July 4th on the Oregon Coast

This past weekend Cheryl and I joined a good group of friends in renting a house on the Oregon coast near Lincoln City (about a 5.5 hour drive from Seattle). This was primarily organized by Trang and Henry – Thanks guys!

The full list of photos is here.

We decided to leave after the initial holiday traffic died off, so didn’t actually arrive in Lincoln City until well after midnight Thursday night. We were not the last ones in, I believe Shawn and Megan didn’t make it in until well after 1am – Henry and I stayed up to greet them.

The morning came quickly, and we were greeted to a warm day. The sun was having a hard time breaking through the ocean mist near the coastline, but 100 yards off the shore it was clear blue sky. We had each signed up for a meal (breakfast or dinner), and Cheryl and I decided take Friday night dinner. Our first breakfast was an amazing combination of crepes, and quiche – something both Cheryl and I appreciated.

After breakfast we spent some time hanging out on the beach playing with a soccer ball, football, disc, etc…) then headed south to go body boarding at a local beach… We headed down to Devil’s Punchbowl.

We also rented wetsuits because the water on the Oregon coast is freezing cold:

The wetsuits really helped, but we regretted not getting gloves. As soon as my hands hit the water I could feel the pain brought on by the cold water. After a few minutes my hands were numb. Regardless, we bodysurfed for over an hour, and had a great time. Every 5 minutes or so on the way back that night Cheryl would comment on how much fun she had in the waves. There were a bunch of surfers out there hanging out, but I think we caught way more waves, and had more fun :)

Since it was our turn to cook, on the way home we stopped in and bought the ingredients for Cheryl’s famous lasagna, and a bunch of Rainier cherries which were on a great sale – Rainier cherries are so good! We made dinner, and sat back to watch the sun set.

Here was the view from the house:

The next morning, Shawn, Megan, Cheryl and I drove further south with Trang and Henry to go sandboarding in the Oregon Dunes just south of Florence. On our way there we went to the ‘worlds largest sea cave’ to check out the local sea lions.

The view – even without the sea lions was spectacular:

After hanging out with the sea lions it was time to go sandboarding. We rented sand boards from a local place at Sand Master Park, and went south to Honeyman State Park. Sand boards seem like a cross between a wakeboard and a skateboard with a construction similar to the 7ply skateboards I used to ride, wakeboard-ish bindings, and a laminated bottom that has to be waxed prior to every single run. I had set my expectations very very low for sandboarding, it definitely exceeded my expectations though I don’t think it will catch on to be mainstream for a wide variety of (relatively obvious) reasons – until the climate changes a ton at least :)

Here’s Henry getting ready for his first run:

Cheryl surfing the sand:

Shawn and Aaron doing figure 8’s at the end of the day:

Cheryl also took some video. This one is a bit funny because a dune buggy in the background is revving up making it sound like the sand board has an engine. It does not :)

After finishing up on the dunes we headed back north to the house. It was Eric and Oliver’s turn to cook dinner, and they prepared an outstanding salmon dinner - with more Rainier cherries :)

Here’s Cheryl and I hanging out on the deck of the house:

We then sat back and watched a pretty impressive fireworks presentation – given it was not an organized event, just a bunch of random people launching fireworks from the beach. We didn’t bring any, but we had fun watching.

After the fireworks died down, Shawn broke out his guitar, and we massacred a bunch of popular tunes :)

The next day we decided to head out early. Cheryl really wanted to rescue Boots and Charlie from the kennel, so we wanted to beat the holiday traffic rush. We didn’t quite beat the rush, but we did make it back just in the nick of time. Boots and Charlie were very glad to see us.

Until next time!

Some biking, Some Wakeboarding

Well, the last time I posted I didn’t have a bike, but luckily I found one on Craigslist for a reasonable price. Last year, I took a bit of a spill on my bike, and that bike is still out of commission with a broken rear frame piece, shock that needs serious servicing, and a broken pedal.

So, my new bike is a Transition Bottle Rocket, it’s more of a slopestyle bike than a downhill bike – which is what I’m used to, but so far it’s taken a pretty good amount of terrain.

Here it is:

I’ve had the chance to do a lot of rides on it so far. Some longer cross country rides, some local freeriding, Whistler, and the North Shore. It’s proven to be very versatile.

Here’s a shot from Whistler last weekend (Crabapple Hits):

 

This is Glade contemplating a steep double roll on the North Shore:

Other than biking, I was invited out with a friend from work to go wakeboarding before work – which requires waking up at an unholy hour. Apparently people who know something about wakeboarding/waterskiing will find the following picture pretty impressive… It’s a flat lake with no boaters… I am not actually a wakeboarder (I’ve only gone a few times), nor do I play one on TV, so the awesome conditions are no doubt lost on me.

