Modern pioneers

We just celebrated a state holiday in Utah called Pioneer Day. My brother +Kurt Weidmann and I decided that now that I have my weekends back to do fun things, we were going to hike to the highest point in Utah. For me, backpacking helps me recenter my life and gives my brain the space to work through things on its own. The hike didn't look particularly hard from the research we did, but we planned a 3-day trip anyway. We got out fairly late and hiked to the point we wanted to reach the first day and then found a good place to set up our camp. It was swarming with mosquitoes, so we declared that we were going to rest in the tent until we decided to make dinner. That never happened because we fell asleep. We just weren't hungry enough to brave the mosquitoes.

As we took inventory of our situation as we got ready for bed, Kurt found a couple of blisters on his heels. Full-on blisters. So we decided that spending another 2 days wouldn't be our best idea, even though we took care of the blisters. Since the goal was to get outside and play and getting to the top of King's Peak was really just a bonus, we decided to head home the next day and spare Kurt the pain of more blisters. 

In the morning, when we packed up our campsite to move on, a guy in a green jacket walked into our campsite with a shovel. "Hey, good morning," he said right when I noticed that his jacket had a US Forest Service patch. "I'm Steve with the Forest Service and I just wanted to thank you for keeping such a clean campsite and setting it up in a proper location." Ranger Steve thanked us for having a perfect campground. It looked like this.

Yeah, this is after we had camped here. Can you tell where everything was? Of course not. Because we're that awesome. Having Ranger Steve compliment us on our Leave No Trace camping skills was the highlight of the trip.

It was a good thing we had already decided to head home because when I put my boots on, they looked like this:

Having your boots split along a seam is "not nominal," to quote a NASA astronaut who described her experience crashing back to Earth in a Soyuz capsule with a parachute malfunction. So we hoofed it back to the car, meeting lots of people on the trail who wanted to know if we'd seen a couple of teenage boys. Yep, there were some lost Scouts and neither the Scouts nor the adults really knew what to do when they're lost. It bothered me so much that when I got home, I quizzed my kids and they totally knew that you are supposed to sit down and blow your whistle.

The hike back was nice and much faster, since we were going gently downhill and by the end, my boot looked like this:

Seams, schmeams. On the one hand, it'll be fun to get a new pair of boots, but on the other hand, this means I have to pay for a new pair of boots. In any case, we got home safely, had loads of fun and nobody got seriously hurt.

Then on the 24th, Pioneer Day, I ran a 5K with Sophie. She heard about this one at church because it sounded like one of the church groups in the area organized the run, which went from one of the temples in Provo to the other one. And she likes running. I think I covered that in the previous blog post. In any case, we started at the Provo Temple and the run went down (topographically) to the stadium, down about 100 East to the Provo City Center Temple.

Since it was all downhill, it wasn't too bad. And Sophie didn't have the stamina to run the whole way, so I lucked out there. Even with all the craziness the weekend before and the not-training either of us did, we finished and did it in about 40 minutes. Then I went to work. That night, the two of us slept really soundly. And I broke all kinds of records on my Nike FuelBand for activity this last week.\

These are the kinds of experiences that summer is made for. Weekends too. It's nice to have them both back so I can do things like this.

What have I done?

Sophie is a natural athlete as much as Chelsea and I have to work really hard for it. So far, she's earned the Presidential Physical Fitness Award every year she's been in school. And then seemed surprised when we told her that it's actually kind of a big deal. To her, it wasn't hard, she just had to do some stuff. She likes running and while I haven't watched her in PE class, I know her sense of style, so I've got a pretty clear image of what that looks like. It's Sophie in a dress, running around the baseball field at the elementary school. If she's planned for it, she's wearing shiny pink sneakers with her dress, and if not, I think it's totally plausible to assume she runs in her leopard print dress shoes. She keeps asking if she can go running and I really hate running, so we keep suggesting she ask family members who actually like running like Grandpa Sir or Ollie. I don't think she's asked them yet.

Because we live in the kind of place where you can see someone jogging literally any time of day, any time of the year, there's an insane number of events for people who run. It's completely crazy. Anyway, apparently the church is sponsoring a 5K run/walk and Sophie found out about it. It goes from the Provo Temple to the site of the Provo City Center Temple and she decided she wants to do it.

Chelsea decided she was doing enough things already and wasn't going to be involved in training or the actual event (a wise choice), so it was all up to me whether it happened. Did I mention I hate running? I'm not a runner. Sure, I'll run to play baseball or volleyball or even basketball, but just going out and running from one place to another? Not for me.

But it's the kind of thing that the munchkin loves. So I registered the two of us.

The run is next week. Like a week from tomorrow. I'll survive it, but the question is what condition I'll be in at the end of the run. And hopefully Miss Sophie will find a running buddy who's not me. Wish me luck.

Nana's Knock Knock joke

"Knock knock"

"Who's there?"

"Amos"

"Anus who?"

"No, not Anus, Amos."

I was laughing too hard to hear the actual punch line.

Say what again?

Last night I was putting the kids in bed and as I was talking to Sophie, Max came out of his room and said, "Dad, I heard an ominous noise."

"It's fine. Go back to bed, dude."

I know they read a ton, but "ominous noise?" Where do they come up with this stuff?