Waaaaaay Tooooooo Long

It's been a MONTH since we posted. Woooops! Excuses? Yeah, I've got plenty so get comfortable. The first one is that I have created some posts but I haven't posted them yet, they are saved for further editing and photo adding.

In case anyone is interested, a blurb about the GET program, the education credits program that we started for Kian. He's got over 100 credits already and if anyone wants to add more, best to do so by April 30th to get the current, lower prices. http://www.get.wa.gov/importantdates.shtml


Nextly, our excuse is that Annie and I are both simultaneously at work... imagine that! For the past 3-years its been one or the other, a sort of magical thing, actually, considering that Kian is 2-1/2 and so we've had the luxury of more time around the little man. Reality has struck us though and we are both enjoying our respective grinds. Annie is at Virginia-Mason Hospital doing a nursing thing.

Here we go again... no time to finish this post but instead of saving for later I'm hitting publish now. Tomorrow would mark more than a month without a post and we just can't have that.

Luvvies from all of us here!

Daddy Does California

It was supposed to be a family vacation. For all of us the timing was just right: I was start my job in 3-weeks, Kian had a 10-day break from daycare, and Annie was still looking for work but should have been able to do this from the road. With one exception: interview.

So I had to go it alone. My amazing friend Bryn fixed up my RV with just a pair of pliers and blow torch and so I loaded up the RV and set sail on Monday with a couple paying passengers who'm it connected with on Craigslist. Christopher and I hit it off, a good thing because he and his little Chihuahua pooch hung out with me for two-nights. I left him in Santa Rosa to make his own way into the Bay Area while I took my bike out of the bathroom and hit the roads under 85 and sunny skies. Awesome, that first day was one of the best rides of my entire trip: Kings Ridge. An 85 mile epic on steep, beautiful, narrow roads that took me out to the coastline and then back up through the Spring-lush rolling hills.

Next day my legs were knackered so I eased around San Francisco hitting all the sites and cool spots, once again under sunny skies and over 80 degrees. The city was outside after having been beaten by a 2-week storm. I lucked out, finally, and hit the weather just right. 70-miles in 7-hours on the bike: coffee shops, Chinatown quick eats, afternoon beer along Hwy-1, and lots of other stops. That night I drove to Santa Cruz and took out the mountain bike for a sweet 4-hour ride on coastline singletrack, then up into the hills and back via the University. Crazy ride, and all without a shirt on. Felt so good at the time but I would pay for this mistake with a pretty hefty sunburn. Fortunately Bryn was to the rescue.

She and Michael and a large 20-person gang of mostly Seattle cyclists were down in Los Alamos, near Santa Barbara, for a 1-week cycling camp and Bryn was my lotion applicator. The dudes wouldn't touch me. The next 6 days we rode epic after epic, mostly all of them leaving right from the hotel and with much needed warmth and sun.

Sick Of Sick

Kian's signature of approval! Spring skiing rocks.

Kian, no peein' on the trail!

Deep tuck for a super fasssst descent.

At the warming hut, aka Train Robbers Hideaway, skiing and having lunch with
the Gray Jays. I suggest they change the hut name to Camp Robbers Hideaway.

Getting back to the Depot from Guthrie is a 3-step process:

1-Pack it!

2-Load it!

3-Kick it!

The slog continues. I suffered with a mild bug for almost 3-weeks but haven't ever really felt awesome since then, so it probably tallies more than a month of hell. I don't feel that bad, just not good enough to do anything fun.

Got back yesterday from the Chiwawa and Kian is sick again, although he seemed fine to me. This morning he complained that he was "full" but still wanted to eat and then he threw it all up. After I changed his clothes and cleaned it all up he did it again, but on a new set of clothes and on the carpet this time. I kept him on the linoleum after that. Don't feel sorry for him, he was in good spirits, but I had to clean it up. He was immediately whistling his version of twinkle, twinkle lucky star and kept asking me "what happened, daddy, what happened?" as though it were some unknown event which caused the mess. I just glared at him. He whistled.

We had another sweet weekend at the cabin and I had the pleasure of tugging Kian up to Guthrie Loop on an amazing Spring day. He fell asleep 5 minutes out and when I got to the loop I unhitched him, parked him on the shady side of a snowbank (it was warm up there in the sun) and then I got in about an hour and a half of skiing all within eyeshot of the Chariot. When he woke up I pulled him down to the Guthrie Loop warming hut where we had lunch, skied, and fed the Gray Jays.

Belated From The Methow

Heffe the Diesel pulling his Henry the Caboose.

Kian making a dash for it down the boardwalk in Winthrop.

Here's a few belated vids from our weekend in the Methow last month. The snow was getting a little thin back then but its since been refreshed, although the conditions then were still pretty primo. They kept calling for rain and warm conditions but every day the sun and blue sky made lengthy appearances. On a couple occasions that weekend the Jeff-Henry and Doug-Kian chariot teams got to ski side-by-side: Heffe and I chatted while the little ones mooned each other.

