July 1: Sunriver - Day 3
I slept better last night, and I woke up at 6:40am. I made eggs as everyone else slowly made their way out from their rooms. Even the girls slept in this morning. Since we had hit everything we wanted to do yesterday, we just had a lazy morning. After breakfast, we walked to the Fort Rock playground in Sunriver where the girls played on the merry-go-round mostly. It had a rope structure that wrapped around it into a cone shape so they could climb up while it was spinning. While everyone else went back to the house, I walked to the North Market to pick up a few things for dinner and lunch. After lunch, we spent 3 hours at the south pool. The girls really wanted to go to the south pool because it had a water slide, but then they didn't like it very much because they couldn't go very fast. Mandy and I didn't have that problem. At this pool every hour on the hour, they had an adults only swim time for 15 minutes which forced all the kids out of the pool and away from the deck. It gave them time to use the bathroom, get more sunscreen on, maybe get a snack. It was pretty pleasant out. The air was cool, but the sun was hot by the late afternoon. We all got burned a little bit. When we got home, we walked the 1.5 miles from our house to the Village and back again. Nathan grilled up chicken that Jada had had marinating for the last couple of days. We played Settlers of Catan again after dinner. This time Mandy and Nathan played much better, but Jada still won. We put the girls to bed around 8pm, and we played Bananagrams which Jada did not win all hands, shockingly enough.
July 2: Sunriver to home
I woke up even before the girls this time. I made breakfast and watched the opening stage of the Tour de France on TV until the girls were finished with their breakfast. Then we all watched Star Wars. It was the first time Ellen and Phoebe had ever seen it, so I kept my usual extra commentary to myself. They seemed to enjoy it, but Ellen got nervous. We got the car packed after that and checked out just before 11am. We had made sandwiches for lunch, and we found a park (Sahalee, I think was the name of it) in Madras to sit and eat. The girls played on the big playground there. We shoved off again and stopped at Timberline Lodge as we passed over Mount Hood. A tour of the lodge was just about to start when we got there, so we were able to learn a bit about the lodge and the public works project that created it. For example, the log holders in the central fireplace are made from the rails used to haul the logs up the mountain, and the guard chains over the fireplace were snow chains from the trucks and wagons. There was still a lot of snow up there too. We got back to Beaverton just before 5pm, so we just stopped off at Red Robin for dinner. At home, Nathan and Mandy worked on getting packed up as much as they could, and then we played Settlers of Catan again. It was a close one, but Jada won again.
July 3
We made our big breakfast for Mandy and Nathan to send them on their way with bellies full. We took them to the airport to see them off, and then we stopped by Ikea to pick up some new plastic bins to replace ones that Phoebe broke in her room. We visited Gramma on the way back from the airport. We spent most of the rest of the day running errands, doing laundry, and just trying to get things back together for the week.
July 5
For the 4th of July, we went for a ride on the quad. We made a lunch stop at Rood Bridge park midway through the ride. The weather was perfect, and we ended up with 35 miles. I bought some sparklers at Fred Meyer when we went grocery shopping in the morning, so after dinner, the girls got to play with those. Though in a pack of 10, only 5 worked. The other 5 were duds. Luckily, I only paid $.90 for them. We got them to bed before the neighborhood started getting shelled. Ellen would say the next morning that they had woken her up.
This morning, Phoebe had to go back to the dentist to get her mold for her "appliance". It's basically something that should help her stop sucking her thumb. Ellen and I went on a 28 mile ride on the tandem so we could get some more miles in, and Jada and Phoebe went walking on the path near our neighborhood. We had some guys from Rick's Fencing out to look at our deck to get an estimate on how much it might cost to get a new one. They think that the builders of our current deck may have violated code with how close it is to the property line, so that should be interesting. We don't want our deck to be any narrower. They'll have to check on that. In the afternoon we did some errands, the girls got to go swimming, and I watched the tour coverage for this morning. It's been an exciting tour so far with the crash on stage 1 that caught up the defending champ, the team time trial won by Garmin-Cervelo, and Thor Hoshovd of Garmin Cervelo in Yellow. (Apparently Dave thinks he's writing for ESPN or something!)
