Sandcastles and Lubritoriums

Oh man, dragon girl! I was pretty disappointed that they bring the sand in and spray Elmer's Glue to get it to stick together so well.

 If you had been there, you would have told me to look away....

Do you see something funny?

You must be super excited to meet this guy in a few weekends:

 

At Whale's Tale

Maybe next time you can come and hold my hand and give me kisses and show me some of your childhood memories.

Chris Pic of the Week

Sleepy boy in the tent at the Dolly Copp campground near Mount Washington. :)

These Legs Climbed Mt. Washington

After a late night arrival at Dolly Copp camground, and a short nights sleep, we were up early to hike Mt Washington via Lions Head trail, and hopefully beat the runners up the hill.  After a quick stop at DD in Gorham, we were fueled up and ready to go.  For the record, Chris got a turkey sausage breakfast sandy and a toasted almond iced coffee, Rachel got a blueberry muffin toasted with cream cheese, hash browns, a french vanilla iced coffee with sausage... haha what?

 On the way to Pinkham Notch, we saw a moose!

Goodmorning!!

 Using the camera buddy for the first time

 You must have learned this from Abby!  Sorry for the low quality pictures here...

Rachel amidst a particularly demanding section

Myself!

Rachel, with a view of Tuckerman's behind.  Tuckerman's trail was still closed due to unmelted snow :-(

Rachel sucking it in to squeeze through a crevasse

Huh? WTF!!  You didn't tell me we could have driven up here!!!

The runners taking their summit photo, woohoo!  Wonder what Casey is clutching in his pocket???

Wow, thats a really messed up joke... Wait, for real?!

You earned it!  And with a very impressive time ;-)

Vietnam

Not the country, but it still was pretty neat!

I sure wear that shirt a lot...

Bike odometer milestone - 999.9!

The view at mile 999.9.

XC Bike Trip Training (Ride #1)

 

The race logo! 

Scenery on the ride there.

Exploring Bennington College

Sunday morning @ our little tent site with the cheery little camper inside!! :-)

Map of the day's ride, including the ride down to Dunkin Donuts for food and coffee before we started the marathon course.  The numbers along the route denote the mileage at that point in our ride, in 5 mile increments.  The total distance that this shows obviously doesn't take into account the detours we took, both on purpose and by accident.

Graph of the elevation for the whole ride... on either side of mile ~30, it should be a mirror image.

Highlights, in chronological order:
-Waking up next to a nice little pond in our cozy sleeping bags and tent ;-)
-Cameron's shorts
-Watching the start and then getting breakfast even though we didn't have time for the Diner
-Leaving ~1hr after start  and enjoying good weather and scenery for the 1st half of the ride
-Cheering on Cameron @ about mile 20!
-Cheering on Julie (& Casey) @ about mile 21!
-Cheering on Charity @ about mile 24!
-Following Charity through the finish (~3hrs, 27 mins)
-Seeing a random lady collapse near the finish :-/
-Cameron finishing under 4hrs
-Julie (&Casey) finishing... hopefully Julie will qualify for Boston next time around
-Snacks at the finish line
-Rachel betting me a gatorade that she could run over a orange traffic cone without crashing.  I was happy to lose this bet and cough up the change @ Stewarts :-)
-Riding in light rain
-Getting a little wet and dirty
-Getting soaked and covered in dirt from the road
-Rachel getting hangry and acting like a person from the Snicker's commercials "You're not you when you're hungry" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MixNh9L7G5M
-Riding up the big hills back to the start line
-Changing into dry clothes in the field where the car was parked
-Eating our leftovers from Chili's the night before on our ride home


The full loop!

Google maps said only 15miles, which was pretty close to what my bike computer said when I finished, and then I did 2 laps on the loop in the park to get up to ~17.5.  It's a nice ride :-) If you come back at all before I'm done here, I'll take you!