This Time I Mean It!

This is kind of embarrassing. Here I am again, jumpstarting this blog by doing a photo retrospective of the past 3 months. But I'm back for real this time, and here's why: I can't possibly let Leslie out-blog me. Sure, she has a cool business and a great topic (the rehab of an old house in Montford), but that doesn't mean I can't beat her with sheer volume. And thus out-blog her. And I win! [You may be thinking at this point - this is a contest?? And ok, sure, the answer is no. In fact Leslie's about the least competitive person I know - and I have verified proof, having taken a racquetball class with her in 1992. But you've got to take your motivation where you can find it.]

So, I'm back. And this time I mean it!

Without further ado, the last 3 months:

We headed back to the beach - for a triathlon. My first ocean swim. But first we gamboled about as one does at the beach.

Accompanying us to the beach - Leslie! And providing our accommodations - her brother Douglas! (as an aside, I love this picture, because it looks like the ones we used to take when Douglas would come to college and take us out to dinner. So it looks just like those pictures if this is what we looked like in 1991.)

An actual triathlon picture! I haven't managed to do too many of them this year, but this one was fun. My first ocean swim - to say I was a little intimidated when I watched the first wave get swept past the turn buoy by the current would be an understatement. In fact, I started so far up the beach that at least half of my wave was ahead of me when I made the turn - but I by God did not get swept past the buoy! And then I biked surprisingly strongly for me (probably because it's dead flat down there?), and had a much better run than I expected (again, the flat no doubt helped), and ended up 2nd woman overall. To say I was surprised would be an understatement.

A week later, Clark ran the Citizen Times Half Marathon, and Sam as usual helped him celebrate his finish.

Some fishing took place - Shii caught his first fish, with help from my mom. It's a real sign of how much she loves her grandchildren that she's turned into a rather capable fisherwoman.

And some baseball of course. Couldn't let a retrospective go by without at least one baseball pic.

New holiday ornaments! They're hollow - and thus not likely to break your tree branch in half.

We tried out LEAF for the first time. Turns out, it's fabulous. I know everyone says that, but I wasn't sure that 3 straight days of vending was really going to be a blast. But yep, it was.

Aided largely by how much fun Sam had. Here he is trying out the aerial arts.

Also much zip-lining was enjoyed.

And in the midst of all this I've been riding my bike. A lot. Because I've entered this race called the Swank 65, and I'm slightly intimidated by it. (ok, fine, I'm scared sh!tless.) So Kelly and I have been heading to Pisgah and riding. And having fun. (as an aside, what is up with my bike helmet?? It always looks really high and kind of sideways. So I resemble a slightly tipsy miner. May have to do something to remedy that.)

Our reward for all of the Pisgah riding: views like this. We climbed up to the top of Farlow (which is a long, long way in a small, small gear), and every now and then the trees would open up and you could really see where you were. Which was totally worth seeing.

Will report back with more. For real, this time.

The Prodigal Returns

I was just talking to a friend, who said she was reading the blog, and I was all "Wait, I have a blog???" Oh yeah, right, I have a blog! So, here are the last two months in pictures, in no particular order, and then we'll return to our regularly scheduled program in which I actually write on this thing.

Look - I started really making jewelry!

And then I kept making jewelry - here are rings:

I then started selling it. Really, one girl can't wear that much jewelry.

We had a blast at Art in the Park and Big Crafty - made a bunch of lanterns for those two.

My mum was in her first 5K ever (how cool is that??) - and Sam was quite the cheerleader.

Sam turned 8, and had a birthday camp out with two of his friends. (Note to self: next time maybe my dad shouldn't be solely in charge of how big the camp fire gets.)

Sam played All-Stars at the end of the Little League season. He was thrilled. Turns out we practiced or had a game EVERY DAY for two and a half weeks. While quite happy for him, we were slightly less than thrilled.

I got a new bike! I love him! His name is Flash! (or Precious, but he gets embarrassed if I call him that in public.)

