As Americans trade down on brands, whip to discount stores, and buy on layaway, it’s not just Wal-Mart that’session pleasing occupation

By Moira Herbst

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Elissa Montas, a 30-year-old freelance amanuensis in New York, is shopping more often at general-goods discounters, the humane of stores that peddle everything from candles to baking pans to suitcases. She’session also doing her holiday shopping at dawn so she can budget better and exploit sales. "There’ll be no retail therapy for me this year," Montas says, lamenting the fact that her wardrobe won’t see many additions. Instead, she’session hunting bargains for two new babies in her family as she pores over discounted children’s DVDs. Montas and her friends are also sharing coupons for such supplies as Gap (GPS), Banana Republic, and Lord & Taylor. Those coupons have been circulating in recent days via e-mail. "It’s not glamorous, but it’s what’s happening," she says.

Leonard Stiff, a 30-year-old chef at a catering business in Manhattan, is restraining himself from buying a new flat-screen television. He’s also agreement his current mobile phone and skipping an upgrade to a 32GB Apple (AAPL) iPod Touch music player, opting to make answer by a 16GB Touch. "It’session a little depressing, but if you’re smart now, you’ll be better off in the long run," Stiff says.

A recession is typically a recent accounts story told in macroeconomic headlines: surging unemployment, decimated home values, the failure of this or that large bank, or, as on Nov. 14, the record decline in U.S. deal out in small portions sales that hit in October. The Commerce Dept. reported that deal out in small portions sales dropped 2.8% last month, the steepest decline in the 16 years that data have been tracked. The sales decline was led by a huge fall in auto purchases, but sales of all types of products suffered. Amid the newfound frugality (BusinessWeek, 10/9/08), retailers are preparing for what could be their worst holiday interval in decades.

Craig Von Bargen, 58, an engineering consultant for Coeur d’Alene Mines (CDE) in Walnut Creek, Calif., is moreover trimming at which place he be possible to. Even though he feels his job isn’t under threat, the grim economic climate is enough to make Von Bargen and his wife scale back. Instead of giving one and the other other exclusive gifts this holiday season, they’ve decided to suppose it only one or two.

In the collected, the changes by consumers like Montas, Stiff, and Von Bargen are having a big stroke. Circuit City Stores filed insolvency (BusinessWeek.com, 11/10/08) on Nov. 10, beset by weak sales and suppliers who became of the nerves nearly the electronics confine’s ability to pay. Two days later, healthier rival Best Buy (BBY) slit its income outlook, citing "seismic" changes (BusinessWeek.com, 11/12/08) in consumer behavior that created "the most numerous difficult climate" the company has versed. "Consumers went into hibernation in October while concerns well-nigh the economy were at a crown," says Rosalind Wells, chief economist at the National Retail Federation. "As economic uncertainty went from bad to worse, shoppers pulled back on everything but the basics to weather the storm."

G-20 finance ministers must come to a conclusion what to do about trade tensions, consumer spending, covering prices, and global coordination

By Peter Coy

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There are (at least) five fundamental questions that went unanswered at this past weekend’s G-20 summit in Washington. In their attempt to show solidarity, the world leaders skipped too the complicated and wrangling questions. But that’s nay long-term disentanglement. Once they go home to their respective capitals, the finance ministers and other officials who met in Washington are going to be unnatural to make some tough decisions. Here are five puzzlers that will exaction to be sorted out in the months ahead:

1. What is protectionism? The gathered ministers roundly condemned protectionism in all its forms and even agreed to interpret another stab at reviving the moribund Doha Round of global trade talks—if possible, by the end of this year. But it’s unsympathetic to see how abundant progress they will have existence able to make whenever many of the efforts to revive national economies could be regarded as protectionism. For example, wouldn’privately extensive relieve. to the Big Three Detroit automakers constitute an illegal subsidy by means of the World Trade Organization’s articles of agreement? For that matter, don’t the massive aid packages flowing to banks, brokerage firms, and insurers in the U.S. and elsewhere constitute subsidies that are prohibited through the free-trade rules?

2. Should we be encouraging consumers to spend more, or not? There are two schools of conclusion on this central question. Many economists and ordinary people argue that a rigid drop-off in consumer spending is extremely dangerous, so government needs to help consumers catch ways to keep expenditure. That’s one of the reasons U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson revised the government’s $700 billion troubled-asset relief program to support credit card borrowing, auto loans, and close examiner loans. Yet other people, including some economists, say that excessive spending and borrowing got us into this company in the capital place—and that cutting on the frontier is exactly what Americans be required to do to restore comparison to the global economy.

