Mis-Adventures of Nate & Jenny

The Annual Trip to Kingdom Trails

A couple of weekends ago, Nate and I went to Kingdom Trails in Vermont. You might remember our last trip to Kingdom trails with this video. This year wasn't as eventful. I did however chose to skip the jump that caused such a beautiful noise last year. Here are the photos from this years trip.

Nate took a break riding to walk across a tree on the river. He literly stopped riding, dropped his bike, and walked across the tree. When he got back to his bike, I was like, 'what was that?' He was all, 'it looked like a fun tree to walk across.' Yup, that's Nate!

I made him take a picture with me. Notice that we don't look pooped and are all smiles!

Nate's panoramic... It didn't work but we tried 20 times and none of them worked so this was the best one! It's a GORGEOUS church at the top of this super fun hill and it has the best bathroom in all the trails.... Plus the view ain't so bad!!

Nate jumping....

What fine balance skills, I have.... :)

This is part of this super fun trail called Kitchel. It has berms that you can ride up the side. I am still learning how to be daring. If you can click into it and make it bigger, notice my facial expression.

But then it's all smiles...

Still sucky... but still having fun!!

When we finished riding for 4.5 hours, Nate wanted to go check out the pump track. He made me go over a bridge. This was the second attempt and it went MUCH better than the first attempt.

I wanted Nate to go over a bridge so that I could get a picture of him over the bridge. This is the face he made at me. He was not amused!

But then he got to do this...

And this...

And he ended up having a LOT of fun on it!

Although, I did catch him yawning too....

And the self portrait after... Not so fresh... Not so smiley... Definitely TIRED!!!

LoziLu-funness!!

I put most of these pictures on FB already, but the story is pretty freaking funny that I have to share with words too. Last May, Nate did the Tough Mudder race. It looked really fun and ever since then I have been looking for something similar although cheaper and shorter. Then I got an email with a discount code for the LoziLu Women's Boston race. I looked into it and found out that it was at one of the local farms which happens to be the farm that we have a CSA at and I thought, "PERFECT". Because Nate's team was so big and it was so hard for them to stay together, I wanted to be part of a really small team. I asked some girls if they wanted to join me and a few of them said, "sure"... and I'm pretty sure most of them said, "sure" reluctantly. I have been swimming with the Masters group lately, and because our coach seems to give me soooooooooo much crap on pretty much a daily basis, she HAD to be on our team. I also asked another swimmer who is ultra competitive, Nicole. My idea of the team was "Aqua Divas" so I asked my surfer pals, Anna and Molly, as well. Anna fell off her bed two nights before and broke her coccyx (which is the funnest word to say) so she couldn't do the race with us. So Molly sucked it up and hung out with the nutty swimmer girls.

Nate came and took pictures and he took this picture of the entrance way:

At the start of the race, we all agreed that we were going to have fun, we were going to stay together and we weren't going to race.

I probably should back up and say that I'm not a big fan of mud. When I mountain bike, I avoid mud. I do everything in my power to not get muddy. Our first obstacle was through some mud pit and I was going to run on the edge of it, but my teammate, Molly, didn't really like that idea. She kindly grabbed my hand and pulled me right into the mud so notice in this first picture how much mud that I have on my shoes... Thank you, Molly!!!

and yes, when I run, I make funny faces because I can... and notice... the Aqua divas are wearing goggles which came in handy later in the day.

Nate didn't run the whole thing with us so between this picture and the next, we had quite a few obstacles. Crystie, the coach, must of said something to me, so I mooned her... and a whole group of ladies behind me started hooting and hollering... I wasn't looking for that result so I made the ladies run faster!! We had to go over and under some walls and go over some balance beams and go through some more mud and crawl through some ropes and what not.... But then we came up to the fun stuff. The first fun obstacle was basically a tiny pond. I yelled "Goggles On" and then I attempted to what I thought was shallow dive across the pond... Although from the pictures it looks like I squatted and then came up 2 feet away... So much for a shallow dive.

