Weekend o' Fun

Family Zoo Trip
Meg, the boys, and I visited the Oregon Zoo on Friday morning. When we left Beaverton, it was covered in a fall fog; when we crossed the county line into Portland a few short miles later, there was nothing but blue skies and warm sun. Even though it was an inservice day, our early arrival allowed for a very quiet--almost private--tour of the park. Aaron kept up a torrential pace, moving from exhibit to exhibit, while Meg and I (hauling Edward on my back) lagged behind. We headed home around noon and parted ways: Meg and the boys to the Booren's in Sherwood, and Michael to the coast for a campout with his scout team . . .

Camping with the Varsity Scouts

Five of my six boys ended up coming (the last had a football game that evening), and one of the boys' older, married brother played my adult sidekick. Although it rained much of the drive to the coast, by the time we parked the cars at Camp Clark, the rain had subsided and we were able to set up our campsite and eat dinner with relative ease. Our main goal to accomplish on the campout was to draft a high-level plan for next year's activities; we didn't plan as thouroughly as I had hoped, but at least we have a bare-bones plan to fill in later. We played games on the beach for only an hour before the boys decided they were tired and wanated to go to bed--it was only 9:00 P.M.--although one of the boys injured his toe, essentially imobilizing him for the remainder of the trip. So I reluctanly headed back to camp as well, only to take what seemed hours to fall asleep. The wind woke me up around 1:00 a.m., when I also noticed that rain had begun falling again. Around 4:00 a.m. I realized that my tent had begun taking on water; I changed position in my tent to avoid the flooded areas, but when I awoke just before 7:00 a.m., I was thoroughly soaked. I had set up my tarp poorly, so it was pooling water that my tent eventually soaked up. I had a change of clothes with me, so I didn't really care. But with one boy not able to go on the hike, and the others in a seemingly foul mood, we all headed home ahead of schedule.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Partied Like It's 1999

Image
1999 symbolizes my "freedom" time: I was a college graduate, gainfully-employed, virtually debt-free, and single/childless. I pretty much did what I wanted and didn't have to report to anyone or commit to any thing. This past week felt like I had stepped backwards in time, as Meg decided, on a whim, to drive to Salt Lake City--with kids in tow--and stay with my parents for a week. Since I wasn't part of the road trip, you'll have to encourage her to share any stories , although she has confessed to me that she's done with blogging. Here are the highlights of the back-in-time party that was this week: Exercise : Besides my daily 11-mile round trip commute by bike to the office, I went on three other bike rides around Clackanomah County, swam at the pool twice, and ran once. Cleaning : Organized some of our outdoor living space, cleaned the house from top-to-bottom, washed the G20, cleaned my bike, and manicured the outside landscape. Sleep : Every night wa...
Read more

Hiking the Timberline Trail

Image
I don't think I've been on a true backpacking trip before. Back in high school, my friend Bart and I planned a multi-day trip to Carl Lake, but we ended up turning around after one night of camping at Cabot Lake because it was raining so much and we'd rather stay at his family's cabin instead. I also hiked up to Moraine Lake as a scout leader, on the way to South Sister, where we camped in preparation to summit Oregon's third tallest peak, but we left all of our gear at the lake on the second leg of our climb. That was back in 2001. I first learned of the Timberline Trail by reading a brief summary of it in, of all places, Portland Monthly. Sure, it was 35 miles farther than I had ever backpacked before, and it involved two more days and nights, and I would be going solo. But the summer of 2016 is all about change and new beginnings for me. Day 1: Timberline Lodge to Ramona Falls I slept in Tuesday morning, as I was up late Monday night making my final preparat...
Read more

A Wild Black Sheep Chase

Image
It all started with a tweet. The tweet guided me to a blog. The blog inspired me to craft an e-mail. The e-mail led to a phone call. And the phone call led to my agreeing to trade my 1993.5 Infiniti G20 for a 2010 Black Sheep commuter bike (1 of only 13 in existence). All of this happened within 24 hours. From New Bike An informal part of our agreement to move to Portland was for me to get rid of my car, since I had committed to biking or riding the bus to work--and I never did drive the G20 once we moved to Portland, except once every other week or so to keep the fluids moving through the car. I had posted my car for sale at the G20 enthusiasts' site , but I didn't get any substantial bites, nor did I do much to promote its sale (Meg would like me to remind you that I took a year to sell my del Sol after buying the Maxima ). So when I saw a blog post about New Belgium's car swap at the Tour de Fat , I called Meg and proposed the idea to her. She thought it sounde...
Read more