We had a marvelous start to the day in Bend. Christy and Jason’s house is full of windows and we watched high desert wildlife parade past as we ate breakfast. By 9 AM we were cheering for the Bend Bullets, 8 yr old Bodie’s roller hockey team that was playing against a team from California in a weekend tournament in town. Bodie is the team’s goalie and made some excellent saves.
Being a parent can be hard. Being a parent of a goalie is even harder. For all of the great saves, there are the ones that get through. Bodie is lucky enough to have a mom that can relate to the stress: Christy was Middlebury's goalie.
We returned to the house and strolled right out the Dimmig’s back door and onto a network of walking trails. Saleh (6 yrs) and Milo (3 lbs) led us down into the Ponderosa pine forest that cushions Tumalo Creek. The tall pines along the stream bank had to be hundreds of years old and owe some of their longevity to their thick fire-resistant bark and lack of low branches.
Livin' the High (Desert) Life. Fun in the foreground and even bigger fun in the background.
Hey Kellan, I dare you to walk across that tree.
As we walked, Jason (who is an ophthalmologist) told us about some of his service trips as part of the Himalayan Cataract Project. Most recently, he and a handful of other doctors have been traveling to Ethiopia to train local physicians how to perform an operation to remove cataracts. They are literally restoring sight to thousands of people. When we got back to the house, he showed us the video of patients celebrating upon regaining partial or total sight. It’s impossible not to be moved by the footage: https://youtu.be/ri2Wqn8iDSM.
Kellan and Bodie were eager to get out and do something more exciting than hiking and hockey, so for the third day in a row, we packed the bikes and headed out for some riding. At the start of the trip, when I decided to bring our bikes along, I thought that we would use them for riding around campgrounds and pedaling along smooth paths at a leisurely pace. Over the last couple of days, all of the bikes had been ridden more aggressively than they had been designed for and this afternoon's destination was not going to provide the stiff heavy frames with any kind of relief.
Julia, about to load the chairlift in her Snow Bowl t-shirt.
The parents spent the afternoon rolling down the trails of Mt. Bachelor in pursuit of the the kids, who were attacking the trails at a seriously ferocious pace. Mt. Bachelor spends most of its life as a ski area, but in the summer months, you are allowed to load your bikes onto a special rack on the chairlift and make bicycling a gravity-only sport without having to huff and puff back up the mountain. Kellan declared this the best day of the trip so far.
The helmet brand is Nutcase. So is the kid brand.
Small wheels + poor shocks + inadequate brakes = the edge of control.
Bodie led the charge. He's not afraid to go big and is a natural.
Kellan, figuring out the balance. Notice the kickstand. Yes, we are those people.
The trails were flowing, fast and dusty.
The crew, all in one piece after a fun afternoon on the mountain.
We rode until dinner time and all agreed that we were not even going to think about cooking. Jason and Christy took us to the kind of place that should exist in every town: The Lot. The Lot is a covered and heated outdoor pavilion that is surrounded by food trucks offering a variety of different cuisines. You can survey the menus and daily specials, place your order, and then saunter up to the wall of taps in the pavilion to purchase your choice of local beer to go with your dinner. With 21 breweries in Bend alone, choosing an Oregon beer is harder than choosing dinner.
Table for eight? No way. Kids and adults got their own tables. Notice the Thai truck in the background.
Everyone else piled into the Dimmig’s car for the ride home so I could wash and fill up the van, put some new ice in the cooler and get ready for a big day of travel tomorrow. We are headed in the direction of Salt Lake City to deliver Karen to the airport on Wednesday, so Jason and Christy have suggested that we camp and experience City of Rocks National Reserve, southwest of Boise. It looks to be about a 9 hour haul. It has been so fantastic to catch up with old friends and to finally meet their kids. Thank you, Dimmigs!