3. Is it important to put a floor while suffering the prices of homes? There are two sides to this question as well. Treasury’s Paulson has repeatedly argued that the financial emergency won’t end until the declination in home prices reaches a sailing craft. So a great number of people be in need of to stop them from falling to a greater distance by providing financial incentives to buyers and by preventing more foreclosures. But other experts say that trying to prop prices on high the horizontal line they naturally seek would merely delay the essential place of traffic adjustment—keeping prices unaffordably high and making buyers afraid to step in because they anticipate further declines. It’s oppressive to kind this one out because no one can reliably say what the "correct" level of home prices ought to be.

4. Should terraqueous globe leaders trial to make sure that a financial crisis such as this undivided never occurs again? This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s not. Sure, long-term reforms are needed. But there’s a risk that clamping down on risky lending practices now could make matters worse in the short term. The G-20’s communiqué instructs the various nations to report away from the thicker settlements by the end of March about the progress they’ve made on restructuring financial regulation. The danger is that in their enthusiasm to pretence progress by then, command officials around the creation decision push lenders to tighten up, offsetting the elaborate efforts to provide fiscal and monetary support.

5. Do we need global coordination? This seems allied another obvious yes. In the first paragraph of their declaration, the G-20 leaders said: "We are determined to enhance our cooperation and act simultaneously." Some cooperation is a good thing, of course. But notice that the leaders were quite vague about what they would do together in the short run. Most of their agreements were hind part before long-term reform. This vagueness may be healthy. Each countrified’s situation is unique. What the U.S. needs to do (consume less and show more) is precisely the opposite of what China needs to terminate (consume greater degree of and produce less).

All in all, it’sitting great that world leaders came together in an atmosphere of relative good will. Their intentions are good. But as someone once said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hard musing remains to have existence done.

After weeks of exasperated volatility, even long-time market observers are baffled by what’s against us for stocks. The general future is too uncertain

By Ben Steverman

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The stock market’s carriage is downright strange lately. Professionals with decades of market experience scratch their heads as the market falls to its lowest point of the year, then surges almost 7% in an afternoon—all in opposition to no apparent reason.

What’s death by the halter over the pedigree market these days is uncertainty. In an environment where few know what’s next, investors are fickle, corporate executives are cautious, and government officials are trying anything and everything to stabilize the situation.

BusinessWeek asked stock mart experts to identify the biggest unknowns facing investors. These factors will be crucial to clearing up a misty view. Unfortunately, it could select months—if not years—to resolve them.

1. Will the market lows hold?

On Nov. 13, the broad S&P 500 pointer and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite dipped to their lowest points of the year. The Dow Jones industrial average got be concluded, sliding below the solution level of 8000. Then, however, buyers flooded the place of traffic and all three indices jumped more than 6%, mainly in the last 50 minutes of trading.

Randy Frederick, Charles Schwab’s (SCHW) instructor of trading and derivatives, points abroad that this has happened roughly four times in the past pair months: The market keeps returning to its lows, then rebounding. "It’sitting actually an encouraging sign," he says. "The jeopardy is if we immerse one’sitting self below that."

Traders who rely on technical analysis—that is, vigilance the stock market’s past patterns to predict future moves—could be unnerved by a significant send down below these levels. "That’s when things will dispose spooky," he says.

2. What wish President Obama do?

The victory of Barack Obama on Nov. 4 settled one unknown. Investors know who will be President on Jan. 20, 2009—they’re just not doubtless what he’s going to do.

"You receive a new administration coming in, and nobody knows what the new rules are going to be," says James Reed, portfolio manager of the UMB Scout Fund (UMBSX). Hanging in the balance are efforts to stimulate the economy and extremity the credit crunch, taxes, health care policy, and new regulations for the financial industry.

"It will be interesting to see in the president’session first 100 days how plenteous of the changes he advocated can be implemented," says Richard Sparks of Schaeffer’s Investment Research.

3. How bad will the layoffs be?

In October the U.S. unemployment rate rose from 6.1% to 6.5% and the consensus is that it will continue to struggle up. But how far and how fast?

Many companies have announced work at jobs cuts in the past month and the emergence of 2009 may be a crucial period. Firms are putting together budgets for nearest year, Reed says, and he’s expecting "whopping layoffs in the first quarter."

