Echo Triathlon at Echo Reservoir in Coalville

It was a pretty drive up Parley's Canyon this morning. It was raining at 6 am. It was like Mother Nature was telling me that I am totally right to be afraid of being killed by water.

TB did a quick check up on my bike the night before. I told him that I had to park at the high school and ride a couple of miles to the race start at the reservoir. He said, "That will be good training."
No joke. I have not ridden my road bike since...probably my last triathlon last year. I definitely haven't run since then.

Echo Reservoir is very low right now, so there was a long hike down the muddy beach to the water. The triangular swim course was marked with big orange buoys that you swim around. The second buoy became loose from its anchor, so we were all chasing it around the lake. That was kind of funny to me, because the water was about 4 feet deep, so I could save myself when started to freak out. Once I was around that buoy though, the water was too deep to touch and too murky to see my own hands doing strokes in front of me. So all of a sudden, I felt very small and insignificant in the middle of all these bobbing white swim caps. I just knew that no one would notice if I slipped under the surface and didn't come back up. So I freaked out and headed for a rescue kayak and just held onto it for a while. This is a bad idea, because I had nothing to do but say crazy things in my own head and listen to a bunch of old guys have panic/asthma attacks as they swam by. Eventually, I decided to just swim to the finish and ignore my imminent disappearance from the world. Swimming is a better way to get through the first leg of a triathlon than thinking, so I made it to shore in 20 minutes. That is a ridiculously long time for a sprint swim. There were not many bikes left in the transition area when I got mine. My bike and run were fine and my finishing time was pretty bad. Considering my total lack of training and my psychosis concerning all things water, it was an ok day.  

Heidi, Coach Scott and me after the race.

Music Discovery Camp at Gifted Music School

It was their first camp! It was the first time I've dropped them off for a couple of hours! They wouldn't tell me what they did each day, but I figured it out when they sang a couple of new songs every afternoon. I thought I would think of a million things to do, but it turns out that two hours of class downtown doesn't give me tons of time and I was sick again with a recurrence of an ear infection, so I pretty much sat at the coffee shop at the new Harmon's downtown (awesome!) and read "The Language of Flowers" every day. It was very pleasant.

East Canyon Reservoir

East Canyon Reservoir is beautiful.

 And there are sheep running down the road.

I swam around with Marilyn and Heidi. No one drown.

I had one of the kid's floaty toys attached to me on a long string. Coach Scott said, "So we can find your body?" Yes.

Millcreek Community Center

It's music camp week and ballet week. We needed to make up for a bunch of ballet lessons that Jovie is missing due to her heavy vacation schedule. We'd never been to the new Millcreek Community Center, so ballet make-up was a good excuse.

It's fantastic!

It's stylish and new and shiny. The library has a cool conveyor belt and sorter in the book return, really friendly librarians, and cool chairs in the kid's section.  The Evergreen Café is frequented mostly by people from the Senior Center. The seniors were all very friendly to us because the kids had pretty good manners. The food at the Café was good and cheap.

Yes, this counts as good manners. They are using their fingers, but they aren't yelling or running around. Not too bad, kids!

Book update: We read the whole Ramona Quimby series. We read the first two books in the Hardy Boys series, but I had to edit out too many references to guns and death threats so we've given up on that for a while. We started the Encyclopedia Brown series and I've figured out every mystery so far. Ikey finished Set 1 and Set 2 and half of Set 3 in the Reading for All Learners series. He read the word "CLASSIC" off a bowling alley sign while I was driving down the road the other day. He is not afraid to try to sound out any word. Jovie read the word "Fish" off a truck.

Catherine's Pass in Albion Basin

A very friendly Bob drove us on the Alta shuttle on a beautiful summer Sunday to start our hike over Catherine's Pass. We've never made it all the way to the top of the pass, although we tried last year.

As we are older and wiser this year, I knew we would make it. We stopped to smell the flowers.

We made it!

 

 There was a big pack of nerdy college kids wandering around the mountain in cargo pants and holding clipboards. Todd said, "Geology class" with more than a little derision. So I asked the nerdiest one, and he confirmed that it was a Geology Field Camp from Penn State. Todd said, "Look at their young hopeful faces. Do you think they know that they're going to have to go to business school to get a job?"

Aimee's birthday in Coronado

TB went on an early bike ride with the guys. They rode over 30 miles and TB was on a folding bike. It sounded funny. The kids and I rode bikes to Clayton's Coffee Shop for breakfast.

 We drove a short way from the island to Balboa Park to check out the San Diego Natural History Museum.

Jovie rode an old-fashioned carousel and Ikey rode the Balboa Park Railroad.

 
We wandered around some of the interesting buildings and shops in Balboa Park. If we lived here, we would have to spend a lot of time visiting all the museums.
 

 

We headed back to Coronado for some beach time. Ikey rode his bike to the beach.

 

 

Jovie ran right up to the ocean and threw a lot of sand into the water while TB and Isaac built a sand castle.

 

 Jovie flew a patriotic kite.

 

Pete and Dan set up a festive dining room in the new casita and made a delicious dinner. Tim and Susan came over for dinner and cake. We had the most fun day with good friends.

 I'm getting old.

4th of July in Coronado



Dan, Todd, Isaac, Jovie, Aimee, Pete

 
 
Coronado might be the best place in the world to celebrate July 4th. We woke up early-ish and dressed in homemade matching red, white, and blue outfits.

 

Everyone comes to Coronado for a fantastic two-hour parade and everyone wears all the flag-inspired clothes they can track down. It's quite a sight. We found a shady spot to watch the parade. All the branches of military had bands. We saw the Budweiser Clydesdales, Miss Coronado, baton twirlers, clowns, and a marching band from Minnesota.

 

 

Pete and Dan had two parties to attend along the parade route, so the kids traveled in style on shoulders so they could watch the parade as we moved. We ended up in a shady spot in front of a beautiful house with lots of food and lots of patriotic revelers. 

After the parade, Jovie and I enjoyed a tour of the neighborhood all dressed up for the occasion.

 We were invited to lunch at Gran-Gran's house a couple streets down from Pete and Dan's.

 The guys watched the kids during naptime so TB and I could ride bikes around the island. The beach, the bay, and every park were as full of people as possible. The tents and bbqs and picnic blankets and music and kids and bikes were more dense then you can imagine. It was very exciting. At dark, we loaded the kids up in the bike trailer and rode onto the Navy base to meet up with Todd's friend Stephanie's family. She invited us to watch the fireworks on her deck and it was quite a view! We could see Coronado's show going up from a barge in the bay and San Diego's show from four spots around town along with Sea World's and Point Loma's fireworks. Stephanie set up a big buffet of food and snacks and desserts. It was really first class treatment and her children were delightful and ours were adorable. It was a really great day with perfect weather and a lot of celebrating.