Still Rockin'

It has been a while since I've provided a status report on the ol' yard work project. We had to take a break from our rockin' (also known as "building rock walls") because family was in town, we've been training for Reach the Beach and we had to deal with the dirt.

Dealing with the dirt was not a satisfying experience. There are no photos dramatically illustrating "before dirt" is in the beds and "after dirt" is in the beds. We have no truck and the dirt store is only open 7-3 M-F. Getting six yards of dirt to our house required borrowing a friend's truck during lunch twice (one time Christopher did two dirt runs in the one lunch break), and getting my step-brother and his truck to help us out at 7am on two separate occasions. Between various dirt runs we also had to schlep the dirt one wheelbarrow load at a time from the driveway into the back and shovel it into the beds. Pretty boring and somewhat backbreaking. Not terribly fun or satisfying. And again, no cool pictures to show off.

Getting the dirt in was key because, well, that's what stuff grows in and we are in planting season! We also needed to fill the beds before we could finish the last two little rock walls (it is much easier to traverse the ground with your wheelbarrow when there are not rock walls in your way.)

But the dirt is done and just yesterday evening we finished planting the last of our rocks. The photo is a bit warpy because it is several stitched together in a sort of panorama, but it gives a sense of the yard.

Now imagine a little patio in that circle bit to the left toward the back, take out the wheelbarrow, compost and random boulder that is too heavy to move on our own just now, throw in a bunch of plants and the whole thing starts to take a little shape!

The best & worst ride ever!

As part of our training for Reach the Beach (just two weeks away!), our biggest, longest, hardest training ride was this last weekend. It actually wasn't that rough of a route. 70ish miles of pretty minimal hills, gorgeous farmlands, good roads, no traffic. The standard route is actually just shy of 50 miles (we added bits and doubled back to get the miles we needed) and I'm really looking forward to doing the ride again later this spring/summer. There were even fluffy little llamalings (baby llamas) and such.

That would be the "best" part of the ride.

The "worst" bit would be: "A short but severe thunderstorm Saturday afternoon killed a 59-year-old Southwest Portland man, cut power to about 30,000 people, capsized two sailboats, clogged traffic and knocked over trees across the Portland area."

Over half an inch of rain in ten minutes at one point, gusts of wind 40-50 mph and me and my Christopher out riding about in it. It was absolutely horrible. Definitively the worst weather I've ever ridden in, or even been outside in in any way. Not fun at all to be riding my little bicycle with that sort of wind tossing me around the street (thank you cars for not crushing the life from my body!) Oh, there was lightning too. With everything else going on, however, that was a bit of a side-note.

End of the story though, we made it back to the car (of course this happened around mile 62 of our 68 mile ride) just about the time it stoped and though we were muddy, frozen and a bit wiped out (more from the storm than from the 70-mile ride) we arrived hale and hearty, safe and sound. Which is sort of astonishing when I think about it.

After that Reach the Beach should be a piece of cake. mmmm.... cake....