Another busy weekend...

Early last week, I signed up for a trail run on Saturday thinking I wasn't gonna be able to head up to the mountains so I might as well.  I hadn't really been running, so I figured a half marathon would be good.  And it was quite good.  I think I was the only runner who mistakenly put their number on the back of their shirt...

from http://www.coastaltrailruns.com/cm_wntr_canyon_meadow.html 

For those of you who haven't done any of these trail run events (this was my first)... it's a lot of fun.  There seems to be 3 folks who organize these races around the bay area.  I haven't done any of the other two... I just did this race as it was 10 min away from my house.  Actually more like 12 min... as I woke up at 7:35 (as I turned the alarm off)... got to the staging area at 7:48, parked in the overflow lot (a mile away), ran to the bathroom, and registered for the race as they were counting down... 10...9...8... Perfect timing!

• Coastal Trail Runs
• Pacific Coast Trail Runs
• Inside Trail Racing

There were probably 200 folks there, which was quite a surprise to me as it had been raining all week and the trails were quite muddy with tons of downed trees.  Felt a lot tougher than Tough Mudder jumping over trees, hopping over streams, and crawling under some branches.

finding yu-mo...

 

After this quick escapade, I made it home to say good bye to the Schmidt's who have been in town for their spring break.  Looks like we had a visitor last night on our front porch...

After walking to Piedmont Ave with Kimbo & Mingie to pick up a bagel, I got to work on a few things I've been meaning to do:

Make some parallettes... voila!  Following these directions... except I had to go for 1.25 in piping as Home Depot didn't have enough T joints for the 1.5 in PVC... http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/13_03_Parallettes.pdf

Make a Greenland Paddle... I've been meaning to do this for a while as I have 3 kayaks and 2 paddles.  Plus Wile-E, my wooden boat has been yearning for a wooden paddle.  He told me he wants one for X-mas last year... http://www.blueheronkayaks.com/kayak/paddle/article/makegreen.htm  The key to making these for me was finding a really sharp knife to whittle down the paddle once the shape has been cut with a band saw.  Sharp knife at my household = kitchen knife.  And it worked wonderfully.  Now I've got to sand it down, test it, and finish it. 

AND I got another unicycle.  Just a 20 in. MUNI, not a 36 in coker like I really want (I'm saving up for that)... but I'm pretty stoked on it nevertheless.

And finally, I got to spend some time in the kicthen (aka Oakland's Test Kitchen) and made some Lemon Gelato with our newly acquired ice cream maker.  mmmm...  We have an overstock of lemons from our lemon tree and I've been trying to figure out how to go through all of these lemons.  And I figured Lemon Ice Cream would be a fun present to give to our friends.  So I'm still working on the recipe... lots of taste testing... it's a lot of manual labor.

That was Saturday (St. Patty's day)... forgot to wear green...

Sunday I went skiing!  Best day of the season.  I'll report on that later... hopefully.