My Endless Summer

I haven't ever really used my blog before, but after a summer of travels, I figured it was about time to post a few things. I'll go for a more detailed shot of the vacations soon, but for now I thought I would just include a few highlights.

And just as an aside, I do own (and did wear) more than just the one black striped shirt that shows up strangely in 90% of the pictures.

Phoenix, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Utah, Belize, Canada, Mt. Rushmore, and Switzerland

June - Good bye Party in Phoenix

We had a swimming pool, pool table, outdoor fire pit, games, food, etc. It was a good time, but hard to say good bye after 3 1/2 years. I miss it a lot.

Jordan - The Petra Treasury, a view of our nightly meal, and a photo in front of Lawrence of Arabia's Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Israel - Wailing Wall, Dome of the Rock, with the Barker family at the BYU Jerusalem Center, the Garden Tomb

Egypt - Camels, pyramids, and a couple of sphynx (the big famous one and the smaller one as well.)

Family Vacation in Utah

Belize - The scuba diving trip of a lifetime

Canada - The West Coast Trail. A 75k, 6 day backpacking trip. Unbelievably beautiful.

Mt. Rushmore

Switzerland - Hiking the Alps

I may eventually get around to posting more pictures and more details from each of the trips, but in case I don't, there is a small sample. It was fun, rushed, crazy, and I don't think I'll ever plan so much in so short a time again, but it was amazing.





Ragnar Relay - Del Sol

Team "We'll Figure It Out Later" after our race.

You can see the numbers--202.1 miles in just under 28 hours and 45 minutes with no sleeping between the start and the finish. 16th place in our division which isn't bad considering we had two people run in full body banana suits.

At the start line. Can you spot our team's runner?

At one of our exchanges somewhere in the middle of nowhere, sometime in the middle of the night.

Most of the team at our final major exchange. We we really low on sleep and full of Ibuprofen at this point.

We spent a lot of time dancing to Beyonce to encourage our team and other runners. Here is me, dancing alone by our car while everyone else is on water and picture duty.

Mark taking us in to the finish line. The rest of us joined him for the final 100 yards of the race--yellow shirts and bananas in hand.

Casa Grande Triathlon

This was after my first (and so far only) triathlon. The goal was to finish . . . and I did.

It was after this that I set my "100 Events" goal--meaning that I had 99 more atheltic events to compete in before reaching the goal. There's no time frame for it really, just sometime before I die. At the latest count, I have currently complete three of the hundred. The Casa Grande Triathlon, the Sedona Half Marathon and 202 mile Ragnar Relay-Del Sol. Event number four is coming up in April with the 178 mile Ragnar Relay-Los Angeles.

Hiking Mount Humphreys - the highest peak in Arizona