the half-mile course. As the race was held at Fremont Avenue, it was quite local to me, but I showed up a bit late so the best places to watch the race and the big screens were already taken. I did find a spot after the finish line, but I decided to fight the crowds and try and get a spot in the middle of the course. Luckily I found one at a tricky part of the course, thus had move opportunities to see some crashes. As it was raining, I was only planning to stay an hour or so, but I enjoyed it so much I stayed for the whole event. My favorite cart was "The Crapster" (yes, it is a large toilet), but unfortunately it did not win. Other interesting carts were the "Rollaroid 600" (a large Polaroid camera which won the "The People's Choice award") and "Rollin Troll of Fremont" (it really does look like the famous Fremont Troll), which came in third. In fact, although the racers came from all over the US, Seattle based teams won all the prizes and no, it was not a fix ;-)

From a photography point of view, one good thing about this event was that it gave me an opportunity to take some photos of moving objects. As you can see from the examples before (there were more blurry ones), I think I still need a lot of practice. For better taken photos of the event, check them out at the official Seattle Red Bull Soapbox Race website.

Spectators trying to get a good view of the race

Was he that quick or was my hand shaking?

I don't think the toys with paddles helped his speed

Cheater!!! That has a motor!!!

Day trip to Tacoma, Washington

Me and a colleague from work had been planning to trip to Tacoma all summer and finally the weather was nice enough for us to go which was not a working weekend for me. Tacoma is 32 miles southwest of Seattle and two of the attractions that we decided to visit were the Museum of Glass, and Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. Truthfully, the Museum of Glass did not have many things to see inside, but it did provide you the opportunity to see live glass-making in the Hot Shop Amphitheater. As you can guess, the artists were very good and it was interesting to see the whole process from start to finish. What I liked the most was actually outside of the museum. The thing that strikes you the most when you arrive at the museum is the 90 foot cone which houses the Hot Shop. This cone has become the landmark that symbolizes the museum. The other attraction outside the museum is the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, which is a 500 foot log pedestrian overpass that links the museum to the rest of downtown Tacoma. The bridge itself houses a collection of glass work from Dale Chihuly in the form of the "Seaform Pavilion" (a ceiling made of 2,364 objects from Chihuly's Seaform and Persian series), "Crystal Towers" (the towers rise forty feet above the bridge deck and serve as beacons of light for the bridge and city) and the "Venetian Wall" (an eighty-foot wall displaying 109 Chihuly sculptures). We spend some time at the bridge as the glasswork there was just amazing.

The artists at work

The cone

Fellow tourists under the "Seaform Pavilion"

One of the "Crystal Towers"

The "Courthouse" reflecting off the "Venetian Wall"

A light rail train on Union Station (you see, I told you that there is a Union Station at every US city)

After a spot of sightseeing in downtown Tacoma, we headed over to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. I had already been to the Woodland Park Zoo and the Seattle Aquarium so I was not expecting anything different from those. Inside, we realized that it was not that big but we still wanted to be selective to what we would see. After a quick trip to see the muskoks, reindeers and polar bears, we spend the rest of the trip in the aquariums mostly looking at the walruses (they are massive), puffins (I notice that all they do is clean themselves), penguins (they are cuter when they are swimming), sea otters (they were so playful with each other) and the beluga whales (swimming in circles). To wrap up the trip, we were fortunate to see the feeding time for the walruses and the beluga whales. Both were entertaining as they were performing tricks for the crowds and provided lots of photo opportunities to trigger happy amateur photographers like myself :-)

Which one of you is Rudolph?

The penguins

Playful sea otters

Shocking! a puffin which is not cleaning itself

Walruses (swimming, waving and close up)

Beluga whales (swimming and waiting for dinner and health checkup)

In the Aquarium

Anyone for a beer?

Although I am not an alcohol drinker, me and a friend decided to pay a visit to the Fremont Oktoberfest. The original Oktoberfest is a two-week festival held each year in Munich, Germany during late September and early October and famous for providing people the opportunity to try different types of beers, eat lots of bratwurst and get really drunk. This was not our intention but we really wanted to experience the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the Fremont Oktoberfest was a bit of a let-down. Although there was a reasonable amount of beer on offer, the glasses that we were given was quite small so it worked out quite expensive for each beer we wanted to try. The biggest disappointment was that they did not have the famous tents containing the rows and rows of tables for people to sit down and drink and socialize. Oh well, maybe my expectations were based on the original German Oktoberfest and I should have known better :-( Oh, if you are wondering if I forgot to upload my photos of this event, well I did not take any. That says a lot by itself.

Where is the Kimchi?

One thing I like about Seattle is that it is a multi-cultural city and all year round, it promotes this by having events and festivals for the different cultures at the Seattle Center. Today's one was the turn of the Korean Cultural Celebration Ch'uSok (Harvest Moon Festival). As I had a busy day today, I only stayed for several hours which included some time to get something to eat for lunch. My initial intention was to try some Korean food that they had there, but the queue for it was just too long (it must have been free :-)) so I ended up getting some seafood instead from the Steamers restaurant there - yeah, I know it is not very Korean, but it was good.

As well as there being stands and displays introducing Korea and its culture, throughout the day, there was a lot of performances ranging from dancing, singing, martial arts demonstrations, playing of music instruments and tea ceremony demonstrations. Some of the performances were very similar to the performances that I saw at the Seattle's Chinatown-International District Summer Festival but they were still enjoyable to watch nevertheless - I really liked the performances of the different types of drums the most.

No, these are not the performers

One of the many drum performances

Are they in sync?

One thing that I did notice was that the martial arts demonstrators where mostly performed by kids aged 12 or younger. They were actually quite impressive and most definitely I would not pick on any of them. Hmm, thinking about it, I think I can take them on if we had a fight but I would say that wouldn't I ;-)

Hmm, can his kick reach my head??