Easter activity

The birthday party went well! There were just a few relatives gathered at a restaurant. A manageable size, but nice spread of ages from 2 to 90.

We also had lunch on Thursday with Harold's cousin who works for the Bonneville Power Administration. Good Friday we made a little escape to Bainbridge Island, a 5-hour drive. There we visited my niece, who together with her husband, works for Linblad Special Expeditions cruise company. Ross maintains the vessels and was away; Andrea works in personnel in the Seattle office. We were eager to see their "new" home, a fixer-up'er that they had made much progress on. We had a great walk around the town, and then a good dinner and breakfast before heading back to Portland.

In both directions we passed over the bridge that replaced the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that collapsed in a high wind in 1940. Did you know it was designed by Moiseiff, the same man whose theories and designs guided the construction of the GGB? He carried his idea to an extreme. The length to width ratio of Galloping Gerdy was 72 to 1, whereas the GGB was only 47 to 1. The engineer who studied the collapsed bridge was none other than Clifford Paine, Strauss's Vice President. Paine was therefore brought in to inspect the GGB in 1951 after a 69-mpg gale caused it to pitch one side of the roadway 11 feet higher than the other! Paine prescribed stiffening girders criss-crossed between the chords underneath the roadway the length of the span.

After we returned safely to Portland, we had dinner with Harold's cousin and her mother. Today, Easter Sunday, we attended Irwin's church and then visited old Cincinnati friends now living in Lake Oswego. Tomorrow it's time to return to Cincinnati. Too bad. I really wanted to return to San Francisco to hear the Calder's play at the Herbst Theater. But the airlines wouldn't cooperate in their pricing structure....