Campin the Dunes
OK, I am being lazy here but Kelly did such a good job writing up our camping trip I am going reuse it below. Hope you all enjoy it! PS. You can tell its
hers because of the lack of capital letters.
last weekend heath and i went camping in
Michigan at warren dunes state park again. this time, heath's brother,
Luke, and his girlfriend,
Rebbecca met us there for the weekend. this trip started off absolutely horribly.1) we got a later start than anticipated, so we didn't get to the campground until 10:30 pm, which meant setting up the tent and everything in the dark.2) when we got to our reserved site, we found that it was now a lake. there were 3-5 inches of standing water on the entire site. so we had to go get a new one from the booth, which, thankfully, was open.3) we realized that when we left in such a hurry, we failed to bring flashlights. yeah. whoops.4)
Luke and
Rebeca were coming via a slightly different route than us, and ended up getting stuck on 80/94, which was completely closed in both directions due to flooding. they ended up being on the road for an ungodly amount of time, and arriving at the campground at 3:30 in the morning.5) while at the campsite and trying to figure out
luke and
rebecca's progress, heath could not have had a harder time getting a cell phone signal, so calls kept dropping, adding to the frustration.6) it rained overnight that night so everything we had left sitting out was soaking wet by morning.
so that was the bad part. by late morning on
saturday, things started to turn around. poor
rebecca, who had never been camping, was (rightly so) not loving the whole wet/tired/crappy experience so far. once the sun started to come out, things improved. we had lunch on the campfire, managed to get some of our stuff to start drying out, and
everybody's mood improved. we hiked around a bit, and climbed the big dune near the campground. after that, we decided to drive over to the beach and hang out there (since we were all still sort of tired and worn out from the
challening 12 hours previous). we got to the beach and the waves were HUGE! huge as in they would literally knock us down, great for
bodysurfing and inadvertently removing swimsuit tops and bottoms if one failed to be diligent. it was a lot of fun, even though we got knocked around a bit too much from time to time. after the beach, we went back to shower and eat. unfortunately, heath had to be on his phone and laptop for several hours dealing with a work issue. once that was over, we sat by the fire a bit longer and hung out before going to bed.
sunday was pleasant, too, we slept in and got to picking up the site to get ready to go home.
overall, it ended up being a really nice time. we had a lot of fun with
luke and
rebecca and laughed a ton despite the horrendous beginning of the trip. we're hoping to go camping again before winter comes, possibly in two weeks out near where heath grew up. hopefully it won't be immediately following torrential downpours!
Take Cover In Your Nearest Panera!
Ok, so I am driving back from
Champaign, IL this afternoon and listening to Chicago news radio and I am hearing all sorts of reports of a terrible storm that blew threw earlier in the afternoon. Power is out all over the place, trees are down roads are flooded and people are being told to stay at work or home because the roads are so bad that traffic is backed up for hours. On top of this there is another bad storm blowing into the area. I was about 45 minutes from the south suburbs when I decided to pull into the last rest stop before the city. I had the first
inclining's that I had to go to the rest room and didn't want to be stuck in grid lock having to go! While I was there I made some calls and found out that things were worse than I had feared. Even Kelly was telling me I might be better off getting a hotel room instead of trying to get through tonight. What to do what to do? As I am contemplating my options I notice that an
ominously dark line of clouds are bearing down on my location. I decide to go up the road a bit to Highway 30 to find a place to hunker down. I make it to a
Panera Bread restaurant just as the local tornado sirens are going off. I duck inside just as the rain starts and purchase a cinnamon roll and iced green tea and settle in next to a window with my laptop to watch the show. As the storm blows in one of the employees comes by and asks if I really want to be sitting by the window. Of course I do! Not a lot of people (other than close family maybe) know that I am absolutely
fascinated with big storms. I love it when a big
scary one blows in and I can watch it for hours. When I was a kid, I even thought it would be neat to be a storm chaser when I grew up!
Ok, I still do, but it doesn't really pay the bills! So, I am now sitting here in the
Panera, watching Mother Nature's
laser light show as the lights dim and flicker with each lightning strike. I love this stuff.
Hopefully things will clear up in the next hour or so, so I can get back home tonight. Anyway, I hope all of you are fairing well through the storm.
Labels: nature, panera, storms
The Middle Port In for a Visit
So, this weekend my middle brother Luke came into town to visit, collecting the
prestigious honor of being the first out-of-town visitor to visit our new abode. He came into town early Friday evening and we put him up in the office/second bedroom for the weekend. That evening we went out for pizza at
Gulliver's in Rogers Park (Chicago). Its a little neighborhood nugget that we found not too far from home with great pizza and a very eccentric decor. The place is decorated from floor to ceiling with thousands of antiques and old lighting
fixtures. Seriously you could look around for hours and constantly find something new. To top off the evening we went back to
casa de ChamPort for a little Guitar Hero tourney. We started off playing Dance Dance Revolution but Luke and I were not coordinated enough (or too tired) to get the hang of it so we switched to Guitar Hero Encore. After that we hit the sack.