Robin and I took Flash and her un-named steed for a ride in Pisgah, where we stumbled upon this amazing waterfall in the middle of nowhere.

Robin and I at the end of said ride, looking happy.

We went to the beach!! And my boys built their usual giant sand sculpture. This was some kind of deathworm, according to Sam. And he named it Sheldon.

Family at the beach. Best time ever.

So there you have it - two months encapsulated in 10 minutes. Rock on.

Race Report - 12 Hours of Tsali

Last Saturday was the 12 Hours of Tsali mountain bike race. Basically, if you're crazy you start riding your bike around the Right Loop at Tsali, and 12 hours later you stop and see how far you've gone. If you're only slightly imbalanced then you find 3 good friends and sign up as a team - so then you ride around Right Loop, wash yourself (oh yeah, and your bike) off at the bike wash, lie in the shade pouring ice water on yourself while two of your friends ride, and then put all of your gear back on and get ready to do it again while your third friend rides. I would be in the latter category.

We got there in the pouring rain to set up our pit area, and then as soon as we were totally wet and all of our stuff was too, the rain stopped for the rest of the day. Awesome. Which meant that the first lap of the race (which I rode) was a complete mudfest.

Here I am after said lap:

Emmie's laughing because she didn't have to ride in all that mud. (although the little kid in me really likes riding in all that mud. under normal circumstances it's so irresponsible to ride on muddy trails. but this was a RACE - so I HAD TO ride those muddy trails. again, awesome (but for real this time.))

My three race compatriots. Kelly (who I'm pretty sure turned the two fastest loops by any woman in the whole race - there's a reason why she's wearing the sponsored jersey), Emmie (who I'm absolutely certain had the fastest time of the day if you factor time not spent training into actual minutes on the course), and Robin, who is my usual partner in crime and who has gotten in crazy good shape over about a 1 month period.

Here I am taking off for my second lap. Do I look happy or what? There's something to be said for this biking thing. (Although if there had been a cameraman at the top of the fire road there would also have been some distinctly not-so-happy pics.)

Kelly and Robin walking me up for my third lap. Love the headlamp on in the middle of the day. Except back in the woods it really wasn't all that bright, so then the headlamp seemed not so crazy.

And when I finished my lap it was getting downright dark. Which turned out not to be such a good thing for Kelly. Lesson we all learned: invest in good lights for night racing. Seriously. Good lights are good thing.

All four of us after Robin's last lap. It was almost 11:00 pm by this point. Turns out 12 hours is a long time. But - we had a great time.

And - we actually ended up on the podium. Second place women's team! Woohoo! And maybe even cooler, we were 17th out of 35 for all of the teams (womens, coed and mens.) The trophy was this enormous 3 foot tall monstrosity covered in glitter and a gold plated girl on a bike. It looked like something I won in 4-H in 1980. Except for the girl on the bike part. We made Kelly take it home since she rode the fastest laps, and her kids love it.

The Week in Pictures

Here it is - the week in pictures.

Candles, candles more candles. And a few lanterns. This was most of Tuesday.

Half of the labor force of Spotted Dog Farm. (aka my dad)

The other half of the labor force at Spotted Dog Farm. (aka me) I know, fetching outfit, right?

Little League Night at the Tourists game. Soooo fun. And cute. Have I mentioned how cute Little League is? Thought so.

Version 1.0 of my next big idea. There'll probably be a version 2.0 and 3.0 before this totally comes to fruition, but right now I'm wearing version 1.0 and loving it. I even went running with it on to test out the construction - it passed a hot and sweaty 4 mile run with a bunch of harder efforts in the middle (aka to those that run, but not to those with middle-school humor, as fartlek. Seriously. Look it up.) And since it made it through all of that with flying colors I'm thinking I'm on to something here. There will be more beta testers. I'll report back.

And now I'm off to bed. You think that tent just puts itself up at 6:30 in the morning? After it loads all of the flowers and plants in the van and drives it over to the market? If only it did. Maybe I should look into an upgrade.

Just Call Me Eastman Kodak. . .

