Skating with Friends

Fridays at work are always long.  We are usually understaffed with one person always gone on a flex schedule.  Sometimes people call in sick that morning or take a scheduled day off.  This Friday we were missing two people and we had to deal with Andrea nit picking our work.  It stressed us out and made us really frustrated.  We really didn't understand why she was picking on us for the petty things that shouldn't matter.  I was glad to finally escape from that place for a few days.

Suzanne has wanted milkshakes since Wednesday but decided not to actually get one until after work on Friday.  She asked me if I've every been to Daddy O's and I said no.  I've been there with Lindsay many years ago but never actually got any food.  She also asked if that would be something we could do for dinner.  I said sure.  I would have to ask Ben what he would like.  We all basically got the burger, fries and I decided not to get a milkshake like they both did.  It would have made me more full than I would have been.  I just stuck with the food and had a drink. 

We got to my house and cleared off the table, got some plates and silverware and of course some ketchup for our fries.  We ate our food and chatted about random things.  Suzanne was really excited to go roller skating.  I guess she hasn't been skating since she was in high school.  She seemed apprehensive about it as well.  She didn't let it psych her out. 

I was sad that we were only going to have a few people come out with us.  I was hoping for at least 6 or 7 of us.  Sadly we didn't give people enough time to plan and some people didn't check the Facebook group to find out.  I guess it was just me, Ben, Suzanne and Nicole, who was going to meet us at the rink.

We paid for a 2 hour block from 7 to 9.  Ben and I brought our own rollerblades mostly because we had them and I could not skate in roller skates to save my life.  The wheel placement for me would have been a disaster considering that I've been rollerblading most of my life.  I paid admission for everyone since Suzanne bought everyone dinner earlier.  She stood in line for roller skates while Ben and I put our blades on.  Nicole arrived shortly after.  Last time we skated, which was a couple of Decembers ago, Nicole was hilarious to watch.  This time she was just as funny.

Hugging the wall, shuffle skating and some bobbing in and out of the crowd were just some of Nicole's sweet moves.  I tried to skate with her a few laps just so she wasn't by herself the entire time.  Suzanne definitely has skated before.  At first she had to acclimate herself to the wheels but she was basically a pro after a few laps.  I skated with her a few laps as well.  We really didn't participate in the games such as red light green light, speed skating and musical corners.

There were tons of kids at all skill levels and many adults hugging the walls and some that could be figure skaters.  We even saw a teenaged girl who looked straight out of  the 80's.  She was wearing acid wash jeans that went above her belly button and a really tight midriff shirt.  Her make up even looked from that decade.  And then we saw the guy in the dress.  At first we thought it was a really ugly woman but upon further glances it was a dude.  He hung out with other questionable looking people over in the corner of the building.  They were probably students at Evergreen.

We used the rest of our time skating laps just to get our money's worth.  You could tell everyone was getting tired from the long day at work.  Del was going to meet Nicole at her house around 9:30 so around 8:50 she and Suzanne started taking their skates off.  Ben and I skated a few more laps just goofing around. 

We took our skates off, took a group picture and we all parted ways.  Suzanne came back to our house because she carpooled with us.  We thanked her for going with us.  She headed back home, we got a shower in because I was sweaty.  I watched a few episodes of Bones while Ben played his Xbox game with his friend Josh.  I passed out sometime around 1ish.

A few weeks later I received some new wheels for my rollerblades.  They were getting pretty worn out after 14 years.  Wow!  Has it really been 14 years?

Next Adventure:  Rat Catching

Sledding at Crystal Mountain and Finding a Cache in Two Feet of Snow

Since I had the day off from work for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and I seriously was in the mood for an adventure.  I haven't had an outdoor adventure since Christmas.  I really wanted to do something with snow.  We brought our sleds sorta as a back up if we ended up snowboarding instead.  We got up around 10 and got ready for the day.  We put on our warm clothes, packed up our boots and sleds and Ben made some breakfast sandwiches before we got in the car and headed up Hwy 410.

It was fun driving up 410 and watching the elevation change every mile we drove.  We went from absolutely no snow to almost 2 feet of snow in just a few short miles.  It was gradual so you didn't really notice it. 

