Enjoying Yellowstone as we drive out to Seattle in June of 2012.
School’s almost out and we’re almost ready to get out of here. We pushed it through 8 weeks of summer intensity here in Seattle and are now ready for a little vacation. We leave next week for the Leadville 100 mile race and the 486 mile Colorado Trail; I love vacations!
The summer has been a bit of a blur. I’m wrapping up a 20 credit hour condensed summer schedule with Anatomy and Physiology, Chemistry, English, and Lifespan Psychology. I dove right in and have really enjoyed being in school mode. It’s so different being in school after working at Fisher Investments – in a very good way. I’ve transferred my list-making organizational skills to the classroom and so far have felt on top of all my assignments. As a result, the quarter has moved by quite smoothly and down-right enjoyably.
Julie has been productively pushing through this summer rush as well. Over the past seven weeks she’s knocked out her first draft of her second book, this time on our Appalachian Trail experience, and she’s also built her first website – it’s not launched yet but she’s built it from the ground up by actually learning all the code. She’s getting herself ready to start building websites for others when we get back from our Colorado journey! She’s also managed to prepare for our CDT test-hike by weighing everything that is going into our packs and calculating calorie counts for our entire trail diet. It should be an entirely new trail experience this time around and hopefully for the better.
And vacation is just around the corner! Next week, hours after my last final exam, we are catching a flight to Denver followed by a quick drive to the mountain town of Leadville for the 100 miler. We have quite the group for this event with thirteen of us getting together for the race. There will be four of us actually racing, four pacers, and the rest as crew supporting us with food, duct tape, Vaseline, and anything else along the way that may help us cover the entire 100 mile race course in less than thirty hours.
To cap off the long run, Julie, my Dad, and I are heading out on the Colorado Trail the morning after the race. My Dad, who has been training admirably for this adventure, is doing the first forty miles with us over 2.5 days and then Julie and I will press on to Durango, nearly 500 trail miles from Denver.
Then after vacation, it’s back to Seattle and back to intense, focused efforts once again to finish Julie’s book, make some websites, and finish up my Nursing prerequisites before the end of the year. And after that, well…we’re working on the next cool adventure idea as we speak!
Loving life and working on those Project lists, full speed ahead!