Headwaters Love

Donna (that's the love of my life, my soul-mate, my best friend...)
got back from a family/friend visit in Michigan late Saturday. I always miss her dearly when we're apart, but it is very therapeutic for our relationship to have time apart...when we get back together we seem to appreciate each other more and express more love toward each other than ever. I'm always amazed that we have more to give each other - just when it seems we have reached the highest plateau of love we find one higher. Now I'm thinking that these plateaus will end only if we put limits on them.

Sunday afternoon we spend hiking the Headwaters Trail up on Moscow Mountain. It was a super warm day and up on the mountain was the best place to be with my best friend.

Huckleberry 100

Ahhh...the Huckleberry, the fruit-of-fruits, the fruit I will go to extremes to taste. In it's raw form there is nothing more tasty...in a "properly" made pie it is worth the extra mile(s) to have just one bite. Just imagine what I would do for a full slice of Huckleberry pie topped with Huckleberry ice-cream...YUM!!!

On Sunday the SeanMan and I rode over 100 miles just for this tasty treat (at least that was my motivation).

And I must say that it was worth every pedal stroke to get to Elk River Idaho's Huckeberry Haven. It was so good that I'm thinking about riding up there again.
It is hard to have any facial expression with a mouth full of pie.

Riding Hot

It is done - I have completed my BSN (that's a highly respected nursing degree to you). Oddly enough I received my "post-dated" diploma and grades before I was done...what's up with that??? Oh well I'm not going to worry about it any. To celebrate I decided to ride my bike (gasp!) - yeah it's been some time since I've put some serious miles on, except those infrequent times I rode to work in Pullman at B&L Bicycles only to have the SeanMan pull my fat ass nearly all the way. Thanks SeanMan, so what if you've shot my ego all to hell, I really appreciated the wheel, the pain, and the reminder that mortality happens when you don't ride for a month (that's a lame excuse).

So I did a hill climbing road ride rode late yesterday afternoon for about 2 hours in scorching heat (101-106F according to my fancy bike computer). The pavement was like riding on Rice Crispys (air bubbles seem to form in boiling tar). OK the ride was good and I thought I was ready for what I really like - a long dirt-road MTB ride. This morning I took off planning to do a loop up the South Fork around to George Creek (I estimated it to be 80-100 miles), but I got 30+ miles into it and decided no way was I going to make it - I could feel early signs of heat exhaustion setting in and even though I was slugging down the water I was becoming dehydrated (hard to imagine that 100-degree temps can do that). So nearly at the top of the climbing I turned it around and headed home. That's when the real problem presented in the form a 15-20mph headwind making the lower canyon like standing in front of a blast furnace (which means it was dehydrating me much quicker than before). I stopped several times and jumped into Asotin Creek just to cool off. By the time I reached Asotin (56 miles down, 5 more to home) I was very well done, miserable, and had to stop in the park and just cool down for an hour or so. The place looked like Gehenna (that's Hades or Hell to you)... ...and it smelled like it too with the spew of that stinky-assed Lewiston pulpmill drifting in the winds...enough to make me puke! And I did (another sign of heat exhaustion) - Hello partially digested peanut butter! It tastes almost as good coming up as it did going down - YUM!

I limped the last 5 miles home, took a cold bath to cool off, took a 8 oz. dose of the miracle drug for exhaustion & nausea (Coke), then layed around waiting for my stomach to settle so I could rehydrate. Oh yeah, Donna (that's the love of my life) was not happy with my condition either...I got a well deserved ass-chewing for my Hot ride - there's more than one way to get rid of my fat ass I guess.