The next morning we let Luke sleep in for awhile and then we when to Potbelly's for lunch and then made our way out to Clark Street Beach in
Evanston around noon. The beach wasn't crowded the sun was out and the lake was warm. It all combined for a beautiful day at the beach. We spent a lot of time in the water
swimming around and playing with a new toy Kelly found online called a
WoBoBa ball. It is made in such a way that you can bounce it off the water. Later in the afternoon the wind kicked up and we got some good size waves coming in so we went back into the water to play. By about 4 PM we decided to hit the showers and go get some grub. As we were heading back to the apartment we all noticed how red each other were and realized later that we should have applied some more sun block. At least Kelly doesn't have to worry about those weird tan lines she got during her
triathlon the weekend before. We were all seriously burnt!
After our showers we decided on dinner at
FlatTop's Grill in
Evanston. If you never have been there they have a buffet of vegetables sauces and meets that you put in a bowl and drop off at the counter and they cook your collection up on a giant grill and bring it to your seat when it is done. In the past I have had some good experiences at this place but our experience that night was not great. By the second round of food Luke found a hair in is mix that grossed everyone out. On top of that my second round of food did not come until well after Kelly and Luke had stopped eating. After the hair and the wait I was no longer hungry. We decided to get out of there and try and make the 7:40
Bourne Ultimatum at the local theatre. Before we left Luke decided to make a sign on his
place mat complaining about the hair in his food where he strategically placed the hair on the sign with a circle around it and arrows pointing at it! I wonder if they got the hint?
From there we made haste to the theatre where the movie was going to start in 5 minutes. By the time we got to the counter the woman tells us that the show is sold out. This was surprising to us because it had been showing for a week at this point. The next show wasn't coming on until 9:45. We decided to hangout in downtown
Evanston until the next show. Luke and I decided to buy the tickets for the next show in advance since the first one was sold out and it turned out that was a smart choice. We killed some time at Urban Outfitters and then headed back to the theatre 30 minutes before show time. We bought some snacks and made our way down to the theatre only to find a line outside of the door 30 minutes before show time. Finally, we got in and found decent seats. The showing sold out (thank goodness for buying tickets in advance and showing up early). Fortunately, the movie was really good. After that we decided to head back to the apartment. Unfortunately, I lost my parking ticket so I had to pay the maximum to get out of the garage, but I was tired and didn't care at that point. We closed out the weekend by sleeping in Sunday and then Luke had to leave early because he needed to get back for an open house for a house he was thinking about buying. Kelly and I just worked on getting my fish tank moved from my old place to our new place. We also had to do some minor fish surgery because my catfish got his fin all stuck in the net. He seemed to be doing
ok this morning.
Labels: Family, Leisure
More the Iron Man than I'll Ever Be!
So now that I got my little race description out of the way, I would remiss to not give the loyal readers of this blog an account of something that dwarfs the muddy buddy. The day before my race in the Muddy Buddy, Kelly ran a half iron man
triathlon in Benton Harbor, MI. For those of you unaware, a half Iron Man is a 1.2 Mile Swim, a 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run all done back to back to back. That's 70.3 miles total of non stop movement! She started the race off with the swim at
around 7:30 in the morning and crossed the finish line 7 hours later. She looked great smiling and running out the final stretch where others were crossing with a look of agony Kelly looked like she could run another 13 miles!
I know she will try to down play all this but it took a ton of determination and a lot of adversity for her to sign up for this test of endurance and stick with all the training and mental preparation it would take to finish something this grueling. I know I am extremely proud of her and from the support she received by having her whole family there I can tell that everyone is proud of her! This will be an accomplishment we will all be able to look back on with pride. She was able to see this through to the end even while dealing with some adversity and distractions in other parts of her life and that to me is something to be admired. She is an amazing woman and I hope she realizes this and that when she puts her mind to it she can accomplish and over come anything!
Back after popular demand, I am finally getting a post out there. My apologies to the 3 or 4 of my loyal readers for not keeping this updated more regularly lately. With the recent move and Kelly's half
iron man and my race, there wasn't much time for blogging.
Now that things have settled down a bit I thought I would post an update on how my Muddy Buddy adventure race went. I was hoping to have some pictures to include with the post, but somehow my partner and I did not make it into any pictures taken by the photographers at the race. Fortunately, Dan's (my race partner) wife had her camera and was able to snap a few good ones at the beginning and end of the race, but she doesn't have them uploaded yet. I will try and post some once I have them from her.