I've never been to Crystal Mountain before so I really didn't know what to expect.  I didn't know how big it would be compared to White Pass and Snoqualmie Pass since this one is hidden off of a main road.  The road only went to Crystal Mountain because the rest of it was closed due to the snow amount and if you continued you would be going into Mount Rainier National Park.  I guess it was easier to keep people out by not plowing that area and keeping the gate closed until summer.

We drove up to the parking lots and to my surprise there were lots of people here!  I didn't know how popular this place actually was!  It was really hard to find a place to park. 

We got out and walked to the ski house to find out how much it would cost to spend the rest of the day here snowboarding including rentals.  We found out it wasn't worth the money this time so we walked back to the car and looked for a place to use our sleds.  We parked in a small parking lot and started putting our snow pants, jackets, hats, gloves and boots on.  I wanted to be warm.

We noticed a bunch of people sledding in a no trespassing no sledding area.  They all claimed that they come here every year and do this and they've never been spoken to nor have gotten in trouble by the Crystal Mountain staff.  I said sure, let's do this!  We grabbed our sleds and walked across the street to the hill that everyone was using.  I noticed that it had several small "jumps" at the bottom that we would have to watch out for.

Ben went first with the GoPro.  His trip down did not go smoothly.  He ended up off his sled at the bottom sprawled out.  The footage on the camera looked worse.  Next it was my turn.  I debated whether or not to go down on my butt or on my stomach.  I wished I would have gone down on my stomach because I would have had more control of where I was going.  I chose poorly.  I went down on my butt.  On the way down my disc decided to turn around backwards, and I was going pretty fast, I hit those bumps and flew up in the air and crashed at the bottom pretty hard on my shoulder.  I really hurt afterwards.  The next few times I went down on my stomach and I had more control.

We slid down probably five or six times before it was time to head towards home.  We were getting hungry and we didn't bring any snacks with us.  We got a couple videos of us sledding down the big hill and a few of us down a smaller hill.  We headed back to the car shortly after.  We took our coats, snow pants, gloves, boots and goggles and set them in the back of the car with the sleds.  I knew my body was going to hurt tomorrow especially after that first crash I had.  I think I even hurt the bones in my chest.  I will definitely need to go see a chiropractor as soon as I could.

We drove down the hill to 410.  I asked Ben to park near the gate so I could get some pictures of the Mount Rainier sign and some of the snow.  It was really pretty and I am glad I took pictures of it.  I walked back to the car and told Ben I wanted to find the geocache that was down here.

I figured since we came all the way out here I needed the geocache at the end of the road where the Crystal Mountain road meets up with 410.  Ben said his mom, sister and him found the one by the sign at the end of the road.  I knew there was one there and it couldn't be that hard to find.  I would need a small hint from Ben on which post to check under because that was a lot of snow to dig out.  There had to be at least two feet of snow built up. 

He said he couldn't remember which one exactly but he told me which one he found it under.  It very much so could have been placed back wrong by another cacher as well.  I put my boots back on and waddled out there.  Every step I took the snow went almost up to my thighs.  I made it to the sign and started digging.  He said I would come across piles of rocks next to the poles.  I found the rocks and started prying them off of each other.  They were covered in snow and ice.  I pulled a rock off of the next layer and bam there was the cache container!  I was so stoked!  I found a cache in two feet of snow!!

I signed the cache, took my pictures and then put it back how I found it.  I spent some time burying it back in the snow so if someone else decided to come up here to find it, it wouldn't be that easy too find.  I waddled back to car, took my boots off and jumped in.  We headed back down the highway into Enumclaw, through Buckley and back to his mom's house in Bonney Lake.  We changed our clothes, packed up our stuff, shoved it in the car and headed back to our house in Lacey.

Once we got home, we threw in a load of laundry, made dinner and watched How I Met Your Mother for a while until bedtime.  Boy was I sore the next morning when I got up to go to work.

Next Adventure:  Skating with Friends

Weekend in Bonney Lake

January 13th

Ben and I decided to hang out with his mom and sister during our three day weekend.  We had planned on going to his friend Erin's house for a game night in Kent.  We thought it would make sense to stay in Bonney Lake and make the short drive to Kent.

