mmrobins.com

• I got hit by a car on my bike on Monday. I'm okay except for a few bruises and sore shoulder. My bike is done for #

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• Ran 8 miles last night. It was the third time this week. Tonight I'm doing it again. First time over 30 in a week. #

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• Got a flat tire biking to work today. Forgot to repack my patch kit after using my bike bag for luggage this weekend. #
• Going to see Public Enemies tonight. Got free tickets from work. #
• Reunion pics from this weekend are available as a zip http://bit.ly/11ARdR #
• High school reunion pics on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/mmrobins/sets/72157621358895081/ #

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Class of 1999 at the Mudhole

Time to ask the obligatory question: has it been 10 years already? Fortunately for our class, our senior class president Carey Sauer was totally on top of the organization, so we had an awesome time and a great turnout. We even had some people who weren’t there to graduate with us, but were in our grade for so long I couldn’t believe they weren’t technically part of our class. The best part about the whole weekend was how welcoming and accepting everyone was. Everyone I talked to was genuinely interested in how their classmates were doing, and nobody had a bad attitude. Even the kids at the picnic behaved great.

Friday night was an informal gathering at Kelly’s. Way more people showed up for this than I expected, including the class of 1989, who we didn’t socialize with, but it was interesting they were there just the same. It took me at least a couple hours to get across the bar and even say hi to most people. By the end of the night I didn’t even have time to catch up with everyone who was there. Fortunately, there was time at the picnic at the mudhole (yes it’s actually called that) near Priest River the next day. Carey even enlisted her

Outside the bowling alley at closing time

family to help with all the preparations, which was awesome. Kim and I spent a bit of time trying to teach Ubuntu to swim in the river. That went okay… It was fun to see everybody’s kids.

Dinner was at the Riverbank, and we even got vegetarian dishes which were, of course, big plates of pasta. After dinner everybody went next door to the bar for more drinking and the slideshow that I put together. I was surprised that when I put it on everybody mostly stopped talking and just watched. I kinda messed up and started the slideshow half way through and didn’t put it on repeat, so a bunch of people didn’t see the whole thing since they thought it was over and didn’t pay attention while it looped through later. Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, and ended the night at the bowling alley bar, with a pretty large group hanging on until closing time.

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Matt ferries people across streams

Rather than the usual 4th of July with fireworks and crowds of people, we got away from it all this weekend on a camping trip to Pamelia Lake in the Mt Jefferson Wilderness. We went with our friends Travis and Lucy, and it was Lucy’s 30th birthday on the 4th. This was her first ever backpacking trip, and the longest hike she’s done too, so pretty badass stuff for a divisible by 10 birth year if you ask me…

From the trailhead to the lake is a little over two miles. This was a good distance to go with a pack for people who haven’t backpacked much, and I made it harder than it had to be by carrying in a pack weighing over 40 pounds with all sorts of luxury items like camp chairs and alcohol that I
would not normally carry backpacking. One of the nicest things about this wilderness area is that there’s a limited number of people allowed. You have to get a free permit, and they only give out so many. Of course, this doesn’t stop everyone from entering without a permit, but in general you’ll have fewer neighbors and trail traffic than you would otherwise. We got into the lake camping area late afternoon on Friday, so most of dozen or so sites were taken, but we still got a really nice one right near the water.

We spent the evenings eating and drinking a lot while playing cards and hanging out. We taught Lucy to play Euchre, a game which Travis had just learned the week before at Jacob’s bachelor party camping trip. We mixed 99 Bananas and Peppermint Schnapps with hot chocolate for our desert :-)

Waterfall on the way up to the lakes

Saturday we did a day hike to Hanks and Hunts Lake. This was probably about 8 miles of roundtrip hiking. The hardest part was that we couldn’t find the trail after doing a stream crossing. It looks like the water changes which stream bed it flows down fairly frequently, sometimes choosing the ‘trail’ as it’s path. Kim and I hiked in our sandals, so we would ferry Travis and Lucy across stream crossings so as not to get their feet wet. The hike had lots of views of waterfalls and snow-capped Mt. Jefferson. We got to the first lake and we ate lunch. Ubuntu went exploring the icy lake and fell through the ice into shallow water. Boy was she surprised. After lunch Travis and Lucy relaxed in the hammock we carried up, while Kim and I hiked a bit farther to the next lake for a cold swim.

We were all pretty tired after a hike back, especially after a big dinner and some more hot chocolate and mixers. Lucy brought some sparklers, so we lit those off on the lake shore. The next day we hiked out, had lunch at a Mexican restaurant and drove home to shower and enjoy our comfortable beds again.