Down from the mountains and onto the road ....two wheeled style! After deliberating for awhile I've finally made the plunge into road biking. After the first ride this past Saturday on a real road bike (eg. skinny tires); I must admit I like it. I followed Dave on one of his regular routes through the Snoqualmie Valley. We did 40 miles this time out and for the most part I was able to keep up. A lesson learned...if you miss the holder and drop your water bottle on the road, all your drink will leak out before you can hope off the bike and save it. So bring extra. The first photo could be titled "white legs on a nice bike". The next is Dave after 40 miles. My only regret is not taking a photo of Dave replacing his flat tire along the roadside. I think I was too busy being secretly glad for the break! The last photo is my new pride and joy, a Specialized bicycle.

Well, back from a break after that Tonasket posting. Hey...it's tough to follow up on that beauty! Anyway... maybe I should document a few of those I work with? My team of engineers went to the pitch and putt golf course last week for "team building". So this is what civil engineers look like on the golf course. There was also a special treat, in the bottom golf photo you can see Greg Norman joined us for our round! The bottom picture is the view from my new cubicle at work looking west toward Elliot Bay. I like it! Now that summer is officially here those dark clouds are all gone. :)

A few pics from the first adventure to Tonasket. After the weekend of Chelan convention, Ranger Dye and Corporal "Can't hit A Clay Pigeon" Matthews headed north. We relied upon Google instead of the Okanogan County road atlas and promptly couldn't find this beloved gem of a parcel we had purchased. And yes, we'd been there before. So, after an extra hour of "exploring the area"; we set up camp in the dark. Turns out we're not quite as alone as we thought... we appear to be the cow gateway connecting the low and high country. There is a herd of range cattle from the valley below that graze all summer on the higher slopes; so there is a nicely worn path snaking up our land. Although they eat our wildflowers on the way by....they apparently lower our fire danger. Hmmm.....well that's what their owner told us. Nice people really and nice cows too (as far as we could tell). Anyway I also found out one must be careful whom they purchase property with. I think the 2nd to last photo proves the point. Personal issues of this particular land baron aside; he actually worked pretty hard, see our progress in the last photo. With convention and then camping it was a great 4 days and felt like a longer break than that! Um that's actually someone else's "retreat" we discovered about a mile away. Don't get your hopes up :) it's still BYOO but we're working on that.