We did a lot today.  We woke up and went to see the old North Bridge where the “shot heard around the world” was fired.  Note that it is no longer the same bridge, which was a little disappointing but whatever.  It was also interesting that we were the only tourists under 65, aside from one other British couple in their 30’s.  This is how the whole trip has gone, though.

I was particularly impressed with how much respect the British soldiers were paid.  Their graves were marked and decorated everywhere.

We then headed down to Walden Pond, which happened to be about 4 miles away.  It was absolutely gorgeous.  It was quite interesting that Thoreau wasn’t really out in the middle of nowhere.  He was in plain view of the railroad (according to the plaque), and was only about a 30 minute’s walk to his parents’ house.  Nevertheless, it was far enough.  We rode our bikes around the pond.  This pond is now on my top 5 favorite places list, in spite of our being about a week and a half early.

Freaky train.  That thing was absolutely flying.  Bree’s unnatural and unjustified fear of trains doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon (her words not mine)

Thoreau’s cabin site.  Including the chimney.  Needless to say, it wasn’t very big.

Bree showed me how to use the F-stop control to get better color out of our camera.  That’s why today’s pictures look so legit.

Next we took our bikes onto Battlefield Road.  It was kind of solemnizing to think that this stuff actually happened where we were standing – that on that narrow little road 1600 British troops marched through.  It was also amazing that the minutemen weren’t hundreds of feet away picking the soldiers off like you see in paintings, but right up next them – behind walls and boulders 50 ft away and out of the houses which were even closer.

An old house foundation.  A wounded British soldier was found lying on the porch there.  The family took him in to dress his wounds.

Colonialists built these walls while clearing fields.  They make great self-portrait shelves.  This one was taken at ye olde tavern.

To make a long story shorter, we’ll skip the details on the cemetery that Bree liked in Concord.  Following that we headed over to the Boston temple for some initiatories.

Bree thinks the architecture is very fitting to the area.  We capped the day off with a nice session of flying trapeze.  It was awesome, and much more relaxing than one might expect.  Kind of like skydiving.

Bree and I are spending Fall Break leaf peeping in Boston this week.  We came with the intention of spending most of our time on bicycles.  In the name of cost-effectiveness, our bikes are… well… awesome?  Anyway, here are a few pictures of the trip so far.  Almost all of these were taken from the Greenfield area (save the one at the coast), which is not far from the New York and Vermont state line.

For some reason Bree likes this one.  So whatever.  I throw it in.

Bree with the Purple Uni and me with my Red Rocket.  In front of a kitchen supply barn.  They unfortunately do not have bathrooms there.  Needless to say, our road bikes are sorely missed. 

On what is probably the single best road-ride on the freaking planet.

The burning bush

A sweet barn

The Martin household would like to welcome the newest member of the family.  She doesn’t have a name yet.  And no.  Bree is not pregnant (at least as far as I know).

Too bad I don’t have time to ride her…  She is beautiful though.

Bree has made a great point – along with my parents last night.  I was kind of sick last September as well.  The cause?  School.  of course.  It makes too much sense.  This semester I’m far sicker (I’m guessing) due to the fact that I’m far more stressed.  This semester here are the things I have going on this semester:

• 21 credits of engineering electives/mathematics courses.  This includes such glamorous titles such as “CPU Design Lab”, “Parallel Programming”, “Scientific Visualization”, “Discrete Structures and Mathematics”, “Low Level Computing Systems” and many others.  It’s either that or postpone graduation until a YEAR from December, as opposed to May.  Considering the potential income lost, a conservative price tag for postponing graduation would be in the neighborhood of $19,000 (less taxes).  That puts things into perspective.
• A thesis that I have no clue about.  Enough said.
• Work at 20 hours per week.  Otherwise we lose benefits and tuition reimbursement.  Again a wise investment to keep.
• LotoJa.  At least that day of reckoning is only two weeks out.  Still a little nervous about it, though.

It is obvious that this schedule WILL be detrimental to my health and well being.  I think it’s worth it for just two more semesters though.  I suppose I’ll just have to hold on tight and see how this goes…

The seconds are ticking until LotoJa.  Scary stuff.  As one of the few training rides we have left, though, we rode the Cache Valley Century up in the Logan area this weekend.  Bree, Kirk, and I headed up Friday night after work and spent the night at Kirk’s sister Susan’s house.  She was so hospitable to let us stay.

It was a long night before the ride.  Following my Wasatch Boulevard tour on Thursday, I came down with what has made me the sickest I have been since high school.  I have had a fever for three days now and have woken up (or remained awake, rather) in cold sweats for two or three nights straight.  Having not been able to remember how this “being sick” business has felt, I can now sympathize with poor Miss Bree who comes down with everything.  Anyway, I wasn’t going to let that deter me from riding one hundred miles in one go.  Stupid me.

The ride was absolutely beautiful.  I didn’t realize there was that much space up in Logan.  We would go around mountains to open up to little sub-valleys completely expansed by safflower fields.  There were even a couple of lakes that we passed.  Luckily for me, it wasn’t a horribly difficult century.  It was relatively flat and very low key.  All of the riders were horribly friendly – to the point where groups would form on the road among solo riders.  It was also interesting to see the caliber of people there.  A ton of people that were 60+ riding both the 60 mile and 100 mile rides, people with mountain bikes, people that I wouldn’t so much classify as in-shape, and then there were the average cyclists and even the pros.  It was such a good mix – I think it is going to become an annual event (especially considering the price point).  It was very well organized in terms of rest stops which had their own variety of snacks at each one.  I was just very impressed – considering what we paid to ride it.

Kirk, Bree, and I in good old Preston, Idaho

Long story short, Kirk and I finished the 100 mile route and Bree finished the metric century.  I’m so freaking proud of her – she hasn’t ridden more than 20 or 25 miles at all this year in one sitting – and that only once or twice.  She just pounded through it and gave me the support I need by participating.  Good job Miss Bree.

School starts again tomorrow.  Crap.  Not excited.  I’m going to have 19 credits with such thrilling classes as Discrete Structures, Parallel Programming, Computer Systems, Scientific Visualization, Computer Design and my glorious thesis.  On top of that I’ll be trying to fit in 20 hours of work per week.  What am I doing to myself?  Anyway, at least Bree and I got a pretty good final trip in before the end of summer.

Bree’s grandparents have a timeshare on a houseboat at Lake Powell – so all of the Fotheringhams went down to hang out for the week.  Being a working man (and Bree a working woman) with big kid jobs – we weren’t able to make it down until Thursday.  A few days there plus a night in Parowan and it was at least a final escape.

Thanks to the Fotheringham’s uber-nice boat, we got a chance to do a little skiing, wakeboarding, and surfing.  Yes.  Surfing.  Bree is awesome at it.  I am not.  Nor am I any good at wakeboarding. Proof follows.

The final day was spent in the Red Hollow slot canyon accessed from Orderville, Utah.  It was an awesome canyon.  We parked at what I believe is a water treatment facility just outside of the canyon, and hiked along the sandy streambed into the canyon, sticking left and entering the red one (the stream splits and goes into both a white and red canyon.  Red is what we wanted).  It was about a mile and a half into the canyon, where it quickly turned to a very twisting and very stepped canyon.  It took a lot of stemming to get up (hanging onto either side of the wall to climb up over boulders and the like).  I was a little disappointed at the lack of water, though.

Above: Bree stemming up over a boulder

Climbing up the first section of rope.  Luckily there were established ropes already in place.

There were two section that required a quick climb up to the next section.  Bree did phenomenally.

At the top of the canyon, the wind kicked in.  Freaky.  Being a simple fluid moving through a tight canyon, it sounded exactly like the beginnings of a flash flood.  Holy crap scary.  We knew there were no clouds in the sky, but you can never be too careful.  Just about as we were about to take off for a segment which had higher ground, the wind died down and Bree realized our stupid mistake.  I was thankful.

This weekend Emily and Caroline came over to hang out.  It turned out all right.  Colton also came over while Trent was in class, so of course that means exposing my family to the ultimate Cinnamon Challenge.  The challenge is this:  Eat one heaping spoonful of cinnamon.  That’s it.  The catch is that you cannot have any water.  Results are shown below.

Caroline – 2 Seconds

Bree – 4 Seconds

Emily – 4 Seconds

Ben – Succeeded!

Colton – Completed on second try.  Couldn’t let me beat him.

