Spokane & Nishinomiya

Last week I showed pictures of a lot of water sports… The video even showed a bit of me trying to wake surf. I got up a couple of times, but never got near the surfing part. The goal is to get up high enough on the huge wake the boat is set up to produce, and then surf it without holding on to the rope. Worse than my attempt at wake surfing was the fall I took the last time I attempted to get up. I twisted my knee, and knew right away it was not going to feel good later. That evening I was walking, but with a bit of a limp. The next day I could hardly move it. So I took a couple of days off walking!

The reason I’m mentioning all this, is that’s the reason most of the family toured Spokane without me. Kevin and Becky & family had not been to Spokane before, so they went to the Riverfront park to see the huge red wagon, and other fun sights. Pretty cool!

The falls are really pretty, underneath the dam. The bridges in the area are beautiful too.

By the third day I was doing quite a bit better, and decided to join them for a tour of the Japanese Garden at Manito Park. The garden is gorgeous, and really looks like it was pulled right out of Kyoto. It was designed by Nagao Sakurai, and created in time for Expo ‘74.

This sign commemorates Spokane’s Sister city – Nishinomiya. What makes this extra special for Cherryl and me, is that we met in Nishinomiya many years ago! We both taught English and Bible in Osaka, but lived in the town of Nishinomiya.

You might wonder at the inclusion of this next picture. Actually, I’m wondering why I put it in! But I had fun running an errand for Karen. She had a package delivered to this box, near the airport. I just walked up, put the bar code from the email on my phone under the scanner, and a door popped open to the left of the screen. And if that wasn’t obvious enough, the screen told me the door was open. Slide the package out, close the door and go! Probably not 8 seconds. Didn’t need the porta-potty on the other side of the fence.

I guess it’s been hot all over the country, but this display on my dashboard was surprising in Spokane. When the car has been sitting a while on the hot pavement, it reads a bit high at first… it was really only about 99!

Bryan is in a Pathfinder club, which will be going to an International Camporee in Wyoming in just a few weeks. One of the crazy things they are shooting for in the Camporee is the Guinness World record for GBC’s. What is a GBC? I’ll copy from the Camporee website:

We are going to try to break the Great Ball Contraption (GBC) World Record in Gillette! What is GBC? It’s a crazy fun machine. Each participant builds a contraption (module) which moves a ball from one side to the other, like a bucket brigade. All the modules are put together to form a continuous loop. Here is a link to the current record holder from Denmark. There are a few rules which must be followed so all the modules work together, so be on the lookout for more information.

Here is the link they mentioned: Watch the NEW WORLD RECORD LEGO World 2019 Denmark Great Ball Contraption GBC video. (It’s long, but addicting!)

Here are the kids strategizing and testing their ideas for contraptions. The idea is each team makes a module, which will then be connected to all the others to make a mega-machine. If you watched any of the video above, you’ll see all these kids have their work cut out for them!