Home page of Kevin Talbot - Hobbies and Interests

Here's a little bit about some of the things I have an interest in....

Motorcycles...

Well as you might guess from the picture above, I love motorcycles. I've been riding them since I was 15 years old. My first "car" was a motorcycle (a Honda 305 Superhawk). Over the years, I've owned about a dozen bikes.

My bike is a '94 Harley-Davidson Sportster that I've had about 3 years. It's beautiful black just like the one in the picture. I think it's the most favorite bike I've had yet. It is a great cruising bike and it not only looks great, it sounds wonderful - nothing sounds quite like a Hog!

I used to really like the "crotch rocket" kind of sport bike and even owned a few. But as I've ..ahem... "matured", I've taken a liking to "cruisers" and that's how I picked my Harley. Nothing is more enjoyable to me that taking a nice, leisurely ride on a winding backroad and enjoying the scenery, smelling the trees and flowers and soaking up the sun.

Scuba diving...

On a vacation to Maui several years ago, I decided to take an "intro" scuba lesson and see if I liked it. I've always thought it would be fun to try, but I never took the time. The intro class was two hours in a classroom and then out to the beach for two half hour easy dives. That's all it took to get me hooked! I'd always enjoyed snorkeling in Hawaii, but diving let you go quite deep and stay down for extended times and really see the underwater life close up.

After this intro dive, the next day I took two "instructed dives" where the instructor keeps close tabs on you. You can do this without being certified and actually it's quite safe.

When I got back to Seattle after that trip, I signed up for a scuba certification class the very next day. This was in November and it was really cold. My friend Larry signed up too as he'd always wanted to get certified too. So the two of us took the class freezing our butts of during the four "open water" certification dives. Two of them were at the Edmonds ferry terminal where there is an underwater state park. The morning we arrived, it was 8 AM, the air temp was 30 degrees and there was a inch of snow on the ground! The 45 degree water actually felt warm compared to the cold air!

Since then, I've logged several dozen dives, but only in Hawaii. For me, it's just too darn cold to go diving in Puget Sound although many, many people do enjoy it.

If you care to take a look, I have a page with several photos from some Maui dive trips.

Photography...

I got interested in photography in high school and learned to not only take photos but develop and print from black and white negatives. There are lots of times when I just take "snapshots" of various places, but I do try and make some creative photographs from time to time.

I'm not too keen on people photos, but I certainly enjoy taking scenic nature photos, sunsets, and photos that find an interesting light or pattern in a scene.

I am working on a photo page of some of my photos, but it's not yet ready. In the interim, you could take a look at a small sample of my work on a friend's page. My friend Cindy Ference is an artist and makes a line of photo notecards with many of her images. She's chosen one series of mine I took on Maui in the extinct crater of the Haleakala volcano. I was flattered that she liked them enough to include them on one of her card series. You can visit her home page and see her photos and mine at http://www.oz.net/~moonbeam/

Computers...

Since I have taken the effort to make this web page, you might guess I have an interest in computers. Well, you'd be right if you guessed that. I've owned several, starting with an Apple II back in 1980. When I bought that "antique", I got a 12" black and white monitor, two 5-1/4" floppy disk drives (single sided no less) and 64K of RAM. It set me back $2900 - that's $2900 in 1980. Today, that same amount of money will get you a pretty nifty Pentium system and a nice laser printer. Back then, a 16K memory kit (that's 16 KILObytes, not MEGAbytes) cost over $150. Today, 16 MEGAbytes of RAM will only cost you about $80. Boy, weren't those the good old days!

My current computer assortment includes three computers. At home, I have an Acer Pentium 90 desktop with an HP laserjet and HP Deskjet color printer. For work also have an older 486/33 laptop with just a black and white screen. I could not function in life without my trusty HP 200 LX palmtop - I keep tons of stuff on it and depend on it day in and day out for my schedule, phone books, databases, etc.

At my job, I get to use and maintain some very nice UNIX workstations. We have several Silicon Graphics Indigo2 systems with tons of RAM, hard disk space and very fast graphics. We also have a couple of even faster HP c110 UNIX workstations that make the fast SGIs seem slow in comparison. I've been able to learn a lot on the job about UNIX and networking from building our network one computer at a time. Using UNIX machines, particularly SGIs, makes it seem easy to get networking and multi-tasking working smoothly compared to PCs.

Dogs and Cats...

I love animals, especially dogs and cats. I've had many dogs in my life over the years. It seems like I always have at least two living with me. Take a look at my "family" page to see my extended family of dogs and cat.

Fish...

I also have some other pets.... I have a 55 gallon tropical fresh water aquarium. Currently I have about a dozen fish including some gouramis, clown loaches, tiger and rosy barbs and some glass fish. They are very beautiful and lots of fun to watch. I particularly like the clown loaches as they seem to have almost a personality to them.

Art...

I like a wide range of art, but I particularly like photograhpy (black & white especially), sculpture and impressionist paintings. A most memorable trip I took one time to New York City in 1993 included spending about a day and a half at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I vividly remember the Egyptian Art section and the many European Master's paintings, in particular two of my favorites, Monet's Cathedral at Rouen and Van Gogh's Sunflowers (seen above).

At the Met gift shop, I purchased a replica of a beautiful marble sculpture from the Alexandria region from about 2500 years ago. The artist is unknown. It's assumed it was the work of an art student as it was uncovered in the remains of an art studio that appeared to be a teaching studio. I took an art metal casting class at Bellevue Community College about two years ago and used it as a pattern to make two bronze sand castings of the replica. Here's a photo of me and the instructor (Ross Brown) pouring the part. The bright yellow/orange material we are pouring is molten bronze at about 1000 degrees. When it's molten, it's almost transparent and looks very much like gold. And boy, is it hot! you can feel the heat ten to fifteen feet away. Here's close-up photo of the untrimmed casting. The trimmed casting weighs over fifteen pounds! Someday I'm going to apply a nice blue/green patina to it using ammonia to give it an aged look.

Music...

I enjoy a wide range of music from Miles Davis to Pearl Jam to Melissa Etheridge and lots in between. If you'd like to be very bored, you can browse through my list of CDs I have here.

Auto Racing...

There are two spectator sports I really like - NBA basketball and auto racing. I follow both Indycar racing in the US and Formula 1 racing in europe pretty closely. I never miss a race, even when it's a Formula 1 race on ESPN 2 at 4:50 AM. I also enjoy the new "World Sports Car" class racing as well. These are main types of cars that race in the 24 Hours Of Le Mans, the mother of all endurance races.

Personally I find the Indycar races to be a much more competitive series, but I also like Formula 1 as it's the pinnacle of open wheel racing technology.

Movies...

I've always enjoyed movies. I like a few of the classics like Casablanca, but my tastes run more current and do lean towards the dramatic and science fiction genre. My personal favorites would have to include Pulp Fiction, Blade Runner, Dune, My Life As A Dog and Casablanca.

I have a small movie library for the movies I really like. I invested in a laserdisc player which really does an amazing job of letting you see a movie at home with much higher quality that a typical video tape.

If you're interested, I have my movie library list here to view.

Last updated: June 29, 1997