Because I can finally take pictures again. But rather than buying another cheap camera, we instead bought semi-expensive phones that take pictures. Good multi-tasking, right? I figure this way we only have to worry about breaking one thing.

So here's (part of) our weekend in pictures. I don't have any City Market pics (partly because I didn't have time to play with the new phone, and partly because it was so windy I was afraid we were going to blow away like Dorothy. We actually saw a tent lift up and turn over - scary.)

But fortunately I didn't have to worry about the wind too much, because it was my turn to head to baseball instead. Hooray! Here's our baseball player (though he looks a bit more like a chipmunk in this picture than he does in real life.) Little League is soooo fun. They're so flipping cute. Plus the game was tied in the bottom of the last inning, and Sam scored the winning run. So he was feeling quite happy when this picture was taken.

After market and baseball were over, we headed over to the farm. It was the prettiest day:

Here's the regal beagle (also known as the current spotted dog of Spotted Dog Farm):

My two favorite boys in the world.

Sam showing exactly how big my Dad's prized flame azalea is. It's really, really big. I think only about half of it is actually in this picture.

Today was spent in equally beautiful settings - Bent Creek this morning (where my bike legs decided to return! Hooray! I don't know where they went last week, or why they decided to return, but I'm really happy about it.)

And then we went on the funnest adventure ever - which is going to warrant its own post once I get the pictures our friends were taking. But here's the teaser - check out Navitat Canopy Adventures. It was AMAZING! And I'll have the photographic proof in the next few days.

6 Hours of Warrior Creek

So last fall I got this idea - that it would be the winter of the mountain bike. My slightly neglected, probably lonely mountain bike would finally be back on the trail. It would be happy and fulfilled. I would be fit.

But then this winter struck - and Bent Creek (where I habitually go, since it's soooo close) was under snow. For weeks at a time. But I didn't know this was going to what the *whole* winter was like back in February when I talked Emmie into signing up for 6 Hours of Warrior Creek as a duo.

So we were excited to be doing the race (my first mountain bike race since 2004, and my second mountain bike race since 1993. Seriously.) But we weren't feeling quite as prepared as one would hope.

Nonetheless, eaaaarly that Saturday morning, Emmie, my mom (for moral support, and because she doesn't like to miss a party), and I set off for Wilkesboro.

Here we are pre-race in the tent village (also known as the pit area.) We came up with one firm strategy - have fun, don't stress.

And here I am about to head out to the start. Note Big Bertha - my bike. She's a big girl. I actually had people marveling at the fact I was out there doing the race on such an old, heavy bike. Don't listen Bertha! Don't listen!

The start. You might notice it's just a big, fat mass start with about 300 people. Hmmm. I quickly developed a strategy for this also - stay out of the way. Considering I wasn't really trying to race hard, it seemed best to stay out of the scrum at the front. So I was in the back quarter of the field, and it worked out swimmingly. That also meant that I spent a goodly bit of the first lap at the end of a loooong caterpillar of riders in the singletrack, which caterpillar would sloooow down going up hill (when otherwise I might be semi-likely to pass someone), and speed up going downhill (where thank god a little bit of space would open up, since I'm not the best going downhill.)

But even with the congested first lap, and Emmie's flat from hell on her last lap (hole in the spare tube? check! crapped out co2 thingy? check!), we still had a great time. We definitely weren't the fastest team, but that wasn't the plan. We had a great time, mountain bike people are incredibly nice and cool, and now we're going back for more. That's right - now we've found two more friends and we're signed up for 12 Hours of Tsali. I'm telling you, we just can't get enough of this stuff.

Market Season is Here!

And to prove it, here are a few pics my friend Leslie took last week:

And while I wish I could blame my absence from the blog entirely on being busy getting ready for market - and that was for sure part of it - I don't really know why I fell off the wagon. Once I fall off, though, it takes a while to remember to climb back on. But now I'm committed! After all, I have a real live race report to post! And with that teaser, I'll meet you back here tomorrow.