original polkas

My aunt and one of her friends wrote and performed these politically charged Sarah Palin polkas. They're pretty funny - check 'em out.

The Sarah Palin Polka
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Rsn8hKSEk&feature=email

The Perfect President?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCMBRxbppjk

Happy 34th in mystery location

This is Holly's "favorite" b-day picture. I think she was 16 here, but not sure. She's 34 today - Happy Birthday Sissy! We're all out here in SV celebrating. We all rolled into town yesterday afternoon and I did what I could to be the 1st one here so I could hit the trails. I went north of town and checked out some of the loops up there. It was sooooo pretty. The fall color is great right now. I must say, I love living in OR where there are a ton of trees and different shrubs that have a variety of fall color. However, the aspen still holds the number one spot in my heart. I know you east coast folks would argue, and have, and the maples on the east coast are very impressive, BUT the aspen is just amazing! I think it's the white bark, the sparseness of the leaves and the fact that they are in iscolated clumps. It makes them special.
We are staying in a condo. Thank goodness because Mom brought us boxes and boxes of stuff. As you can see from her expression, it's not stuff that she likes. There is some stuff that I like though. Random ceerap, but sadly there is only a few things that are being transported to the local thrift store.
I enoyed the irony of this particular item.

Rogue River twitch

It was a great weekend here in southern OR. Fall has set in and the temps are cooling off. I went out on a nice, long ride with Chrysten. We were going to do the Ride the Rogue century, but decided to skip it. We had a great ride out to and around Jacksonville. It wasn't that warm, but when I got back from the ride, Pete and I went out to the res to swim anyway. It will probably be the last day out there since it's getting pretty chilly. Today was a fast paced ride to 4 corners and an afternoon of fishing out on the Rogue River. I was too busy catching rocks to take pics, but it was a beautiful float.

nightmares

At the time I saw this man, I didn't find him disturbing. In fact, I was pretty impressed - naked unicycling could result in a lot of pain. However, I have now had not only one, but TWO nightmares with this guy in it. Even worse, his face is painted like a clown. Some of you already know how disturbing and creepy that I think clowns are, the rest of you know know. So anyway, this guy rides past a window that I'm looking out of and he has a clown face. Think Wizard of Oz, with this guy as the witch. No crazy laughing though, just that sick-ass serial killer clown face smile. I really wish I would have written down the rest of the dream when I woke up, but I didn't and now I can't remember. I even walked around the house until I was fully awake so I wouldn't fall back into the dream. I hope he doesn't appear a third time.

On a more pleasant note, I've been listening to Bitter Sweet lately and I'm diggin it! Beginning modern dance starts back up next week and I think this will be good practice music.

a must read

I was relieved when I got this in an e-mail this morning. There are very few political topics that truely boil my blood. There are a few however, which I will not get into on this forum. I will say though, that I feel very fortunate because my mother and father, and their generation, my grandmother, and her generation, have all fought hard and made many sacrifices so that my generation has choices. It's my responsiblilty, along with others in this generation, to keep those choices alive for future generations. As you can tell, this is one of the things that gets my blood boiling, so with that said, I would like to pass on this information to those that may be interested.

http://womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com/

Jedadiah State Park

I went camping in Jedediah State Park this weekend. It's another great get away, only 2 hrs from home. It's near the coast and the Smith River runs through it. The weather was a lot warmer than last weekend so we got to swim in the river after mountain biking. It was soooo nice! The river is incredibly clear, deep and mellow. It was like being in a fresh water pool - it was refreshing since it was hot and muggy for the mountain biking portion of the day. It was amazing to be in the red woods, even though the trail was only ok. There was a section of it that was gravel - kind of strange. All I could think was how much work i must have been to haul all that gravel in and how it made the trail feel like a path in a city park. lame.
The trees are HUGE! We went for a walk along this one.
The light was amazing for our decent. I had fun playing with the different settings on my camera. The B&W were nice, but the sepia tones were much better, in my opinion. Not that I know a thing about photography though.

This seasonal bridge provides access to Stout Grove from the campground. It looks rickedy, but in fact, it seemed to be fairly stable. We couldn't ride our bikes in there, but we figured that the short walk was much better and more scenic alternative than the 4 miles of scarey, shoulderless road.

North Umpqua Trail

Four of us headed to the North Umpqua River this weekend for a camping / mtn biking adventure. It was Katie's first camping experience so we tried had to do it up right. Instead of hotdogs though, we make chicken sausages. Katie is a great cook so she jumped at the opportunity to saute the sausages after a failed attempt at roasting them. Katie is also the master smores maker. We are taking ADVANCED smores making here. Melted Reeces Peanutbutter cup smores. WOW! If I didn't know better, I would say that she is an experienced camper.
Kate is an experienced camper, as you can tell by the Red Stripe. She's a Montana girl and knows her way around camp.
It was cold. We were all shocked by the temps. I had on all my warm clothes and wasn't about to wonder far from the camp fire. We had rain Sun night, but luckily it was just enough to make a pleasant pitter patter on the tent - it lulled me to sleep.
Kate and Katie shuttled Jay and I up the trail. There was a fire in the area, but we thought it was in the section where the trail crossed the the opposite side of the river. We set off on the Deer Leap Segment of the North Umpqua Trail. It was absolutely amazing. When we came out on the other end of the trail, we learned it was closed due to fire activity. Way to post it on both ends of the trail...luckily we weren't really in the fire area. We are watching the smoke billow and the helicopter come in from water. As a result, we really weren't able to ride the Jessie Wright Segment. The rest of the ride was amazing though. We roded through Panther and then bailed out onto the road. I was so glad when Jay just laughed at me and said that I was a whoosie for bailing, but was right on my tail. I was beat and it was getting cold and looked like rain. We rode the Mott Segment the day before in combintation with Strawberry so I didn't feel like I was missing anything. This trail was amazing and I can't wait to explore more of it.