I got home after work and started packing up our stuff for the weekend.  I asked him if he wanted to enjoy snow on one of those days.  He said sure and we packed up our sleds and our winter gear.  We decided to take Ben's car so we took out all the big stuff he had stored in there and put it in the house.  I started loading in our big bags, snow gear and the sleds.  I grabbed my computer bag, toiletry container and my coats and shoved them into the back of the car.  Ben added his bags.  We believed we were ready to go.

We left around 6 and got to the house around 7ish.  We brought our stuff in and set it downstairs.  Trish was making dinner.  She said she was trying a new recipe, chicken marsala.  It was tasty.  We had rice and salad with it.  We chatted about random things, gave Amy a hard time and listed to the strange things Brad had to say. 

We finished up dinner and ended up playing Ticket to Ride, a train game we received as a Christmas gift.  We've played it a few times already.  This time we weren't going to let Amy do what she wanted.  Halfway in we ate some ice cream Amy bought for us.  I had some Ritz chips and some pop.  The game lasts a while so we all didn't get to bed until about 2 after playing.  I was so tired I just wanted to go to bed but I had to brush my teeth and wash my face and such.  I hit the bed hard.

January 14th

The next morning I woke up around 9 and headed upstairs.  Trish was up making cinnamon rolls and I brought bacon to use up.  Ben came up shortly after.  We hung out most the day watching TV and spending time on our phones and laptops until the Seahawks and Falcons game came on. 

The game started out pretty well.  We scored first and we looked good on our opening drive.  Then all hell broke loose.  We had a really bad second quarter we could not recover from.  Two long kick returns were negated due to penalties that did not exist, which backed us up on our side of the field and one of our offensive linemen stepped on Wilson's foot tripping him into the end zone giving the Falcons a safety and the ball.  I was horrified!  That was the wheels fell off.  We could not recover.  We were missing too many of our starters due to season ending injuries.  It was heartbreaking but there was some good things to come out of the game as well.  It's going to be a long 7 months of no football but somehow we will manage.

During halftime Trish made us her famous nachos.  We inhaled them.

Since we didn't have anything else planned and we really didn't feel like doing anything so we sat on the couch some more and watched New England stomp on the Texans.  If it weren't for Derek Carr getting breaking his leg; the Raiders would be playing the Patriots instead.  We ate pizza for dinner and played dice and a few rounds of Rummy.  We went to bed really late again.

January 15th

We got up around 10ish and I got cleaned up.  After my shower I went upstairs and relaxed a bit.  I finally got Ben out of bed and we went upstairs to help his mom make food.  We ate French toast and some sausage.  It was delish.

We had to wait for Amy to get ready so we could go.  Her shower and putting on clothes took about an hour.  We just sat there and watched TV while waited for her.  We all piled into Trish's car and I called shotgun.  We stopped at Safeway to pick up some flowers for their grandmother's birthday.  Ben and I bought some more soap and shampoo for the downstairs bathroom.

On the way to Auburn, we went the back way through Lake Tapps, I asked if we could stop and get a geocache on the way to their house.  Trish said sure.  I scouted the area around her house and there was a small park we haven't hit up yet that had a geocache in it.  I was stoked!  We stopped for a few minutes to grab Park Play (GC6N9K6) and I let Ben find it.  We signed our names and took a group photo because they are fun a nd I like to take them.

We visited with his grandma and his uncle while the Green Bay and Dallas game played in the background.  We chatted about our jobs, what we've been doing and random things like that.  She told us how her birthday went and the flowers that she received.  We were there for almost two hours before we wanted to head home so we could eat some dinner.  I was hungry.  Along the way home, we heard how Green Bay made some insane plays to take Dallas out of the playoffs.  I was happy to hear that because I knew the Falcons would smash Green Bay next weekend.

We got home and Trish started in on making chili and corn bread.  Meanwhile we watched the Kansas City/Pittsburg game.  Kansas City got robbed.  No doubt about that.  We were disappointed in the teams that made it to the divisional championship round.  It was clear who was going to win those.  The Super Bowl was going to suck this year.

After dinner and cleaning up we played a game of Phase 10.  Halfway through Trish joined us.  We played that for about an hour or so.  We chilled on the couch for a while using the internet and listening to the TV background noise.  It was getting late so I got ready for bed and passed out.  I was so done.

Next Adventure:  Sledding at Crystal Mountain and Finding a Cache in Two Feet of Snow