Christmas 2010

I can't believe January is almost over. Time is going so fast! I'm finally getting to blogging about our Christmas. We went to my family's house in Idaho this Christmas. I was really excited because I hadn't seen them since last Christmas. We had so much fun together and my family really spoiled us with great cooking, great presents, and lots of fun things to do. The picture to the left is Chad's autograph Chumlee mug - one of his favorite Christmas presents. Chumlee is a character from a show Chad really likes called Pawn Stars.


Here are some more Christmas highlights:


One of our family traditions is to make a gingerbread house on Christmas Eve. We haven't quite mastered getting the frosting to dry quickly enough, so our house usually falls down several times before we finish it. We still have fun though and enjoy eating all the gingerbread, frosting and candy.




Chad and I made Lomo Saltdao for my family - our favorite kind of Peruvian food.
















Since last Christmas we have kind of made it a tradition to go clay pigeon shooting on Christmas day. My dad got a clay pigeon throwing for Christmas this year so we were able to try it out. We had fun, but didn't stay out for long because it was SO windy.



















Over Christmas break I also got together with quite a few of my good friends from high school. It was so much fun to see everyone again and meet their spouses and kids! It brought back lots of fun memories. Here's most of the group.


















We had a lot of fun going up to the mountains with my family and four-wheeling in the snow. Chad went off four-wheeling by himself one time and didn't come back for a long time. My mom started to worry a little so they got in the car and went to look for him. Chad got stuck in the snow and couldn't get the four-wheeler out. He tried for about 30 minutes until my parents came to help him. Chad seems to always have lots of adventures when we go four-wheeling at this place. Last year Chad's phone fell out in the snow and we miraculously found it the next day.
















It was fun to have Brian back with us this Christmas (he was on a mission last time), but now Brandt is on a mission and we missed him lots!

"Miss Wallace you are the best thechr in the hole wold..."

This is a letter that one of Michelle's first grade students wrote to her. I thought it was too cool to not share. This same student also asked Michelle several times last week for a map to our house so she could come visit over the weekend.

Adventurous Biking

If you don't live out East, or if you haven't seen the news about the weather out East, we got our first big snowstorm yesterday. Here in D.C. we had somehow managed to avoid all the winter storms so far this year that hit other states around us...until yesterday. Around 3:00 pm, right around the time we were leaving to go home from work, the snow started to fall. I had ridden my bike to work in the morning, and I really didn't want to leave it there and take the Metro home or make Michelle come pick me up, so I decided to just ride my bike home. I had ridden in the snow lots of times, so I wasn't too worried about it, but I had never gotten a flat tire in the snow, until yesterday!

After just a couple miles (on Beach dr., which is the road that goes through Rock Creek Park) I was riding further out from the curb that I normally do because the snow and water was accumulating along the side of the road near the curb. Also, the snow and water was covering up a lot of the big potholes in the road. I went over a particularly large pothole pretty hard and little while later I noticed my rear tire was flat. At this point, huge pieces of snow were falling from the sky, and there was a lot of snow on the ground. I knew it would be tough and painful to change the tube in my tire in the snow, I would have to take my gloves off, so the first thing that crossed my mind was that I needed to find some type of shelter to change the tube. I was really lucky that there happened to be a bridge just a short distance away. I walked my bike to the bridge and then carried my bike underneath it.

I had gotten a couple flat tires before, but I always had the help of either a friend or a kind passerby on bike to stop and help me change it. This time, I was on my own. I took my time and got to work. I had to use the icy river water to clean off the tire. Fortunately I had everything I needed to change and inflate a new tube on my bike and I was able to do it. This was a huge relief. I had tried to change a tube before but couldn't. I am definitely confident enough to do it on my own now, and I know exactly what to do. I guess there is no better way to learn than when you have to do it...because, well, you have to do it. It would have been an absolute disaster if I needed someone to come pick me up, not to mention dangerous with inches of snow on the grounds. I put everything back together on the bike and hit the road. Hesitant at first to make sure the tire would be alright, but eventually riding confidently. I think I will carry two extra tubes from now on, just in case.

After changing the tube, but before getting back on the road, I took a fe pictures of where I changed the tube underneath the bridge. These were taken on my iPod, so not the greatest quality.

100.4 miles -- I did it!

This is a map of where I rode yesterday (50 miles out plus 50 miles back, 100 miles total). I started where the red line starts in the bottom right of the map, near DC. I think that seeing how small the DC city limits are in comparison to how long the red line is (indicating where I went) gives some perspective of how far I rode.





Yesterday I went on a 100 mile bike ride (100.4 to be exact - I know this thanks to my GPS watch). Whenever I have a day off work I like to go on a long bike ride, as opposed to the normal commute I do to and from work on most work day. Speaking of commuting in to work, I never wrote about it but I have finally moved up to riding in to work every day. I have been able to ride in every day for the last two weeks. Back to yesterday though: my 100 mile bike ride. I woke up pretty early for having the day off, and I was out the door by 8:00. I went on a really nice trail called the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, or the WOD (pronounced wad). It starts just a couple miles from where we live, and goes through several cities and counties. It is one of the longer and nicest trails (in my experience so far) in the DC area. My only complaint might be that it all looks pretty much the same as opposed to Rock Creek Park which has a variety of streams and even the occasional deer. At any rate, the WOD starts out here in Alexandria and passes through Falls Church, Vienna, Herndon, Ashburn, Loudon County (at some point...I can't remember which city was in Loudon County), Leesburg, and finally Purcelleville. The trail is only 45 miles long so if I turned around at that point I would have only had a 90 mile round trip. Thus, I kept on going down some road in a city I had never been to until I would up in a nice residential neighborhood and was 50 miles away from home. Being at the halfway point, I lied down in the grass and ate my little lunch I prepared and called Michelle to check in. When I started the 50 mile trek back home I still felt pretty good, but after 20 miles (70 miles total trip) I really started to feel it in my legs and even my back from leaning forward for so many hours (my total time biking was about 7 hours). I just kept thinking of how much I wanted to be home, and the miles started to go by pretty slowly the more I want to get home. In some ways it might be better to not be able to see EXACTLY how far you have gone, maybe I won't take the watch next time. Anyways, nnedless to say I made it home and Michelle was eagerly waiting to make sure I was ok. She got me a hot towel to put on my feet, which had been numb for about the last 4 hours of the trip (it was at or below freezing for most of the time I beleive). I have the right stuff for riding in the winter but I don't think it is good enough for spending as long as I did in the winter freezing. I was talking to a friend who also bikes and he says I might have had hypothermia because normally you are really hot after riding 100 miles, not frozen like I was. The winter riding gear I have is excellent for keeping warm on my daily commutes but I think spending 7+ hours in the freezing cold requires more, it is just too many hours to spend in that cold of weather. So I can tell you one thing, I will not do a bike ride that long until it warms up significantly, maybe not even until the Spring or Summer. I did enjoy the ride though and do look forward to riding a century (100 miles) again and trying to improve my time - I definitely didn't set any new world records for 1oo mile bike rides but I had a great time doing it. I found this picture on line of a part of the trail. Even though there is more variation in the scenery than what you can see in this picture, this is what a great deal of it looks like (and how it looked while I was on the trail). It should be gorgeous once things start warming up and the plants all come back.