Hood to Coast 2009

Ken and friends completed Hood to Coast this past weekend. 196 miles from Mt Hood to the ocean. It took them 28 hours to complete the race. All were friends from dodgeball and the league even sponsored their shirts.



Ken loves that race. He loves to organize it, run it and push himself as far as he can go. I, meanwhile, have no desire (or ability) to run that race. Now or ever. Instead, I go for moral support and to hang out in the beach house that we rent for the weekend. This year, there were 23 of us in the house. Quite full to say the least.

I went down the night before with two girlfriends and the dog. We took down all of the food for the house and did a grocery run in town to pick up beer for 23 people. (We estimated 6.5 beers a person which was surprisingly accurate. I think there were only 6 left or so -- fitting since I accidentally counted myself in the beer numbers).

Five others came down later Friday night in separate cars and a group of six went crabbing early the next morning while I slept in. I went crabbing last year but the giant belly makes it difficult to fall asleep and move. So when I get to sleep, I want to stay asleep. Apparently, I picked the wrong year to skip crabbing because the light rain and 3 lbs of raw chicken drumsticks resulted in their catch being 30 ginormous dungeness crabs. The outfit where they rented the boat steamed, cracked and cleaned the crabs for them, which our friends brought back and kindly shared with the rest of us. I drank a non-alcoholic beer and ate crabs on the porch. It was the highlight of my entire summer since that was our family's tradition at the beach growing up. They also brought back 4 dozen beautiful oysters that they grilled and served up to the running team. I skipped those but will happily partake next year.

When the runners arrived, they showered and ate. We spent most of the afternoon & evening grilling up burgers, brats and oysters while drinking beer, playing games and hanging out. It was a nice weekend. It's hard to imagine that next year at this time, we'll be taking an almost one-year-old. Surreal.