Inspirational athletes, Portland, OR

This wall holds a gallery of clearly inspirational athletes, though non-sports-watching me has no idea who any of them are---except I'll bet that's either Venus or Serena Williams in the top center.

Cartoon dogs, Portland, OR

A gaggle of varied cartoon dogs.

Fish Grotto, Portland, OR

Once this mural was advertisement for a seafood restaurant, now closed.

Interstitial butterflies, Portland, OR

Butterflies, popping up on the side of a building, wedged in between other more "proper" signs.

Alpen sausage mural, Portland, OR

Steep mountainous landscapes highlight the origins of this sausage place's cuisine.

Pastoral mural, Portland, OR

Portland Oregon has a lot of beautiful murals on random walls, like this one of a bucolic pastoral scene.

Rushing between gates in O'Hare

On a tight connection, racing through the colorfully underground passage between terminals B and C in Chicago O'Hare.

Tire cozy, Coralville

For some reason, these folks have decided that what they really need on their spare wheel is a knitted tire cozy.

Refracted rain

Large drops at the start of a heavy rain, refracting on the windshield of my car to form patterns on the dashboard.

Refracted rain

Streaks of heavy rain refracting on the windshield of my car to form patterns on the dashboard.

Bloody spit

A surprisingly complex and beautiful byproduct of a baby tooth coming out.

Mobile birds, Iowa City

A flight of wooden birds hanging gently balanced on the wires of a mobile.

Dovetail pond sunset, Coralville, Iowa

Sunset deepening over a small pond with an accompanying trail in Coralville.

Monarch Butterfly, Iowa City

Monarch chilling on yellow daisies.

Morning glories, Iowa City

Morning glory in full bloom, part of a climbing wall of the flowers.

Flattened flower, Iowa City

A great big compound flower rendered rather flattened on the concrete.

Lost helmet, Iowa City

This lost bicycle helmet mystified me: it's impaled on the branches of a tree hanging way out over a creek, clearly too high to the creek to have washed it up there, but also in a place it would have been extremely difficult for a human to get to.

Swamp walk, Coralville, IA

Elevated walkway above a swamp at Iowa River Landing, with little tufts of plants poking their heads up through it. I winder if they mow the bridge to keep it from getting overgrown?

Monarch Butterflies, Coralville, IA

More beautiful monarchs dancing around the flowers.

Monarch Butterflies, Coralville, IA

Monarch butterflies drinking nectar in a park near my house.

Passing pirate ship, Seattle, WA

And now we'll say goodbye to Seattle as we wave to this passing pirate ship, making its blandly anachronistic way from lake to harbor.

Wanna-be Apple Store, Seattle, WA

This was the first time I ever saw a Microsoft store, and my immediate aesthetic reaction was that it was an oddly off-brand Apple store.

Crows fighting over a stone, University of Washington

I watched these two crows for a while as they had a long back and forth tussle over the stone currently in the left bird's beak. The stone itself seemed to have no particularly interesting properties except for being the right size to fit in a beak and be the subject of a competition.

Husky Stadium, University of Washington

The stands of Husky Stadium, reddening into dusk.

Drumheller Fountain, University of Washington

Drumheller Fountain is one of my favorite places in the University of Washington. It sits in the middle of rose gardens and open lawns, with benches scattered around where one might sit and work outside as the early morning strengthens into day.

Into the cataract!

Seaplane in apparent peril.

Dorm balconies, University of Washington

Those concrete stacks in my last image are actually balconies on a student dorm, turned sideways to emphasize their concrete pointiness.

Concrete stacks, University of Washington

Brutalism at its best in the form of these sharp concrete shapes on UW's campus.

Sieg Hall reflections, University of Washington

Slight angular differences in the windows of Sieg Hall chop its reflections into interesting patterns.

Sieg Hall, University of Washington

A pointy diamond window pattern makes a nice exterior on Sieg Hall, one of the engineering buildings of UW.

Nanoengineering Building, University of Washington

Blue and white cross-hatching patterns on the Nanoengineering building at UW.

New-Old Brick Building, University of Washington

This lovely brick building are the University of Washington's campus has the external styling of an old brick building, but the steel-hearted bulk of a modern frame.

Artists for Progress, Seattle, WA

A nice mural on the Seattle streets.

Jazzy Starbucks, Seattle, WA

As Seattle is the home of Starbucks, its instances of the chain are sometimes much cooler looking than when you find them elsewhere.

Brushed concrete, SeaTac airport

Circular patterns brushed into the concrete at the Seattle airport.

Luminous artwork, SeaTac Airport

A beautiful piece of illuminated artwork in the Seattle airport.

Octan corporation welcomes you, Seattle, WA

Try as you might, reasonable though it may be, you will not convince me that this octagonal building is not an outpost of the Octan corporation.

Supervillan complex near Seattle, WA

This terraced building, set like a greenery-draped and terraced dam across a small valley, is clearly a super-villain headquarters.  For the longest time, I was unable to figure out what it was at all, except that its edges featured a bonsai museum and a Sikh cultural center. Apparently, it is the now-abandoned former headquarters of a little-known but massive private timber-holding corporation.

So yeah, definitely a super-villain headquarters.

Wild Waves park, near Seattle, WA

Wild Waves is apparently a rather large water park near Seattle: here we see all of the different slides and features pop out in different shapes and colors. I particularly like the water slides looking like squiggly straws.

Obstacle course? near Seattle, WA

This intriguing set of loops and stations looks like some sort of obstacle course or fitness concept to me.

Container storage near Seattle

Colorful containers packed nearly into a tight storage yard.

Cement plant near Seattle, WA

Cement plant to the South of Seattle, with all its many red-headed cement-mixer trucks lined up in neat rows.

Heavily braided highway, Seattle, WA

Here we see the extremely complex interchange between Interstates 5 and 405 near the SeaTac airport, braiding together in a weave of local, express, carpool, and solo-driver threads.

Boeing field, Seattle, WA

I always love seeing Boeing field. There's just something very special to me about seeing the airport where many of the planes I fly on made their first takeoff, all of the blank yet-to-be-decorated aircraft standing by its edges, and just the sheer scale of the company and its operations.

Docks, Seattle, WA

Seattle cargo docks silhouetted in sunset: if you look closely, at the bottom gleaming channel, you can see the giant cargo-container handling cranes picked out in thin spider-like lines.

Wake on Lake Washington

Wakes on Lake Washington, gleaming before Seattle and highlighted in the setting sun.

Evergreen Point floating bridge, Seattle, WA

The floating bridge between Seattle and its Eastside suburbs, silhouetted in the reflection of the setting sun.

Cascades, Washington

Curving layers of mountains in the green Cascades.

Cascades, Washington

Green and white ripples of the oncoming dusk across the Cascade Mountains.

Cascades, Washington

A snow-capped peaks in the Cascades, others rippling in the misty twilight behind it.