The Muddy Buddy, is a 7 mile long course over pastures, dirt trails through woods. Each leg is around 1.3 miles. Well as you all know, my race started at 7:30 AM the day after Kelly's half
iron man, so after trekking from Benton Harbor, MI to
Elgin, IL Saturday afternoon, we settled in for some dinner and then sat in the hot tub for a while at the hotel. The weather worsened shortly after we got to
Elgin and began to rain, but with the race not starting until Sunday morning I was not worried. Then Sunday morning came I what do I found outside my window but a steady rain fall still coming down. Not to be deterred we packed up and headed out to the race at Indian Hills Farm outside of
Elgin. As we parked the car and grabbed the stuff to head up to the registration tent, the sky completely
opened up and came down on us in buckets making a wet situation wetter. The girls retreated back to the car and Dan and I (already wet from standing outside) made our way to the registration tent about half a mile from the parking area. The rain continued to come down as we got our stuff and then went back to the car to get the bike and the rest of our gear for the race. By then the ladies had dug up a couple of umbrellas for themselves and all 4 us made our way back to the starting area. As we got closer to race time the rain finally started to let up and about 10 minutes before the start it completely stopped! Although, little did we know the damage was already done. Keeping in mind that the course is approximately 85% off road on pastures and dirt trails through the woods you can imagine what kind of condition the course was like after having 2" of rain dumped on it
all night the night before. We decided that I would run the first leg and Dan would bike because he had hurt his hamstring a few weeks before and thought the biking might be easier on it. Since who ever runs first ends up running the most legs it made sense that I should do it. Right away into the first leg I knew we were in trouble. As I ran, the course got progressively
gooier. Running it it was a trick, but imagine riding a bike through it. They
start the race wave by letting the bikers get a 2 minute head start then they let the runners go. By the time I got to the first transition point and traversed the
obstacle (climbing wall) Dan had already dropped the bike off and began running the next leg of the race. When I found the bike it was caked with mud and I had to dig globs of it out of the brake assembly before I could take off. About 50 yard in I foolishly decided to shift into another gear to ease up the peddling and felt the chain give way completely. I looked down and sure
enough it had come off the cogs. I quickly got off and flipped it up side down to get it back on track as another racer passed by saying, "its going to be a long day man." Boy was he right. I manged to get the chain on with minimal effort and took off on the leg again catching and passing my teammate about 100 yards form the 2
nd transition. I dropped the bike off and threw a cup of water in my face and made haste to the 2
nd obstacle (a balance beam). As I ran by the race official I stated, "nothing like racking myself to get the morning started" and climbed up and carefully made my way across (found out later that my teammate had fallen off of them) and took off on the 3rd leg running. All along the way was muddy and big puddles every 10 feet or so and I quickly decided that it was just easier to run through them than to try and go around each one so I began splashing my way along about about 4 puddles into this plan I stepped into one that was about knee deep and almost when face first into it. Toward the end of this leg was a huge steep hill that the bikers were pushing their bikes up and the runners were barely maintaining a brisk walk up it and then we hit transition 3 (giant inflatable climbing wall with mega slide on other side). I quickly made my way over this and found the bike my teammate had just dropped off. The next couple of legs involved 3 more steep hills and a
nother climbing obstacle. In the final leg my
teammate and I spent a
large part of it together because he need to walk the bike through several parts of it and I kept catching up to him. Then we came to what can only be
described as a marsh land. Normally this looks like it would have been a pasture in a low area. As we looked head to the few dozen people carrying their bikes through the 100 yard long area we realized that this was going rough. We started out as Dan hoisted the bike up and we slopped through the soup. A little ways in I saw he was struggling with the bike and asked him if he wanted me to carry it for awhile. He wasn't sure if that was against the rules since it was his leg to ride the bike. But considering the bike was riding him at that moment and he had a bum hammy I went ahead and took. Little did I know that it weighted and extra 30 to 40 lbs with the extra mud on it and it was quite a work out. Once we got through this point we came to solid ground an Dan got back on the bike and rode it to the last transition point just before the finish. I took off running and met him there couple of minutes later and together we crawled into a trenched out mud pit that we had to crawl through for about 20 yards together before crossing the finish line.
We were tired and muddy but smiling. We found out later that we finished the race in 1 hour and 10 minutes about 15 minutes after the first people to complete the course which was pretty good considering there was a wave in front of us. It was a great time and it truly lived up to its name as the Muddy Buddy! I would also like to give a shout out to my buddy buddy partner Dan for braving the whole thing on a bum hammy and my lovely girlfriend for cheering me on, even if she didn't want to give me a hug when I crawled out of the mud and crossed the finish :).
