sick sick sick

As if the swine flu wasn't enough. Nor was the second flu I had. No I had to get another virus, one that sent me to bed for nearly 3 weeks, and then reduced me to a fatigued pile of tears after four hours of work each day. Two weeks of 4 hour days four days a week, and I could just barely manage to go back to full time work.
One day in there I took a vacation from my bed and went for a ten minute walk on the beach at the bottom of our hill. There was a wee fort someone had built and I just wanted to curl in and hid away for a bit.



And a tree that I even stopped to photograph... too bad I didn't remember it when we were racing the pair along the beach and we nearly SMASHED into it a few weeks later. Oops. Driving backwards in a boat is not my forte.

I was one sick girl. Fever, infection, glassy eyes, but I was most impressed with my neck. Do notice the swollen neck. My lymph nodes took almost 5 weeks to return to normal!

Europe - Sans photos

Day 2 of my week 0'Europe adventures:

Iceland - Stark beauty that makes you breath slowly and stare constantly. The people and hte land were so lovely. 9 hours wandering a town on next to know sleep is an adventure, but I found good company, great food, and thoroughly enjoyed soaking in the blue lagoon hot pools.

London - Ummm a bit of a constrast going from 300k population to London. Gatwick airport alone is more people than I've seen in months. I was touched by seeing bits of humanity in the security workers... a young man crouching down to encourage a toddler to walk through the metal detector and his coworker getting down to have a little wee conversation with the kid. A women lifting up her shift an inch to prove she didn't have a belt, and all the laughs when the security guard joked that he's never had such luck getting girls to flash him before. It made the cattle truck feel of security lines so much more bareable.

Next up, Genoa... we'll see how it goes!

Volcanos from the sky

Our inflight entertainment from Seattle to PDX was volcano after volcano after volcano. It is fair to say that 'the mountains were out' which is such a rare thing in the rainy Northwest.

Reiner

St Helens




Mt Hood

American High school


PDX and the Max Line

Beach days

We drove through the amazingly tall trees to the enormous Cannon beach that was covered in people. Okay most of the world would think that the beach was fairly sparsely populated, but it now feels rather full of people compared to the beaches I hang out on in New Zealand - granted that beaches are wintry cold at the moment there:)

Training while on vacation

I am under strict orders from my coach not to over do it while I am in the States because "I'm on vacation" after all... But rowing is my vacation from life, so I've found my own unique brand of adapting my rowing training into a vacation flavoured one.

So I present to you the vacation-erg thanks to my friend who lent me her dusty rowing machine.

And the Oregon flavor beach run
The oh-so-light out 5:40 am departure to boat house
And the Willamette River I have never actually seen from water level before. I had no idea that there were sandy beaches, house boats, and tons of rowers on this river before. Five seat never felt so good!

Chicago Friends

Chicago was all about meeting up with friends.. for deep dish pizza, conversation, and wedding vows. I can't get over how there are American flags EVERYWHERE and there are lots of contrasts between pretty things and rough things.