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Green Valleys of Silliness...bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives... |
   
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Saturday, September 27, 1997
I had lunch yesterday with an online acquaintance, Michael Hoffman. I had read and admired some articles that he had written around a year and a half ago, about his ideas on on-line navigation and usability. I had forwarded the URLs to the editorial team on MSDN, the product I was working on at the time. He and I had corresponded a few times since then, when I wanted to use his article in a sample DHTML thing I was working on. He asked me some questions about Microsoft and the Northwest, and expressed a desire to move here.
I got email from him Friday morning, saying he was now contracting at Microsoft! I was surprised! He has only been in town for a few weeks, and last Monday was his first day on campus. So we met for lunch and I shared some pointers about MS stuff, and gave him a demo on IE4.
A big life change for him, to move from California to Seattle, and to a new company. I'll be hooking him up with the Seattle fannish community, and the Cacophony Society, if he wishes.
* * * * * * * *
Today was the Inanimate Object Bungee Jump and Donner Party Memorial (Tastes Like Chicken) Barbecue. This was the third time we have done this event, and I have to say that today's edition lived up to July 1994 and July 1995 for weirdness and hilarity. I don't know exactly why this activity is funny, but it evidently is.
We met at the usual place, the Ravenna Park Pedestrian Bridge that is where 20th Street would cross the park if it were still open to traffic. It's a rather high bridge over a steep, wooded valley. Part of the cacophonous mindset is to keep one's eye out for potential site venues. The serendipity of combining a germ of an event idea with a public place that has electrical power, or a lot of foot traffic, or is just a strange spot, can have quite an effect on how an event turns out.
I brought some lighter items to bungee, and other people brought heavier ones. A crew was detailed to climb down to the stream and bikepath down below and block out an area with yellow and black "Hazardous Waste" tape, so no one would wander unknowingly into the line of fire. Carl got the barbecue started, and we ate hot dogs and chicken wings while attaching items to long elastic cords and bouncing them down into the valley.
There was a crowd of about twenty people there, some new faces and some familiar ones. We started with the lightest items, which happened to be what I brought: a long garland of artificial flowers and a pink neon plastic slinky. These proved so successful that we attached them to many of the larger items. They just made things so festive! Next were a pair of running shoes in a large plastic bucket, with flowers and slinky attached. Just the ritual of:
- Getting the bungee cord arranged just so.
- Calling to the people keeping watch on both sides of the bridge (making sure the path is clear).
- The watchers responding, "Clear!"
- Calling out "Fire in the hole!"
- Letting go of the item.
- Watching it bounce at the end of the cord.
was just oddly thrilling and laughter-inducing.
Someone had brought an empty shell of a Mac SE, which was the first item of size to take the fall. Then came something that had been specifically requested when Dave was talking this event up a few months ago: a frozen Butterball Turkey. The net bag it was packed in was attached to the cord, along with the pansy garland and the pink slinky.
This was our first casualty. Down it went like a stone, and the netting couldn't take the strain. "Whomp!" It hit the ground, with a very strange sound. My knees literally buckled with laughter!
We had a dead Mac (not empty) that someone drilled a hole in with his Swiss Army knife. It was heavy enough to actually strike the ground, then bounce up again. It made the drop several times!
The last item was a freezer that was about the size of a medium cooler, brought by Matt. For this, we took the two cords that were used attached end to end for other items, and attached them both to the bridge and to the freezer. Well, you never know what is enought till you know what is too much. This item broke both bungee cords and hurtled to the ground. The cords broke with sort of a "Zing!" sound.
Then we picked up our trash and policed the area, concluding our festivities for the day.
Images of the day and an event report by Nick Fraser have now been posted.
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