Category Archives: sport

Tokyo Dome for a Baseball Game

Some colleagues arranged for us to buy some tickets for a baseball game while we were in Tokyo. The Giants were the home team playing another local team called the Swallows. The game was played inside Tokyo Dome, an inflatable structure and thankfully one with air conditioning! Here is a panorama of the interior of the dome during the game. Baseball games in Japan have some notable differences from those in the US, mainly relating to crowd behavior. That may get a separate post so I will leave it for now.

Fastnet Race Start in the 90s

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We recently had the 40^th anniversary of the Fastnet race that ended up with a significant loss of life and boats. Weather forecasting technology and the methods of communicating were very different forty years ago and some of the boats were ill-suited to open water racing of that nature. Growing up in Cowes, the Fastnet race was always a big deal. It was every other year as part of the Admiral’s Cup. Some of my school friends got to crew on it. I watched the start of one of the races when we still lived in the UK and I scanned in some of the shots I got that day. The start was always frantic. Boats are jockeying for position, often very close to shore. Lots of shouting goes on. With a good wind, big sailing boats look so cool to me.

Village Cricket Washington Style

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During my exercise to scan old negatives, I came across some photos of a company cricket match I took part in. It got me thinking about cricket and whether anyone plays the game in the Seattle region. I figured that the large Indian population in the area might have brought cricket with it. A quick Google showed a local league with plenty of teams and a game taking place the following day up in Everett. I figured this was worth a look.

I took a drive up for what was a 40 overs match. (For those that don’t know cricket, be prepared to be baffled for this post.) I wasn’t intending to watch the whole game but I wanted to see a bit of the play, get some photos having never photographed cricket in any depth, see what the standard was and have a bit of a flashback to my youth when cricket was a big part of my spare time in the summer. The Saturday had been a gloriously sunny day but the sunny was cool and overcast so not the good weather for cricket but certainly not unknown in a British summer!

Something about the field that they were playing on meant that they weren’t changing ends at the end of each over. They just swapped the batsmen over and changed bowlers. This frustrated me a touch as I was hoping for different views without having to walk all the way around the boundary. However, I guess the exercise is good for me.

Having never photographed cricket in detail, it was interesting trying to find good angles to shoot from. I liked trying to have the bowler and batsman in the same shot and switching focus from one to the other was trickier than I anticipated. I also found that some of the more dynamic poses of the players were reached when the ball was long gone. I was hoping to have the ball be a feature of the shots so it became a choice of ball position or player position.

I had a chat to some of the players from the batting side. One asked me if I wanted to join. It is a long time since I last played and I wasn’t much good even then. These guys were not professionals but I would not be setting the world on fire if I joined. Still, I might look out some other games at some point – preferably on days with a bit nicer weather. Sitting and watching a game in the sun sounds pretty good.

Return of the Racers

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The races at the rowing meet I covered in this post tend to overlap from what we saw. The length of the course and the time to complete it is such that the next race was started before the last was finished. Consequently, there is not a way for the crews to return up the cut as the next boats are heading towards them. Apparently, they all wait in the next bay. Then, when it is clear, they all row back up together. The cut was full of crews rowing back to take their boats out of the water. It made for an impressive sight!

ASUW Shell House

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A short walk from the campus of UW takes you down to Montlake Cut. This is the home of the university rowing team. Having read The Boys in the Boat, we had read a lot about this location. The Shell House from the book is still there and is in great shape. George Pocock is no longer building his shells there, but it obviously has a place in UW rowing lore and it looked interesting on a sunny weekend day. It looked even better from one side but the giant cherry picker in front of it kind of ruined the chance of a photo from that direction.

High Tech Rowing Boats

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The technology of rowing boats has always been prized. In George Pocock’s day, the crafting of high performance shells made his work in demand from university crews across the US. George may be long gone but the company that bears his name continues. They no longer are along the Cut but now operate out of Everett in a building with a slightly less scenic location.

Wood has been replaced with composites and these shells are light, stiff and very impressive. A few of the shells were laid up in the parking lot waiting to be loaded on trailers while others were already strapped in. The crews’ shoes are attached in place along with seats. They don’t look like the most comfortable of vessels but they do look like they are well designed to go fast and to transfer the power of the rowers directly to the water.