July 6
It was a busy day for us. I went back to work after a week and a half off. I got to ride to work though. It was a really warm day already first thing in the morning. The girls had a piano lesson in the morning, and they met up with some friends at the Beaverton city park to play in the fountains. They somehow found some time to visit Gramma in there too. Finally, they went to their first session of Speed Camp where they'll learn to run faster. Plus, they like all the little drills and things. They have some friends who are taking it as well, so they'll have fun. It's twice a week. I made dinner with the things Jada left out for me to make it easy.
July 9
On Thursday morning, the girls got to start their horse riding lessons. It wasn't a camp this time due to our many different things going on this summer, Jada just put together a few sets of dates that she could bring some of Ellen and Phoebe's friends out to the Dream Ridge Stables to ride horses. This was the first time for Phoebe. From what I hear, she did a great job. On the first day they learned the basics of caring for a horse, brushing, feeding, and saddling along with the basics of riding including getting in and out of the saddle. Then they got to walk their steeds to the arena to mount up and go through some commands and maneuvering of their horses. Ellen got her horse, Beau, again which makes her happy. Phoebe rode a horse named Elmo. Ellen had her tutoring in the evening. I met up with Jada there so she could head off to her haircut appointment without Phoebe in tow. The girls and I went over to Noodles for dinner and picked up Jada something from there. We also committed to re-building our deck.
Friday morning, the girls were back at horse camp. They got more riding time this time and even spent some time out on the trails. They all went out for lunch afterwards. Then they visited Gramma and went to Powell's to drop off their summer reading lists.
Friday was not a fun day for me, however. Starting Thursday after lunch I started feeling really queasy. I managed to make it through the afternoon ok, and I was fine eating dinner. However, Friday morning, I woke up around 3am and couldn't back to sleep. Then the illness really kicked in when I got up for breakfast. I couldn't eat anything all day, and I had a fever. I wisely made the decision to stay home from work though I tried to dial into my morning meetings. I had to run to the bathroom too often, and I was just feeling too horrible to sit at my desk. I removed myself to the couch and dozed while watching the Tour de France coverage. My fever got worse in the afternoon so I went shivering to the bed with the bigger blanket. Luckily, the bathroom trips were becoming less frequent, and I slept for about 3 hours. I was able to eat a rice cake and some toast in the evening. My temperature was still 100degrees before going to bed, and I ached all over. Jada was getting a headache too, but that was probably due to lack of sleep.
I woke in the morning without a temperature on Saturday, but I was still pretty weak from not eating anything much for the past 24 hours. I stayed home during the grocery shopping trip and watched Thor Hoshovd retain the yellow jersey in the first mountain stage. As the day wore on, I tried to do more. I ate a semi-regular lunch. I also set up our tent in the front yard to air it out in preparation for next weekend's camping trip for Cycle Oregon weekend. The girls played outside in the afternoon. They've also been building with Lego's in Phoebe's room. She's working on a castle and stables. The stables are much larger than the castle.
July 10
Nice day today, but we weren't able to get out on the bike again. I was just too tired.
July 14 - Bastille Day
I've been getting to ride my bike to work even though I'm oncall this week. I really needed it after doing nothing all weekend. I was still hungry and weak on Monday, but I've gotten better. The weather changed to more soggy through the middle of the week, and I got absolutely soaked on Wednesday. I got to watch the girls in their speed camp when we went to pick them up Monday night. They practiced inside on Wednesday due to the rain. They're the only girls in the group. They seem to be doing well though. The coach seems really well suited to the kids. He's not a drill sergeant, but he does expect the kids to do their work. I'm definitely not concerned about Ellen's fitness level for the riding we need to do this year. On Tuesday, Phoebe received her new appliance to help her stop sucking her thumb in the middle of the night. So far, she is reporting that she doesn't like the feel of her thumb against there, so hopefully this will help, and her mouth shape will be saved. On Wednesday, during the day, they met some friends at the Beaverton Library to watch Leapin' Louie Lichtenstein perform cowboy tricks reciting poetry from Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein among others. Then they went over to the park across the street to play for a while until it started raining again. Jada got out of there with some berries from the Wednesday farmers market in the rain. To celebrate the Bastille, Jada took the girls bowling. Apparently, she did not do too well herself. Then they stopped by Borders to pick up a summer reading program prize (a book), then they headed to the Beaverton pool for swimming. Ellen spent two hours at Sylvan to make up for missing next week when we head to Pete's house.
