What the hell!?

Ok, so I just signed up for the Escape from the Rock triathlon on Sept 11 before really finding out if I can honestly swim a half mile. Hey, I'm in good shape right? I used to swim a long time ago and it should be like riding a bike I think. There was a possibly of the event being full very soon so I decided to take a chance and sign up. I have three weeks to re-learn how to swim...that's plenty of time I'm sure...

Down goes the chimney

Marcus and I woke up this morning and on a whim decided it seemed like a nice day to take down the chimney. We have a little problem with project dependencies right now. We can't redo the stairs going to the basement because the chimney is in the way. So there's lots of work in the basement that is getting held up because of it.

The hardest part of the whole ordeal was figuring out who got to climb the ladder and get on the roof. I hate ladders and Marcus hates heights so it didn't go so well. One of us would get halfway up and then come back down. Finally Marcus sucked it up and got up there. Hey, he's the guy right?

Surprisingly enough, the chimney came down pretty easily and we were able to get the roof patched. I think we'll be cleaning up dust for the next 10 years but what else is new. I can honestly say that today I've never been dirtier in my life. We were literally caked in a black mass of dust and dirt and chimney debris. It was pretty gross. Now that the chimney is gone we can get back to finishing up work on the basement so I can hopefully have some Monday Night Football parties and have an excuse to buy that nice 42" Phillips AmbientLight tv. Ahhhhhhh....

Kayak bumper cars

I attended a beginning kayaking course at Enatai Beach in Bellevue this evening with a friend from work. It was a total blast! We got outfitted with kayaks, lifejackets, spray skirts, and paddles and then one by one we each got into a kayak and went out onto the lake to wait for everyone else. The getting in part wasn't so hard, but it's been over a year since I was last in a kayak, so the waiting on the lake part turned out to be a feat. Because of boats and jet skiis going by there were decent-sized waves that were quickly moving towards the elevated fishing pier. In about 10 minutes there were three of us stranded all smashed together on the swim area buoy lines desperately trying not to get sucked under the fishing pier. One poor lady was paddling furiously and going absolutely nowhere. Our instructor saw what was happening and then laughingly told us to go out further on the lake and get away from the swim lines.

Once away from that disaster we finally got going and learned how to paddle, spin the boat around in circles, go backwards, and stop. Our instructor even gave us a few demonstrations on rolling, which of course no one else would try. When the lesson first started it was literally like kayak bumper cars. No one could stop and everyone was just sort of crashing into each other. By the end of the lesson we could actually control the kayak.

We started from Enatai Beach and then kayaked through the Mercer Slough and back out. It turned out that getting out of the kayak was a much harder task for most people and there were about three people who went swimming in the process. It was pretty funny.