Month: May 2025

I won two gift certificates to Mountain Burger in the Pole Pedal Paddle, so we went and used them this week.

When the weekend came, we loaded up the camper and headed out east to Spray, OR (pop. 145) for the Spray Rodeo.

We camped on the John Day River.

I did some fishing,

and some swimming,

and some marshmallow roasting.

I slept well in my new bunk:

On Sunday, we went for a bike ride. It was beautiful, though a bit tough.

The last climb kept going and going. I took some breaks:

On Monday, we stopped at the Painted Hills National Monument on the way home for a short walk. Papa should remember this view:

We made it home just in time for my riding lesson. I rode Jack this week, and we did a lot of loping.

This week, Dad made a recipe from The Mother’s new cookbook. Porchetta chops ( pork chops wrapped in pancetta and seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic, orange zest, fennel fronds, sage, and rosemary)

and he served them with a fennel salad and green beans.

Big week this week. I started it out with some horseback riding – and some poop shoveling!

It was Pole Pedal Paddle weekend. This year Dad and I raced together in the Family Pair category. Dad started things off with the alpine ski.

He passed me the timing chip, and I was off on the Nordic ski. I hammered right from the start and just started dropping people.

Here I am coming up to the finish. Notice all the adults close behind me.

Now notice that, not but 20 yards later, I have completely dropped them. I passed the chip to Dad, and he took off on his bike, racing toward town.

Once Dad got to Bend and tagged me, I was off on the run. I ran fast. Really fast (8 min and 24 sec miles).

When I finished the run, I tagged Dad, and he was off on paddle leg. Would someone please tell this fool that paddle boards are not fast.

After the paddle, all that was left was a sprint to the finish.

We won our category. By a lot. And, we got mugs! Our team name was “The Manimal and his Dad”. Good name.

For being the fastest Family Pair, we also won a prize bag filled with hundreds of dollars of gift cards and goodies. I was most excited about the gift certificates to Mountain Burger.

The Mother was most excited about the goodie bag.

That evening I set up a celebratory PPP bar:

Sunday, we went mtn. biking. It was cold.

After biking, we went to my school’s fundraiser at a new park in town.

The best part was the super cool bouldering area in the park – although the soft serve sweetened with manuka honey was pretty darn good.

Dad and I bought The Mother a new cookbook for Mother’s Day. Yup. You guessed it – that means new meals. Maybe ones we might not like. This week didn’t look great but was yummy – mostly. Za’atar Tofu Bowls (not photogenic). ..roast carrots, turnips, and broccoli, za’atar seasoned tofu, white beans, with radishes and shredded beet garnish.

It is spring time on the river walk. Goslings everywhere.

Next week I will do the Pole Pedal Paddle with Dad. I will do the Nordic and run legs (the race is a downhill ski followed by a Nordic ski, then a bike, run, paddle, and sprint. We practiced the Nordic leg. Because it was Mother’s Day, I let the Mother keep up.

There is still a lot of snow, but it is disappearing fast. I could ski right onto this chair only a few weeks ago:

Afterwards we went for coffee. Thank you Nan and Pop.

For dinner we took The Mother to the Yacht Club for a reuben. They were out of reubens but thankfully there were cubans.

I went with pepperoni pizza.

This week we made two lime and two bean salad.

We planned to go skiing on Saturday, but when we woke up – it was raining at the mountain and in town. We canned the plan to ski and headed to the rock gym. But you can only climb for so long – or The Bigs can only climb for so long. So after lunch – it had stopped raining – so we headed to the park for some basketball,

a game of catch (and some hitting practice),

and a little soccer thrown in for good measure.

Upside to the rain? Flowers. Check out these trees.

Sunday morning it was cold…but the thermometer at the mountain kept climbing – so we packed up the car and headed out for a ski. Jameson met us there. It turned out to be a pretty great ski morning – followed by a soccer game.

This week, Dad made shrimp and chickpeas with chermoula,

and I made Vietnamese pork tenderloin.