Here is Lake Sammamish:

Well, I did manage to clear the wake a few times, but it was not always pretty.

As an example…

Of course, I was shown up by my friend who was pulling backflips, and other crazy things you only usually see on TV. So my wimpy wipeouts were nothing compared to his.

Here’s my buddy with some serious hangtime:

He landed the one before this, but it’s better to have the wipeout on camera :)

I had a few hard landings, one gave me whiplash a bit, and I actually had to go home and rest during the afternoon. The water is a lot harder than it looks.

Anyhow, until next time!

Boots and Charlie

As many of you know, Cheryl is a big fan of most things furry with four legs. If we lived somewhere out in the country, or worked 9-5, we would definitely consider having a couple dogs – a few retrievers perhaps? Anyhow, with our work/travel schedule, we’ve determined that we do not have the time to properly take care of a dog. To fill the fuzziness void, for Cheryl’s birthday, I gave her the go-ahead to get cats.

Not long afterwards we found ourselves in the ASHA Kitty Harbor shelter, where about 20 kittens were roaming around on the floor, and in various cages. Kitty Harbor is a no-kill shelter that takes kittens in from other shelters that do not have the room to keep them. When we sat down to play with the various kittens I took a liking to “Tom” and “Jerry” as they were called. Cheryl seemed to take a liking to almost any kitten in the place, so apparently it was up to me to determine which ones we should grab. We were looking for 2 since we hoped they could keep themselves busy during the day while we were out.

To make a longer story short we brought home Tom and Jerry:

Who were almost immediately renamed to Boots and Charlie. Boots – because he has four white feet that look a bit like boots, and Charlie – because it popped into Cheryl’s head. The name seemed to fit, so we went with it.

Here’s Charlie in his first few minutes at our house:

 

Cheryl was pretty excited:

So far they’ve been very good together. Every night they sleep together, and most of the time they aren’t playing around they can be found lying around together somewhere. They are rarely apart.

Here’s them sleeping in a gift basket we got a while back:

 

Cheryl has already taken them on multiple walks outside:

So, now we have two scratching posts, a feather on a stick, a ball that makes noise when it rolls, and even a laser pointer… But, their favorite toy so far is the brown paper bag that Shawn and Megan brought over for a dinner party.

Here are Boots and Charlie playing in the paper bag:

Here they are on the paper bag:

I think I have about 20 photos of them and the bag.

Anyhow, we’re now on week two with these guys. They were 11 weeks when we got them, and have an easy-to-remember birthday: Valentines day. So far they’re doing great, we took them to the vet for their initial check up today, and they charmed the entire staff – who were all surprised they were so well behaved.

Anyhow, until next time!

Ontario for Sean’s Wedding

A couple of weeks ago Cheryl and I headed to Toronto for Sean’s wedding.

Here are the pics from the wedding.

Here are the pics from Kitchener/Waterloo.

We took the red-eye from Seattle-Toronto, and were lucky enough to stay with Amy and RJ in Kitchener. Since Steve is currently at UWaterloo I was able to go visit with him on campus. He toured me around the new buildings that have gone up since I was last there a few years ago, and I was surprised at how much the campus has changed. While we were in Waterloo I also had a chance to hang out with my cousin Bryan who I haven’t seen in a long time.

Amy and RJ invited Steve over for dinner Friday night, so Steve had a chance to show off his drum skillz on Guitar Hero World Tour with Ryan, Cheryl, and I…

Saturday morning Cheryl and I had to get dressed for the wedding:

 

We had rented a car, so we drove to downtown Toronto for the wedding, and were glad to meet up with Chris/Pat/Sean at the wedding. The hall was spectacular, it was clear that Sean and Jamie had pulled out all the stops.

Later on we headed north to pick up Cheryl’s mom at Yorkdale, check-in to our hotel, and head over to the reception.

It was great to see the Kirby’s again, but also great to hang out with Jamie and Michelle. I hadn’t seen them since their wedding in the Dominican.

Anyhow, the reception was fantastic, and Sean/Jamie showed off some of their mad ballroom dancing skillz. Not an act I’m likely to want to follow anytime soon.

On Sunday, Cheryl, and I went back to Kitchener to play with Lindsay/Ryan, and Sam.

Here’s Sam as we sat in the sun in the park near Amy and RJ’s house:

I went back to Waterloo while Cheryl played with the kids to save Steve from his Physics studying and take him out for a coffee. We didn’t stay too long because Cheryl and I were planning to take the 2.5 hour trek up North to Midland to meet Cheryl’s mom’s new cats.

