Six Pillars

My friend Winsome, fellow triathlete and Chinese student, told me about a bike ride she was signed up for: the Six Pillars Century. She is training under a coach who has all his athletes riding the full century... I can't ride that distance (and enjoy it) right now so I signed up for a shorter route, a 56 mile route which is basically the Eagleman bike course.

I drove out to Cambridge, MD, picked up my stuff and rolled out. It was actually a nice day for biking, not too hot, little bit of a breeze, clear skies... I thought the route itself was pretty nice as well, consisting of a big loop around Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.

Blackwater NWR

Cherry Blossom Festival

I had some friends of friends in visiting the DC area, and they wanted to wander around the National Mall and see various monuments. I took them along the Moonlight Monuments route, and they really seemed to enjoy it.

One nice thing about their visit was excellent timing: the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and there were huge crowds all over enjoying the various festivities.

SunTrust Relay

Mai and Charles spent their spring break taking a family vacation up the East Coast, stopping along the way a few times before reaching me. They brought Maddie and baby Estelle, already a traveler at only 3 or 4 months old!

I took time off work and we wandered around DC for a bit, visiting museums and monuments. They were in the mood for a low key vacation so we didn't grind out an exhausting visitors schedule.

The one thing I did have planned was a half marathon relay - I was on a relay team that needed to replace a team member, and Mai was interested. The half marathon relay teams consisted of 3 people: 5 miles, 5 miles, 3.1 miles. I had one of the 5 mile legs and I was positive the friend who couldn't make it had the 3.1 mile leg, so I told Mai she could take that one over. But, I was mistaken as our team's third runner Leslie has the 3.1 mile leg. Mai was OK with bumping up from 3.1 miles to 5 miles - no big deal for her.

The morning of the race, we couldn't figure out how to get to the exchange points. If I ran the 1st 5 miles, Mai would need to get to mile 5 in order to meet me, then swap with Leslie at mile 10, and somehow get back to the finish. Granted I didn't look all this info up ahead of time, but to make a long story short, since we couldn't find anybody who knew what to do, we just decided to run the first 10 miles together, and then work our way back with the metro cards the race provided.

So I had promised Mai 3.1 miles, which became 5 miles, and then 10 miles that morning. I'm lucky she was cool with the ever growing mileage she had to do. :) This race was actually very nice - scenic course passing many of the major landmarks, and not quite as crowded as the MCM.

Outside the Museum of Natural History.

Street full of runners and paper cups.

Ski Liberty

Kevin and Heather texted me and asked if I wanted to tag along for some night skiing at the Liberty Ski Resort. Of course I was in!

One thing I really liked about the Seattle area was the proximity of winter sports. I don't want to drive in or shovel snow just to get to work, but I do like to ski/snowboard or snowshoe. Even a winter hike is fun.

Liberty isn't very far so it is a perfect day trip. The area reminded me of the Summit at Snoqualmie, perhaps a little bigger and taller... on the other hand it has been many years since I last visited the Summit.

After arriving, Heather joined the beginner lesson so Kevin and I went off to ski a few green and blue slopes. We checked in a few times to see how they were doing and after the class was over we all skied the green hill a few times.

Chinese Class

I've thought of taking Chinese for years, but never did much about it. However, that has changed as I recently signed up to take 1st semester Chinese at Howard Community College in nearby Columbia, MD. Class starts today and I'm looking forward to it!

Moonlight Monuments

The hiking meetup group holds a few other cool events throughout the year: Halloween corn maze, a summer picnic, and when the full moon is on the weekend, a Moonlight Monument Hike.

My friend Alyssa is a new DC-area resident, so I invited her to attend this. I thought it would be fun and inexpensive. We met the group at 5 pm between the White House and Washington Monument, along the Mall side of Constitution Ave. It was already dark so after splitting into 3 groups of varying size, the hike leaders handed out glow-in-the-dark necklaces and we set out. We went with the "fast" group of about 40 people, while the "medium" and "slow" groups, each about the same size as ours, trailed behind.

First up was a short walk to the Washington Monument.

Washington monument
Originally uploaded by klbarrus

We took a few pictures and before long, our group leader was rounding us up for the walk to Jefferson. We left early and walked fast, in order to put some space between our group and the other groups.

Jefferson memorial
Originally uploaded by klbarrus

We had a little time to walk around the rotunda before we gathered up and headed to the Roosevelt monument. That one has a nice waterfall area, but my pictures didn't turn out too well. We headed on to the Korean monument and the Lincoln memorial.

Lincoln memorial
Originally uploaded by klbarrus

The Lincoln memorial was very well lit, and despite the number of other people out visiting, it wasn't too hard to get a nice pic, because of the amount of space available. Alyssa set the timer on her camera and we were able to get a pic of us in front of the Reflecting Pool, with the Washington monument in the distance.

Reflecting Pool
Originally uploaded by klbarrus

From there we walked the short distance to the Vietnam memorial, and then went to the World War 2 memorial.

World War 2 memorial
Originally uploaded by klbarrus

And that was the end, other than getting back to the Washington Monument. Overall it was a fun tour, and one that anybody can do on their own. It was quite nice at night, everything is lit up and it isn't crowded at all.

Seattle Weekend

I flew back to Seattle for Dawg Dash weekend, and Waffle Fest.

• Hike


But first, I met up with my friend Carrie for a hike. We mailed back and forth setting it up: I definitely wanted to hike, but I wasn't sure of any good routes, since it had been quite some time since I moved away. We settled on 6-8 miles with ~2000 foot elevation gain, which sounded reasonable. She brought more friends and we drove out to the Teanaway forest area to hike to Navajo Peak.



IMG_0076
Originally uploaded by klbarrus
These three are serious hikers!


What we wound up doing was 13 miles and ~4500 foot elevation. Carrie is a strong hiker - I think she goes every weekend all year long, sometimes both days - and perhaps overestimated my hiking fitness in her ambition to summit, and probably didn't measure the route too carefully. ;) It was a tough hike, and I was dragging a bit by the end.



IMG_0092
Originally uploaded by klbarrus
Navajo pass. The summit is another ~1200 feet up.


The view at the top of the pass was spectacular, and worth the hike. I was ready to turn around at this point, roughly 5.0 miles in with ~3200 feet of gain - that would have been enough for me. But Carrie wanted to summit Navajo peak, and it was "only" another 1.5 miles and ~1200 feet... so we headed up. It was snowing at the top, so the view wasn't too good. Despite how tough the hike was (for me at least), it did feel good to reach the summit.



IMG_0101
Originally uploaded by klbarrus
Just below the summit, as fog and snow moved in.


I don't think I slowed them up too much, but I know I did. We got back to the trailhead as the sun was setting so it was good timing overall. Afterwards, e were famished and ate at a Mexican restaurant in Cle Elum.


• Dawg Dash


The next day I ran the Dawg Dash in the rain. We were lucky: it rained lightly before the event, and poured afterwards, but during the event it didn't rain much at all.

The Dawg Dash is a fun event because it is dog friendly, and one of the UW homecoming events. After the race we retreated to Francesca's for Waffle Fest, a UW themed waffle brunch hosted by Francesca. Yum!