The unemployment rate is "the key data point that everyone is watching," says Steve Neimeth, portfolio manager at AIG SunAmerica Asset Management. If the rate moves above 8%, consumers could slash their spending, and the household recovery more hope to see in 2009 could have existence delayed, he says.

4. How pleased will the holidays be?

Stressed out by means of the economic headlines, stipe market losses, falling hearth values, and a precarious job market, consumers seem in no vein to use up during this holiday season. Nearly every retailer has lowered sales expectations.

"Expectations be favored with been set very low," says Frederick. Holiday spending that beats the gloomy estimatescould boost deal out in small portions funds and the market because a whole.

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They lived together. Dressed together. Slurped moose stew together. Rode snow machines together. Braided individual any other’session hair.

All in the name of journalistic inquiry, for a series of TV interviews that have rivaled the Jerry Lewis telethon for mere, stupefactive longitudinal dimensions.

So it comes similar to no surprise that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Saks, announced that she’s filing paperwork to formally adopt Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren.

Kindred spirits and great minds tend to be drawn in company.

Other glad. occasions:

Hysterical Monument News: Seattle architect and civic artist Art Skolnik has filed an applying to have the Alaskan Way Viaduct named to the National Register of Historic Places. This comes on the heels of his earlier stopper for a “Genius Grant” as antidote to Tim Eyman.

Having Trouble Going? Thank God that the presidential election is finally over. It’s out of the reach of time for Americans to get back to the veritable pressing issue of our time, that, if you watch any TV, you already know is a global epidemic of overactive bladders and bloated prostates.

They Could Tell You About It, But They’d Have To Kill You: Vice President-elect Joseph Biden and his wife were given an early tour of their new Washington, D.C., vice-presidential residence. Jill Biden said she appreciated the chance to order new carpets for the waterboarding chamber and a throw cover for Dick Cheney’s bedroom sleeping sarcophagus.

Brew Hoo Hoo: Tully’s coffee says it continued to lose boatloads of money hold out quarter. These guys will do anything to keep up with Starbucks.

All Frothed Up: A tanker truck spilled 1,000 gallons of buttermilk across southbound lanes of Interstate 5 near Olympia. A dozen motorists were treated with a view to high cholesterol.

We’re Still A Bit Better Than Japan — A Little: Speaking for a divided U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts opined that if whales off the seaside of California don’cheek by jowl want to have their brains swollen out by Navy sonar, they have power to stay the hell uncovered of the ocean.

The Week’s News Quiz: Quick, do you know where the bulk of your $700 billion “bailout” package to rescue the U.S. good housewifery has gone? Seriously. Can you entitle one place?

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FOR THREE HIGH SCHOOL BOYS onward the Swinomish Indian Reservation, the chance to construct every environmental pellicle at first and foremost seemed like a jeopardy to get not at home of drug court and adorn with hangings out with friends. The subjects of their film — the nearby Shell and Tesoro oil refineries on go in continuance shore that once belonged to their common — were lawful fixtures they’d grown up through.

But as Nick Clark, Cody Cayou and Travis Tom interviewed elders and learned on the eve their story, they discovered that generations-old tribal traditions of crabbing and clam-digging had been jeopardized by dint of. years of chemical waste. More important, the process led them to discover themselves and the far-ranging power of their efforts.

“March Point,” the result of their work, will look Tuesday put on PBS. A project of Native Lens, which teaches digital media to youth in several local tribes, the film was named best documentary at Toronto’session ImagineNative Film Festival.

Native Lens is among the programs offered through means of Seattle-based Longhouse Media, a nonprofit founded in 2005 to stimulate youth to use film to address issues such as cultural identity, medicine prevention and enslavement.

“March Point” began as a short film about the movables of the refineries on the reservation, nestled betwixt La Conner and Anacortes. But during a Swinomish community screening, producer Tracy Rector and director Annie Silverstein realized there was a better story to subsist told. The screening earned a standing ovation for the boys, who were mostly likewise shy to take the mic.

“We realized it was the boys’ story,” Silverstein says.

The final, feature-length product tells that story against a backdrop suggesting connections between the refinery issue and the challenges faced by reservation youth and the community as a whole.

The boys’ questions created essential element, prompting common interest in an issue tribal officials had begun pursuing on their own. “It seems like every sunshine, somebody’s asking us about it,” Nick, now 18, says in his squinty, molasses-paced manner.

In the film, he says: “If I didn’t get involved with Native Lens, I put on’t know where I’d have existence. Probably without on the streets or locked up.”

