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Hiking Oyster Dome …. and looking down on those sleeping oysters
When I was a young boy, our family would occasionally make our way up Chuckanaut Drive after church to have Sunday dinner at the Oyster Bar. The Oyster Bar back then wasn’t anything like today version, which is gourmet and pricey, a restaurant you’d go to celebrate a special occasion, like your wedding anniversary. The “original” Oyster Bar was more like Ivar’s Salmon House light. It had more of a casual dining feel. Your modestly-priced dinner — oysters, breaded prawns or fish and chips were the usual main fare – arrived on a plain, dinner plate, not the fancy china…
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Sonja’s big day
The loop has closed. All three of our daughters are now married, and their dad couldn’t be happier, more grateful. Our beloved middle daughter, Sonja, was the last to tie the knot. She and JB Foreman exchanged vows April 3 on the dock at College Club, a boathouse and headquarters for a rowing club on the shores of Seattle’s Lake Union. The bride and groom arrived at the wedding venue in a boat – Sonja’s longtime dream on her wedding day — and left in a boat. Now Sonja and her sisters are all in the same boat.…
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When it was ‘Miller Time’
Oregon State basketball’s glory years, under the late, great – and chain-smoking – Ralph Miller These are heady times for Oregon State fans. The Beavers, picked in preseason to finish last in the Pac-12, won their first-ever conference tournament on Saturday night, thereby earning a rare appearance in the NCAA Tournament this week against Tennessee. Forgive them if they’re acting like they haven’t been there before. They actually have. It’s just been awhile since OSU has been relevant. I’m dating myself here, but I remember a time when an Oregon State team in the NCAA Tournament was a familiar rite…
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This one was a real mind Bender
The meteoric rise and fall of Bob Bender, Washington’s once promising, young college basketball coach. With apologies to soccer star David Beckham, no one could bend it like Bob Bender. He had it all. Good looks. Infectious personality. Energetic recruiter. A son of a successful high-school basketball coach. A standout player at Indiana and Duke, two of college basketball’s blueblood programs. A coaching disciple of legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. Arriving at the University of Washington in 1993 as its 17th basketball coach, Bender had his work cut out for him. The program he inherited from Lynn Nance was in…
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It’s your turn, Isaac. Run with it!
My third hike to spectacular Spider Meadow in the central Cascades, which turned out to be a passing of the baton to my grandson, Isaac Richardson It was supposed to be a story about backpacking in the era of COVID-19. At least that’s how I originally pitched it to an editor at The Seattle Times in the summer of 2020. There was only one problem: No official at the Wenatchee Ranger Station, which oversees the trail to Spider Meadow, wanted to talk to me. And that was a bit unusual, because PR folks at the U.S. Forest Service have always…
