This weekend against all common sense I decided to try to ride my mountain bike 67 miles over the Coast Range of Oregon from Hillsboro to Tillamook. I left the house at 6am and was on the way by 7am after stopping for some snacks and breakfast. It was a a fun ride that took me through the countryside of Hillsboro past alpacas, bison, and lots of cows to logging roads through Weyerhaeuser land through the mountains.
For Emily’s birthday this year we decided to take a trip to Yosemite National Park and attempt an early season climb of Half Dome with our friends Josh and Alina who now live in Santa Cruz. The High Sierra’s had an epic snow year and most of the park was closed resulting in hoards of visitors and we got turned back just below the summit of Half Dome by high winds, hail, and ice but despite getting skunked on the climb we had an amazing time and came home with some great photos and even better memories. Read on:
My longtime friend Rachel from my years at Bowdoin visited Emily and I this week before a conference was attending at Skamania Lodge. We picked her up from the airport on Tuesday night and had a wonderful evening catching up with her in our backyard over dinner. She seems to have a wonderful job on the Hawaiian island of Lanai and we were deleted to be invited to visit them whenever we’d like. While chatting a big fat raccoon ran along the top of our fence delighting Rachel who doesn’t get to see mainland wildlife often and perking the interest of Leo who watched it intently
This weekend against all common sense I decided to try to ride my mountain bike 67 miles over the Coast Range of Oregon from Hillsboro to Tillamook. I left the house at 6am and was on the way by 7am after stopping for some snacks and breakfast. It was a a fun ride that took me through the countryside of Hillsboro past alpacas, bison, and lots of cows to logging roads through Weyerhaeuser land through the mountains. 
For Emily’s birthday this year we decided to take a trip to Yosemite National Park and attempt an early season climb of Half Dome with our friends Josh and Alina who now live in Santa Cruz. The High Sierra’s had an epic snow year and most of the park was closed resulting in hoards of visitors and we got turned back just below the summit of Half Dome by high winds, hail, and ice but despite getting skunked on the climb we had an amazing time and came home with some great photos and even better memories. Read on:
My longtime friend Rachel from my years at Bowdoin visited Emily and I this week before a conference was attending at Skamania Lodge. We picked her up from the airport on Tuesday night and had a wonderful evening catching up with her in our backyard over dinner. She seems to have a wonderful job on the Hawaiian island of Lanai and we were deleted to be invited to visit them whenever we’d like. While chatting a big fat raccoon ran along the top of our fence delighting Rachel who doesn’t get to see mainland wildlife often and perking the interest of Leo who watched it intently