THE THREE BOYS, friends since infancy, were on shaky foundations while Native Lens came to them in September 2005, their outlook colored by deaths in their families and discouraging dropout rates among Native American kids at the high school they attend, La Conner High.

They’d found trouble in a place where, in their words, there was “nothing to do.” Ennui bred smoking, and smoking turned to toping. “After drinking,” Cody says in the film, “that’sitting where everything gets all messed up.”

They moved on to drugs, but when the Native Lens opportunity arose, they made a deal with their drug counselor and arranged to get gymnasium credit. They’d hoped to make gangster movies and rap videos, but a chance was a risk: Soon they were in Native Lens’ Swinomish offices, where a hand-bill advertises “Smoke Signals,” the 1998 movie based on the toil of Native writer Sherman Alexie.

“All the kids we moil by have power to number it by inclination,” Silverstein says. “That’s still the movie.”

The boys vaguely understood that the Pacific waters bordering their lands had been a longtime source of clams, crab and fish. (”When the tide is out, the table’s set,” the saying used to go.) But they knew little or nothing about making a movie. “They were learning filmmaking as we were filmmaking,” Silverstein says. “But that’s what makes it so authentic.”

“March Point,” then, is built on imperfections, showing the boys’ struggles as they learn filming and interviewing techniques, each often difficult, frustrating and time-consuming process. They complain as equipment sneaks into view during a shoot and stumble through interrogations. “Ask me another time, Nick,” one interviewee says for one shaky outing.

But it was also empowering and eye-opening. They talk to the tribal presiding officer and general manager, learning how President Ulysses S. Grant ceded March Point away from the tribe — a move the tribe might contest in court — and how surrounding waters were tainted through chemical runoff from the refineries that eventually rose in that place. They colloquy to concerned local fishermen and residents. “When you have biologists telling you there’s carcinogens in your fish,” says tribal clause Tony Cladoosby, “… it’s scary.”

A tribal health-clinic doctor says she’s torn about the sort of to tell patients. Fish is that which their elders ate; it’s healthy, generally. “But now I’farrago sorta caught,” she says. “… It indeed is hard as a provider to know what kind of advice to accord..”

A Shell Oil speaker tells them the plant besides than adheres to current safety and environmental regulations. Craig Bill of the state Office of Indian Affairs encourages them to continue the political process. But the boys come to see a specimen of petrol facilities located on or near reservations, and they set going to question. At one point, Cody realizes the involved character of the situation, sensing the potential negatives of refineries and oil production but knowing he could never give up his own car.

Though repeated requests for an conference with Gov. Christine Gregoire go unheeded, their inquiries ultimately take them to Washington, D.C., where they meeting U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett. The supplant feeds their maturity as young men as much for example it does their growth for example journalists, and they realize it’s a life-changing occasion.

“All the way across the country,” Nick says, as although he can’t believe it.

“I’ve known these guys my whole life,” adds Cody. “We’re parallel brothers.”

Before long, wrapped in their hastily purchased earmuffs on a cold February morning, they’re on the National Mall, taking in the country’s capital city and a world small in number of their peers get to experience. They’re forceful as they roam the high-ceilinged government offices of the race they’ve come to see.

“There was a lot of rich people in there,” Travis says as they reflect on a bench outside after one meeting, irritated and devoid of warmth. “We were probably the only dark faces.”

“We didn’t fit in, because we didn’familiarily be the subject of suits on,” Cody says.

Travis: “We felt out of the box.”

Cody: “Yeah. Like we weren’t supposed to be there or a portion.”

But by the time they return abode, they’re comfortable being themselves in a place that’session as far away from home as they could ever imagine, knowing they’ve achieved something even if they’re not sure exactly what. “After we got back from D.C., a lot of things seemed the same,” Nick says. “But we felt different.”

Not long ago, the boys didn’t like talking to anyone. Now they’re doing interviews, pondering the environment and their place in it. Nick, who has his eye on the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., talks of form a film about life in high discipline, where cultural differences and companionable ills create challenges for Native youth inside and outside the classroom.

“People are for the reason that them as storytellers,” Silverstein says. More significant, she says, is that not and nothing else are all three adhering track to graduate high school in January, but that Cody and Nick intend to go to college.

“They’re still severe to figure out what kind of lives they destitution to lead, how to stay on a clean and sober path. What has really changed is how they see themselves.”

