Negative Nancy

Right now I am grappling with a couple of things. #1. I have a cold and have made good friends with Kleenex today. #2. I am wondering how my social networking is affecting my lifestyle and what I've actually gained from it. I feel that blogging is a worthy cause. It encourages writing, which is creative and blogs teach me something about my friends or someone else. I find I use my blog-stalking as a diversion to work sometimes, but consider it a healthy diversion. Facebook is a different story. I feel it is totally superficial and often contrived. As I talked with some work friends today, one of us mentioned that he might "quit" Facebook. Myself and another friend, scoffed...why "quit" such a good thing? But is Facebook really a healthy and positive asset to my life? I'm not so sure, yet I am constantly compelled to check for updates, click "like" or join a group and I just don't know why. I kind of feel like I smoke and know I should quit, but can't. I just tried to post a question about my pondering but I was only able to use 420 characters and I didn't feel like I had enough room to really make my statement. I admit the ease of conversation is great and the quick posting makes keeping in touch easier, but I'm not sure how much quality exists in the networking program. #3. I have a lot to be thankful for right now, conveniently it is Thanksgiving....

1. I love where we now live. I think a lot of my previous disgruntlement was location and while I'd still like property and a nice kitchen, a bathroom without a pink tub, a landscaped yard...you get the idea. Now that we've moved, I don't feel like I need to change that aspect of my life.
2. While my job is tough and unrewarding at times, I really like it. I like the school, my colleagues, my classes. The kids are kids but they're never the root of why I don't like teaching. The system is broken and the kids can't change that aspect.
3. Dogs are great, especially mine. Unlike people they are always happy.
4. I have a great group of friends here, finally. It took awhile but I now have a great group of friends that I love hanging out with. Actually I have two groups. My biking friends and my horse friends. My biking friends actually consist of girls now in addition to a fabulous group of very good looking guys. We all got together this week to see a biking movie and I marveled at how different we all are (in both age and outside biking interests) yet how when we bike, we just mesh...we know what order in which to head down a trail, we know who likes which trails, we know who has what bike parts, we even know what each of us likes to eat on the trail. We all have an oddly organic relationship, but it works and we've all come to appreciate what has come to be. While my horse friends are not as close, they're still an awesome support group and another family away from home. Horse shows are not really competitions (they're more like good natured competitions), they're more like family get-together's and while I just chastised networking, networking has allowed me to keep in touch with them in the "off" season.
5. I don't have a lot of negatives in my life. I hear people complaining all the time and while I do my fair share, it's not serious and it's not affecting my life in any serious way. I hear of negativity frequently at work and I wonder why? Sure, the system is broken and needs fixing, but why ALWAYS focus on the negative. Plus, I have too much to do at work to focus on the negative or anything un-work related.
6. I have a best friend. Jarred and I have been together 10 years this Thanksgiving. He's still my best friend and he's still the one. I have a few single friends right now and they comment on our relationship which is a good reminder that it really is great, all the time. Even when Jarred says, as we walk in the door, "Our house stinks. I'll light the candles, if you make dinner."

Sophie

I took this photo at the start of September and it makes me realize how fast Sophie is growing. She's still two but looks more grown up every day. Sophie is the first horse I've started seriously (meaning I really think about what I'm doing when I work with her). She's actually VERY smart and easy to ride. While she's still a two year old and has two year old moments, she's been a great learning experience for me. She's off to "school" this month and I'll miss riding her multiple times a week but I also know I'd like a finished horse before she's five as I really like to show. It's also hard for me to ride on a consistent basis right now because of school and my own school program, so it will be good for her to spend the winter elsewhere.

Just like other animals, horses have personalities. Sophie is social, she loves to be where the action is. She's also a thinker. As I rode yesterday, two girls came into the arena with ponies and carts. Ponies attached to carts can look weird- ponies trotting fast with people in carts can be weirder, especially when the come up beside you. But Sophie gave them a few glances and then got back to work.

I'm Getting a Little Older

The day has finally come. Shuksan can no longer go on long bike rides with us. We're now too fast and he's getting older. I don't know what I'll do when my little buddy dies and I don't like that he's older but such is life.

Caveman TV

There is nothing like a fire on a damp Western Washington day. When we bought our Camas house we knew we had to get another wood stove. The house has a double sided fireplace. A totally inefficient heat source that had to be changed. We finally bit the bullet and bought a wood stove. Our previous wood stoves had been hand-me-downs and while they did the job they weren't all that efficient. Both Jarred and I had visions of a nice Vermont Castings sitting in our house but after nearly pooping our pants upon discovering the prices of wood stoves, we settled on a middle of the road insert. This little stove is light years better than our other stoves and we got it in just in time for the cold weather to come. While we still have work to do on the fireplace, we're loving our little stove.

The Life of a Salmon

Maybe our population would be under control if all women led the life of a female salmon. If one has never seen spawning salmon, it's quite the sight. These girls head as far upstream as possible- most aim for their own birth place to lay eggs. After the eggs are safe, these girls die and their littleuns are born the next spring. When we lived in North Bonneville we lived next to Hamilton Creek and watched this wonder each fall. We also dealt with the aftermath of the death as rotten salmon is a tasty but poisonous treat for dogs. While Shuksan has yet to be affected by his salmon consumption, both Gretta and Bella made visits to the vet after consuming the rotten delicacy. Regardless, it's always amazing to see nature at work.
We spent last weekend in the rain at our favorite hiking spot, Eagle Creek. Since we moved, we actually forgot about the salmon season, so it was a nice treat to see all the girls and boys working their way upstream.