Winter's Back

After about 6 weeks of winter drought La Nina returned and brought winter back in a big way. Almost too big a way. Stevens Pass had 3 feet of fresh snow in the days before we arrived on Friday and so the tracks were all a little soft, but no one was complaining. It was a perfect day out there with few skiers and so fresh corduroy could be had all day long. I'm still not back to perfect health and so I just got out for a short, easy 45 minute kick. But it was beautiful out there and I enjoyed it all a bit more going slow and taking a little less for granted how important my good health is to me: even taking it slow is more than many people are able to experience. But damn, I miss being at 100%.

The wind in the face, the snow in the teeth...

Kian had an awesome weekend of skiing and made some great gains. He spent nearly 2-hours straight with the skis on instead his usual 15-minute stints. He wanted more and we had to pry him off his 100-yard section of track to get him to come inside and eat. Some more pics coming soon.

New Snow

Who doesn't love waking up to a wash of fresh snow throughout the city? Lots of people, I bet, but no one in this house. Not any more than an inch of snow fell outside our place but it was a perfect uniform coating over everything: all that dirty, concrete and steel is now awash in white, its beautiful! But melting fast. Kian got to go in 2-hours late today although he's been out of daycare for more than a week so its not as novel as it could be.

Sick Week

If sick week sounds familiar its because we're now on consecutive sick weeks. Kian and I relapsed on the weekend, through no fault of our own, mind you, and Annie succumbed. So this week we've been fighting wounded: Annie has been trying to keep her hospital hours up, Kian gave daycare another go but was rejected, sent home and has been diagnosed with an ear infection, and I've been somehow working extra hours at Cycle U just to bring home the bacon. Bacon bits. There are some signs of improvement now midway through the week but we'll see, our weekend plans might be in jeopardy.

Despite our various states of contagion last weekend we did get out, although kept it to a minimum. We got in some good movie/TV time, and missed out on some amazing crisp sunny weather over at the cabin. Here's a few pics of Kian getting after it at the Leavenworth Hatchery.

K-I-A-N

Earlier this morning Kian surprised us by waltzing into the kitchen and spelling out his name. He is a little sponge right now and has several firsts just about every day. A few days ago he started saying Nope and Yip, in lieu of Yes and No, and although its not good and proper speech to be promoting in a developing child, its pretty awful darn cute.

This week is "sick week" around here. On Tuesday Kian was sent home from daycare not long after I dropped him off, and sure enough he was running a fever that required nurse consultation but never a nurse visit: by the rings under his eyes they guessed its a sinus infection. Tuesday evening I led very hard back-to-back workouts at Cycle-U which made me susceptible and sure enough, by Wednesday evening I had the bug. We've all been feeling pretty lousy this week but we're on the mend, although we'll probably end up taking it easy this weekend despite our ski plans. Buuuuuuummer.

Cuttin and jukin!

Here's a series of shots from the Chiwawa Dog Sled Races
a few weeks ago: sluggin' down some cocoa...

Ma-Za-Ma

We just spent a super 3-day weekend in the Methow Valley with some of our best kid friends. The weather cooperated and we logged some awesome clicks on the ski trails. Here's a few pics from inside our cozy cabin in Mazama and hopefully I've got a few vids from the wild trails of the Mazama too.

Baby Henny (Henry). Baby Henny's not so baby anymore, coming up
on 1-year (and at 24-lbs he's gaining on the "big boys", Oliver and Kian.

Baby Lise (Elise), the youngest of the bunch at about 6-months.

Kian and Oliver.

A Couple Dude-Dads.


Aunt Mary: brave to be hanging out with the baby crew.
And sleeping on the couch. In the closet.

Multitasking.

Back out on the range...

Kian and Henry go sledding.

Oh yeah, you wanna see fast.

A Few New Flips

Whachu lookin at Willis?

What's been going on? Just the usual, I guess, although if I were pressed to define the past two weeks I'd say there has definitely been a lot less of winter going on. We took almost two-weeks off from the snow, as a fam, in large part because of the wet warm weather we've been expewiencing. Although as usual, if you're not from around here you might not understand that the weather charts aren't really all that accurate. Just cause the symbol over Seattle shows a big cloud with raindrops doesn't mean its always raining, in fact, around here 80% chance of rain really means a 20% chance that it won't be raining. We like those odds this time of year. Case in point, the past two weeks. I got back on the bike that first weekend of no-go to the snow and I hardly got wet. I've done tons of city commuting and a couple big rides and have merely been splashed, and there's been a fair bit of the sunshiny stuff too.

Me Big Boy!

Kiki playing with the fart machine: the "other" fart machine.

But this coming weekend will show a return to the white stuff as we're headed to the Chiwawa. We'll host for a day or two at the nordic center and I might even do a bit of cross-country racing in Leavenworth at the Bavarian Cup. I've already skipped a couple of ski races, and with only a handful on the Northwest calendar if I plan to race any I'd better hop to it. Here's a quick clip of me yesterday at Hyak: I dropped Kian off in Snoqualmie, a real win-win for all: Kian gets to hang with his Aunt-Uncle-Cousins, they get to play with him, and I get to ski unencumbered sans the ski trailer. And a good thing yesterday because the snow was slow and I took the 12-km climb to the nordic system via the Catherine Loop trail... up up up.

Not a great sequence but quicker to upload than these little videos:
crazy! 1+hours and counting on this other clip.