Starting to Feel Like Real Authors!

With the upcoming release of our book, we have turned to thoughts of events. We have officially booked our first gig! We will do a book signing at the Tattered Page during the Tulip Festival Street Fair (April 19-21). Exact dates and times still have to be nailed down, but you know we will pass along all the details as soon as we have the. Right now we are simply giddy over merely talking about “signings”. We are very excited and grateful to the Tattered Page for having us.

Oh Yes, It Is Real!

Today had a happy surprise in the mail—the first copies of OUR BOOK! We didn’t even know they were coming, and they aren’t set for release for almost three weeks, so it was a total shock. Taking a photo of the cover simply looked like the same old image we’ve been looking at for months, so Hunter helpfully modeled for us to prove that, look it is a real book you can hold in your hands.

Wow!

It was such a great feeling to see one, what is it going to feel like when we see piles and piles of them?

Famous Folks From Our Town

When we first approached this project, there were a million ideas running through our brains about what to include in the book. We were all over the map. But ultimately the photographs steered the project, regardless of all our grand plans. One of our first ideas was to include some famous residents. But then who do you include, who do you leave out, how do you define “famous”? Eventually we decided that wasn’t a road we wanted to travel, and we needed the space for other things anyway. But, once again, blog to the rescue! This is a place we can profile some of those famous folks, no problem.

This week, in honor of winter and ski season, we would like to talk about Craig Kelly. Don’t know Kelly? Then you probably aren’t a snowboarder. In the late 1970s, Fulton’s Schwinn Cyclery in Mount Vernon attempted to sell snowboards. They did not sell. Eventually they were turned into rentals. They were not rented. Finally the owner’s son, Jeff Fulton, commandeered the four boards and headed to Mount Baker with three other friends. Fulton, Dan Donnelly, Eric Swanson and Craig Kelly, all from Mount Vernon, were the first to snowboard at Mount Baker Ski Area. They were on the forefront of an amazing new sport.

Kelly was a natural talent on a snowboard. He was already an accomplished BMX racer and a chemical engineering student at the University of Washington before becoming a world champion snowboarder. He was one of the first sponsored, professional snowboarders. During his fifteen-year professional career he won four world championships and three U.S. championships. He also won the Mount Baker Banked Slalom three times. As the sport became more popular he was featured in several commercials and appeared in seven Warren Miller films.

Eventually he retired from his professional career to devote himself to backcountry riding and guiding. He also continued to work with his old sponsor, Burton Snowboards, on design and development. According to owner Jake Burton, “When I started listening to Craig that was when my company became successful and really took off.… when the rest of the industry listened to Craig, that was when the sport really took off.” In 2011 Burton dedicated its prototype facility in Kelly’s name.

Kelly died on January 20, 2003 in an avalanche near Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada while guiding two groups of backcountry adventurers who were heli-skiing on a glacier.

If you want to learn more about this boarding legend, or just see a little video, check out this preview to “Let It Ride: The Craig Kelly Story”.

Scenes

Recently we have been revisiting our scanned photographs. There are so many fabulous images! While the images in the book hold a special place in our hearts, there are so many others we didn’t include—it is enough to make us want to write another book! Sadly, lack of information was often a cause of an image not making the book. Of course if we had had unlimited information, choosing what to include and what to leave out would have been a Herculean task! Perhaps we should be grateful…

Here is a gem we know nothing about:

We scanned this from John Kamb Jr.'s collection. We simply adore the composition; the “slice of life” vibe from people who don’t know they are in the camera’s eye. Sadly, we didn’t know much about it so it was left behind.

And in this so-far-snowless winter (for us anyway), Big Snow pictures are catching our eye. There was a massive snowstorm that hit Mount Vernon back in 1916, and the book has a few photographs from then (can you image ice-skating on Skagit River?!?); this one didn’t make it.

It is still great, but we had to make an executive decision.

Never fear photos, we love you all! 

The Taft Connection

Mount Vernon has a small connection with our Nation’s 27th President. In October of 1911, William Howard Taft paid a visit to the town. On page 52 of the book you will see a photograph of him giving a speech near the train station. In addition to that, downtown’s largest hotel (at a whopping five stories tall!) was renamed The President in honor of the fact that Taft stayed there during his visit.

We also mention the rumor, which was repeated to us by several sources, that Taft got stuck in a bathtub while at, what was then, the Windsor.

Imagine our surprise when we came across this article today! Apparently the bathtub rumor was a national urban legend. It is not surprising, after the passage of about a hundred years, that this legend was given a little home town spin. We would venture that many places across the country thought that rumor was all about them.

And Taft seems to be everywhere these days (we’re such trendsetters!). Just the other night ESPN was reporting about Taft being the newest President to join the National’s Presidents’ Race. Interestingly, he does have some ties to baseball. In 1910 he threw out the first-ever ceremonial first pitch. And he is often credited with starting the seventh inning stretch. It seems like a good choice for the Nationals, but we feel kind of bad for the person that will have to run around in that extra-giant head…