Bend is SICK!

Jarred went to Bend earlier this summer for a "boys" weekend. He came back all excited about the riding, repeating over and over again that "Bend is SICK." I told him we had to get down there before winter. Summer in Bend is hot and dusty so early summer or fall is the best time to go. We thought it would be fun to have some of our biking friends join us, so Jarred sent out a mass email inviting anyone who wanted to come. We ended up with 14 people wanting to come to Bend. I kept thinking to myself as the emails kept rolling in, this place must be GOOD. Jarred loves to plan and he found a house that slept 15 close to the major trail systems. We all headed down Friday. The weather was awesome and we got some great riding in on the Phil's trail system. Saturday's weather proved to be outright crappy but since it wasn't too cold, we decided to stick with our original plan to ride around Mt. Bachelor. We figured we were in Eastern Oregon, it wouldn't rain all day. WRONG. This was the dirtiest I've ever been. While the ride was fun, I ruined my brakes, ate enough grit to feel pounds heavier and worried that the skin on my butt was going to be rubbed raw. Because of the weather, we had some technical difficulties with equipment (flat tires, lost contacts, non-existent brakes and cold bodies) but overall Saturday's ride was fun and as I kept having to tell my friend Danielle, who decided she should have gone climbing somewhere sunny after 15 minutes of rain, that this was a character building experience and she would appreciate it later. The weather improved Sunday and after putting the washer at the house to the test...imagine 14 grubby bikers, 14 grubby pairs of shorts, socks, shirts..... we were ready to ride on Sunday. In my opinion, Sunday's ride was the best. We rode some short but well built trails and the were some of the best trails I've been on. Fast and fun. I now agree with Jarred, Bend is sick.

Boys Will Be Boys

While Jarred generally has an obsessive personality, I do not. I consider myself more anal than obsessive. I do, however, believe that his biking obsession has worn off on me. If I wasn't biking this summer I was riding my horses (my obsession) and I think I biked more than I rode this summer. I thought the biking would taper off once school started but as the weather was great, we were allowed to continue to fuel our obsession. After the Mt. Hood Epic, I took a weekend off to get my horse show fix and then we were back on the bikes headed up to Seattle to take a skills class with Simon Lawton, owner of Fluidride. Simon is one of those gifted individuals who can not only ride like a pro (he is actually a pro) but he can teach those who ride like mortals, to ride like pros. He really knows how to teach the fundamentals of going up and downhill faster and more efficiently. After leaving Simon's class we just had to try out our skills the following weekend at Black Rock. Black Rock is a downhill skills park. I have decided I am not a downhill rider. Jumping scares me but I do love going fast. Part of Black Rock was scary and I had no interest in trying to see how high I could jump but another part of Black Rock was like one big roller coaster ride where the rider could hone in on new skills and build confidence. We all got our fill of adrenaline and good times at Black Rock.

The above photo is Jarred, Aaron and Cage on a teeter-totter. It took a number of tries (and some balls) for them to stay on the teeter through the whole ride.

Mt. Hood East Side Epic

Holy cow! What happened to fall. I thought I'd spend a couple of minutes doing some blog-stalking tonight and realized while all my blog friends have been diligently posting significant events, I've been a lazy blogger. I'll blame it on the fact that I'm having too much fun to blog this fall.

Fall event #1- The Mt. Hood East Side Epic. Jarred had this great idea last year that he wanted to organize a mountain bike ride that covered over 50 miles of trails up in the Mt. Hood area. Actually, his original ideas was 75 miles but very few people want to punish themselves to this extent and linking up 75 miles of single track is hard. So after a winter of bickering with the forest service (only because of general disorganization- like any government run entity), getting sponsorships and working out a good route the ride was a reality. Now if only people would sign up..... since Jarred and our friend Ted, who jumped on board to help Jarred out with sponsorships, could not charge for the ride (forest service rules), not many people initially committed to riding. I think there were 10 riders signed up two weeks before the event. However, because of a stellar forecast, another 40 people signed up the week of the ride. Between the 50 riders and 10 guides, this shaped up to be quite an event. By the time 8 am rolled around the parking lot where we met was full and 50 bikers waited eagerly to get started. The only hang up initially was the fact that because of lack of communication between the forest service and the forest "cops" the forest cops only caught wind of the ride the morning of the ride and they were not happy about the situation. After initially blaming Jarred for his lack of communication and threatening arrest (not sure how this was going to take place as these guys were glorified security guards) the situation was resolved and we were on our way. I volunteered to run sweep- ie ride at the back and pick up the slow, injured or people with mechanical problems. I am generally the sweep because I am the slowest in the group of riders we ride with, however I wasn't expecting this kind of slow, so running sweep was a little different on this ride. It was nice to see all sorts of riders on all sorts of bikes.
Overall the ride was a success, everyone finished the entire 50 miles and we only had one minor crash and one minor detour off trail. The only bummer about the day was that those of us who ran shuttle to the starting point of the ride all had our vehicles broken. Both Jarred and I lost our wallets, clothes and some camping gear. While our insurance company treated us right, it was a pain and a disappointment to come back to a vandalized car.