July 26
Holy cow it's been a while since I wrote in the journal here. Let's see if I can get us caught up.
On July 15, I took off work early so we could drive down to Salem to participate in Cycle Oregon: The Weekend. It took some time to get the quad up on the car the first time, but it went up ok. It has an extra stabilizer bar which really helps a lot. It took me a while to figure out the best placement of it. We got our camping gear packed in the back, and we also brought the girls' single bikes so they could ride around with the kids camp if possible. We were quite the sight as we went down the road. I-5 was a parking lot as usual. We eventually found out it was because of an accident...on the north bound lanes. We were heading south. Gapers delays are the most frustrating. We were causing a few gapers ourselves with our long bike on top of the car. I kept looking up myself to make sure it was ok, but it did just fine up there. I didn't feel any odd handling characteristics with the extra weight on the car either, which was unexpected. We arrived at Salem around 4pm and found our way to Willamette University which hosted us for the weekend. We had to take up 2 parking spots for the car so I'd have room to get the bike down, but luckily, we were early enough that that was possible. It didn't take very long to get it down and squared away. We hadn't registered in time for a dorm room, so we set up our tent next to the campus quad (not to be confused with our quad which we had stowed at the secure bike parking for the night after registering). It was just after 5pm by this time, so we walked over to the dinner tent. It was mostly pasta. There wasn't much in the way of protein. It was sunny and warm out, but getting cloudy as dusk approached. I realized that I hadn't remembered to get my fleece or a pillow into the bag before we left so we walked along the shop row looking to see what was on offer. We were able to pick up our matching ride jerseys which were pretty nice looking. Before getting ready to turn in, we walked around the campus to get the lay of the land finding both sets of available showers. We finally put the girls to bed around 7:30pm while I went over to the main stage which was setup on the side lawn of the Oregon State Capital building in the Walk of Flags. The odd thing about the evening was how chilly it had suddenly gotten. The wind had started to pick up, and the clouds had rolled in. People were dressed in long pants and down jackets as if it was the week ride in September. This has certainly been a crazy summer. Announcements were supposed to start at 8pm, but didn't actually start until 8:30pm. We got the ominous warning about 30% chance that it wouldn't rain the next day. This after there had been no rain in the forecast all week, and nothing for Salem up until right before we left, so the talk of rain this weekend was quite unexpected.
