2006

Today’s hike sees some of the girls enjoying Fall Creek over in Felton. All that rain is still pouring out the mountain.

Charlotte loves hiking in the hills with her friends so much, it’s her idea of a perfect Mother’s Day. And since she gets whatever she wants on Mother’s Day, that’s exactly what she did this morning. Back home a few small gifts with flowers from the garden to get her all choked up. Next stop on the parade of whatever Charlotte wants to do is the beach. I’m certainly not going to argue about one of my favorite places to go. It’s such a beautiful day that we have no trouble finding lots of company. ...

It’s time for our annual fundraising bicycle ride again. The ride is a great excuse to ride with friends and raise money for our schools at the same time. Charlotte puts in a huge amount of effort every year for this event, and it really shows. The ride was a little smaller this year, but we still raised loads of money. A few rest stop shots Charlotte took while she handled SAG for the 50km ride. ...

Charlotte, Sonia, and Cindy are off for a hike at Pogonip and up to UCSC. A nice pond and some wildflowers along the way look like they made for a very nice walk. A brave and very large gopher is busy making a mess of things.

Matt and I are off to Yosemite to enjoy an amazing day in one of the most fabulous places anywhere. It’s a great chance to spend a big block of time discussing work at the same time we get in some photography. The weather cooperated nicely and the water was really flowing. Yosemite falls were really raging. I thought the kids would like this cloud man waving to us. ...

Charlotte headed out to Monica’s track meet over in Scotts Valley after school today. Not sure how the whole team did, but Monica did great in her events including the discus.

Time for our second trip out on the bay with our new boat Nemo. This trip’s firsts include Gabe and actually doing some fishing. Other than forgetting to unclip the trailer bow hitch and no fish, it turned out to be a very successful trip. We made it out to Soquel Hole along with almost fifty other boats, though mooching didn’t produce any bites. We’ll start trolling after a few more learning trips I think. ...

I led a training ride for our upcoming SVEF event, but only Steve showed up. It was a nice ride, but I think the threatening weather may have scared everyone off. Turned out to be a great day for a ride as usual. It was also a good day for Steve’s son Patrick to practice his photographic skills for the event.

Charlotte, Valri, and Gordon headed over to the UCSC Arboretum to see what spring has served up. It’s getting close to the time where Gordon heads back to Bootjack, so these are some of the last trips the girls will be doing with their dad. Quite a collection of strange and wonderous flowers on display.

Gabe’s class went for a field trip on the O’Neill Sea Odyssey today. Definitely a trip I wanted to volunteer for. After suiting up all the kids in life jackets, we proceeded to enjoy a great little cruise out the harbor towards the boardwalk. The rain managed to stop just in time to give us a truly spectacular day. After sailing, we headed back for some science labs where the instructors discussed navigation, ecology, and biology. I think everyone really enjoyed the microscope view of Plankton from Sponge Bob, or by his less well known name of copepod. ...