The Plague

We have it. "We" meaning the short one and I. Yesterday we hit the road for a quick trip to Bend and Mt Shasta only to find, while Anna was giving a presentation yesterday and couldn't stop coughing, that her demise was soon to come. Hope we made it out before infecting the tall guy! When we left home she was loading all the fun stuff (bikes, dirt shoes, helmets) and now we are sitting in the Oakridge house drowning in balled up Kleenex and empty chicken broth boxes. To add to this viral intruder, shorty decided to drop caffeine figuring she might as well suffer all at once. What does this mean for me? That I need reinforcements ASAP. HELP!!!! She won't let me photograph her so I leave you with these lovely shots from yesterday's drive.

I LOVE smelling luggage

Sometimes I think that maybe I should have taken up drug or bomb sniffing as I find sniffing luggage to be immensely satisfying. Take, for example, the bag of smells my short one just came home with. She's been in DC for a week which is a smelly city. Her shoes have walked through the halls of the senate and house buildings, into the offices of senators and congresspeople (a couple of them even had dogs in them!), through the DC metro (she calls it the gerbil tube), along miles and miles of side walk littered with stinky city stuff and through airports and hotels for 6 days. That bag of dirty cloths and shoes is like Christmas for a dog! I must have spent a solid 39 minutes sniffing all the sniffs out of it when she got home. Also, I was wondering why there were so many tall shoes and suites but hey, what happens in DC stays confusing to dogs. I'm just glad she's back and that I don't live where she was because it smelled a lot like concrete and the place we go sometimes where I mostly stay in the car and very little like dirt, sweat and trees which are the smells I relate to fun. Well, also I like the smell of things that are decaying but my peeps don't approve of that.

While the short one was in DC pretending to be tolerant of crowds, uncomfortable attire, a couple inches taller, and bad food, the tall one was taking a really cool instructor certification program at the indoor bike park in Portland. I think we can all agree that this week JW wins for coolest job. Also, he's now a certified mountain bike instructor so maybe he'll be able to teach the short one how to ride a bike at a speed that does not necessitate quite as much waiting on our parts. Though, these days I never turn down a break. So, here are some photos of marginal quality from the past week. Though it seems the only one from DC is of the tiny plastic bike pins that Anna refuses to wear and Congressman B always takes great pleasure in pushing.

Mountain in the middle

Just across the Hood River from our house lives a mountain called Gilhouley but most people call it Middle Mountain because its in the middle of stuff. It's in between two main roads, in between two big volcanos, in between two major orchard valleys and there are probably other human reasons.

The short one used to take me running up the crazy steep and treacherous dirt road until we were followed by a large cat. Now she packs a can of pain in her pack and rides up instead. Apparently large cats like small things and she's bigger on a bike. So I say, where the hell is my bike???

The peeps dream of building a network of trail on Middle Mountain to compliment the existing moto trails which are very
unfun on a mountain bike. But for now we've got this few miles of steep grunty climbing to keep the dirt shakes at bay and a network of roads and moto trails to rip around on.

The trails are fun but its the river between our house and the mountain that is the best. Despite the fact that it washes off all the mud I so carefully covered every inch of my body with while on the trail, there's nothing better than saving drowning sticks for a bit before going home.

Jinggangshan

The tallest guy in China is one of the peeps' coworkers, Chris. He's 6'7"ish and he's been working on developing some new mountain bike projects in China. It seems he's been lonely hanging out at such high altitudes as the average male height in China is 5'4.9" so he's recruited Jason to join him for a month of trail building and bike park design in Jinggangshan. Awesome deal for Jason! Not so awesome for the short one and significantly less awesome for me. The tall one's absence poses a few major issues for me, all related to food.

1. He is the only one who feeds me people food

2. He wakes up earlier than the short one and feeds me first thing

3. He is a sucker

So now not only will my access to bacon, broccoli and sweet potatoes be significantly reduced, I will also have to wait an extra 20 minutes or so for breakfast and have to work a lot harder for treats. I'm contemplated stowing away in one of his bags but I've heard some strange rumors about what some people in other countries consider to be edible and fear I might end up on the menu... or maybe that's just in Canada? If I decide to stick around and keep the short one company (while slowly starving to death) please come visit and feed me. I suppose she'd be stoked on some human interaction too as she tends to have creepy cat lady tendencies when left on her own for too long and we don't need any cats. 

Here are some photos I stole from the internet that are supposed to be of Jinggangshan. Looks pretty cool!

Wiggly dawg is slowing down.

It's true, I went on a ride with the tall one and was set back for a couple days. Sore dog joints resulted in an increase in fish oil on my food and some dog drugz that dull the pain. Sadly this means that I'm not up for the big rides anymore. Luckily my people rock so they will still do their big rides and add special Moxy rides to the end so I can still have some fun. It's awesome being me:). And, as always there are strange people things happening such as the jars of rotting cabbage in the kitchen. They call it "fermenting sauerkraut" and I call it something that needs to rolled in. Anything that smells that much like a fart deserves a good roll.

The short one has mistakenly tried to pretend it's summer by riding her road bike up the roads that are only open in the summer which, today, resulted in a
bit if snow hiking in road shoes and a couple icecream headaches. She followed that up with a trip to Portland to snag the Shays' from the airport and have a tasty city dinner with our favorite little boys and their rad Mamma. Luckily for her she brought home a dogie bag:)

The tall guy's been digging in the dirt and riding lots. We find out tomorrow if he'll be ditching us for a month of bike park building in China!! Basque0 and I have discussed this and while we will miss him horribly we both agree that given the opportunity there's no question we'd take it so here's hoping for some Asia adventuring!

That's all I've got for now.

People are strange.

To start with, they call these cows "Dinner, Lunch, Breakfast and Tasty". I suppose once they become those things it might feel a little more ok but right now they are more than just a piece of meat! We stopped by our neighbor's house today to visit our future grass fed meal and pick up a chicken coop. The peeps will soon be chicken farmers and I will probably just be in more trouble and stinkier than usual.

The short one has been taking the skinny tire bike out a lot this week which means I don't get to go. I've been contemplating chewing its wheels off so that she's got no choice but to mountain bike but I'm not sure how that would go over.

Luckily for her and her wheels the peeps took me swimming on the Hood today. It was cold and beautiful and the sticks were glorious.

Hijacked by the short one.

Anna here. Moxy's been slacking on blogging because I left and took all her interwebing tools with me. Where did I go you ask? I went to Maui. And thanks to a couple really generous people, I didn't wear down for 7 days. My skin turned red in a couple places. I hung out with a bunch of amazing people. I cheated on Moxy with a golden retriever named Yoshi. I tasted some strange green things that I assumed were edible based on their location at the grocery store and later decided I might have been wrong. I sang the ABCs with a sweet 2 year old named Rose. I stayed in a lovely house with a pool where I could hear the waves in the distance and roosters in the less distantness. I did some work. I ate enough fresh avocado to fuel a jet, or just an out of shape 31 year old girl on a bike. I hiked in the woods and walked with a couple awesome Tracys while overlooking the ocean. And I spent much of the week chasing Dylan all over the place on a road bike. We went up hills pretty slow and down hills really fast. I stretched a lot. I smiled a lot. Oh, I also went to the beach... Once.

Really, the only thing that wasn't completely awesome was the lack of J-Dub. He was missed but he had some fun in Sedona so at least we were both having fun in separate sunny places togetherish.

Characters, views and adventures: