Tag Archives: vacation

me, a bikini, a glacier: alaska!*

{15 July 2010}

(think of it as where’s waldo for the alaska photoset.)


the short and the long of the trip to alaska was: cruise ships are maybe not my style (being penned up on a boat with a lot of old people), but as a way to see alaska’s spectacular inside passage, pretty great. vancouver is a lovely city, and the forest around juneau is easily the most beautiful forest i’ve ever been in. B and i opted for as much adventure travel as was possible while off the boat: snorkeling, ziplining, hiking, rock climbing. it became clear that we were out of our demographic when we kept ending up on shore excursions attended only by us and members of the boat’s crew.

other perks of the week included: eating my body weight in salmon over the course of seven days (mmm). learning to run on a treadmill while the boat heaved over waves in conditions that ranked a 7 on the Beaufort Scale (sometimes you have to embrace the absurd). hanging out with my family (my ADORABLE and much adored niece Geneva has a bright future in chess). experiencing the near-constant daylight of alaska around the summer solstice (blackout curtains do wonders, when you want to sleep). oh, and of course, the polar bear plunge, going swimming in the (unheated) pool on the back deck of the ship while the ship sailed past glaciers in Glacier Bay.

* with apologies to the panama canal guys. i had a palindrome phase when i was a kid…

catch up installment of come here, go away

{03 August 2007}

1. come here, vacation in idaho
the schedule was thus: wake up with the sun, 7 or whenever. go for a run on forest trails or logging roads. see some deer or other wildlife. come back, shower, breakfast. spend the morning reading or doing chores around the cabin, or sitting on the back porch with my ibook and wireless internet. forest, meet internet. internet, meet forest. maybe nap. late lunch, then bike into town. swim in the lake, then go to the grocery store and plan the evening’s meal. cook dinner with family and friends. spend the evening throwing a frisbee on the golf course, walking the dog in the meadow, watching movies, playing speed scrabble with my brother and sister-in-law.

2. go away, coming back from idaho
my boss is off getting married so that means that i get to be the boss for a while. it turns out his work suits me. what doesn’t suit me is doing his job and mine. where’d my summer go?

3. come here, veronica mars
season one has hijacked all of the time i would have otherwise spent reading books/sleeping in the past couple of weeks. curse lau for loaning me the complete first season! i finished it last night, but it turns out she sent me home with season two, also, so i’m not out of the woods yet. the fact that i know the series was abruptly canceled at the end of season three, however, makes me sad even as i invest in the first season. WB dramas, i love you.

4. come here, pandora
how did i not know about www.pandora.com until now? i’d vaguely heard of it before, but never really bothered to try it out till this week. i heart it.

5. come here, ultimate frisbee
i have a new love. take that, track workout! i’ve begun counting ultimate frisbee as speedwork for marathon training. we play saturday mornings, which means that i have to do my long run alone on sundays, but i don’t care.

6. go away, stinky hot weather.
i get home from running at 7am and i literally can’t stop sweating for the first 15 minutes or so. my body has become a sieve.

7. come here, 400 mile merit badge!
last week i ran my 400th mile since marathon training started. this is peak mileage month; if all goes well and i stay healthy/uninjured, i should hit 500 by the 25th or so.

8. go away, repetitive stress injuries
tendonitis and soft tissue strains and stress fractures are circling one another warily, growling low in their throats. on the upside, i got to see an x-ray of my foot (and no stress fracture after all!). there’s something fascinating about seeing a picture of one’s own bones. like, that isn’t just a black and white picture of foot bones on the screen, a theoretical image of what feet look like, those are mine. that’s me.

9. come here, awesome car-free weekend:
date with a cute boy on friday (i beat him at darts! turns out drinking beer actually IMPROVES my aim). ultimate frisbee on saturday followed by a double at ye olde corporate theatre gig. pick up organic veggie farm share with the first sweet corn of the season. sunday morning an easy 10-miler, followed by brunch at Over Easy with an old college friend. afternoon margaritas and chips and salsa with A and J, then 500 clowns‘ 365 project. finished the evening watching poi fire dancing at foster street beach – take out sushi and smuggled-in PBRs and crazy hippy drum circle, while the full moon rose over the still black lake. kept the car parked and rode my bike all over all weekend, and as a karmic reward, enjoyed excellent public transit timing every time i looked for a bus/train.

10. come here, popularity dialer
.

vacation adventures

{15 July 2007}


my brother, sister-in-law and i swam out to shellworth island today to find a geocache. none of us are particularly strong swimmers, but we’re all reasonably fit, so tho it took us a while, it was a pretty manageable swim. the scariest part was just making sure we were visible enough in the water that the speed boats and jetskis wouldn’t run us over. once we got to the island it only took us a few minutes to find the geocache. we explored the island a bit, hiked over to the other side, and took a few silly pictures. (T and i made my brother pose as the crazy hermit of the island.). then we swam back. felt like good exercise to stretch the body and soothe tired muscles from yesterday’s run, but not terribly high-intensity exercise. i’ve never been a good enough swimmer to make it work as cardio exercise.


mostly, by the time we made it back to the car we were just pleased with ourselves for a successful adventure in which the geocache was found, hiking shoes were transported to and from shore without getting wet, and the camera, GPS device and car keys stayed dry and afloat in our improvised mayonnaise-jar drybox. it seems we were something of a spectacle in the water, three swimmers crossing half of payette lake, and no less than 4 boats or jetskis pulled up along side to offer us a ride to shore or ask if our boat had sunk. “we’re just going for a swim!” we’d call back. they would look quizzically at us and then repeat their offer, “but do you need a ride to shore?” an eight-year-old girl leaned out of her father’s boat and asked us, “but why?” T called back “oh, just for fun!” the little girl processed this for a bit, looking at us as though we’d suggested that keeping rattlesnakes as pets would be a fun idea, and then admonished us, “okay, well, be careful!” it’s really more of a water-skier’s sort of lake, i guess.