That night, the rain started. It rained all night too. It's actually kind of good that it did rain because it provided some nice white noise to keep the girls asleep all night even with the loud horn of the Amtrak trains that were pulling in and out of the nearby station. We got dressed for breakfast shortly after 6am during a lull in the rain and headed over to the breakfast tent. We had ham, eggs, and oatmeal. The girls even went up for seconds. Since it was still raining, we went back to the tent and read/rested hoping the rain would let up at some point. We weren't in a hurry to get started since we were only doing the medium option. At 42 miles, it wouldn't take us all day. By 8:30am, we decided it wasn't going to stop, so we just got ready and left in light sprinkles. It wasn't too bad. We navigated through town and finally got out on the country roads where the rain finally let up. We got the usual compliments on the bike. The first rest stop was only 9 miles in. They had fresh berries of all sorts - strawberries, blackberries, Marion berries. They were all delicious. The mid and short loops separated shortly after that stop. We continued on to Silverton on the medium option enjoying brief sun breaks through the clouds. We had our lunch break at the Oregon Gardens, and we actually arrived around lunch time. I say that because we normally leave really early and get to lunch in time more for second breakfast. Lunch was a boiled chicken sandwich and chips with a live band. We shared the table with some other cyclists and chatted while we ate. After lunch, as is Cycle Oregon tradition, we were greeted by a steep and long climb. However, the sun was out, and we just kept making our way forward as Jada conducted a Spanish class. This culminating in the grind up a short 12.9% kicker. We made it without resorting to walking up which was better than some of the single bikes on the climb. Then we glided by all the singles that had stopped at the top to rest. I'm not sure why people always do that, but I prefer to keep moving and rest down the other side of the hill. We enjoyed a long downhill section. Phoebe especially liked it when we would be able to make it up the next little climb without pedaling. The cross/head winds we went through on the return trip to Salem were challenging. The last rest stop had a small playground for the girls to play on. We enjoyed the sunshine while it lasted all the while watching the rain clouds sitting over Salem. The sprinkles started shortly after we crossed over I-5 back into Salem. We rolled across the finish line at 2:30pm and rolled the bike right into the secure indoor parking. We took the girls bikes out so they could ride around the campus. The weather started to clear up a little bit. I went over to the Cycle Oregon trailer and spent my birthday money on a long sleeved jacket from last year's Cycle Oregon ride. It was $60 off which is a great deal for these jackets. It is water resistant. I went over and showered while the girls rode their bikes. Ellen and Phoebe racked up another 6 miles on top of the 42 we had already ridden that day. After Ellen and Jada got back from their shower, we all went over to the state capital building to take a tour. We got into the last tour of the day going up to the base of the pioneer statue that is on top of the capital's rotunda. It wasn't as scary as I expected. The Pioneer is 22 feet tall, and it was sculpted in New Jersey in 1938. The statue is gold plated, and it was last re-plated in 1985 when school children did a donation drive to raise money to get it done. The views were pretty nice with the sun finally out. After dinner, the girls rode around some more. I went over to the announcements again after putting the girls to bed. There they said there was only a 30% chance that it would rain on Sunday. Boy, were they wrong.
The rain started around 4am on Sunday morning. Phoebe was still asleep after Ellen and I were awake, so I let her sleep while Ellen and I went to breakfast. Jada and Phoebe joined us shortly. It continued to rain all the way through breakfast, so we went back to the tent to discuss our options. We had originally planned to ride the long option, but then we decided to cut back to the medium route. Around 8:30am, we had decided that maybe it was not raining that hard anymore, and we expected it to continue to ease up. However, once on the road, it continued to rain, and after we got out of the city, it started to pour. Ellen started to complain about being cold even though she was in a rain coat and warm pants. But their rain coats were soaked all the way through. At the 9 mile rest stop, she was cold, so she went to the ambulance where they were taking all the kids to get warmed up. We made the call to go ahead and take the sag wagon back to camp. The quad doesn't lend itself to being carried on top of the sag wagons, so I got to ride it back on my own to camp. I made good time, and I got lots of, "hey, you lost your family" type of calls. I humored them, making up stories ("I'm single. This is just my rain bike. I don't like getting road spray up my back" or "I just enjoy the challenge" or "What?! I must have left them at the rest stop") but I never got the best opening of, "you're missing your family" to which I could have replied, "I wouldn't say I'm missing them." I luckily stumbled onto the kids camp crew riding back from somewhere when I hit Salem. I had been trying to follow the signs in reverse back to the capital, but I wasn't sure where I was. They helped me get back to the marked portion of the course and back to the finish line. The girls had holed up in a cafe having hot chocolate, but it was closed by the time I got around to being able to have some so Jada made me a cup of tea. We had our lunch in the dinner tent since they were bringing back a lot of the lunches from out on the course. Many folks sag'd in that day. Several people were driving their cars up to where we were camped since there was a little road, so I followed suit. We packed the wet tent quickly, and tossed everything in the car. It rained all the way home.