Racing on Montlake Cut

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It was purely by coincidence that we happened to be at UW when a rowing meet was taking place. We had read much about UW rowing in The Boys in the Boat (well worth a read if you have the opportunity) and were planning on walking down to the Cut to see the Shell House but there were plenty of boats and crews in the parking lot when we came through. We actually got there almost at the end of the meet. I guess they row early to get the calmest conditions?

A few final races came through as we walked along the cut. The crews were working hard but still had some way to go when they came past us. By that distance, the strongest crews were showing themselves clearly. We watched them disappear up the cut and towards the finish line. As the last race past by, you could see the course boats start to disperse so we knew it was done. What we didn’t know was that we would get a nice finale. That will be another post.

The Raiders’ New Home

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Across from McCarran airport is a construction site. While plenty remains to be done, it is easy to see that this is the new home of the Oakland Raiders (not Oakland for much longer). We drove right by it on the interstate but I had no way of photographing it then. However, I did get a shot of the structure from the airport parking lot. I wonder what it will look like when it is finished? Can it be as impressive as the new stadium in LA?

Closing the Viaduct and Opening the Tunnel

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For decades, the dominant feature of the Seattle waterfront has been the Alaskan Way Viaduct. This carried Route 99 from the south side of the city along the waterfront before diving into the Battery Street Tunnel and then popping above ground to continue to the north. It was a double deck viaduct with the northbound traffic on top and the southbound traffic on the lower level. The viaduct suffered damage in the Nisqually Earthquake and further investigation showed just how vulnerable it was so the replacement process commenced.

The replacement is a tunnel. Building the tunnel under the city was not an easy task. A tunnel boring machine named Big Bertha was brought in to cut the tunnel. Unfortunately, at some point it struck a hard object which damaged the main bearing for the cutting head. A hole had to be dug and the machine extracted, repaired and reinserted. This added years to the project but finally, in January 2019, the viaduct was closed. A three-week period was set aside between closure of the viaduct and opening of the tunnel to allow reconfiguration of the approaches at each end.

On the weekend before the tunnel opened for traffic, WSDOT held celebrations. A fun run took place on the Saturday and the Sunday included a bike ride. This included riding both directions through the new tunnel as well as both directions on the old viaduct. I signed up to take part. Tons of cyclists also took the opportunity and the event was sold out well in advance. The number of people mean things were pretty crowded and it could be congested at times. The long descent in the opening tunnel section could have been quite fast but it wasn’t possible to speed along given how many people there were.

The new tunnel sections were nice and well let. We actually rode quite a distance south after popping out near the Coast Guard base in the harbor and the wind was in our faces but that meant the run back was a lot easier. The second part of the tunnel had to be a climb given the descent we had made originally but it wasn’t too bad. Then we turned and were directed on to the streets to enter the Battery Street Tunnel.

This was a far more dismal experience. It is a dark and dirty tunnel and I was pleased to get through it quickly. We actually went through it the wrong way and we went south on the northbound part of the viaduct before diverting off and coming back on the lower level. One last run through the dirty tunnel and we had completed the ride. As I exited, plenty of riders were just starting. It would have been possible to do it all again but I was happy to have done it and decided it was time to go home. Later that day a serious (for Seattle) snow storm swept in so we had been lucky to get the ride done without any disruption.

Jim’s Spartan Experience

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I didn’t get to the Spartan Race in time for Jim’s start so he was out on the course when I got there. I wandered around seeing others making their way around and decided he must have already passed the earlier spots I might see him. I waited for him to come back in to the main area before heading out again on the second big loop. I was wondering if I had missed him when he came into view down a hillside. Rather than distract him, I let him do the next obstacle before I said Hi!

I then saw him do a few more tests before he was off again. At least now I had a rough idea of where he was and who was on a similar pace. That made picking him up again a lot easier. I could then follow him around the final series of tests. These shots are a bunch of those I got of home as he was in the second half of the race. He pushed on to the end and finished well. I was tired watching it all so I bet he was shattered. However, once he finished, he looked really stoked so I guess the success was rejuvenating.

Excellent effort mate. Well done and a well deserved addition to the medal collection. Now to finish off your personal challenge!