reflections, dreamer fountain

Fremont Bridge, Seattle

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The bridge project takes us north again, to Seattle's historic Fremont Bridge, not to be confused with Portland's own vastly larger (but less historic) Fremont Bridge. As with the nearby Aurora Bridge, this one photo was taken way back in 2006, well before I ever thought of this bridge project. So I didn't take a lot of photos, and I didn't walk across the thing.

For something that's apparently quite the quirky and beloved symbol of a quirky part of town, I haven't come across a lot of interesting stuff to share (and, coincidentally, to pad this post out to a more respectable length). It has a Structurae page if you're interested in the engineering side of things. If you're more up for the artsy-quirky stuff, it turns out that in the summer of 2009 the bridge hosted its own artist in residence. Residence, in this case, meaning hanging out in one of the drawbridge towers, watching the world go by and gathering artistic thoughts. Which sounds like a great job, although I expect the living-in-Seattle part would quickly become annoying. Still, if this software thing doesn't work out, maybe the sorta-new bridge in Charleston needs a blogger in residence, or if not, maybe the shiny new one next to Hoover Dam does, or possibly one of the Ala Wai Canal bridges, or the Millau Viaduct, or, or, or....

aberdeen, wa | september 2006

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From the archives, a few photos from Aberdeen, Washington, a gritty blue collar logging town and seaport on the Washington coast. We occasionally pass through the town on our way to Lake Quinault and points north, and I seem to recall taking these photos as we drove through without stopping.

The one thing in Aberdeen that I wish I had a photo of and don't is a little addendum to the big "Welcome to Aberdeen" sign at the edge of town, a small acknowlegement that Kurt Cobain slept here, once upon a time.

150k

So my Sitemeter counter just ticked over to 150,000 a few minutes ago, for whatever that's worth. That number sounds fairly huge, even spread over the 5.5 years this humble blog's been around. Although that also works out to about 75 visitors per day, which is distinctly non-huge. So whatever.

In any case, lucky visitor #150,000 arrived, not from Google, but from something called Fast Browser Search, which I'd never heard of before. They searched on the phrase "octet plus one", which led to an old bad movie post of mine from way back in December '06. You'll have to go read the post if you're curious why I used the phrase; as for the search hits I get on that phrase (a surprisingly high number), I haven't the foggiest idea about what they're actually looking for, and the other search results besides me don't offer any obvious clues. This particular visitor didn't stay long, and all I know is that he or she is a Comcast customer somewhere in the US, on either Pacific Daylight Time or Arizona (blech!) Time, using Internet Explorer 7 (blech!) on Windows XP (blech!), and (I think) MS Office installed (blech!). And they arrived at precisely midnight local time, which seems appropriate somehow, this being a serious major milestone and all.

This milestone probably just means this blog's warranty has now expired, and everything will rapidly go to pieces after this. I would find that entirely unsurprising.

In any case, if you find yourself pining for a bit more tasty bad movie goodness, why not check out the new Tumblr site called Trailr that I created a few days ago? It's not just cheesy movie trailers, but I liked the name and I wanted to use it even if it's only mostly accurate. So enjoy, or whatever.

screamer, sw morrison

after hours

car coming

scrub jay, july 2011

flag shadow

horsetail falls, may 2011

Ferry Street Bridge, Dayton OR

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A few photos of the Ferry St. footbridge over the Yamhill River in Dayton, OR. I happened to be in the area back in April and stopped briefly for a look. In retrospect I probably ought to have, y'know, looked around the town itself as well, but I was on vacation and trying to hit a bunch of places on the blog todo list, and being a bit monomaniacal in the process. And in my defense, a torrential downpour opened up while I was on the bridge, so it wasn't really a great day to be walking around looking at old buildings and so forth.



The city of Dayton is thinking about replacing the current bridge with a new structure, as they think it's a bit long in the tooth for a wooden bridge in this climate. That document doesn't go into any depth on the origin of the current bridge; it mentions it was built some time in the 1970s (but they weren't sure exactly when) and the easement status for it is unclear. Which kind of suggests to me that building it wasn't an official city project. Or it was and they just weren't as wound up about meticulous recordkeeping back then. Or everything's documented to the hilt, but whoever wrote the report didn't spend a lot of time on historical research. These are all possibilities.



As the name of the bridge suggests, the bridge is at the foot of Ferry Street, which is the main drag through town. And as the name of the street suggests, there once was a ferry across the river at this spot. The local historical society's "about" page mentions that the ferry came first, in the 1840s, and the town later grew up around it. The book A History of Oregon Ferries since 1826 has a couple of pages about Yamhill River ferries, and it seems to indicate Dayton didn't get a (non-railroad) bridge over the river until some time in the 1890s. The current bridge is just outside of town, a bit upstream. There's a bit of debris on the bank of the river immediately upstream of the bridge that looks like it might have been a dock at one point, although it's hard to imagine that any part of a wooden dock would have survived the elements for ~120 years. It's probably something much newer and unrelated.



In any case, the bridge seems nice enough. It has that groovy 70s Oregon look, where we were all going back to the land and building everything out of good, honest solid wood from here on out: Geodesic dome houses, hot tubs, probably even the solar panels. Note that this was back before anyone ever heard of spotted owls, obviously. It totally looks like it could've been someone's DIY project, using plans from the latest Whole Earth Catalog.



The only problem with the bridge is that it doesn't really go anywhere. There's a bit of parkland on the far side of the bridge, along with what looks like, um, the municipal sewage lagoons. Or maybe they're just irrigation ponds, I'm not totally sure. But that's about all there is. The bridge might be convenient if you're on one of those long distance bike rides around the Willamette Valley that my coworkers love to brag about doing, and you'd kind of like to avoid riding on state highways clogged with 18 wheelers and casino-bound RVs. That would make sense anyway.

small subjects, tanner springs

green & violet, tanner springs

lovejoy fountain, july 2011