July 27
Still trying to catch up with the journaling, I've rolled over to the next day. When we last left our intrepid family,...
We were home for a few days. Ellen went away for a birthday party for one her friends that was held at the Great Wolf Lodge in Washington. It is basically a water park that you can only use if you stay there. She had fun, but she didn't sleep at all while she was gone. It showed when she got home. My former boss (I almost said "old" boss, but I don't think he reads anything but tweets and facebook entries anyway) came up to visit on a tour of microbreweries. Greg and I met him out at Hopworks on SE Powell in Portland for dinner Tuesday night. It's a bicycle themed pub with good burgers, and Greg says good beer. They brew their own root beer, but they were out that night so I was disappointed. On Wednesday night I had to be on a phone bridge most of the night for an insertion that had caused impact the previous week, so I wasn't happy to be getting up the next day, but I was still the first one up. So, early Thursday morning, on July 21, we hit the road by 6:15am for our long drive down to visit our friend Pete in Mountain View, CA. Ellen was hard to get out of bed after her party days, and since she had gotten home after 9pm the previous night, she didn't get much sleep that night either. She was a bit, shall we say, difficult to deal with all day. Jada took the first leg down to Medford, I think it was, when we made our first gas stop. We had made lunches so we wouldn't have to find somewhere to eat on the way down to save time. We still made several potty stops just to walk around. Traffic was fine. No real issues anywhere along the way. Unfortunately, we hit some construction with bad roads just after Ellen had finally fallen asleep in the car. So close! We arrived in just under 11 hours driving through 100 degree temperatures in the central northern CA valley. However, in Mountain View it was only in the 70's. We arrived just after 5pm and walked downtown for dinner. They had closed the main street down for a block party featuring a Journey cover band. When they started up, we were in a book store near the stage. The singer sounded so much like Steve Perry, I had to check to see if they were actually the real thing, but Journey was playing that night in Salt Lake City with Foreigner and Styx. We, of course, bought more books at this used book store. You'd think we could walk out of a store without buying books, but you'd be wrong. I picked up the Earth DVD set for only $17. I was pretty happy about that. We got back to the apartment, we put the girls to bed, I watched the Tour de France coverage with Pete, and then we went to bed. Pete had a hockey game that started after10pm. Crazy guy.
The next day, Pete went to work, and we just hung out around the apartment. I watched the Tour de France while the girls read their books. Ellen was in a much more pleasant mood after a decent night of sleep. We spent most of the afternoon lounging by the pool. Even though I didn't actually spend more than 30 minutes in direct sunlight, I still managed to get pink on my chest. Then we just waited for Pete to come home for dinner when we walked downtown again for Chinese. I can't remember the name of the place, but it was good. It was nice to just spend the day doing not much.
