Earning some couch time

Chris, Toules, and I earned some well deserved couch time the weekend before Thanksgiving. We went to New Hampshire again, and took on some serious hiking and mountain biking. We had a couple friends racing Ironman Arizona, so we decided to tackle some big workouts ourselves - can't let them show us up!

Toules was out of control - loving every minute of the hike.

Saturday's hike was to Sandwich Mountain & Jennings Peak. It was a 10 mile hike, and took 5 1/2 hours. Numerous stream crossings, and steep grades slowed our progress. Temperatures were perfect for hiking though - around 50 and sunny. Toules had the best day of his life - racing up and down the trail. I couldn't believe we didn't have to carry him home.

Toules is way at the top - always waiting for us. Four wheel drive can really help you up the mountain!!

We did have to carry Toules over this stream though. Chris had to help me too :)

At the top of Jennings Peak!

Waterville Valley ski slopes - way off in the distance.

The town of Waterville:

White Mountains of New Hampshire

Ahh, relaxation - love it!!

On the hunt for another hot rod

View from ferry - leaving New London, CT

A 1936 Ford Woodie from Long Island, NY showed up on Ebay. Chris was pretty interested in it, but he wanted to see the car before he bought it. Not unusual, as it's an expensive purchase, and pictures can only tell part of the story. So, we decided to go to Long Island on Saturday. It's a pretty easy trip - drive to New London, CT and take a ferry to Long Island. Fortunately, the car owner lived near the ferry terminal, so he had a friend, that was helping him sell the car, pick us up at the ferry.

Ferry crossing - waves were small, but made the boat rock pretty good at times:

The remnants of Hurricane Ida were affecting us that day - torrential downpour at times. We couldn't take the car out for a test drive, but Chris wasn't too concerned. He mainly wanted to check the underneath, and that was easy to do in the garage. A very nice garage too - old car photos on the walls, and Coca Cola coolers on shelves. This was definitely a 'non car guy' garage though: only one toolbox that didn't look very used and no car grime anywhere.

Alas, the car was not up to Chris' standards - floors had been replaced. And it looked like it didn't fit the chassis anymore, meaning it was probably on a different chassis - not the original. It was still a good trip, and was nice meeting new people. The owner lives on an inlet - look at this view...

Our ferry ride back to New London was uneventful - a lot of people coming and going. The rain had let up, it was now mostly windy. Our car ride home went smoothly too. We got home in time to change clothes, and meet our neighbors for dinner. Fortunately they drove, since Chris had been driving most of the day.

View from Ferry - Long Island side: the dock was so small, we thought we were docking on the beach! And the ferry was over 100 feet long!

The rest of the weekend was cloudy but in the 60's. We met our triathlon club for a trail run on Sunday morning. Then we went on a 2 hour mountain bike ride - mostly road, but some forest trails.

Since I get us too involved, Chris always says, we had a dilemma on Sunday evening. A triathlon club meeting & yacht club meeting were at the exact same time and in different towns. Chris went to the fun triathlon meeting where he heard some experienced triathletes talk about their Ironman experience. I went to the yacht club meeting, as I was being voted onto the audit committee. It was the annual meeting, so they discussed the past year's projects, racing programs, and 2010 budget. There were a lot of members attending, so it was fun to catch up with some I haven't seen in a while.

our yacht club:

Weekend in New Hampshire

Waterville Valley, NH (view of Town Square - across the pond)

We decided a couple months ago to try and rent a winter seasonal apartment in New Hampshire - Waterville Vally. The winters in New England are long, so we thought a nice vacation place would help us get through the winter blahs. I wasn't too optimistic about finding a place, since we wanted to find a 'pet friendly' place. Toules has to come along on our weekend getaways too! I looked a little online, and didn't really find anything. I decided to send an email to a realty company, and asked if they had any pet friendly rentals. The company actually sent me back a handful of listings to my surprise! We went up in early October, viewed a couple units, and picked one! We're all set for winter in New Hampshire!!

pictures of our new apartment building

This past weekend was our first weekend visiting our new pad. It was a beautiful fall weekend - temps in the 50's & 60's. We actually did a couple errands at home before heading north (I convinced Chris to try and rake a few leaves again...same result as the weekend before). We also decided to run our weekly 10 mile run at home, so we could concentrate on hiking and mountain biking in NH (it was a great run - one of our fastest times of the season! 1:29)

We got to Waterville Valley in the early afternoon, checked into our new apartment, then went on an afternoon hike with Toules. He was in heaven - squirrels everywhere!

