It's about frickin' time for an update!

The Worst Day of the Year Ride - Portland, OR

Team Haulin' Oats: Jeannie the "maneater" Holiday, Kendra "Private eyes" Hinckley, Angie "Haulin' Oats" Diefenbach and Alyssa "Your kiss" Crea Team Haulin' Oats: Jeannie the "maneater" Holiday, Kendra "Private eyes" Hinckley, Angie "Haulin' Oats" Diefenbach and Alyssa "Your kiss" Crea

For the second year in a row we participated in the Worst Day of the Year Ride, here in Portland.  We were joined by Alyssa and Jeannie to form team Haulin' Oats!  We stayed up until 2 am the night before designing and making our capes, bracelets and hats for the ride.  We got a lot of comments during the ride and I have to say we were lookin' good! Jeannie had a boom box blasting the best of Hall and Oats but the cd kept skipping.  Luckily she brought back-up tapes of Lionel Richie and Wham - that definitely saved the day and brought motivation to many cyclists.

The flat tire incident.....

YouTube-Video

Jean got a flat tire halfway through the race.....so sad.....but a local hero saved the day and fixed the tire!

Birthdays

I was surprised on my birthday by Troy who came for the weekend to hang out with us.  That Sunday Alyssa went with us up to Mount Hood for a day of sledding.  We went up there with two saucer sleds and a garbage back and only the garbage bag made it home with us.  To say the least it was a bit icy.  I don't think the fact that two of us went down at a time on the little saucers had anything to do with their demise : )

We both had really fun birthdays this year.  Kendra celebrated her birthday after our worst storm of the winter.....a scary 1.5 inches of snow.  We all held up in a bar until the storm was over.

 

 

San Francisco - then the Cali coast - then Santa Barbara and back....I'm exhausted just writing this title

After my presentation at AGU (woo hoo it's over!!) Kendra met me in San Francisco.  We toured the city for the afternoon and we even got out to see Wicked with some Alaska friends.  We rented a sweet plastic car and headed down highway 1.  It is one of the most beautiful coastlines we have ever seen.  Our mission: get to Santa Barbara to see the Adams Family.  It was a whirlwind of a vacation but we met up with Larry, Sue, Emily and Amanda and got some really overdue quality time with them.  They toured us out to a beautiful waterfall then up in the mountains behind the town.  We are both in love with the area and talk about it non-stop.  One our favorite stops was this little bar in the middle of no where.  There was music and bikers and some interesting folks hanging out.  We also got to hear some funny stories about the area back in the day when my uncle would frequent the bar.

On our way back up to San Francisco we had just enough time to see some unusual looking sea life and to drive out to the Pinnacles - a very cool geologic area that deserves more than a ten minute stop.  Next time!!

Turkey Day at the Hincklebach's

For Thanksgiving this year the troops all came down to Portland.  We had a lot of fun and the food turned out marvelously!  I think we may have been a little shocked...no dry turkey, runny potatoes or hostess meltdowns!  A success and maybe the start of a tradition.

Hawaii

Last November we went to Hawaii!  It was so much fun.  Check out the adventures tab for more details!