State Fair!

Rock!

No, not the musical... The annual trip to Salem to look at pigs (interpret that how you will) and to see if they have made any improvements on the Sweepa. Of secondary concern is checking out how many food items can be deep fried, and going on at least a couple of "I sure hope they tightened the bolts when they took this off the trailer" rides. Good fun! Pictures and a virtual Tilt-A-Whirl:

The Fleming's and Taylor's

Van, a.k.a. Captain Adorable, hanging out with Mom

On the way back from Rachel's wedding, I gave Josh to call to see if he was going to be around. He only lives about ten minutes from my Grandmother now. Turns out, he was. Not only that, but Matt, another friend from school who now lives in Minneapolis, was there with his family as well. I never met Van, Josh's son, or Eva or Jen, Matt's daughter and wife.

I spent several hours over there with the families and got to hang out with new Van and the not-shy-at-all Eva. Good times! Pictures here.

Rachels Pictures

After a long night of processing, the pictures are up! I hope they do this beautiful wedding justice.

836 More to Come...

Pictures, that is... Congratulations to Rachel and Jeremy Zender!

Water Time

My crazy nieces

The day after the wedding shower, I put Meg on a plane for Boise (work thing) and I headed out to Stockton to spend the day with Jen, James, Cait and Sophia. We ended up taking advantage of the warm sunny day by heading out on the boat. Had some fun on the wake board and with wake surfing. I got some air on the wake board, but still can't surf the wave like Meg...

Photos here.

Shower

Meg scoring a cool headlamp

I'm not sure how it all came to be, but Meg's Aunt Susan offered to host a wedding shower for us at there home in Marin, California. Meg has several relatives in the area, and I, of course, have Jen's crew, so we had a good mass of people.

Meg and I flew down with Cait and Liz on Friday night. We drove up to Marin and stayed a night at the beautiful* Travellodge. The next day was some pool time and a trip to In-and-Out before heading over to Lynn and Susan's. The turnout was great. Lots of talking. The kids were in the pool for hours. The food was great. Meg and I got lots of very nice gifts. A very enjoyable time.

The next day I took Meg to SFO where she was to fly out to Boise for work (I'll let Meg fill you in on that joyful experience). I then headed to Stockton for a day with my sister and her family. More on that soon...

Lots of pictures here.

* May not be a true statement

My First Tri

Living large post-race with my killer participant medal

Swimming sucks. Cycling is great. Running is alright. That would me my eight word synopsis of the triathlon. I need to A) swim a lot more distance before the next tri, B) do things differently in the transition, and C) Do some more run/bike brick workouts. I now have a baseline and look forward to sucking less next time! But, no matter how much I train, sweat, bleed and try, I'll never do a triathlon as cute as my nieces...

Big props go to my gold-medal-winning woman! Meggie had a great performance and came away with first place in her age group. A first for her! She talk about it here.

More pictures here.

Back to the Pack

Kevin, Meg, Yvette, and Eric on the way into the Goat Rock Wilderness

Our friend Eric has gone backpacking in the Goat Rock Wilderness for the past 15 years. This year we were around when the invite went out and were able to join. I know it's been awhile since the last time I strapped a pack on. It was great to get out there again.


Looking back on the way to Goat Rock Lake

The area was beautiful. Due North of Mt. Adams, it had great views of both Adams and St. Helens. With the high snow pack the area got last winter, we still had to cross some snow banks to get up to the camp site. A bonus, however, was water flowing right by the campsite, which was both beautiful and convenient for cooking. Our day trip the next day up to Goat Rock Lake, a high alpine lake, was on snow about 50% of the time, a lot of that on traverses. Need to get out there more...

More of my photos here.
Meg's photos here.
Kevin's photos here.
Eric's photos here.


Laying low at the campsite