Urban Offspring:

In the words and manner of my beautiful daughter (clapping with glee), "yay, I did it." The race was challenging but was a blast to run. Venice beach was beautiful, teaming with swimmers all suited up and raring to go. It was really tough just making it through the surf. I didn't really panic, but there was a short recovery time were I had to side stroke and float on my back. After making it to the first buoy, everything fell into a comfortable free-stroke rhythm. I finished the swim in 38min. right in the middle of my age group.

I kicked booty during the bike, loving every minute of the 1hr19min. ride through the streets of Los Angeles. Sunset Blvd.was particularly inviting giving off the aroma of fresh coffee and pastries while the hep cats watched the racers go by. Out of 32 middle aged broads, I was 8th on the bike :-)

The run sucked ass. I suffered through a side stick only to find my toes on the right foot feeling numb. Maybe the bike shoes were too tight? I'm still carrying an extra 10 lbs, plus dealing with all the damage birthing them danged ole babies did to my nether regions, well, let's just say the run needs improvement. 59 minutes for a 10k run. eeeeh, definitely there are minutes to be shaved off that. The first racer in the 35-40 female group ran a 45 minute 10K. She was smokin! I'm thrilled with the race overall, 13th in this age group with a time of 3hrs. 6 min and 2 sec.

pre-race prep....

my pimped out ride....

start of the orange cap wave. they started the swimmers in waves. the group i swam in was the 8th wave, roughly 200 swimmers?

me and my flabby legs...

and for those of you who patiently read through this post and looked at my silly pictures, here's a sexy-man-shot...

he braved the chilly waters sans wetsuit.

also, see photo at the beginning of the post. that would be the sexiest-man-alive-shot. he is also my biggest supporter and the one who makes these events possible for me. te amo, machi.

We spent the past weekend in Oregon at a bluegrass festival. Goodtimes all around. The first night, we camped next to Shasta Lake in northern California. After some confusion and an hour of cranky baby, we found a suitable spot. Reba went with us, spending an entire afternoon running wild in the forest. She splashed up and down the river as we bi-ped folks labored along. Lila looked for rocks and did a little splashing of her own.

We roasted hotdogs and watched them one-by-one roll off the grill. Whoops. At first leary of the whole camping arrangement, the eldest of our offspring began to enjoy it as the blow-up mattress made it's debut. It was like having her very own jumpy house. Keeping her from jumping on her little sister's head was the rough part. Though the tent was a bargain at Target ($44), it is the most comfortable tent I've been in. The top half is open, screen material, with a rain-fly to cover it. Very bright and airy as they say in the real estate biz. It made watching the night sky lovely and bug-free

We woke before dawn to get a jump on the second half of our drive, breaking down the tent by the headlights of the mini-van. We learned by day 2 of our trip that children travel best while asleep. After making a few pit stops, we dropped our dog off at a kennel and finally arrived at Horning's Hideout. This dude in Oregon turned his property into a campground / music venue / wedding site. It's a heavily wooded, hilly chunk of land that hosts thousands of tents, with a stage set-up in front of a lake.

Lila spent 3 days romping through the mud, playing with bubbles, hool-la-hoops, frolicking in a creek (it's the only bath she had). She kept calling everyone, "hey boy, you wan play?!" One girl was clearly upset that she couldn't tell by the pink clothing and long hair that she was female.

The band we were there to see is Yonder Mountain String Band. They are four bad muthas who rock the bluegrass. Oh how I love to get the boogie on when they play. It's quite the different kind of boogie. Babe-in-carrier is how we roll now. They made all the camping areas open, no special place for the family campers, so it was a bit dicey trying to pick and choose our site with the masses. In the end our area was calm and we managed to be quite during the wee hours.

The festival was teeming with little tots and bigger kiddos too. They had a special area for kids to play, with crafts, painting, bubbles and the like. Lila made wings to wear as she paraded through the venue on Sat. night. It's bizarre to see a man in a purple thong with a shiney cape, holding a huge sheet filled with helium balloons and then turn around and see an 8 year old managing to hool-la-hoop with four hoops. There were amazing hoopers, probably cross-over from String Cheese Incident, a band is renowned for it's hool-la-hoopers. All said and done, fabulous trip...can't wait to go again.