Weekend of Independance

Saturday
Meg was hosting a party for an acquaintence on Saturday morning, so we three boys drove to Hood River to see Thomas the Tank Engine at the Mt. Hood Railway. It was pretty much the same stuff as last year, only today it was warmer and dustier. There was a small petting zoo the boys went in, but when you're only 15 months old, it must have seemed like being caught in a stampeed. Both Aaron and Edward seemed to have a good time, and were both somewhat dissappointed when it came time to leave. Ironically, they spent most of their time playing with the toy trains; we have what I think is a better setup at home, but I guess the newness factor won them over.

Monday
After Meg took the boys to their morning music class at the church, we drove about 25 miles east to Mehama for our 7th annual Independance Day Hike (see our history for past hikes). We hiked about 1.5 miles up a gravel road (closed off to traffic a decade or so ago) to Shellburg Falls. The falls resemble Lower South Falls (you can walk behind them), only less grandeur. We continued on another .5 mile above the falls to reach a simple campsite (although it does have restrooms and running water from an old_school pump, which the boys enjoyed playing with), where we finished our lunch and let The Word out of the backpack to run around. Aaron once again walked the entire length of the hike, although he whined the last mile or so about how tired he was. But he was excited when we saw the car again and said he had fun hiking.

Tuesday
We recently saved Lil' Megan's Razor scooter from a potential garage sale, and Aaron has spent lots of time riding it around the neighborhood (Edward likes to ride, too, but obviously needs help from Dad). He seemed to show good balance skills on it, so I encouraged him to remove the training wheels from his little_dudes bike. He agreed, and we all walked over to Lee Elementary to let Aaron practice riding down some gentle grass slopes at the schoolyard. He crashed shortly after launching his first few attempts, but he was soon able to ride down the hill unassisted until his bike ran out of gas, and he plopped over. The bike is really too small for him, but the chain eventually snapped and halted practice for the evening. Even though he crashed a lot, he liked the challenge and the new freedom. As soon as we find a bigger, better bike for him, I expect he'll be riding a lot on his own soon . . .

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