Mosaic of Happenings

A few short notes of no special relevance, in no particular order:

I rode my bike to work on Friday.
Matt rides his bike in every day- the 7 mile trip takes him 20-25 min each way.
My 9+ mile trip took about an hour.
My friend Adam drove me home, so we could begin our weekend adventures. Next time, tomorrow, I will be driving my bike past some of the scary/trafficy part of the ride, and still probably riding 6ish miles, in 45 min or so. But I have to ride home, too.

* * *

I've been running "a lot"* lately. I bought some new trail running shoes, since my knees report my old ones were wearing out. The first pair I bought were super light weight, looked like a unicorn puked them up (vibrant reds, purples and yellows all swirled together), and made my toes fall asleep when I ran. I traded them in for a blue pair that look like keds skate shoes. The new ones meet the approval of both my knees and toes. And ankles.

*I can claim to be running a lot based on my current Strava standings. Strava is an app that tracks your mileage, records, etc, and lets you virtually race others. I've joined a "how many miles can you run this month?" challenge every month this summer, and I've been in the  top half every time. That's right- I run more than some people!

* * *

This year we were invited to 4 weddings, 3 of them in August.
One of Matt's old roommates got married a couple weekends ago. They found a beautiful castle/B&B in Tacoma to get married in. They rented out the whole B&B for thier family, but most of the family decided to make the drive home after, so we got to stay in the castle over night.
Castle weddings are awesome.
Also, macaroons are a legit substitute for wedding cake, especially (but not only) if you are marrying a French person.

* * *

This weekend, we did a hike to Mt Shuksan and Lake Ann.The trail was storybook perfect, with long meandering creeks that had wide, flat, not-slippery stones at easy points across them, and switch backs that gently climbed us the ~2,000 feet over a ridge.
The appeal of Mt Shuksan is that there are glaciers there. I haven't seen a lot of glaciers not in Alaska. Mt Shuksan has "hanging glaciers." We tried to guess how a hanging glacier was different, and I wondered why one mountain would have more than one glacier.
The actual view looked like some bits of a big glacier were stuck on the side of this mountain- so little compared to glacier attached to ice fields.
Still totally worth the hike.

We also saw some pika.

* * *

For Labor Day weekend, I am going to a wedding in Toronto, and Matt is going to spend two weeks in Death Valley doing "summer testing" of a truck. I assume this means they stress test the truck- driving it hot and hard in the worst possible climate to see if they can kill it. This seems like the weirdest possible way to explore Death Valley, but I'm really excited for Matt to go on this trip.

I'm also excited for when he comes back- we might actually spend a weekend in our own house.
Or we might go camping. With mountain bikes.
I'm excited for both options.