a pretty decent year

So, it's that time again when I rewind the past year and review some of my favorite moments, which..... luckily for me, I happen to capture many of those with my camera. Ideally, I don't know if I remember more events because I have photos of them and thereby can remember them with more accuracy than other events that seemingly fade into obscurity? I don't know... I can't remember those other events to know if they were worthy of having photos of or not.... hmm. Anyways, while I ponder that, I'll leave you with some of those memories from 2009, a pretty decent year in my book.

Bringing in the 09 New Year at Cindy's playing rock band with my softball girls.

Brandi played up in Bellingham, WA in early February and a few of us made the trek up there to take in the show.

And also to take advantage of boarding at Washington's Mt. Baker. And, it just so happened that an old school mate of mine that I haven't seen since we graduated from HS ten years ago was going to be there too. Hanging out with Natalie and her BF made for a fun day.

It just so happened that my 29th Birthday fell on a Tuesday this year. Which, if you live around Portland and spend time playing in the snow, you know this as "Ladies Night at Ski Bowl". So, a bunch of my friends all got together and went up. And, it just so happened that on this night, the first REAL GOOD snow of the season started falling. For many reasons, 2.10.09 was an eventful night.

That Friday, February 13th, I had the My House is Too Small for this Party, Party. Amazingly enough, throughout the course of the evening we crammed over 40 people in my tiny abode. Including singer-songwriter Anne Heaton who finished off my Newman O's.

In March, my ex bf and best friend in my later years of college, Jonathan, came from Finland to visit!

April pretty much started my year long efforts and pursuits of bike racing. I spent one whole weekend in The Dalles for the Cherry Blossom Stage Race. I learned here, that I hate hills and I love crits.

In May, my brother and mother came to visit. That was all sorts of fun!

We even had one of many summertime "porch parties at the sausage house" in their honor.

Memorial Day weekend, I went with some friends to climb my first fully covered glaciated peak at Oregon's South Sister. It was a fun weekend of building "snow camps", falling down hillsides with fully loaded packs and unstable snowshoes...

and photo-ops!

In June, my good old buddy Joanna Lane came out to visit for a softball recruiting thing and a few days later... her family joined in and were off for a little while on a PNW vacay. More of my friends should do this!

In early July, Sam and I left for the coast for a long holiday weekend head start which included camping and surfing... and then.....

the Tour De Franzia on the 4th...

followed by Lindsay's party bus birthday trip back to the coast for fireworks and bonfires on the beach. It was a great 4th of July!

I raced my bike ALOT this summer. At most, four to five times in one week! This photo is from the Swan Island Crit, one of my favorites!

Also in July, a few friends and I loaded in the car and headed up to Seattle to the No Depression fest which was chock full of great musicians. I was thrilled to see Sera Cahoone, Justin Townes Earle, Iron and Wine and one of my personal favorites... Gillian Welch.

On one steamy hot lazy summer day... I called Julie and convinced her to bring her dog and go to the Salmon River to hang out for the afternoon with me watching kayakers and rafters shoot the rapids. I sweetened the deal by throwing in a promise to swing by Hood River's Double Mt. to fill a growler. Let me just say... that water was COLD!

Every summer, one of the highlights hands down is the LCP softball tournament. Teams come in from all over the PNW and it basically turns into one large party/softball playing. This year... we pooled three teams together to make a massive encampment of fun that included grill outs and flippy cup. One of the best signs of a good LCP is fuzzy memories and sunburns.

At LCP, everyone knows where the action is and what teams to root for!

One sunny Sunday in August, we loaded up the car with our dogs and hiking gear and treked out to Mt. Hood to see the wildflowers in full bloom. Along the way, we met some older ladies who kicked our asses at hiking and we vowed to be just like them when we were in our 70's.

I really enjoyed the OBRA Crit Championship race this summer in Salem. Late in the summer I bought a brand new bike (as seen here) and while i wasn't that happy with my results in this race (I was still getting use to the new bike) I'm happy that overall for Cat 4 women I tied for a second overall placing in Crits this year!

Another highlight of the summer was proudly getting to attend my friends Kristen and Vanessa's wedding at the Ponzi Vineyards. It was a beautiful evening and such a great opportunity to enjoy in the special occasion with my friends.

Also this summer, on top of regular road bike racing, I also tried my hands at track bike racing at the velodrome. I fell in love with it. :)

One weekend, a bunch of friends and I went to Clear Lake near Mt. Hood for a interesting venture in camping and dealing with local red necks.

Labor Day Weekend, Lauren came to visit and she and Amy and Julie and I went for camping and surfing at the coast. It was an adventure in making sure our six person tent with two dogs didn't leak.

From there... it was then up to Seattle for the Raise the Roof benefit concert with Brandi Carlile. I designed the poster for the event and it was a lot of fun getting to see friends from near and far all in one place for one good cause. That weekend, I also went to Bumbershoot and met up with another friend of mine, Nick Teich who was in town for a conference. It was a loaded but fun weekend.

In late August, Sam and I headed south to Northern California for a few days to go camping and surfing in the Redwoods. It was a great trip! I felt like it was the equivalent of jamming four vacations into four days with the varied terrain we went through and experiences we had. Beware of things that go bump in the night when you're camping where you shouldn't be!

The beginning of October was a jammed packed as well. I had gotten into my first real live art show.... Artcrank, which kicked off the month long Oregon Manifest in Portland. Myself and about 30 other artists showed our bike related artwork at the First Thursday open house at the Ace Hotel.

From there, Sam, Amy, Julie and our dogs headed south to Bend for a weekend of camping and mountain biking.

Needless to say, we ran into some surprises from Mother Nature....

I also took Sam on a nice little hike up Dog Mountain this October, one of my favorite hikes. I'm glad Sam didn't kill me after that one as I forgot to mention to her how steep it is.

Obvy, I'm pretty good at making it up to her. :)

We celebrated Thanksgiving over at Sarah G's house with friends playing flag football with tube socks in the mud and playing rock band. It was all sorts of awesome.

Speaking of all sorts of awesome, so is playing paintball with about 1o of your friends.

After this point in the year... I had some problems with my camera which oddly enough... aside from going home for the holidays... provides very few memories. Hmm... I'll have to work on that next year. Happy 2010 everyone, to new friends and new adventures!

(note: blogger is pretty good about not making my photos smaller by itself. It's nothing that I'm taking the time to change... but somepeople get cropped out of the horizontal photos. So, if you'd like to see the whole photo and you're currently reading this on blogger... click on the photo to see the whole thing.)