 

Playing with the cats was fun, but all we could hear on the radio was storm weather warnings for the morning, so we cut our morning plans to make sure we would have plenty of time to get to the airport in the afternoon.

As expected, when we woke up we were greeted with 20cm of new snow – a much different sight than the previous day when we were playing with Sam in the sunny park…

So, we began our trip back to the airport early Monday morning:

Luckily the snow turned to wet snow, and finally rain by the time we hit Toronto. The flight back to Seattle was uneventful – just the way I like flights.

One thing I forgot to mention is it was Cheryl’s birthday the week prior to our Ontario trip. We celebrated with the usual crew, but also with Andrea, Stacy, and Steven from Vancouver, and Chloe and Jason.

Cheryl put up a bunch of photos from her birthday here.

Until next time!

Whistler, Vanc, Dallas, and San Jose

Last week was filled with travel for Cheryl and I.

Friday night we headed up to stay with Jen and Glade on our way to Whistler.

We woke up early to make the day trip out to Whistler, and by the time we made it to Creekside the line-up for the lift was somewhere between 45mins to an hour long. We were worried that we’d be sitting an hour at every lift line, but, although it did take us a long time to get up to the top of the hill, the rest of the day was a bit better. It was definitely the busiest I’d seen it in a long time, but the snow made it worth it.

It had snowed a ton the two days prior, and they had not opened the high alpine up until Saturday morning, so there was more than a bit of snow to be had. We were still able to get fresh tracks when we hiked up to Flute at the end of the day. Glade and I dropped a few ledges, and a 12 foot drop was feeling like 3 feet. So nice…  You can imagine there was some pretty huge cliff hucking going on around the mountain.

After heading back to Vancouver, Cheryl and I hung out in North Vancouver – I’m looking to buy a bike, so we toured all the typical North Shore shops, and we ended up hanging out with Kelly at a North Vancouver beach.

Sunday was Jerry’s birthday, so we were invited over to Andrea and Jerry’s for some birthday dinner in downtown Vancouver. Good times.

As soon as we got back to Seattle, Cheryl had to pack for her Monday flight to Dallas. She would be there Monday to Tuesday night. The timing of her trip was bad since I had a 6:50am flight to San Jose on Wednesday morn.

California was sunny, and warm, a stark contrast from the cold pouring rain that greeted me as I drove to the airport Wed morn. And as expected I was greeted with cold pouring rain when I got back late Thursday – ah Seattle.

This weekend is Cheryl’s birthday, so we’re sticking in town, and have friends coming down from Vancouver.

Should be fun!

Marley and Cheryl (and me)

Evan’s roommate was out of the country, and owns a dog. This combination presented a challenge to Evan, but an opportunity for Cheryl. Cheryl – as you probably know – loves animals, and wishes we had a cat/dog, or something fuzzy with four feet. Anyhow, at some point Evan realized that Cheryl would gladly sign up to walk Paddington without much convincing.

Now, Paddington is a labradoodle… Which sounds like a combination of the work of an insane mad scientist, biogenetics, and bad marketing, but, I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for the result. Knowing nothing of labradoodles except that they are dogs, have four legs, and are furry is enough for Cheryl to agree to take care of it for an indeterminate length of time.

To make a long story short, we somehow managed to get the dog to our neck of the woods, where we have a really nice off-leash area.

Here’s Cheryl getting ready to start our journey:

 

The dog park is really just over a block from our place, so we don’t have to walk far. It’s once we got to the park that the shenanigans began…

Now, I’ve never been to a dog park before. Back home every area is an off-leash area, so we didn’t have designated spots for walking pets, but I’m pretty sure dog owners don’t like their dogs being terrorized, which is exactly what began as soon as we took off Paddington’s leash.

As soon as Paddington’s leash was unhooked he ran to the nearest dog, and started ‘terrorizing’ it… That’s the only word I can use to describe it. Now, Paddington is not a mean dog, just a playful dog, but it seems like Paddington’s MO is to annoy a dog until it snaps at him, and then it’s time to move on to another friend or… victim. So here we were, watching Paddington move from dog to dog annoying each to the brink of their sanity before moving to the next. It was methodical, and almost genius in its simplicity and predictability. I’m sure if Newton were watching he would find an F=ma equivalent equation that would dictate his behavior. Now, if we called out “PADDINGTON” you’d expect some form of response… You would be wrong.

So, we now had the attention of every dog owner in the park (and there were many.)

