Be The Pigeon

One of the highlights of my recent family vacation to Canada was taking a day to go downhill mountain biking at the Sun Peaks resort in BC. The place is only about 6 miles from my aunt's ranch where we were staying, so it was a must do. I went with my brother Kevin, my brother in law Kyle, and some-family-relation-that-I-don't-care-to-figure-out Rylee (we'll say cousinephew). This was serious downhill, unlike anything I've done before. It's a groomed, sculpted set of trails for bikes; curves are built up to make them faster, etc. They also had a terrain park with lots of jumps. The biggest of them looked like this: In case you can't see it, the sign pretty much says "you can die if you're stupid enough to go down here!". That wooden jump would take you up about 10-12 feet off the ground, followed by several other large jumps behind it. Needless to say, I went the other way. The day I took these pictures (during the cattle drive) was warm and...

I'm on my way home right now from a visit with Grandma in the middle of nowhere, CA. (That's about 3 hrs north of Sacramento and an hour from the nearest puddle-jumper airport). Took Misha with me this year since Amy got to do it last year, and we dug for things to do in the mighty town of Mt. Shasta. Frankly, that's a tall task to accomplish, but if you ask Misha, I did it pretty well. She wanted to go back over and over to the fish hatchery, after all. I'll tell her story in another post. Grandma is moving to an assisted living place in Phoenix, in a couple of weeks, and so most of the visit was taken up with moving furniture and packing stuff. Grandma appears to have gotten over the first emotional blow with a move like this, and she's now unloading junk like there's no tomorrow (pun intended). She's very matter-of-fact about the whole thing, which is refreshing. Grandma bequeathed her nice china set to us, which was very nice of her. We thus spen...

In case you didn't get the post from Jo, here's the Picasa link to all our vacation pix. They're fun. Click the image to launch the slideshow (it will launch in a new window). We had a fantastic time.

We're currently in Phoenix, and having a great time. The weather is much cooler than normal, something for which we're grateful. Grandpa has a bird that he affectionately refers to as "my brother," though I don't really see any resemblance. The girls have enjoyed scaring the darn thing to the point of needing psychological help. Yesterday afternoon, Amy was going upstairs to change into her swimsuit, when I heard, "Dad, come help! The bird is pecking me! It won't let me upstairs!" Fierce, ferocious, bird. Amy and Kristen have been somewhat nervous and reserved around "Skipper" since we got here. Misha, though, took a liking to him right away and wanted to be his friend. Skipper had other plans. Last night, she was doing something and trying to pick him up when all the taunting of the day (not from her) came back. He pecked her face pretty good. Poor thing. Really hurt her feelings. She says, "I don't want to talk abo...

Well, it's spring break time in Colorado. We decided to take a road trip to somewhere warm, and the closest place we could get some nights on my mom's time-share was St. George, UT (thanks Mom!). Based on the weather reports we've seen from CO, we aren't missing much in the nice-spring-break-weather department. We've had a nice time here, and thanks to my fruit-phone (aka blackberry) which Jo loves to talk smack about, I get to blog about it before she does. You see, she mocks my phone, but it tethers nicely to the laptop and gives us online access from wherever, even on vacation. Mocking me now, sweetie?! We didn't exactly start out warmer than CO. We drove out to SLC first for a day, and managed to get 50mph winds. Then, on our drive down to St. George (commonly called Utah's Dixie), we got to drive through lots of snow, though thankfully none was sticking. Didn't get much above freezing until we were only 20 miles from St. George. Then it rain...