Jack Johnson In The Gorge Amphitheater

So, Wendi and I drove five plus hours (dropping the kids off with friends in Portland) to central Washington to see Jack Johnson play in The Gorge Amphitheater in George Wa. Wendi has been a fan of his for awhile and I have been recently exposed to his music. It was a great concert. He played for two hours often bringing parts of the opening acts back on stage.

Wendi and I were wondering if maybe we have "outgrown" the concert scene though because there were lots of twenty-somethings doing lots of imbibing and acting a lot younger than their age, which was on some levels very entertaining. (Remind us to tell you the story of the young couple just down the hill from us!) Actually, the worst of it was a tie between the guy behind us using disparaging language to describe my beloved Beavers (I was wearing my OSU hat) and the group of girls sitting behind us while we were standing, throwing small foil balls in our direction in an effort to get us to sit down.

All in all it was a fantastic trip. One we would like to get on the schedule again for next year. We had a great time together. It was good for us and good for the soul to get away like that once in a while.

My First Century

On Saturday a good friend and I rode from his house in Vancouver WA. to my house in Corvallis OR., a distance of over 100 miles! This has been a goal of mine since I started road riding several years ago and it finally came together this weekend. I did manage to get myself dehydrated and couldn't finish the last 8 miles or so but my odometer read 101.2 miles before I called Wendi to pick me up. My friend did finish the ride but so far he has not gloated that he rode farther than me. ;)

Mama Notes - thursday night

This week has flown by like a tiny bird working with a stiff tail wind! In other words, yeah, it went by really fast!

Tomorrow we're heading up to Vancouver to stay w/ buddies. I get to attend my 20th HS reunion ... I haven't kept in touch w/ anyone & there are a handful of folks that I'm very excited to see again! The downside is that my dearest hubby won't be there with me for a variety of reasons, instead he'll be hanging out w/ the boys at our friends' house.

Then on Saturday I'll be w/ the boys providing a wee bit of support while he & his buds BIKE their biggest one-day cycling adventure yet! A CENTURY! 100 miles! Sheesh, I can't even imagine, but how cool for them! So stay tuned, I'm sure he'll add an update once he's pried his stiff fingers from the handlebars....

Kingdom Of Loathing

Okay, one more post tonight. A good friend of ours has gotten us hooked on this internet game called Kingdom of Loathing. It is a text game so the graphics are funny stick figures. The writing is sharp and funny. I haven't quite figured out the goal of the game but you have to complete certain adventures and gain experience in several different categories to improve your character. As your character improves, you get to do more challenging adventures. One of the things I like most about it that all the items and monsters encountered have funny twists to them. For example, you need to create meat paste in order to put things together and you may meet a Weretaco in your travels. Anyway, it is a very fun game. I suggest taking a peek at it.

Cycle Oregon The Weekend Aug 1st - Aug 3rd

Again Warren and I volunteered on Cycle Oregon The Weekend. He drove the SAG van while I did radio communications with my ham radio. My call sign is KD7PEL. This weekend there were 1500 riders doing several routes. They stayed two nights at Fort Stevens State Park. We had fun meeting several riders and spending the weekend together. It was especially nice to be in a car after spending four days on a bike.

Bike Trip July 28th-July 31st

Again, our tires hit the road on anther four day bike ride. We were planning on riding from The Dalles Oregon to Astoria Oregon, about 200 miles, east to west. After planning out the route we noticed that the prevailing wind is west to east. So instead of 200 miles of headwind we reversed the legs.

Day 1: We went from Vancouver WA to Cascade Locks Oregon. We rode about 47 miles today. At first we had to ride surface roads in Vancouver which is always a bit unpredictable. Then we hit highway 14 and made some great time with the tail wind. We made in after several hours of riding but would have made it sooner though we stopped several times to look for geocaches. The picture here is of me and my riding buddies in Vancouver as we started out.














Day 2: We started in Cascade Locks OR and rode to Horsethief Lake State Park WA. This was a fun day for us as our tail wind allowed us to average 14+ miles per hour! Many times we were doing 20-22 mph. Very fast for us as we usually average only 10-12 mph. This picture is of us leaving Cascade Locks.













Day 3: Vancouver WA to LL Stubs State Park OR. This day, I believe, was only 39 miles. We rode MAX (the city transit) and saved ourselves many miles. Our legs were tired from riding the last two days and at least I didn't want to ride many more miles than that. LL Stubs is Oregon's newest State Parks and it has lots of hiking and biking opportunities. On the way one of my riding buddies finally got a flat tire and he broke two spokes. He went with our ride support vehicle back to a bicycle shop. While they were gone, I search and found four geocaches in the park. This picture is of me trying to put up the sun fly.













Day 4: LL Stubs State Park OR to Astoria OR. This day was over 77 miles, the most I have ever ridden in one day. We spent the morning trying to find four or five geocaches, which put us a bit behind schedule. We rode over the coast range and got into Astoria about 6:45pm. We felt surprisingly good after having biked that far. The picture I have here is of us at the Astoria Column after the ride.

Family Reunion July 25th-27th

The Gale-Sedlacek-Westerberg family reunion was held this year in Cascade Locks Oregon. We usually have lots of food and fun and this year was no exception. We try to look for places with a pool and the KOA in Cascade Locks met the bill. In researching campgrounds, we knew that the Union-Pacific railroad has a mainline that travels the Gorge and comes quite close to the camp. We were told that "after a few trains go by we wouldn't even notice it". Well, we noticed it. And noticed it. And continued to notice it, all day, and all of the night.

All the kids (big and small) played so hard both in the pool and in the campground. At night we had campfires and got a game of Catchphrase started. During the day, the Gale family went on a hike to search out more geocaches and to exercise the dogs as well as the humans. We also spend some time at the fish hatchery, where we met Herman The Sturgeon. Herman was longer than both Casey and Alex laid end to end.

We have pictures but alas, I don't have them on this computer right now. We'll publish some of them as soon as we get them.