Tawptuan

t1_j4ze3qk wrote

Just look at that eternally serene, peaceful, quiet sister of Mt. Fuji! 😂

P.S. I remember the fateful morning when the shockwave of the eruption hit my house, 150 miles away. I thought someone was dynamiting stumps at a nearby farm. Windows rattling and walls shaking. Then the chaos from the cursed ash fall. 😬

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t1_j2vi1x5 wrote

A couple of related historical vignettes…

1956: On school field trips, we believed that if we held our breaths all the way across the bridge in our heavy, slow-moving school bus, that it wouldn’t collapse. Almost 70 years later, you can thank the first grade class of Langley Elementary.

Fast-forward 10 years: On a camping trip to Deception Pass State Park, we Langley High School guys crawled out on the lower bridge girders, over the fast-moving channel, with its deadly-looking whirlpools, to fish for bass. Never caught any, but we earned some bragging rights to this day.

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t1_iyap5oc wrote

Exactly. Interestingly, I freely drank unfiltered wilderness water for 20 years before the 1970 research with no problems. Then added those gagging iodine pills for the next 20, followed by a proper mechanical filter for another 20 yrs. A victim of hyped research and clever marketing? 🤷🏼‍♂️

I guess the sad alternative might have been my epitaph: “Here lies wilderness enthusiast JQ, killed by Giardia at 97 years old.” 🙄

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t1_iy7jgnh wrote

Hurtling along at 50! The good old days!

Raised in Washington here. My first trip back east was when I was 8 in the 1950s. After experiencing mid-west and east-coast summer humidity for the first time in my life, for three sweltering weeks, I felt EXACTLY the same as your grandfather—especially after crossing the Cascades to the natural air conditioning of Western Wa.

The other thing that struck me were the clear, cold, drinkable streams running in little rivulets down the cliffs next to highway 2 in the Cascades. We stopped and drank from them at least 4-5 times. This was pre-giardia days. For 3 weeks, we had seen only brown, muddy water everywhere east of there. Despite the awful humidity in the east, none of us wanted to go swimming where “you couldn’t see your feet.” Coming back to WA, to swim in clear water was luxury again!

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