A year ago this week I was bicycling through Vietnam – a dream come true. I had been captivated by the idea of biking the rice fields of Vietnam from the instant I saw pictures of such a trip on the REI adventure travel website nearly 10 years earlier when Glenn and I were looking […]
“You two look to be in great shape” is what our tour guide said upon meeting us on a very cold, windy and slightly rainy Sunday morning in Copenhagen. Certainly not a sentiment I’ve heard very much (ever) in my life. It made me blush. I still can’t get over it when that happens – […]
It turns out that sometimes…running sucks. I learned this important life lesson this past weekend when I participated in the Happy Girls Half-Marathon in Sisters, Oregon. Running 13 miles on forested trails in the high dessert of the Cascade Mountains with 500 other amazing women. What could be better than that? What could go wrong? […]
“Surround yourself with people that make you a better version of yourself” was the quote on the back of a guy’s t-shirt as we ran the Portland Half-Marathon last weekend. I had started studying the t-shirts people were wearing for this momentous event in an effort to distract myself from the fact that I was […]
We were supposed to run 10 miles today according to our training schedule and I was scared to death that I wouldn’t be able to do it. Ever since we did the Cascade Lakes Relay in early August we haven’t been running regularly as we’ve been focusing on hiking in preparation for the hike around […]
Every year Glenn and I plan at least one mystery vacation for each other. We plan a special outing and the other person doesn’t know what it is until it happens. I stole this idea from a co-worker who does this with his partner and I thought it was brilliant! This past Labor Day weekend […]
I read the book Wild last summer. In case you’ve been living in a cave – this is the popular book by Cheryl Strayed (a fellow Portlander, no less) about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Admittedly this was a very atypical book for me to read as I rarely, if ever, read non-fiction. I’m really […]
Glenn has a habit of forgetting to tell me about important things. I think he has imaginary conversations with me in his head and then expects me to be aware of them through osmosis. Oddly, this doesn’t tend to work. Case in point…several months ago Glenn said that he needed money to give Robert (a […]
Glenn and I are training to walk all the way around Mt. Hood over this coming Labor Day Weekend. It’s called “Round the Mountain” and over three days we’ll hike nearly 45 miles, with 36 other people. Each day we’ll be doing 14+ miles at altitude with significant elevation gains/losses throughout the day. It promises […]
This past weekend we hiked further than I have ever gone in a single day – and not necessarily on purpose! I had a friend mention that she had recently hiked to Larch Mountain and that it was a challenging but doable nine miles round trip. This sounded exactly like what we wanted to do […]
Glenn and I are training for multiple hiking trips later this summer. In August we plan to do backcountry camping in the Olympic National Park/Forest area (Washington) and over Labor Day Weekend we’ll be hiking all the way around Mt. Hood (Oregon). Circumnavigating a volcano! It doesn’t get much cooler than that. Both trips will involve considerable […]
I still can’t believe I’m a runner. In all honesty, I think “running” is too strong of a word to describe what I do. It’s really more of a shuffle with forward momentum. My friend and neighbor, who has often gone out jogging with Glenn and I, calls it “shoggling” – which is a combination […]
I ride my bike to work several times a week, even in the rain and darkness of winter. It’s about 12 miles round trip and takes me about 35 minutes in the morning (lots of downhill) and 45 to 50 minutes in the evening (lots of uphill). For nearly 10 years I have worked in an […]
This past weekend Glenn and I set out to hike Dog Mountain – a notorious hike in the Columbia River Gorge outside of Portland, Oregon. I have always been too intimated to try this hike – a seven mile loop with 2,800 feet of elevation gain. Very steep going up…and just as steep coming down! When […]
