Guinn Family: Hood to Coast and Other Adventures

The Hood to Coast run is the most well-known and popular relay run in our neck of the woods. It takes place at the end of August every year. You literally have a team of twelve people running from Mt. Hood to Seaside on the Oregon coast. This event is incredibly strenuous as you have three legs to run consisting of 4-7 miles each. Paul's legs added up to 20.5 miles in total, consisting of a 7.72 mile run on flat ground, a 5.0 mile run downhill on a gravel road in the middle of the night, and a 7.73 mile run through rolling hills.

I was surprised that Paul agreed to fill in a spot on a Hood to Coast team considering he wasn't training for it. I was also a little envious that he got to do it with one of my dearest friends. But they had to have a boy to qualify for a mixed gender team.

The team was called The D'Feeters and the vans were decorated with severed feet from the Halloween decoration section. The team was split into two vans of six runners. When one van had runners out the other van's occupants got to rest. After the first leg for Paul's van they went to a friends house in Tigard and had steak and salmon! Not what I would call carb loading. More like a gut bomb.

Paul slept in a field for a whopping two hours following his second leg. The rest of the runners in his van decided to nap in the vehicle, but Paul wanted to stretch out.

Halfway through his third leg, Paul started looking for soft places along the road where he could fall if he got faint. Thanks to some neighborly children who gave Paul a free bottle of water, he was able to finish his last leg without any catastrophes.

I asked Paul what his favorite part of this experience was and he said it was definitely the challenge of doing something he's never done before and having to push his body to the limit. He was a little loopy when he got home after the race. But it was nothing that a shower and a little sleep couldn't fix. After seeing Paul finish Hood to Coast I started thinking maybe I'll do it next year (and get a better time, hahaha). With all kidding aside, we are VERY proud of him.

It is hard to believe, that a. Paul and I have officially been married for ten years and b. That we have known each other for fourteen years (actually longer than that if you count our first class together as sophomores although we never talked). We have something exciting planned, but as a pseudo-anniversary date we went to our second ever concert together over Labor day weekend. We saw the band Heart! We got an amazing deal on Groupon to see them at an outdoor amphitheatre nearby. It was seriously perfect! We took a shuttle and got let in without waiting in line since we did it the "green" way via bus. We realized that everyone who takes the bus is either intending on being drunk on the way home, or some even managed to start their party before the bus ride. People talk about everything when they are drunk!

We had lawn seating which I prefer anyway, so we just cuddled under blankies like we were dating again! The opening band was Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin Experience who is the son of the former drummer for Led Zeppelin. They were really quite amazing and we already felt like we were spoiled with entertainment. Heart was fantastic! They had "matured" since their glory days, but they still had the voice and kept us entertained. Still, our favorite song of theirs was "Crazy on You." One of our neighboring viewers always had something laugh-worthy to comment on every few minutes which made us quietly laugh with each other. We now have inside jokes of this patron who had no idea he brought entertainment for us.

To continue with our pseudo-anniversary, we went on a hike! We haven't done a real hike since the kids were born. We love going on hikes but our kids don't handle long rides in backpacks so we just crossed off hikes altogether in our mind until they are old enough to stomp along with us. Usually our dates are short as to not leave the kids for more than a few hours. The longest dates are temple trips. We already both work so we love to spend as much time with them as possible with our "free time". We have really needed some couple time and decided a hike was quite the perfect setting.

We went to the Ape Caves near Mt. St. Helens. Both of us hadn't been there since kids so this was adventurous. The last time I went I was still young enough to be scared of the dark and tripped on a rock. Not a good memory. We couldn't really take pictures since it is pitch black inside without the guidance of our headlamps, which is why we chose this hike sans kiddos. The hike isn't more than a couple of miles but you have to climb over and around large rocks the whole time in complete darkness. One of the climbs was over 8 feet! Even the hike back to the car was beautiful. We stopped along the way in a a little grotto surrounded by various species of tree. The air was just warm, the light beamed through the trees, the sound was only of nature. And the ground was covered with soft, spongy moss that felt like some sort of a gymnastics/mattress pad. We felt like little fairies were going to greet us in their magical kingdom of Narnia. Of course the battery died on our compact camera during this hike, so our memory of this magical place remains in our dreams. Although a picture can not replace the other senses that we experienced either.

We anticipated doing another 4+ mile hike nearby that included a rope bridge and beautiful scenery, but looking at how long it would take to get there, do the hike, and drive home would put us past our available free time. We'll have to wait for another time. We have really felt spoiled with the surprising amount of couple time we had in September and time together as a family!