On day two of a Zelda weekend was Cowabunga Bay, which is totally like a giant, less deadly Zelda level.  There are wheels and knobs and pulleys that control water flow out of different nozzles that will blast your friends if they aren’t watching closely.  Buckets dump randomly like bombs as you make your way to the top where there are a ton of different slides.  We went at night during an overcast sky, and as such there were not many people there.  Of those that were, we were the oldest by about 10 years.

Man I’m looking a little round…better work on that.

The big bucket finally got us.

Entering the chaos

Well the couple that does things strikes again.  This time, though, I had no clue.  Bree has been planning a “super-awesome-date-night” for over a month now, but wouldn’t tell me what it actually was.  It turns out it wasn’t actually a date night, but more  so the entire day.

She finally told me the night before that we were going to the CLAS marriage retreat (i.e. ropes course).  We showed up for the "deluxe version” of the retreat at around 11:15 to find ourselves canoeing up the awesome and super-clean (not) Provo river. 

Going upstream wasn’t too bad.  The current wasn’t too bad.  About 1/2 mile up, however, the river narrowed and of course that means that the current sped up.  We got caught in a slight eddy while frantically attempting to pass the neck – treadmill fashion.  The eddy pulled us slightly forward while the current pushed us backward.  Result?  Spinning, nearly capsizing, lunch spilling everywhere (including a huge cup of root beer), Bree falling off of her seat into the root beer, and heading back down stream.  Believe it or not, we gave up on going farther upstream.

The docks were super awesome.  They enclosed a ton of stagnant water, which meant mosquitoes as thick as the air.  Luckily my mission bug-spray is as good as it can get.  They would just hover around us – not a single bite.  One dock, however, was not altogether…buoyant?  I was trying to do some stupid hops from one to the other.  What I didn’t account for was that when I kicked off of the one, it sunk 2 feet.  So jumping from one dock to another after sinking 2 feet…I had no chance.  Somehow I made a miraculous save by sprawling and kicking one leg and laying flat on the dock.  The only damage was one leg wet to my knee.

The rest of the day comprised of sweet airborne activities, and for those of you who know anything about Bree and I, airborne is key.  The first thing that Bree and I kicked butt at was the cable walk.  Two cable were anchored to a tree, and spread out farther and farther to opposing trees.  The ideas was to hold on to the other person and walk as far as you could while leaning on the other person to keep you up.  Everyone was totally impressed with how quickly and easily we did it.

The next game we played as no pictorial proof, but it was pretty sweet.  We were given three boards that fit into notches on telephone pole stumps (about 2.5 feet high)  They all fit into different stumps to make bridges, and we had to get our group of 15 people across on the three boards.  If you fell off, you were blindfolded and still had to cross.  This was a sweet game, just because of how much strategy and teamwork was involved.  At the point where you have 10 people stacked on a 2-inch wide bridge, you know you are in trouble.  Especially because we had to pass the boards back and forth, all while trying to balance.

The swing was good and all, but nobody told us we could flip.  That said, it was kind of boring.  You are strapped onto a big bar, and then the rest of your team pulls you up about 40 feet (which takes a lot of pulling).  You then let go of the rope and you go swinging.

The next game was one of the best ones – the trapeze.  The idea is that you climb up a 30 foot pole and jump to a trapeze bar.  There are two catches, though.  The first is that the pole is freaking wobbly.  The second is that the trapeze bar isn’t a straight jump.  You have to actually jump and catch is at an angle.  Actually, there are three catches.  The third is that standing up on the tiny platform on the top of the wobbly pole is actually pretty difficult.

Surprisingly enough, we both made it. 

Next up, the wobbly ladder climb.  Coincidentally, Bree and I went to a trapeze class last week.  And what is a trapeze beside one link in a wobbly ladder?  Not much.  So while everyone else struggle to sprawled and heaved each other up the ladder, Bree and I did our usual circus antics to get up with zero energy.  None of the other groups thought to go up upside-down.

At the top of the ladder was a zip line.  To get there was easy, we just had to walk on a set of vertically-parallel cables over to the tree where the line was anchored.  From there it was a straight shot across the entire facility to a gravity stop at the bottom (luckily enough Bree went before me, so I didn’t have to hang out stranded without a ladder at the bottom of the stop).

