River Boarding

Eileen is visting this weekend so I dragged her River Boarding. If you are un-familiar with riverboards they are a cross between a boogie board and hard kayak. You get a wetsuit, fins, and the board and than throw yourself down the river. I've wanted to do this for years, its very popular in France and New Zealand but the rivers were still too cold when we were in Queenstown last year.

We went on a tour with Cascade Raft which is 40 minutes north of Boise. I don't have any pictures of us in the sexy wetsuits or on the river but the video on their site gives you a great idea. http://www.cascaderaft.com/hydrospeed.asp

The actual ride is not as rough as it looks. Eileen and I agreed that we would like to see them expand it to Class III/IV rivers. On the board you punch right through even the biggest rapids.

Cucumbers

At the Boise Farmer's Market today we bought three kinds of cucumbers.
On the left is an Aremenian Cucumber, in the middle is a Regular Cucumber, and on the right is a Lemon Cucumber. We'll let you know how they taste.

Sausalito

Saturday morning was about 55 degrees and foggy in the city. We walked down to David's hotel and picked up his car. We drove through Fisherman's Wharf (it really was pretty nice at 8am) and out over the Golden Gate to Sasulito. It was cold, foggy and damp in the city. You couldn't even see the bridge from the city, from the bridge you can't see the top or the water.

Once you get across the bridge its a whole new world. We stopped in Sausalito for breakfast, it's a very cool little town on the other side of the Golden Gate. Over there it was 70 degrees and sunny though the fog was rolling across the top of the hills.
We learned that its a commuter town, there is ferry service across the bay to the city. We stopped at the breakfast place that had the most people in it figuring that would be a good place to eat. It did take us two laps to find a place that we were comfortable parking the Porsche. I didn't want it dinged on my watch. The restaurant had several large tables so we were seated with some locals which was fun. They told us to go down to the docks and see the Taj Mahal.
Somebody built themselves a houseboat replica of the Taj Mahal. Only in California. There were also some other more normal houseboats in this marina. When it costs $750k for a starter house (2 bedrooms, 800 sq ft) you can understand why people live on houseboats.

San Francisco

It's been a while since we put anything up. Sorry about that, work has been crazy the past few weeks. Joanie had to go to San Jose, California last weekend to meet with our web design company. We decided to take advantage of the situation (and one free airline ticket) to spend the weekend in San Francisco.

From the time I got off the plane until we checked in to the hotel I felt clammy (like I needed a shower) and I couldn't figure out why. Then it hit me, humidity. We have none in Boise, it hasn't rained since our camping trip in early June. It was such a strange feeling, how did I survive those Maryland summers?

Pam put us back in touch with her brother David who we haven't seen since 2000. It was his birthday weekend so he was staying with friends in the city. David let us borrow his car on Saturday morning to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and do a driving tour (thanks to Brindsi for the detailed tour route) of the area. Normally when you borrow a car from someone you get a Civic or a Camry. Not this time.

That is a 2007 Porsche Cayman S. Go David!! This is the most expesnive car I've ever gotten to drive. While we were at the gas station, a woman came up to me and said "I hope you drive that like it deserves to be driven." My answer to her was "It's not mine and I'm terrified that I'm going to hurt it." Joanie said I was channeling Philip the whole time and driving scared. That may have been the case but what else to do when someone gives you a $60k+ automobile to drive in Bay Area traffic.

I'm going to break up the posts from this trip so that Joanie and I can take turns working through the pictures.

4th of July

We marched in the Boise Liberty Day Parade this year with some Athletes and family members to promote the 2009 World Winter Games. As most of you know I'm not a big fan of parades. I got tricked into this one. We were supposed to have a Hummer H2 Sport Utility Truck that was going to carry some of the Athletes who aren't capable of walking the whole parade route. I was recruited to drive the truck.
Unfortunately the risk management dept pulled the plug on the Hummer because we didn't have enough time to get it insured.

So instead of riding in a nice truck with air conditioning I got to help carry the banner.
We handed out several thousand pens on the parade route and got warm receptions the whole way.

Idahoians Can't Park!!!

We went downtown last night to march in the Boise 4th of July parade. We were walking with some Athletes and co-workers to raise awareness of the 2009 World Games. It was a nice parade even though the temps were over 100 at 6pm when we started walking.

I parked on the street in a nice double spot with lots of room. When we got back from the parade this was waiting for us.

It's on the opposite side of the other hit. I don't understand how my poor car can get hit three times (there is another scratch/dent on the driver's side door that happened right after we moved here) in 3 months when it had never been hit in the prior seven years.

Idahoians can't park!!!!