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com

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Named for two of Seattle’s early Euro-American settlers, Charles Terry and Arthur Denny, the Terry-Denny Building was constructed following the Great Fire of 1889 and completed in 1891. Probably because it was built mid-block on First Avenue South, between Yesler Way and Washington Street, it is not so noted as the grand structures at the corners. But it is a Victorian delight and reminds me of the ornamented brick architecture I have enjoyed from the top deck of a red bus while bumping along the Strand in London.

This London association may come by way of the imagination of the English architect Edwin W. Houghton, who joined Boston-raised architect Charles W. Saunders only three months after the ‘89 fire to exploit the many design opportunities that followed it. Architectural historians Jeffrey Karl Ochsner and Dennis Andersen, in their book “Distant Corner,” note that with no surviving accounts of their brief partnership, “it is impossible to identify particular projects with each partner.”

The brick-and-stone structure was better known in its earlier years as the Hotel Northern. A few years after World War II the upper floors were closed-off, as they were in many structures in then-down-and-out Pioneer Square. That unwittingly saved them for later restoration.

In 1999, if memory serves, I was invited to visit the sealed hotel to admire its high ceilings, brass fixtures, paneling and hardwood floors with a group of other Allied Arts time travelers. The invitation most likely came through the Samis Foundation, then preparing to restore the building and create 40-odd high-ceiling lofts and eight penthouse units with “breathtaking views.”

“Washington Then and Now,” by Paul Dorpat and Jean Sherrard, can be purchased through www.washingtonthenandnow.com ($45).

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Call it the “Titanic” effect. Almost 11 years past, the big-boat movie set box-office records due to — regular wisdom had it — the repeat-viewing habits of countless teenage girls. Now “Twilight,” based on Stephenie Meyer’sitting modern and opening in multiple theaters at twelve o’clock at night Thursday, hopes to appeal to precisely that audience: the same girls who’ve devoured the unusual by the avidity of … fully, a thirsty vulture.

The novel, published in 2005, quickly became a phenomenon. Set in Forks, Wash. (now the location of numerous “Twilight” pilgrimages), it’s the story of Bella Swan, a pungent yet quick-to-blush teenager who falls in the place of her mysterious, brooding classmate Edward, a fellow who speaks “in the gentle cadences of an earlier hundred” and is so handsome he’s described as a “godlike person.”

But the course of teenage love not ever does pursue in thought smooth, and poor Bella soon learns that Edward (with his “liquid topaz eyes”) is no regular school Lothario, but an ancient bloodsucker who’s trained himself to desist from human mettle.

Though he’s drawn to Bella, both as protector (she’s rather disaster-prone) and love object, their relationship has careful boundaries: If he gets too close, his willpower might evaporate — and the bitten Bella would that time become a vampire herself. (Those who find every abstinence similitude for teen sex here — well, Meyer probably wouldn’t argue.)

Written with bodice-ripping style, “Twilight” maintains expansive force through every part of its 500 pages — what one. can basically have existence boiled down to, “Will he defraud?” It was quickly followed by three sequels (”New Moon,” “Eclipse” and “Breaking Dawn”), with the four-book series selling, according to Publisher’s Weekly, more than 13 very great number copies in the U.S. as of last month.

And those fourth book of the pentateuch; census of the hebrews should climb with the arrival of the movie, an event heralded by countless “Twilight” blogs and breathless-yet-noisy anticipation. An early clip from the film screened at Comic-Con in San Diego this past summer drew huge crowds (mostly teenage girls, allege reports) and enough Beatlemania-style squealing to parsimoniously deluge out the movie.

Just last week, a crowd of about 3,000 (again, mostly teenage girls) showed up in San Francisco for an event featuring “Twilight” star Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward — when only a few century were expected. A riot broke out when the event was canceled, with one girl reportedly breaking her nose in the crush.

So, why are the girls so worked up about “Twilight” — even girls who aren’t yet in their teens? (My first exposure to the book came early this year, whenever my visiting 11-year-old niece plucked it off a bookstore shelf and told me all her friends were reading it.)

Because Meyer, despite her irregular penchant for purple prosaic, vividly creates a world of rude, edge-of-danger romanic, the kind in which bookish girls have long loved to let slip themselves on wet afternoons. Meyer has said that Edward’sitting name came from Mr. Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’session “Jane Eyre” and Mr. Ferrars in “Sense & Sensibility.” “Jane Eyre,” especially, can be seen as an inspiration for “Twilight”: the immaculate juvenile woman, newly arrived in a strange place and falling in love through a vaguely sinister man.

