Great Last Week!

First of all I apologize to anyone out there who noticed how long it has been since I wrote last time. I'll take it as a compliment if anyone did. Since last time I've have had many good times. The weather was great last weekend so I took my daughter on a hike up to the Columbia River Gorge. I figured it had been a while, so we went on a smaller hike to help insure her first time out in a while wasn't to painful. I set this goal with her to hike all the trails on a map of the gorge with her before the end of the year. This map only had the physical description of each trail in distance and by name. I learned that I do not know what a loop is according to the Horsetail Falls Trail. It stated it as a 2.7 mile loop so I figured that would be a perfect start. We started at the Horsetail Falls parking lot and continued up a marked trail. We passed two beautiful waterfalls and came to a mile marker of 1.3 miles. It pointed left to Horsetail Falls trail, and right to another seperate trail. My false sense of logic told me that the trail would LOOP around back the parking lot. WRONG. We kept going up and up and up and up with no more markers for quite a while. I now decided we were racing the sun so we better turn around and head back, not to mention the temperature was dropping fast. We made it back by retracing the trail, but I was still dumbfounded as to where the darn loop was. All in all, our 2.7 mile hike ended up being almost 7 miles. Madison toughed it out but was really tired. The good news was when I researched where we had gone I found out we actually went on three different planned trails. I decided a new way to hike all the gorge trails this year. We printed out a great map of all the trails and highlighted where we went. Once we finish that map, we are going to do the Washington side as well.
My tennis team had our first of seven matches of the season. We beat Mint Valley out of Washington 5-0. We all won in straight sets except for our #1 doubles team. The matches were all closer than the score sounds. My partner and I won at #2 doubles 7-5,6-4. We were actaully down 5-4 in the first set before finally breaking the other guy serve. One down six to go. I just can't say how much I enjoy playing with my doubles partner. Not only is he a really good player, but a really nice guy with a warped sense of humor. I think I understand him as well as he understands me. I know I can be both relaxed and uptight out there and he does a good job of keeping me in check. I wish I could find a mixed doubles partner I enjoyed playing with as much.
My daughters school had another bomb threat, that is two this year, doubling the amount I had in my whole educational experience. However, she gets two thumbs up for making it to the final round of the schools spelling bee. She was the last kid knocked out, on the word WHELK. Silent H's sure are tough if you have never seen the word before. So far about 1 out of fifteen people I have asked have spelled it correctly, so we are all real comfortable on how tough a word it was. Madison did say the kid who won it spelled it immediately without hesitation as if spelling the word DOG. Kudos to him, that is one sharp little cookie. He definitely deserved it.
Today was one of the coldest days we have had in a long time. The winds are just nasty. A customer brought back my Camel sign that blew off my fence at the store and gone almost three blocks down the street. No hiking tomorrow. I think I'll just continue to pack my endless piles of junk. Sure is fun packing. I did it for about four hours yesterday and mentally fought myself half the time. Should I keep this or not? I came the age old conclusion if I have to ask I must still have a need for it somewhere deep down inside. Besides shouldn't everyone have six pocket knives even though I only use them once or twice a year. They sure are neat though. Besides, I occasionally play tennis with Tim Leatherman, the creator and majority owner in Leathermans Tools so I would feel real guilty getting rid of it every time we played. Then again he doesn't shop at my store so should I really care. I digress. Okay I'm back on track. Kind of felt like I was hiking again. I can't think of anything else right now so I think I'll head down. I'm feeling kind of squirrelly(not sure if it is actually a word so if it isn't I'm proclaiming that as the correct spelling) if it is a word I'm too lazy to go find a dictionary right now t spell it correctly. GOOD NIGHT!!!!!!!!