Ok, so this is a bridge.  I’m not sure if it counts as architecture, but I do believe we learned about Roman aqueducts and the like, so I’m going to roll with it.  I believe this is one of the most amazingly beautiful and terrifying bridges I’ve ever driven across.  Granted some of the mystique comes from the surrounding geography.  The bridge links Fidalgo Island and Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound in Washington state.  It is also the only way off of Whidbey Island that is not a ferry.

The waterway is called Deception pass because original Spanish explorers believed Fidalgo and Whidbey were all one island and the pass was merely a bay. The waters of the pass are also deceptively calm looking; but the undertows are vicious.  The bridge itself, finished in 1935, is only two lanes wide, and those are narrow lanes.  But as it’s the only way for semis to get to the towns on island, they must cross it daily.  This makes or quite a hair-raising drive when you encounter one.   Further, you have to drive quite slowly, way slower than any young sailor (or tourist) likes to go, or you can easily lose control and head over the edge.  As I said, the lanes are narrow and the water below is highly turbulent below the surface.  Going over is a sure death.

The entire area, the water, the rocks, the trees, can change its look depending of the way the sun hits it during the day, or whether or not it is overcast, and what time of year it is.  The metal of the bridge also takes on different looks with these differences in weather.  It happens frequently where there will be a fog over one island and only one part of the bridge, completely obscuring the destination requiring faith that it is still there.  It is also not very well lit at night because it is a state park and they want to preserve the flora and fauna of the area.

My husband and I moved to Whidbey Island in the spring of 2006 and we lived there for 6 years.  You could maybe chalk up the tense feeling crossing the bridge the first few times to the jitters of moving to a new location and starting life at a new duty station, but after 6 years, those feelings never went away.  The final year we lived there I worked on the main land and drove over the bridge twice a day for 5 days out of the week, and every time I was struck by the amazing feat to bridge these lands, the beauty of the man made work and the nature it was anchored to, and the risk taken with each crossing.  Many buildings and structures are examples of man conquering nature, but this structure leaves you wondering if we really have mastered it, as we sometimes think.

My husband and I have purchased a few houses over the years, moved around a lot, but this is by far my favorite house.  I really couldn’t tell you what the style of the house is, on the outside.  It looks much like all the other houses in the area, not so much in shape, but style and technique.  In fact, it seems to be a popular style in most of the suburbs here in the Mustang/Yukon area.  Inside is another matter, however.  That is really where my husband and I fell in love with the place.  There is so much dark woodwork features everywhere.  As we were looking at several houses, we noticed ourselves being drawn to ones that had lots of wood trim and features, as opposed to trim and features that were painted white.  The wood seems to warm the place up for us.  The study or office (first picture in the blog) also reminded me of my childhood.  Above the entrance to the room are wide open slots.  I had a a great aunt who had a town home that had those kind of features in the rooms.  I believe they were traditionally to allow for air flow before air-conditioning was common.  I used to pretend I was a young girl from some victorian time period (probably not accurate, but I was a kid) and our new house brings me back to that joy.  The family room (bottom picture) has huge bookcases, which is another feature that drew me to the house.  I love books and do not ever get rid of any, even if I have duplicates.  So I need a large set of shelves to keep them, and these bookshelves make my eclectic collection look like they would belong in the grandest of libraries.  I have, unfortunately, ran out of room in these shelves now, however.

With all the amazing carpentry features in this house, it did not take it long for me to feel like it was my home.

I visited Dubai in 2007 while on deployment.  The city was one of the most amazing sights I had ever seen.  We pulled in three times in as many months and, I swear, you could literally track the cities growth with each trip.  Whereas you drive around in an city in the United States and you will see one or two construction cranes here or there, in Dubai, you would drive along the highway leading in to the city and pass 10 or more buildings under construction on ONE side.  When I visited, the Burj Khalifa had not been built, was only 3 years in to that project, and Palm Jumeirah island was just being formed, so the “big deal” building was the hotel the Burj Al Arab, off Jumeirah Beach.

The Burj Al Arab is still one of the tallest hotels in the world. It is designed to resemble the sail of a ship with a tall straight edge as the mast and a sweeping curved edge resembling a sail catching the wind.  I was never able to enter it; the story amongst us sailors was that you had to have a suit and tie (men) just to enter the lobby because it was such an elite luxury destination.  And, in my mind, the exterior of the building alone was enough to give credence to that fact.  At the time, and even still today, I am not overly acquainted with the most astounding architectural feats, but this one struck me as purely amazing.  If its purpose is to convey a sense of exclusivity and unattainability, it succeed.  I still hold this hotel as one of my dream, when I win the lottery, destinations.  Almost to add to its inaccessibility, all the personal pictures that I had of it, with or without me in the shot, were destroyed by a computer virus; it’s too good for me to even keep an image of.

For my first personal building blog, I chose to write about a building that had a major effect on my life even though I was only there for a short time.  I am talking about the barracks buildings from my Navy bootcamp experience.  They called them ships, which I found very ridiculous because they didn’t resemble ships in any way, not like some of the examples we’ve seen in class where they try to give a feeling of the object they are portraying.  This was simply to indoctrinate us in to the ways of the navy.  The buildings were so drab and utilitarian that I almost forgot what the actual edifice itself looked like.  What I have in my memory is a combination of all the experiences that went along with these buildings.  They were three each three stories tall, and older than dirt.  Each one had a central hub of sorts, off which, on either side shot two legs which were the living units.  Each sides legs were connected at the other end forming a center courtyard.  I have no idea what was inside the courtyards; we weren’t allowed in.   Each level of each living unit housed 80 people in one long bay with windows down the length of both sides; the windows didn’t always function, which was terrible in the freezing Great Lakes winter.  In these bays was where we slept, received some instructional training, spent down time, and endured extra training in the form of extreme exercise; think 100, 4-count push-ups.

Needless to say, this was not the happiest of experiences.  The point of bootcamp is to break you, mentally, not to aesthetically please your senses.  I didn’t necessarily give it any thought at the time, but I am sure that the stark utilitarianism of the buildings was, whether or not by design, another tool to break you down.  I did not, and do not like these buildings, although I believe none of them exist any more.  We were told that they had been torn down shortly after my time there because they were so dilapidated; replaced with comparatively nice and comfortable buildings.  Even though I think these buildings were terrible, I can’t help but hold a grudge against all who have come after and haven’t had to experience them.  They can’t be as tough as I am since they didn’t have to endure these buildings.