12AUG, Friday, the kids (Rebecca, Raymond & Joe) took off
for white water rafting on the Skagit River out of Newhalem, WA. Although they had been warned to make rafting
reservations months ago, they didn’t & found two things were working
against them. 1) the rivers are much
lower in the summer & many cannot be rafted due to low water. 2) summer is busiest season (can you say
tourists?) & almost every trip is fully booked. End result was being on a standby list &
then two hour drive north for a not very challenging Class II rapids.
After rush hour Oma & Opa took the grandkids (Jaxson &
Mason) into the Seattle Center. The
Center was full of people due to the DOTA2 (Defense of the Ancients 2) world
championship being held at Seattle Coliseum.
Can you say hundreds of teams competing for $20m in prizes & first
place gets over $9m – we didn’t think so.
Upwards of 15,000 pay for the privilege to watch the teams compete in
the Coliseum. While thousands more watch
outside on giant (& we mean giant) screens set up thru-out the Center.
As
per Wikipedia – “Dota 2 is a
free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and
published by Valve
Corporation for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux. The game is
the stand-alone sequel to Defense of the Ancients (DotA), which was a community-created mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and
its expansion pack, The Frozen Throne. Dota 2 is played in matches between
two teams that consist of five players, who each occupy their own base on the
map. Each player controls a powerful character, known
as a "hero", that feature unique abilities and different styles of play. During a
match, a player and their team collects experience points,
currency, and items for their heroes in order to better fight heroes of the
opposing team, attempting to push through their defenses. A team wins by being
the first to destroy a large structure located in the opposing team's base,
called the "Ancient".
First stop was the International Fountain to play in the water. After drying off, it was on the Armory
(formally the Center House) for lunch.
Final stop was a newly built playground called “Artists at Play”. In Dan’s opinion in an effort to make the
play structures super safe; the designers have made them so
parents/grandparents cannot assist a child if they should need help. The climbing structures, aerial bridges, etc,
are completely enclosed in heavy, rubber coated, wire rope. So if a child should get hurt (& they
will), they will not fall to the ground; but an adult cannot easily get to
them, without climbing thru the very same labyrinth to get to them & then
trying to figure how to carrying them back out if necessary?
After a sno-cone treat it was back to the house in Sultan for
super soaker battles, running thru the sprinkler, & learning from Oma how
to make homemade pizza for dinner.
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