On Saturday, Pete and I went for a bike ride in the morning. He had an extra helmet, shoes, gloves, and bike. Oddly enough, we're pretty close to the same size. I didn't have to adjust anything on his bike. I was most amazed that his shoes fit me. We took a nice 13 mile ride on the cycle track down to the wetlands and nature conservancy our near the NASA Aimes Research Center. I got to see the outside of the massive air tunnel they have there. In the bird sanctuary, we saw lots of pelicans, stork, heron, geese, and ducks. Plus we rode through clouds of gnats that just clung to us like hair. It was disgusting! Yet, when we stopped, they just flew away on their own. We didn't want to try to brush them away because we didn't want little bug smears all over our clothes. After watching Cadel Evans clinch the Yellow Jersey in le Tour in the individual time trial, we drove into San Jose to visit the Children's Discovery Museum. Unfortunately, it was one of the few places our OMSI membership didn't get us in. The girls had fun there, and we spent a few hours until lunch. We found a place to eat over a few blocks, so we walked. The streets were oddly deserted. No one seemed to walk around in this town. It was just after noon on a beautiful Saturday, and no one was around. It was a little creepy. We went to a diner called Peggy Sue's for burgers which turned out to be pretty good. After that, we drove to a place called the Rosicrucian Museum which was dedicated to Egyptian artifacts, mummies, and their history. It was really interesting. We got there just in time to get a tour of their rock cut tomb. In the crypt room, the guide was talking about what typically was painted on the walls of a tomb, and how to the ancient Egyptians, anything that was written on the wall of the tomb becomes true in the afterlife so they were always depicted as young and successful. Even the painters would paint themselves finishing the painting if they didn't finish before the occupant died. On one wall, some of the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt were depicted (there are 42 main ones, and some 1400 minor ones) to cover their bases. It was here that Ellen learned about the goddess Seshet who was goddess of libraries and knowledge. For dinner we went into Palo Alto to a pizza place Pete claimed was better than Papa Dell's back in Illinois. Long story short, it's not. But, it is pretty good. It's called Patxia. The crust is good. The ingredients were good. However, they make the same fatal mistake that all west coast pizza places seem to make which is assuming that tomato sauce doesn't require spices. We ordered a deep dish stuffed spinach and chicken pizza. Pete had gone off to answer a phone call, and when he came back we also got an "appetizer" pizza - an extra thin crust pesto-spinach and Italian sausage pizza. We ate way too much. We put the girls to bed while we sat around, watched a movie, and vegged.
Early Sunday morning, we were on the road again. The drive was long, but not too eventful. I drove the whole way this time. We stopped near Medford at a place called Heaven on Earth restaurant which had cinnamon buns as big as your head. I only got a regular sized one. I highly recommend it. I found them on the last Cycle Oregon I had done in 2009. We hit the usual slowdowns back into Portland, but nothing horrible. We rushed to get the girls into bed since their camps started the next morning.
On Monday, Ellen and Phoebe had their first day of OMSI camp. Jada was helping interview kindergarten teachers to fill a position in her school, so I dropped the girls off. Ellen was signed up for a class called Science School of Wizardry, and Phoebe is in a class called Cool Concoctions. Both of the girls' classes are chemistry based. On Wednesday, we were supposed to have our deck work started, but on Tuesday they called and told us they didn't have the permit cleared by the city yet. Jada asked them to wait, so we won't get it done until next week unless the city comes back and says it can't be as deep as it currently is. Then I'm not sure what we should do. On Tuesday night, we went to visit Ellen's godparents for dinner. That was fun. We haven't been able to see them nearly as often as we'd like. Tonight was the girls' final night of speed camp. They got their t-shirts and pictures.
July 30: Happy Anniversary to us
Our marriage has been rocking along at 10, but we needed to turn up that little bit more to really blow everyone away so we went to 11. Phoebe actually slept in this morning until 7am which is nice. Ellen didn't get up until almost 6:30am. We went to the market to pick up berries and peaches. After that, we got ready and went for a bike ride before it got too hot. We just did a valley route today at 35 miles. Then Ellen went over for a play date at a friend's house, and I fell asleep on the couch while Phoebe was in her room and Jada was in the kitchen. We picked up Ellen around 5pm and went out for a fancy anniversary dinner at Red Robin. (Yum!) After the girls were put to bed, Jada and I finally watched the movie True Grit. It was pretty good. We had to ask if there was any role Matt Damon isn't willing to do.
July 31
It was a nice day again. We had breakfast at our favorite place in the morning to fuel up for our planned ride up to the Rose Test Garden. The trip went pretty well if slow. But we made it all the way up, and then up some more to skyline creeping along at about 3mph, which was perfect for the architectural tour that the girls so enjoy. It was hot out, well, pleasant in deference to our friends in the Midwest who have actual hot weather right now. Jada and Ellen visited Gramma while Phoebe and I went to guitar practice. I'm working on Colin Hay's Overkill, and Phoebe is working on Ode to Joy. Then we had brinner, and I put the girls to bed while Jada headed off for a much needed massage!
Journal entry: July 31, 2011