This is probably where the bickering began... Although it was fun bickering... We had all lined up and we put on our goggles again. The little girl in the red and yellow dress so "they look like they are ready. You should go on 3. Ready, 1... 2... 3..."

And I went...

And then my teammates went...

But it didn't pay off to go first because I couldn't stop and I slid right into the rocks and mud at the bottom. It didn't feel all that good and I had a pretty nice scratch on my stomach the next morning.

And notice how dirty I am now with Nicole

Crystie and Molly who weren't as prepared when the little girl said, 'Go!'

After we ran back up the hill, we had one more obstacle and then we ran to the finish. As we were coming off the obstacle, I heard some ladies approaching from behind so I picked up the pace a bit... which my team took notice off and thought that I was racing to the finish. I waited until we were good enough ahead of the approaching ladies and I backed off a bit and told my teammates that I was NOT going to let someone beat us to the finish line. Yes, I still get crap for that. But notice in this last picture that I was not ahead of them and that we were running together.

Thank you, chicas, for running with me and dealing with my crazy competitiveness!!!

Morning Paddling with Brian and Cassie

On our second day of stay-cation, we met Cassie, Brian and Ki at the pond for a little paddle session. Brian wanted to see if he could paddle his lovely wife and first born to the island and we thought it would be entertaining so we rode along.

Ki looks a little nervous... I would've been too with Brian paddling me somewhere...

My pretty princess being all nervous and tough dog Scout swimming along

This has too be one of the funniest series of pics that we have taken so far. This is Brian attempting a dive off the rope swing. However, he didn't really get his legs up so it ended up being a head flop / cannonball... Pic #1

Ker PLUNK!!

New type of rope swing fun. Rope swing to surf...

One would begin to think that Nate spends most of his life upside down..

Notice Scout as I'm jumping off the tree branch....

Scout mid-air...

Look, Nate's not upside down... but he might be catching flies....

Again, he's not upside down and might be catching more flies...

Nate's upside down again... :)

Look, Scout does know how to jump off a rock!!!

Nate and Brian trying to jump in at the same time

Me and Nate jumping in at the same time.

Now it's Brian and Cassie's turn...

Nate's panoramic of the three of us getting ready to paddle away

Both dogs on the board and Cassie and Ki on Brian's board...

Rope Swinging Fun!!

Now that the summer is almost over, it's kinda fun to go back through the pictures to see where it went... I was going to just put the whole summer together in one post, but there are so many fun/funny pictures that it's gonna be a few posts.

Nate and I did a stay-cation before the Fourth of July. We took Monday and Tuesday off and had Wednesday off so we tried to play as much as we could. I have been "training" for a triathlon in September and have been doing a whole lot of swimming. With the whole lot of swimming comes many Masters workouts. On Monday (and Tuesday for that matter), I skipped Masters so I could go play. On Monday, my skippage took me to the pond with Nate. I did swim so I felt like I was getting something from it... Here are some pictures of non-swimming fun...

Nate in mid backflip off the rope swing:

Me jumping off the tree branch:

So why couldn't Scout jump off the dock like he jumped after me... hmmmmmm.... Next time, I'll be jumping off the dock first!!

Jenny mid-jump off the branch:

Nate's amazing panoramic skills:

Nate mid flight from his back flip off the tree:

Jenny swimming back to the car... Look at that form... of Oakley and Scout... :)

Scout attempts Dock Diving

Whoa!! It's August already... Where has the summer gone???

Before I share pictures from Nate & I's summer, I'm gonna brag about my little puppy monster! Besides ridding our yard of pesky animals, Scout braved the dock.

One of the local dog parks is home to the Seacoast Dock Dogs. They were having a demo day on a Saturday and Nate had to work so I thought I would take Scout (and Oakley, but I knew she wouldn't jump) to see what it was all about. Scout braved the dock and after much persuasion, finally decided to jump.

Scout lining up for his big jump...