Randy's first mountain bike ride!

So I took Randy mt. biking today. Our goal was to do a very popular "beginner's" ride. It's a 7-mile out-and-back route up Millcreek Canyon. It's part of the Pipeline trail, but the section we were planning on doing was called Birch Hollow. If you follow the Pipeline trail further down, there are several different shorter trails you can do as entry points. One of those is called Rattlesnake Gulch.
Here's what the website says about it, "While most of the Pipeline is easy cruising, we wouldn't recommend taking a newbie down Rattlesnake Gulch. This descent is advanced technical. When the dust gets deep and slippery, Rattlesnake can be a white-knuckle slide for the best riders."
We drove around for a bit, looking for the entry to Birch Hollow. Instead, I saw a sign that said, "Pipeline" and decided that was it.
You guessed it, we had arrived at the base of Rattlesnake Gulch.
So after struggling UP this ridiculous down-hillers' trail for about 20 minutes, I realized we may be in the wrong area. We rode back down it, THEN noticed the sign. Oops. :)

Anyway, long story short, we found the right trailhead, road Birch Hollow down to one of the other entry trails (not Rattlesnake) and headed back to the car.
We were seriously like 100 yards from my car when a car came up from behind us and wanted to pass. Randy was behind me and was riding as close to the edge of the pavement as he could so they could get by. In doing so, however, he caught the edge of the pavement with his tire and supermanned off the bike. When the car got to me, the driver and passenger both had shocked looks on their faces and pointed for me to go back.

Anyway, luckily Randy's ok. He just cut his chin, and scraped his nose, shoulder, a few fingers, knee, and leg... Overall, I was very impressed. Especially how he handled Rattlesnake, PLUS he agreed to go with me again some time! :D

Oh, btw Marty, the bike's fine... After some minor adjustments... :)

Below are photos of the carnage, also added to my Facebook account.

Bless his heart. :)

Randy's new addition! Oh, and a random guy at D.I.

So I was talking to Kryn and Gregan last weekend about my blog and how I never have anything interesting to blog about.

Well, this weekend was definitely different.

Friday afternoon I made some incredible homemade bread, thanks to Dad's advice and Mom's "Tried and True" recipe book. Randy was thoroughly impressed.

Then we went to D.I. to look for a dresser for Randy's son who lives in MT but is spending pretty much all of July out here. (By the way, Randy has a 6-year-old son) :)

Randy had never been to a D.I. so I was excited to show him all the random treasures and see his reaction to the always-interesting crowd that accompany D.I. As we were walking around, taking it all in, looking at the dressers we heard a huge crash and breaking of glass. I turned around to see a guy jumping up from a broken table with a look of utter shock on his face.

A D.I. employee happened to be walking by just then and his face most definitely had, "oh, jeez, do I really have to go over there...?" written all over it.

So he walked over to the guy and asked if he was ok and the man said, "I think I have glass in my butt." With that, Randy and I had to slip around the corner before bursting out in uncontrollable laughter. Yeah, we're mean.

After D.I. we decided to go look at pets at the Humane Society. I'm not sure whose idea it was, but I'm pretty sure Randy had been wanting a pet for a while and I just wanted to go play with puppies. The whole way there Randy just kept saying, "I'm going to leave today with an animal! I can't have a dog in my house... I can't get a dog..." But his tone said that he was actually trying to work out a way for him to keep a dog in his house.

First, we looked at the little dogs, since that would be the most logical for his one-level condo, and cuz I wanted to play with the puppies, of course. We saw a few hyper-active chihuahua mixes and a poodle from an apparently infamous "poodle house" http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_12594477 (very sad story) but none he was really interested in.

Then we looked at some cats. He didn't want to have to clean up after a kitten or a puppy, so he was looking for something that was already housebroken. In my opinion, the only reason anyone has cats is because they were at some point an adorable kitten. I don't see the point in buying one past that stage.

We then moved on to the bigger dogs. There were 3 different black lab mixes that we just fell in love with right away. One of whom, was Lola. At first, we thought she was not the smartest duck in the bucket cuz she has this look (as pictured) that she does any time you talk to her where she cocks her head to the side and stares intently. Turns out, though, she's one of the best fetchin' dogs I've ever seen. She's an athlete and she LOVES to play. Isn't she adorable?? Her favorite games are fetch and tug-o-war and she already knows "sit" and "stay."

Right when we got her home we gave her a bath. She didn't love that, but she was SOO well-behaved. Didn't even shake off till we were done rinsing her. After her bath we went for a walk... She's not so good on a leash yet...

Randy got her a big wire kennel to sleep in and he said she slept all through the night without even barking or whining!

Today I'm dog-sitting while Randy's at the dentist. She's been kinda sick though. She has had a runny nose and cough this morning and has been asleep for about the last 3 hours. While she was in the shelter she had developed and gotten over something called kennel cough, and the workers there said there's a chance she could get it again. He's taking her in today or tomorrow to have it checked out. Poor thing's exhausted but she's just so sweet.

Gregan thinks we should arrange a play date for Spiche and Lola. Once she's feeling better and I know she can't get Spiche sick, we'll make it happen. Don't worry, I'll document it for you.

*Update*

When Randy got back from the dentist we went to the dog park. She's great with the other dogs, but she absolutely LOVES chasing and catching balls. Even if she had one in her mouth she would drop it and go chase after the balls other owners were throwing for their dogs. She's super fast and she's got mad hops, so the other dogs don't have a chance. She's so sweet though, they couldn't even get mad at her.

After the dog park I took her for a walk using some leash-training tips we found online and she's practically trained already. She's seriously one of the fastest learners I know, and I'm a high school teacher! ;) Hahahaha

Here's Lola!!

This is the look she gives when you have a ball in your hand and she's DYING for you to throw it. Otherwise it's cocked to her left, as shown below.

This is the look she gives any time you talk without a ball in your hand. The higher pitch your voice goes, the higher her right ear goes. She's adorable. :)

This was a long one, but I've been overdue for a while. Thanks for hangin in there!