With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams...

Happy Father's Day.  10 mile bike ride with MR. And watching the video from the National Hollerin Contest over and over again.

Here's my favorite little bit.  It starts just after the lady is telling a story about how her grandfather asked her if she could holler like a baby pig to help bring the mamma pig back home to the farm. 

Enjoy!

http://s1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff396/quietpirate1/?action=view&current=1308530978.mp4

Didn't get out as early as I should.  The heat was already nasty.  Thank goodness for breeze.

MR ran with me.  We headed out for 6.  He was KO'd after 4.  I ended up running the last 4 myself.  We saw a dead mouse, a dead bird that seemed to be waving it's wing at us as we ran by, and of course orange kitty...who is pretty much just a head and patches of fur on the roadside now.  

Since I've had too many requests to not post photos of orange kitty, I'll post something just as creepy...  It's another selection from the National Hollerin' Competition.  It's a little ditty the man called the "key" holler.  Listen for the monkey and the donkey in the holler!

http://s1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff396/quietpirate1/?action=view&current=1308621795.mp4

what a nice difference it makes getting out an hour earlier.  It was almost pleasant this morning!

quick out & back- nothing spectacular, just a nice breeze and 2 dead snakes.  They were little snakes, so I didn't stop for photos.

I tried to make it a progressive run. avg pace 9:12. splits were: 9:55, 9:33, 9:24, 9:25, 9:00, 8:22, 7:19 (last .22).  So progressive enough, just that one 9:25 to put me off.  I will blame it on the dog that ran out in the road and I had to turn around and yell at him to go home.  Surely that took more than 1 second?

And now to deal with the little gem of a man who sold me a lawnmower that quit working after I drove it around the yard once.  He was wearing a hat that said Jesus all over it.  Not sure how I feel about that right now.

National Whitewater Center- more fun than Disneyland.  No running, but we did:

4 hours of Whitewater Rafting

Canyon Crossing -walking on wires across a ravine holding onto floppy ropes, then zipline back across the ravine. Also, obstacle course on wire with ropes.

4 story drop on the superjump

Rock climbing. I actually made it up to the top of the "medium" difficulty line.  Woohoo!

After a full day of all this fun stuff, we were exhausted and went to Steak & Shake for dinner.  Love that place :-p

Back at the National Whitewater Center in Charlotte.  Sore from yesterday, but ready for more fun!!

 Ran 3 miles around the rapids course..or 30 minutes, I didn't have my garmin, so I just went for 30 minutes & figured it was close enough. 

Then we went whitewater rafting first thing in the morning, kayaking on the Catawba river, back to the Canyon Crossing ropeline obstacle course with zipline at the end, and rode the bikes around the rapids course 4 times, around 4 miles.  The trails were closed because of all the rain the previous night.  They want to preserve the integrity of the trails for the Xterra event coming next month!!

We just finished putting on our water shoes for another rafting trip, and as we were going to our 4:30 show time, we saw that they'd opened the trails.   So we bagged the 4:30 trip and got back on the bikes.  We did around 30 minutes on the green trail, which is honestly adventurous for me, and then MR talked me into going on a blue trail.  I had to walk the bike down one super steep little part, and up a couple of super steep parts, but all in all, it was actually really fun. 1 hour total bike time on the trails.  Not sure of the miles.  My arms & legs all got  a workout.

Here's a photo of MR and I on a flat part of the trail that went along the Catawba River.

Then one more river rafting trip where we had lots of fun and ended up swimming a couple of times.  Great times.  I'd recommend the US National Whitewater Center as a great vacation spot for couples & older kids to anyone!!  It's in Charlotte, and if you're coming in the summer time, let me know because I'll meet you there!!!!   http://usnwc.org/

traveled home from Charlotte and returned to a yard full of tree debris & pine cones.  Took 2 hours to clean it all up. That was my workout for the day.

We missed some wicked storms.  Nice to be home.

Ran 3 to meet up with Wyatt, then we ran 6.  I haven't run with Wyatt in a long time.  It was nice to catch up a little while we ran and found treasures.  MR was the best waterboy ever, as usual.

Photos of snakey-snake and Pooped out 'Possum below.  Not picutured: the mouse, the bird, and the little box turtle that we saved as he was making his way across the road.