The Cradle of Liberty

"One if by land, and two if by sea," or so the tale goes. We just got back from a little trip to New England. We have never been and we loved it. The weather was good, much better than SLC anyway. We walked the Freedom Trail and saw the graves of Sam Adams, and Paul Revere. We also visited Paul Revere's house and stopped at the spot where he was apprehended by the red coats on his way to Concord. It was all very historic.

Where "the shot heard around the world" took place.

The Old North Bridge

Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond

Buckman Tavern where the minutemen met before being shot down by the British at Lexington

Tara and I had finished sightseeing for the day, but we still had the use of the rental car. So I told Tara that we should drive up to New Hampshire since we'd never been there before. So we drove up and decided to keep driving because we'd never seen Maine before. We stopped in Maine for some freshly caught lobster then drove back to Boston.

26 Miles and 385 Yards

Yes, that is the distance of a marathon or 26.2 miles is close. Pheidippides, a Greek messanger, ran from the battle of Marathon to Athens to proclaim the Greek's victory of the Persians. Pheidippides burst into the assembly in Athens and yelled "we have won" before falling to the ground and dying there on the spot after having run, non-stop 26 miles and 385 yards. Obviously Pheidippides should have eaten less salt, less carbs, and worked on his cardiovascular training more. Nevertheless, we now run marathons in his honor, sort of.

My sisters Dianna, Dorianne, DaNae, along with my brother-in-law Ben and myself ran the St. George marathon on Saturday. We all finished. I am glad to have participated, but it totally sucked more than anything could suck. It was cold and rained the entire time. Most of the course was downhill, and it was downhill for a long, long, painfully long time. Luckily I wore band-aids on my nipples to prevent nipples hemorraging like this dude:

I was slow, real slow, but I finished and I didn't die on the spot. I am sore enough though right now that death doesn't seem like a scary option. Atleast Pheidippides didn't have to go through the recovery stage after a marathon. If you are thinking about runnin a marathon, think long and hard about it. Maybe even try a half marathon. If you think that sucks, a full marathon is doubly sucky. Here are two of the dudes that beat me by over an hour:

I am HUNTER

I hunt, therefore I kill. Actually, this was my first successful hunting experience. My past hunts I would go out for the morning and hope to get lucky. This time we hunted for four days. Funny thing is that I actually got something and it was still on the first day. This is the first time that I have shot at a deer and the first time that I have missed. Also the first time that anyone in my party shot an animal, the first time that I have actually seen an animanl shot (my own), first time that I have seen an animal cleaned (my own).

I saw the buck later in the day and dropped him with a shot in the neck. It was a downhill shot through trees and limbs about 80 yards away. After I shot, the buck fell immediately and didn't get up. That's how I like to hunt, pain-free for the animals, unlike my brother-in-laws who wound the deer and then never end up finding them.

Getting my first buck was awesome. I was ridiculed because of its size, but I like my meat tender, like veal. Seriously though, it is a small buck, barely a 2 x 2, but you can't be picky when you've never shot anything. By the way, if you read this blog, and have shot a bigger buck with a muzzle loader let me know. One of the hunters up there asked me why I was shooting fawns. A lot of laughs up there at my expense, but then again, I am bringing home food for the family, they just wasted there money.

McCall, Idaho

We went to McCall, Idaho for Labor Day weekend. It was great. We've never visited McCall before. It's a couple hours North of Boise. It was nice weather the first couple of days and then it cooled off quite a bit. We swam, hiked, rode horses, swam in the hot springs, and played some golf.

Probably the most memorable part of the trip was church on Sunday. There are two wards in McCall and they both meet in the same church. There building is being renovated and one ward has been having separate meetings between four houses and the other ward has been meeting in a barn. We thought it would be most exciting to have church in a barn. Well, it had been in the high 70s on Saturday, but on Sunday morning it barely reached 50 degrees. We didn't care because we knew church was going to be in a barn. We expected the barn to have walls and a closed doors, maybe even a big, fancy barn with heaters or something like that. We dressed warmer, but not warm enough for the barn we met in. It had no doors or walls in the front or the back. It was like meeting in a freezing, wind tunnel. It was dirt floors and there were two horses in there with us. We expected around 100 people to attend, but since it was a holiday weekend in McCall, there were a lot of visitors. 650 people attended church in the barn that Sunday. We froze, but heard some good talks from the local missionaries. The church services were suspended several times until the generators could be restarted. It was a memorable experience. I don't always remember what happened in church the week before, but we will all remember church in the cold barn in McCall.

Twenty-Six Point Two

Some may know that I am foolishly preparing to run the St. George Marathon with my sisters. I don't know if I can do it, but I am going to give it a shot. I need to lose a few pounds and learn to run a little faster and longer. My goal is to finish the race before they close the course after 6 hours. It sounds easy, but I run so slow, I wouldn't make it at my current pace. On Saturday, my sister and I ran a 5K. That was my first ever race. It was fun, but painful to see how fast some people run. I guess that will give me some motivation to keep pushing myself. I ran it faster than normal and finished in 31 minutes, but I was tired. I prefer a 12 minute mile. The guy who won the race finished in 16 minutes. That's cruising. So if you see me running around Riverton and I look like I am going to die, call Tara and tell her to bring me a hotdog and a TAB or Diet RC Cola for nurishment.
I am also taking contributions. I decided to run this race for a cause. My cause is the Aerosmith Guitar Hero video game. I need it and thought it was a worthy cause. If everyone donated $10, I would have enough for the game after the first 8 donations. Any extra funds will be donated to a video manufacturing company of my choosing.