Earlier this month I went home to Joseph City to celebrate my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary with my family. The number 40 brings to mind hardship of biblical proportions: It rained on Noah for 40 days and nights; Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness fasting and then was tempted by Satan; Moses and the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years after leaving Egypt. I’m sure there has been plenty of hardship in the 40 years my parents have shared their lives, too, but you’d never know it by looking at them — they are the most loving couple I’ve ever seen. Continue reading ’40 years’
Archive for the 'shenanigans' Category
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… and a progress update: I passed the 50-mile mark today, woohoo! One of the nice things about riding a bike is noticing all of the things you’re totally oblivious to when you’re driving a car. Here are a few:
- Other cyclists are really friendly, except the super serious people who ride professional racing bikes and wear spandex. They never say “hi” back because they’re too busy being serious. Maybe it’s just carrying over from their accounting jobs.
- Pedestrians, on the other hand, aren’t friendly at all, with one exception — the guy who called out “Bye, beautiful!” as I rode past him.
- Goslings are really cute and fluffy-looking, but their parents are pretty darn scary. I think my mph went up by 10 miles when the mama (or papa) goose came flapping and hissing at me when I rode past the goose family.
- For all the talk about people in SUVs driving like they own the road, I’ve noticed they give me more space than the Prius drivers. They drive like they’re trying to murder me because they’re angry that I emit fewer greenhouse gases than they do.
- Long, gradual hills are waaaay harder than short, steep hills. If you have warning for the short ones, you can get up enough speed to make it most of the way up and then pedal like crazy for a few seconds to get to the top. The long slopes just make you pedal and pedal and pedal, and they really lower your average mph.
That’s it for now. There are some really beautiful spots along my ride, so I’ll post some pics as soon as I get a bike bag that leaves my camera more accessible than it is in my backpack that I strap down onto my rack with bungie cords.
After years of talking about it, I’ve finally started riding my bike to work. It’s only about five miles from my house, and I figured it would give me some exercise. Plus, I expect it to save me lots of pista because I won’t have to pay for parking or buy as much gas. OK, so I’ve only done it twice so far, and Meg picked me up from work the second time so we could go shopping together, but at least it’s a start. Continue reading ’1,000 miles’
I was a little disappointed with Force Majeure’s performance in the second annual P-I battle of the bands. We did OK, but there was no moment of shocked silence followed by delighted screams. I guess we probably qualify as one-hit wonders. I have to admit, I didn’t really think we could outdo our original performance of “Close to You.” Continue reading ‘P-I battle of the bands’
Several weeks ago Todd talked me into signing up for the Tour de Lopez. He assured me that it would be an easy ride with very few hills. My co-workers Dan and Joe also signed up, along with Dan’s wife, Jo. I kept telling myself that I’d start riding my bike to get ready for it — after all, I had several weeks’ notice. But the day of the bike ride rolled around and my bike hadn’t even made an appearance outside the shed. Continue reading ‘Tour de Lopez’
It’s been a terrific year for snowboarding, but alas, it has finally come to a close. I ditched band practice to make the drive to Mt. Baker for one very last day of fabulous fun. I felt a tiny bit guilty for bailing on the guys of Force Majeure, but it was snowing, for goodness’ sake! Yeah, last week’s beautiful weather was a total tease; it even snowed in Seattle. Here are some pictures to recap the season.
“/blog/slideshows/snobo2008/snobo2008.html”
The weather finally started behaving like spring (80 degrees!), so Meg and I thought it would be ideal for a drive north to Mt. Vernon to check out the Skagit Valley tulip festival. We went up too late in the day to catch any of the festivities because we went to a bridal shower in the afternoon for one of my co-workers, but we had plenty of daylight to wander through the tulip fields and take some fun pictures.
“/blog/slideshows/tulips/tulips.html”
Update: The weather was totally a tease. The next day was all cold and wintry again.
Last week, my friend Joanne came to visit. We’re no longer the sassy young things we were when we were roommates at BYU; she’s a busy mom of three and I’m a crusty old newspaper woman. But we managed to muster up enough energy to get a lot of playing into the short time she was here in Seattle (Thursday-Tuesday). Continue reading ‘Joanne’s visit’
Meg recently bought an iPod interface for her car stereo, so today we installed it. It was kind of exciting tearing up the interior of her car, but it was also a bit frustrating. After three hours we had the dang thing up and running, so now Meg can rock out to whatever tunes she wants the next time we drive to the mountains for snowboarding. We started out taking a bunch of pics, but the number of pictures was inversely proportional to the stress level in the car. Here’s what we got.
“/blog/slideshows/ipod/slideshow/ipod.html”
Last week was Meg’s birthday, so we decided to take an extended weekend and go snowboarding in Whistler, B.C., for a few days. Ko came along for the ride, even though he doesn’t snowboard. The first day we tried out the terrain park on Whistler mountain, and the next two days we went to the terrain garden on Blackcomb to try some jumps and rails. Continue reading ‘Whistler’
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