At this point Paddington stole another dog’s ball and ran to the other end of the park. I was happy he was terrorizing a ball, and not another dog. Just as I thought he was preoccupied he ran back from the other end of the park to a group of three dogs peacefully drinking water from a bowl in the middle of the park. Paddington stepped directly into the middle of the bowl, and the three dogs slowly stepped back, in what I can only imagine was disbelief. Paddington proceeded to flip the bowl over, and when satisfied, he ran to the other end of the park… Cheryl re-filled the bowl, in time for Paddington to come back, and flip it back over. At this point he started running towards the big St. Bernard in the middle of the park and began attempting to terrorize it.

This did not work so well, and at this point I openly started calling him Marley.

I’m not even going to go into that, but afterwards he decided to run directly towards the biggest mud pit in the park. He did a superman slide into the mud at top speed, then just laid there. Looking around as all dog owners continued laughing at him. He of course took this as a challenge to somehow find a way to get more muddy, then he rolled… Oh yes. What was mixed in with this mud I will not spend time contemplating, but I’m sure it was not just mud. Regardless, Paddington was rolling in it, and everyone was laughing – until Paddington started terrorizing their dogs in his new mud-monster state… Then somehow it seemed less funny to them.

Here’s a shot of Paddington after his first mud encounter:

 

At some point we managed to get the leash back on Paddington… Then we left the park. I believe this whole thing took about 5 minutes, but we went straight to Lake Washington and made Paddington take a bit of a swim before drying him off.

Here’s Cheryl drying off Paddington back at home:

And from here we somehow managed to get Paddington back to Evan’s house…

Good times :)

Assorted pics from the last couple of months

After my trip to the Dominican, and subsequent (painful) flight back. I spent some time in Sault Ste. Marie for Christmas. SSM is not quite the Dominican…. At least the weather sure wasn’t.

As an example…

My dad had to shovel off over a foot of snow before being able to BBQ dinner:

This year was the first year not all of my brothers were home for Christmas. Jamie and Michelle continued their Honeymoon in the Dominican Republic over the holidays. The good thing was that I spent the entire previous week with Jamie and Michelle, so I was still able to touch base with all my brothers regardless.

Here, we’re opening presents on Christmas morning. Michael is not in this shot unfortunately, this is mom, Steve, Adam, Nathan, Missy, and Dad.

 

I flew out on boxing day to head to Kitchener to visit with Cheryl’s family. We had a great time playing with Ryan’s new copy of Guitar Hero World Tour, and tubing in the local tube park just five mins from Amy and RJ’s house. In this shot Ryan, Lindsay, and Cheryl are just getting ready to head down for another run.

Back in Seattle, we’ve been having a wacky winter. Lots more snow this year than I’ve seen in the past 7 years I’ve lived in Seattle. This is a shot of my driveway that Cheryl took after one particularly big dump of snow. Nowhere near what you see in Northern Ontario, but more than usual for Seattle. The strange thing is that Jan and Feb were bad in terms of ski conditions. It’s almost as if it snowed more in Seattle than on the slopes…

Just after getting back from Ontario we found out that both Cheryl and I received our Green Cards. This was a process I’ve been in for a long time, so when Henry and Trang found out they decided to surprise us with red, white, and blue cupcakes. Cheryl and I decided to celebrate with some filet mignon, and sparkling wine (not real Champagne - that stuff is too expensive for our tastes.)

Cheryl’s dad took a job just outside of Vancouver, so he’s now within a short bus drive of visiting us. He came down to spend the day with Cheryl and I, and we went on a tour of the neighborhood.

I brought home massive paintings from both Africa, and the Dominican Republic. They go for $30 or $40 there, so when I found out it was going to cost me over $150 to frame each painting I decided I’d take matters into my own hands. Here’s Cheryl getting ready to stretch my Dominican painting over the frame I built. Much cheaper than getting it done professionally, but we didn’t get all the crimps out of it, so we didn’t do as good a job as we would have gotten if we shelled out the cash. If I ever buy an expensive painting I’ll definitely get it framed professionally.

Cheryl’s mom came up to visit for a week shortly after we got the painting up and running. We ate at our favorite breakfast spot (B&O Espresso), they went to the Northwest Flower and Garden show, and also to the Lion King musical. Here they are on their way over to Bainbridge Island on a ferry. It was still pretty cool to be up on the top deck, but again, not quite as cool as Northern Ontario.

I’ve been snowboarding a few times in the last month, but also had a chance to help out the DirtCorps. They are now working on a legit trail just outside of Issaquah. It’s called the Duthie Hill Bike Park. The next week I went out to another trail to race, but since my bike is out of commission I decided to take photos instead of trying my luck on Cheryl’s bike.

Here’s one of the local riders sucking it up to maintain speed (not height) through a jump:

Anyhow, that was Christmas/Jan/Feb. Hope all is well!