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Happy birthday, M!

And J's portrait, on M's birthday.

M's portrait, on her birthday.

Today is M's birthday, so as you can see, we went out to celebrate. You can read all about it and see pics of me and J on her blog, Parenthetical Statement.

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I almost forgot! A rattlesnake! This was not the only one there was...but this was the only one I saw with my own eyes and photographed. One of the girls in our group discovered this guy under the edge of the porch after she almost stepped on him. Once I knew we were all relatively safe, I had to get some pictures! And to think, I was considering going away for the weekend with just my 50mm lens!





A close-up of his rattle! That was the scariest sound I have ever heard. Really, really chilling.

Time for one last run before we head home.

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Finally, there was also enough down time for some of this...



Also, in case I didn't make it clear in previous posts, many many thanks to Michelle for generously sharing her camera and her pics with me for the blog.

Finally, the other awesome thing we did all weekend was eat. Tons. Delicious. These were the best cinnamon buns in the entire world. This lovely photo was taken by Michelle.

Here's me, having been drafted into the cooking corps, making pizza in pans for 10 people. I guess you can learn a lot by watching at home.

I swam, IN A LAKE.

For those of you who know me well, this photo should pretty much say it all. I learned to swim, oh, about a month ago. I was really afraid of the water as a kid, so I never really learned to swim beyond the kiddie doggy paddle thing. Neither of my parents swam either so it jut sort of didn't make it into my skill set growing up. As time went on, it became too embarrassing to try to learn. About a month ago though, Michelle just happened to ask me on a good day to do a triathlon (the millionth time she's asked) and so I said "Sure". I guess I have been needing a new challenge and this is as good a year as any to tackle a major fear. Four weeks ago, at the Queen Anne pool, I didn't want to put my face in the water. Today, I went for my first open water swim, in a lake, in a wetsuit! Momentous day!!

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Me! In a lake! (that's going to be a theme of this post)

Me and Michelle! In a lake! I am pretty sure that if you had told Michelle last year that I would be joining her this year...she would not have believed it.

Oh my god, look out far out IN THAT LAKE I am. So, so, far!

Now, on with the biking part. I haven't really ever ridden my bike on real roads and I haven't been on it in a year so this weekend was mostly about reacquainting myself with the machine and learning some new stuff. I wish I had gotten my picture taken in my super dorky bike gear (seriously, why do cyclists need so much crap?) but this will have to do.

This was the view from near the top of our run. The road kept going up and up and I wonder where it would have gone if we had been able to keep going. But, turning around, seeing this view, and getting to run down wasn't so bad either.

Not in chronological order, or triathlon order, but finally we get down to what this weekend is really all about: Run, Bike, Swim, and Food. On Saturday morning M and I got up and went for a casual little run up with gravel/dirt road from the ranch. We were careful to run in the dead center of the road (snakes!).

My new favorite photo of me, thanks Michelle. In hindsight though, there was probably a great big rattlesnake behind each of us.

Picture time! We are so excited by the awesome place, the awesome light, and the general awesomeness of the weekend that we have to take some awesome photos to go with it. This is my new favorite picture of Michelle.



More old photos of Michelle here.

First things first, we have to take a million photos in every direction. The light was awesome, the view was awesome, and it's a good thing we took them now because later in the weekend we would be too scared of rattlesnakes to venture out for photos...

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We really wanted to know what that white tree was, but we couldn't venture close enough to find out (snakes).

The driveway. I am SO getting one of those ranch things someday.

The front door.


The front door also had this awesome built-in boot scraper / cattle grate thing that I will now want built into my own house someday. So practical, so cool, and turned out to be a pretty good dog grate too.

Our awesome camp bunk room.

This is the front porch.


The back porch.

This is the amazing place where we were staying for the weekend. It's an awesome ranch house with a great view and a yard infested with rattlesnakes.

We were spending the weekend with a group of Michelle's friends that she knows from all of them being hardcore crazy triathletes. Yeah, that's right. Apparently, when triathletes go on vacation, there is lots and lots of gear that has to come along.

We stopped on the way out for some organic ice cream and a quick picture.