Waterville Valley ski area

Dinner at a great restaurant in the Town Square to complete our day.

Town Square (lots of shops/restaurants/hockey arena)

Since it's the time between seasons (no snow in NH yet), it was very quiet and peaceful weekend. Very little traffic on the roads and on the hiking & mountain biking trails.

Sunday started off with a short hike with Toules. It was a hilly hike, and you have to cross a stream a few times. After crossing the stream the 2nd time, Toules & I balked at the 3rd, and we headed back down. I wasn't prepared for a technical hike, and breakfast was calling!

After breakfast, we headed out on our mountain bikes. There are a ton of mountain bike trails in the area. Waterville Valley has a very large cross country ski trail system in the winter, and in the spring, summer, and fall, they are open to mountain bikes. So as long as the snow isn't flying, then the trails are open to mountain biking and hiking.



lots of streams in the area!

Chris is a natural on a mountain bike, since he spent so much of his youth & early adulthood on dirt bikes. He has great balance, and naturally knows how to adapt to the varied terrain. Me, not so much. Also take into account my balance issues, and it was an interesting day. I wasn't so bad on the climbing (although I definitely had to push my bike up the super steep hills), but the steep downhills were scary! Fortunately, there weren't many of those!

Chris standing at the top of the really steep hill.

We definitely got a good workout, and I'm ready to get back out there and keep practicing. I hope the snow stays away for a few more weekends.

Ahh, felt good to relax our tired feet & legs after a long weekend.

Fall weekend at home

Halloween weekend, and the weather report looked good: Saturday cloudy, but warm (it got up to 70!), and Sunday showers in the am, but sun in the afternoon. A great fall weekend.

Friday night, we had dinner plans with our friends Linda & Joe from Bristol, RI. We met at Persimmons restaurant in Bristol, RI. Good food, and fun conversation started our weekend off perfectly!

Ahh, it felt good to sleep in on Saturday - until 8:00 - that's late for us. A Starbucks coffee, and a walk in our local forest with Toules was the perfect start.

Saturday afternoon, I decided to mow our lawn, mainly to suck up all the leaves. Chris & I took turns, since we had so many leaves, and had to dump our lawnmower bag so much. A couple hours later, and the yard looked green again. A couple hours after that, and the yard looked like this:

Not sure why we bothered... I also swept the porches, and deck with the same result.

We hadn't been on our bicycles in a couple months since we had been concentrating on running - training for the marathon. So since it was warm, we decided we would go out for a couple hours. We only made it 20 minutes, before Chris got a flat from glass on the road. No problem, except we had cleaned our bikes up, and didn't have a CO2 cartridge (it pumps compressed air into a tire, so you don't have to carry a tire pump) I had to ride home, get one of our trucks, and go back to get Chris. Not a very long bike ride, but I guess it was better than nothing.

Still smiling...

Saturday night, we treated ourselves with dinner to one of our favorite restaurants, Nephews. Beer, salad, and pizza, yum!

Then home early to watch the movie 'Twilight' (ok, nothing special), and the World Series.

Sunday brought us to our long run day. We usually run at least 10 miles every weekend, but this Sunday, we decided we would turn around when we got tired. We ended up running 8 miles - not bad - considering we ran 26.2 miles only a week ago, and we're still in recovery mode. Nice fall foliage, but I didn't bring my camera along. We did a nice foliage drive in another one of Chris' hot rods after breakfast though.

Chris needed to do a project when we got home, so he decided to cut down a dead tree on the side of our yard. It had been dead for a couple years, and was looking like it would fall down in any kind of breeze.

Sunday afternoon, and ready for another hike. We don't go to the forests much during the summer because of all the bugs and mosquitos. We hit them pretty hard during the fall, winter, and spring. Toules loves it!

Hey, wait up!

Pretty... steep!

River otter!

Weekend's almost over. Clocks have been changed back one hour (it's so dark now!), and I'm ready to chill out with a good book!