Summer Shenanigans and Skeletons

Dearest gentle readers, do I have any other Bridgeton Fans out there? I couldn’t resist.

First off I want to apologize to any of my subscribers for the spam posts going out recently. The technical sides of running a blog is not my forte, but I’m working on resolving the issue. Please note that any time I post it will always have actual words in the title, so if you see a string of numbers as has recently happened quite a few times please ignore that. With that said, I wanted to provide you a REAL post since you have been loyally following my inconsistent blog posts.

This year Andrew and I have decided to focus more on being around friends – so no crazy trips expected for 2024. In May we met up with some new friends and did a small overnight up to Larch Mountain (a 4061ft mountain just outside of Portland that despite the name has no larch trees). Unfortunately it was too early in the season, so snow kept us from summitting all the way to the peak, so I’ll have to tick that accomplishment off my list some other time. We did find ourselves a nice area lower down to pitch our tents with views over the Columbia River Gorge. It happened to be the same weekend as the big magnetic storm so we wishfully stayed up late with our eyes directed to the north hoping to catch the spectacular northern lights display that had graced Portland the night before (which every single one of us had missed so we could get some sleep before camping). Unfortunately other than a green glow on our cameras, the magnetic storm had opted not to put on a show for us. Regardless it was still a fabulous trip.

Thus far that’s been our only overnight bike trip for the season.

One of my favorite things about moving to Portland is the bike community here, and as such we have been taking full advantage of Portland’s “Bike Summer” or “Pedapalooza” and joining in on lots of social group rides. We even hosted our first ride of the season – a Skeleton Scavenger Hunt! It was a huge success. We borrowed a skeleton from our friend Jackie, strapped him to the back of the tandem and led a group of maybe 50 people around NE Portland to find fun skeleton displays around the city. (Portlanders don’t think skeletons should go in the closet just because it isn’t Halloween any more – may as well keep them out all year round!)

We do have a bike camping trip on the horizon, we will be doing a couple days ride out around Couer D’Alene, ID with Andrew’s dad at the end of July. Keep your eyes out for that future post as well.