Mt Hood adventures!

So the highlight of our Labor Day weekend was a trip to Mount Hood on Saturday! We drove down with our friend Jared because it was all his wife's idea for a great birthday present for him since he loves to mountain bike but she does not so much, so she surprised him the night before and told him to get his bike ready because we'd pick him up in the morning. The drive down took a little longer than expected as there were really NOT enough signs, but it was a beautiful drive... the drive from our house down to Portland is always beautiful, but we went right by Multnomah falls which is fully visible from the freeway as you go by, and then the drive up the mountain itself was also very pretty.

Bob on the lift

The best part about this biking adventure was the ski lifts! They had hooks on them for our bikes so we just rode the lift up and the bikes down! So easy! Very different for your shoulders to get the workout instead of your quads, but very fun. The first time down we took a tougher single track that I was not a huge fan of as I'm a nervous nellie and brake the whole time and it was super gravelly, which is WAY worse than just the scattered big rocks (which were also present) because of the random sliding it causes.... it was still fun but I enjoyed the next run down a wider trail much better--I could go fast and not fear death. :) Always better!

Jared ahead of us on the lift! (They sent the bikes after us)

In addition to some biking, we also did the alpine slide, which is kind of like a luge and super-fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There were all these signs stating that it was perfectly safe when "reasonable caution" was demonstrated, but that you could pretty much fly out of the track and die if you weren't careful! We still pushed the little control as far forward most of the time to go fast and it was definitely the highlight of the day!

You can see me go by first, then Bob.... Thanks for filming Jared!!!!

We did a bungee-trampoline too, where we were harnessed in and you could jump much higher and do more flips, but somehow I had trouble with this... the guy before us did 4 full back flips in one bounce, landing nimbly on his feet, but I was pretty much the antithesis of him.... I took a solid 20 bounces to succesfully complete one full flip! I mastered jumping high pretty early, but then really struggled to master the back flip! The way we were harnessed in it was pretty difficult to forward flip, so I kept leaning back and lifting my knees but somehow could only get horizontal! I was investing so much effort and getting nowhere and Bob, being the loving husband he is, took LOTS of incriminating photos and kept telling me they were all going on the blog! He's just so supportive.... Jared gave me more tangible advice, reminding me like a tball parent to stick to the fundamentals, "Lift your knees and lean back!" he helpfully would remind me.... Eventually I got a little more coordinated and was successful, even though I did pretty much land on my face after my first successful backflip! It was still really fun, and equally entertaining to watch the boys do their flipping, even though they both mastered the double backflip in their first 30 seconds on the tramp....

Here I am trying so hard to flip....

Although I'm smiling and it looks like I'm resting, this is how I landed (or "splatted" as Bob phrased it) after one of my many failed attempts!

My initial attempts to flip... :(

Bob shows me how it's done! (sorry it's sideways... I filmed it the long way, so it imports this way and I couldn't fix it! :) )

Prior to the tramping, I did master the "Jacob's ladder" thing---those nearly horizontal ladders they always have at the fair that try to flip over really easily and you have to slowly crawl across keeping very low. When I first tried it just threw me on the ground a couple times and it was pretty shocking because even the slightest shift to one side upsets it and you go down hard! Then I figured it out... Bob referred to it as "slithering" which I guess is a pretty fitting description, but it still totally cracked me up. I'm grateful he did NOT video tape that, as I'm sure it was not very graceful, but basically I just pulled myself across with mostly my arms, grabbing both sides at the same time.... can't really explain it but it worked and I made it all the way across without falling off once! Bob says it's cheating but we'll see what he says when I win him the giant teddy bear at the next carnival we're at! :)

We also did a summer tube slide (not on ice or water, but on kind of an astroturf track) where they clipped all 3 of our tubes together because the teenager running the ride said "adults" (apparently us?) were not allowed to go alone. We weren't sure if we'd go too fast or what? But it was great, because I was the front of our little train so it was kind of like a little roller coaster and I hung off the edge a little just waiting for the back end to go off the little ledge just like the start of a big plunge on a coaster... we had fun there too.

The whole day was great, and could only have been a little better if it was a bit warmer. Luckily we all had lots of layers on, because although it was in the 70's in Portland, it was 40's at the summit, and got progressively warmer as you went down the mountain, but definitely in the 50's where we spent the majority of our day.... we had some nice hot chocolate before heading out, and stopped at Chipotle in Portland on our drive back, which both warmed us up quite a bit. :) The drive back went quite a bit faster than our drive down, but felt a bit longer to me since I drove back and had just been reading Midnight Sun (the draft of Edward's version of Twilight--on Stephanie Meyer's blog) on my iphone on the way down. I did finish that this weekend and it was sort of an awful tease, because now I just want her to finish the rest of that book, and she may never! :(

All in all it was a great 4 day weekend... wish we could have more of them, but at least we only have a 4 day week ahead of us now! We had a relaxing day today too--I saw Mama Mia with a friend and Bob worked on the kitchen cabinets some more, and then we went to a BBQ with some friends from work. Hope you all had a great Labor Day and thanks for reading my incredibly superfluous-detail filled stories! I'll try to be more succinct!

~Cathy