Today was Miles’s first day back at school for his last year of high school. He and our clematis vine have both grown quite a bit! See here in 2012, and today. Best wishes for senior year, Miles!

We’re spending a couple of very lazy days at Hecata Beach, just north of Florence, Oregon. First, a look at our house from the ‘street’, the back porch that overlooks the ocean, and a panoramic view. There is a large band of greenery (heather?) between us and the dunes that…

John rode a rental bike to the Portland airport (!) on Wednesday morning and picked up our rental car. We then drove to Lewis and Clark, a liberal arts university in Portland to look around, and were really impressed. We then drive south to Corvallis and took a tour of…

Greetings from Oregon! Here are some maps to help orient readers. First, showing Oregon in the pacific northwestern part of the US. Right now we are at the blue dot on the Pacific. And this zoom in of the state of Oregon shows Portland, where we landed, south to Eugene,…

As many of you know, I upped my triathlon game this year by signing up for the next longer distance offered, having done the shorter super sprint twice. This seemed very doable all winter and even early in the summer but I have to admit I was having serious doubts…

We have a reader-submitted video to share this week – James and Issac at the scooter park at Millennium Park in Dublin. This Millennium Park is way better than ours for scootering! Very daring speeds and moves, Issac and James! [wpvideo E1sO6bDi]

This weekend I had a chance to drive out about two hours west of Chicago to Stockton, Illinois, an area on the Wisconsin/Iowa border, near Galena, where my bicycle group was doing a 75 mile long ride through the “Driftless” region, an area of the midwest that was not flattened…

Augusta has been under construction lately, so I have been cycling down Hubbard to get to the lake. There’s a stretch with very cool murals on the railroad embankment – it was all part of a mural project that covers several blocks. And as promised, here are some photos of…

John and I had a lovely weekend in Miller Beach, Indiana. Miles stayed here with Speedy and Roux and went to music festival Lollapalooza, and Liam was in town visiting Kat. We spent some very enjoyable evenings and mornings on Mike and Andrea’s back deck. Their house is built on…

Continuing with the theme of fun visits, Maddie came to stay last weekend while Debbie and Jeff went out for a night of Blue Man Group and dinner at Beatrix, then stayed at a hotel downtown. We went to Smith Park on Saturday – always fun to be back at…