Adventures of a Discoverer

This last Monday I had the chance of hiking the Noble Knob trail, which was quite a noteworthy hike for a number of reasons. First, some details: this trail is just outside the Mount Rainier National Park boundaries, in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, and it's one of the highest trails outside of the National Park (which gives you amazing views of Mount Rainier). I was lucky that it was a wonderful day, sunny and cool, and I had amazing views throughout the trail. Another interesting detail about this hike is that, unfortunately, this part of the National Forest had a forest fire recently: you could clearly see where the forest burned and where the fire stopped. This made for a hike like no other I made before, mixing stretches of burned forest with still intact forest. Getting to the trailhead was already part of the adventure. You have to take a forest road that under normal circumstances is already pretty challenging: unpaved, narrow, and with no guard rails next to st...

The El Corazón/Funhouse music venue is turning out to be one of my favorite places in Seattle: it's not too big of a venue but it's not crowded either, it has a yummy pizza place nearby (perfect for a quick bite before a concert) and it has some interesting bands. Last night I went to check out yet another genre of Heavy Metal: "Alternative Metal". The best I could understand about it is that it is a version of Heavy Metal that is not mainstream and as such does not need to follow the dictates of big record labels, and it can add some different touches to your regular, run-of-the-mill Heavy Metal. To open the concert I got to watch Conquer Divide , a new(ish) band composed only of young women (although last night they had a guest male vocalist in addition to the their regular vocalist) that seems to bring together a bunch of different music genres: Alternative Rock, Post Hardcore, etc, etc, etc. What I can say is that they have a nice sound and it was cool to watch th...

Kremwerk is a queer-centric nightclub and live music venue in Seattle, specializing in progressive electronic music and queer culture. It's a nice little place, very well put together in the basement of one of the many new buildings that have sprouted all over the city in the last years, and I had never been there before. Last weekend I went there to check it out and it turned out to be an awesome place! The occasion was their "Studio Saturday": on the first Saturday of every month they have an open talent night where, as long as you registered for it in advance, you can show pretty much any art form that you want in their small stage. Comedy, singing, pretty much all art forms are fine, but on the night I went there were a number of drag queens, drag kings and duets (a "duet" is a performer in drag that dresses their left half as one gender and the right half as another gender - it's quite elaborate, one of the performers was wearing a "half hat",...

In my first year here in the US, I went to watch a college football game at the Husky Stadium, the stadium for the football team of the University of Washington, the Huskies. The problem was that I didn't know anything at all about football. So, it was a pretty empty and useless experience: I couldn't understand anything that was happening, why people were cheering or booing, and it felt like a waste of a time, especially because it was a game at night late in the year, and I was freezing. However, now I know football rules, and in fact I regularly watch games on TV. Given that, I thought it was time to have the real and full experience of watching a college football game, so a couple of weeks ago Jenn and I went to the Husky Stadium to watch the Huskies play against the Northwestern University team. And it was a much better and really fun experience! College sports are not a thing in Brazil (there are competitions between universities, but they are barely noticeable) so it alw...