Weekend 15: Museum of Glass, Tacoma Washington

Well, the plan early in the week was to go hiking around Rainier with Marat, one of my co-workers at Stirling, but as the week drew on the bad weather turned him off of the trip ("There's no use hiking there unless you get the views...", he said).

Damnit.

I had just bought a Whisperlight stove and I was really wanting to use it. I packed my bags to go on my own, but something made me change my mind. Going solo in to an area where the projected storms moving into the very area I planned to hike looked fierce... High altitude hiking meaning that there was a better chance of snow than rain... Whatever the reason(s), it/they jumped on the back of my rebellious side, pinned it to the ground and gagged it. All that was left and able to speak were my lesser known friends, Logic and Reason. They said to go see some culture instead of risking bodily harm. So I went to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma.

No cameras were allowed in the actual exhibit portion of the museum. Huge bummer, as there were some pieces in there that I would love for you all to see. One in particular: A HUGE spiderweb hung from the ceiling. The enormous drops of dew were crystal clear glass orbs. Pretty spectacular. The rest of it was a comparison of the different types of sculture that glass had been used for over the years.

In between going into the glass blowing area where people were, well, sculpting, I stopped off and made two pretty cool buttons (the kind you pin to yourself.... the annoying things that usually say "Vote for (Insert rich/hideously dishonest politicians name here)!" or "Eat Children NOT Animals!" Mine were cool though.

Ah yes, I then entered an area where I could use my camera. Sweet.

Heating up the piece in a big furnace.

Out comes the piece and out comes the blowtorch. Not quite sure what the torch does... I assume it is to keep the piece from cooling too much or too quickly.

After a while, they added soem color to it. And then removed it from the pole and put it in the back room. End of show.

Following the glass museum, I walked across a bridge extending from the museum to downtown Tacoma. Here, there was a ridiculously long display case filled with works of art from previous artists.

A stitch of the display case.

A closeup of some of the pieces.

Three of my favorite pieces on the wall.

Another amazing part of the bridge is a tunnel that you pass through. This tunnel has standard walls, but a spectacular ceiling. There are 24 clear glass panels, 3 spanning the width of the tunnel by 8 spanning the length, and above each panel there are thousands of beautiful bowls, and tubes and oddly shaped brightly colored glass sculptures.

I started taking pictures, but I figured that no single picture would do the roof justice. Instead, I took a single shot of every glass panel and assembled in the exact order as you would see them walking from the museum to the downtown area (when you look at the picture below from right to left).

Downtown Tacoma------------------------Glass Museum

After the bridge, I snapped a few pictures in the downtown area. It was an older downtown, and in many ways resembled Roanoke. When it began to rain I headed back to the car.

Before I turned and went home, the engineering geek in my started screaming:

"If you do not go to see the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, I am going to give you a sever lashing."

So I went.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I assume they built the second one using a factor of safety approaching 25 or 30 (exaggerating here) and probably took into account both aerodynamics and resonance effects upon the second bridges construction. (For those who don't know about the Tacoma Narrows from physics class, check it out online)

And that was it for the weekend. No, wait, I did stop at Target and to get a beard shaver. Though I lack all ability to grow a beard, my body is alarmingly quick to sprout scraggly whiskers resembling singed pubic hair... Grandpa, if you're reading this, did I just go to far?... So it was nice to clean up the mug prior to my departure to New Mexico for Stacy's wedding the following Wednesday.

The Ehhhhnd.