Aloha!

Well, I just had the toughest week of my life. Going to the beach everyday, watching Hawaiian sunsets every night, pretending I am an amazing surfer can be really rough on a person. It's a good that I am back now working hard and making every dollar count! But in all seriousness, Hawai'i was really fun and refreshing, minus the sunburn I got the first day from surfing the whole day. I was able to enjoy the whole island of Oahu by surfing, snorkeling, hiking, swimming under waterfalls, luaus, shopping, visiting Dole Plantation, Pearl Harbor and eating lots of pineapple, coconuts and sipping on Mai Tais. My family and I also were able to support my sister and her volleyball team as they played in a tournament at the University of Hawaii. Aloha and Hang Loose!

Providence Bridge Pedal

On Sunday my mom, dad and I participated in the Bridge Pedal. It was a lot of fun being able to ride across the bridges and freeways of Portland and enjoy the beautiful view of the city. Our ride started down by the waterfront and continued to wind its way through Portland over 8 bridges: Hawthorne, Ross Island, Marquam, Burnside, Broadway, Fremont, St. Johns, and Steel and plus we rode down to Portland, from my area, so our ride consisted of about 32 miles! Yeah for us. Afterwards we got to enjoy our free admission into the Bite of Oregon and chow down after our long ride and listen to some music by the water. It was definitely a fun day and I can't wait for next year when we bike 10 bridges! (This picture is on the top deck of the Fremont Bridge. They closed it down to traffic so we got to enjoy the view and listen to some live music and taste free food and drink samples).

Puddles Are Deceiving!

I just spent the last couple of days camping at Fort Stevens with Jennifer and Dad. As a kid, we use to go here all the time because it was right on the beach and there were tons of biking trails and they had old forts from WWII that made great places for hide and seek. During this camping trip we did a lot of biking. On our last day we took the bike trails and rode from our campground and went north to the south jetty where the Pacific Ocean meets the Columbia River then on the way back we decided to ride our bikes on the beach since the tide was low. I have never done this before and it was really fun riding right next to the water. Well as we were riding we kept going through little puddles along the shore that were left over from when the tide was hide and chasing after the many seagulls that thought they had a found a nice quiet place to relax on the beach. As we were getting closer to the end of our beach ride, I noticed that we were riding kind of a sand barge because the ocean was to the side of us and there were quite a few puddles to the other side. So I decided to blaze a trail right on through these puddles as I had done before. I started to go through the puddle and then the next thing I know my front tire is submerged into the water and takes me and the rest of the bike into the puddle. I fell pretty much head first into the water with my bike. Now this puddle is only 4ft x 4ft and as I stood up, I came to find out that this puddle was waist deep! I was completely soaked after my surprise swim and had to ride the rest of the way back to the campground in my soggy tennis shoes and jeans.