This week was Spring Break – and as you all know, I cannot enjoy a spring break without nearly killing myself on some totally awesome adventure…well this week was no exception.  Coincidentally, Spence invited us on a slot canyon hike down in Southern Utah during the week – along with his friend Jeanine and his daughter Jen. 

The first and last main activity was motorcycling/bicycling.  This was my first chance to really break in my mission bike on something other than a stupid road.  We ended up near a ghost town just outside of Springdale after a failed attempt to find the top of Gooseberry Mesa.

Buckskin Gulch was the ultimate man killer.  About four miles in Bree and I decided to turn back (due to time constraints).  It was probably a good move, seeing how the rest of them came hobbling in the door at 9:30 pm, which means something in the neighborhood of 13 hours on the trail.  There wasn’t a single one of them that wasn’t covered in blood or missing toenails or bleeding from blisters the size of a silver dollar.  They couldn’t move for the next day.  Bree and I, however, had a lovely Sunday afternoon checking out the petroglyphs and enjoying how absolutely incredible the slot canyon was.

The crowning event, however, was Spry Canyon.  This is where we learned how truly Mountain-Goatish Spence truly is.  Holy crap…that man is 60 years old yet we cannot even keep up with him.  As we climbed the slickrock face, he just hopped on up…a lot of time was spent by him trying to coax us to go his way.  Bree pretty much thought we were going to die.

We finally got to the actual canyon after a couple of hours, and our first obstacle was a rappel down a 160’ rock face – though not vertical – with water streaming down it.  By this point Spence had mentioned that the park ranger had tried to talk him out of going on this thing – too much snow and ice and slush.  Of course she was lying :S …I was the first to go so that I could untangle the ropes and Spence could help acquaint the people up top with the gear and the method of rappelling.  We would have originally landed in a pool of water with slush floating in it, but luckily there was a big snowdrift form which the pool originated that I could land on.  Everybody got down all right, but in order to avoid the pool we had to traverse a ledge that was about 3 inches wide.  I tried to help Bree across, but in so doing we both fell into the icy water.  I didn’t breathe for probably a whole minute as I helped her swim to the other side.  Now we were in the canyon and were totally freezing.  We didn’t warm up for the next 7 or so rappels…

We kept along – coming across a rappel on average probably every 1/8th of a mile.  It was a totally awesome hike – and would have been the time of my life was I not on the verge of hypothermia.  The rappelling was awesome – especially in trying to figure ways to avoid pools of water.  This sometimes included carrying Bree through the water after catching her at the bottom of a rappel, and sometimes holding the rope around my waste and holding it tight while she basically ziplined down across a pool from the cliff above.

The sun was a beautiful thing – once we finished something like the 8th rappel we finally reached around to the sun – and finally began to warm up.  By now I had put something like 10 holes in my gloves, likely due to how dirty the ropes were (they just sanded through everything).  This is when the hike really got fun.  Now we could enjoy the rappels and the awesome scenery.

Spence ran ahead once we emerged out of the canyon to the boulder-field.  We were then hopping and climbing and dropping from boulders the size of our living room until we found ourselves on a 75 foot cliff.  Kinda freaky.  Having no ropes and no clue where to go, I skirted across the face of the cliff until I found a part where I could downclimb a little bit onto a rockslide.  I grabbed Bree and we trucked down the face of the canyon for the next hour.  I have never been so relieved to see Spence’s truck as I was that day…

Oh, by the way, we have NO decent pictures from Spry canyon.  Reason?  Well first off survival was our priority, and secondly, our disposable camera got destroyed after about the third rappel.  It was so sandy, so wet, and so dirty, that even a waterproof disposable had issues. 

Well as many of you know, about a week ago I took an adventure on my bike. I was just trying to buy my stupid xbox controller for a class while getting my car’s safety and emissions done (we are now starting to develop games for xbox live). So as I was coming back to pick up my car on Highland drive, I started to cross a street at a green light when all of a sudden a van in the “I’m going straight lane” decided to turn right. Right in front of me. I slammed my brakes on and swerved into the van to avoid t-boning, but I still hit, bounced, and hit again. Luckily I stayed upright on my bike – though not without any damage to myself. The only injuries I incurred were from my helmet. Ironic, isn’t it? I’m sure it would have been worse otherwise, though. The guy pulled over and was freaked out. I was nice to him, though. He was having a cig, or something similar to a cigarette.