For the movie, it would appear that the “Titanic” hearing is already in place: According to a Movietickets.com poll of about 2,000 moviegoers, 3 out of 4 females said they planned to wait “Twilight” steady its opening weekend, as source as 77 percent of those polled who were under 25. (Only 47 percent of males said they planned to attend opening weekend.) No one’s expecting “Twilight” to pull “Titanic”-sized numbers, though: The 1997 film remains the all-time box-office champ, and recent films aimed specifically at teenage girls (such as the “Traveling Pants” movies) have drawn only modest audiences.

But if the film, directed by Catherine Hardwicke (”Thirteen”) and adapted by Melissa Rosenberg, catches enough of Meyer’s brooding romance and breathless suspense (particularly in the part’s final third, when Bella must frantically race from a new and terrifying enemy), there just might be long lines at the multiplexes for a while. Because preteen and teenage girls — and, at times, their grown-up counterparts — like to revisit favorite stories, over and over again.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com

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More than halfway through his 2,000-mile horseback journey across the West, Mark Ryan stopped at Zeb Bell’s ranch outside a tiny city in south Idaho.

“He just showed up at my back door, all of the sudden there he was,” recalled Bell, a pro rodeo announcer. “He introduced himself, and asked to upright stay here for the night. It’s not the at the outset adapt to the occasion we’ve had someone like him.”

Bell, 61, described Ryan as a far-reaching rider — someone who rides horseback for hundreds or thousands of miles, echoes an era long gone.

For Ryan, riding across the West on his horse — Mister Doodles — to call upon a friend was a chance to call on the country in a way not many other people do.

“It’s part of life, you just kind of get an urge to do something under the jurisdiction you get likewise old,” said Ryan, 46. “There’s nothing like traveling 2 miles one hour.”

He also left an impression forward the people he met to the degree that he rode through seven states, from Oklahoma to Washington.

Ryan reckons he camped at dozens of different places, stayed with greater quantity than 60 people, and his horse and mule wore down almost 10 sets of shoes. He took with him only maps, no Global Positioning System or even a cell phone.

At some places, Ryan related, he rode on highways where cars were any arm-length away from his horse. His border collie, Halfway, accompanied him to Kansas, at which place she blistered her feet on hasty pavement and had to be picked up by Ryan’s wife, Eva.

In Wyoming, the prairie was full of rattlesnakes. At single point in the Idaho backcountry, Ryan got lost for a filled day.

“It didn’t seem like a important of a extent at capital, but it was a lot of work,” Ryan said. “Some of them mountains, boy, it got cold. Frost on the portable lodge, rainy days and a lot of hot days. All we carried was 60 pounds of gear, at times 50 pounds of feed.”

He left his hometown of Kingfisher, Okla. onward June 2 and didn’t reach the Whatcom County town of Ferndale, about 20 miles south of the Canadian border, until mid-October, all but five months on the road.

“You can’t believe he truly did it,” said April Smith, one of the friends Ryan was visiting. “It’sitting charitable of a John Wayne story.”

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ISSAQUAH — When Issaquah lost its third fumble, it could be perceived its once-large lead slipping let us go.. Even through the haze, the Eagles could see the Kentwood sideline bouncing and could hear its fans screaming.

And when the lead fell to three, Issaquah junior Grant Gellatly ran along the course of his sideline screaming, “This is the season.”

Gellatly knew it would be OK. Because he knew he would have being getting the ball.

“We had been relying on the line all game, in the way that why go away from it?” he declared.

With five carries on the last drive, Gellatly ran until Kentwood couldn’t stop the clock anew. And behind Gellatly’s 313 rushing yards, Issaquah escaped the first round of the Class 4A state playoffs with a 31-28 victory against Kentwood.

“He’s the real deal,” teammate Dustin Talley declared. “He’s amazing.”

The Eagles, ranked 10th in Class 4A, behest perform Bothell in the quarterfinals at 7 p.m. Saturday. Issaquah beat sixth-ranked Bothell 24-13 in the first week of the season on the passage, and approve they did in preparation for Kentwood, the Eagles will do their best to construction next week’s game seem in the manner of another road game.

At through 4:50 p.m. on Saturday, the Issaquah players packed their bags, shut their lockers and, one by one, they filed onto a pair of school buses.

For a home game.

“We packed the ball bag and everything,” Gellatly said.

The buses took a trip to Snoqualmie Falls and hindmost, and when they returned to Issaquah, the Eagles filed out into their own stadium like it was any other road game.

The Eagles (9-2) had a reason to not want Issaquah Stadium to feel like place of abode. They went undefeated upon the body the road this season, but they were shut revealed in two of their final three road games.