What a RIDE

Took my son and nephew mountain riding today at Hatcher's Pass, a mountain valley near our home. It was SOOO AWESOME!! We rode up Archangle trail, which soon became a stream due to mountain run-off. Mud, water, dirt...that's what mountain biking is all about. The scenary was amazing - fall colors, mountain streams everywhere, mountains, valleys, sunshine = awesome!! Mountain biking is alot harder than road riding, what work out. The ride in was mostly uphill. The ride down was a blast! Winter is on it's way here and today was one of those suprise sunny warm days stuck in the midst of rainy, foul weather. We had a great time and my nephew is now hooked, I think. He wants to go back tomorrow but the weather's supposed to be bad, we will see.

We went to our cabin in the wilderness over the long labor day weekend. We took extra day off work, hired a float plane (Beaver, the perfect bush plane) and flew in to the cabin. The land was soo wet, wettest I have seen there. The lake and streams were very high, the tundra was like a soggy, supersaturated sponge and many times the water would be over my rubber knee boots so I stayed closer to the cabin and didn't go hunting with the guys. It was windy and rainy most of the time. Only 1 day of hunting and no caribou seen. Did see lots of Bald eagles, which is always fun. We have an eagle nest close by and it's always wonderful to see the juvenile eagles learning to fly. We had to leave early because there was a break in the weather and the float plane pilot said he had to get us out then or the lake would be too rough to land on, so we packed up and shut up the cabins in record time. Wish we could have been there longer.

I also got my offical time from the Parade Day race:33min 24 seconds. 4 seconds slower than my fastest time!! I wish I would have known that, I could have pushed it 5 seconds faster, HA! I don't know why I always have the wrong time, probably because I never seem to know exactly where the finish line is and forget to hit the stop button on my watch. It was a nice suprise that I did better than I thought I did.

I finally got the results from my MRI, it was a struggle though because the dr's staff kept giving him my HOME phone number to call me during the day when I was at WORK. Anyway, the good news is the dr said he saw no changes in the mri films from the previous films!!! However, he didn't like where the existing spots were, in the area of the brain that deals with cognative thought. Not good, but no change is great, right??? The neurologist thinks maybe the dizziness was from an inner ear virus and he is not willing to give any reasons for the temp vision loss, which has not reoccured, thank you, GOD.
So I went home, still a bit dizzy and my ear hurting. The neurologist said my ear looked fine, no infection. So why did it still hurt weeks later?? I went to a medical walk-in clinic and was given antibiotics, nasocort and singulair. Never taken so much medicine in my life at once, I think. Anyway, the ear is feeling better and I wake up without a headache so the meds must be working even though I still feel like my nose is a little stuffed still. Still dizzy a bit, especially when I lay down. But I'm still biking....haven't run for about 1 1/2 weeks.

School has started, so far the 1st week my son has done well as far as I can tell!!!!

My daughter started college and seems to be doing well also.

So, at this moment, all is well with my world. However, my prayers are with the Katrina victims.