The Lean Mean Redd Machine: Yellowstone, Half Century, and other adventures

In the last five days, Tyler and I have had quite a few adventures! It started last Thursday when we had our weekly "family dinner" with Alyssa and her date. We went rock climbing and had a delicious bbq! This was only our second climb of the season, but Tyler did great leading, and I even "cleaned the chains", which means I had to take our gear off the chains so we don't loose them up there when we pull the rope down. It may not sound like much, but you have to untie yourself from the rope and know what knots to tie and make sure you're tied back in before coming down, so it's pretty intense! We had tons of fun though!

Then on Friday, we decided we wanted to go on a really long bike ride. Now, the longest we went last year was about 25 miles, but Tyler's been training and broke that record a while ago. However, I've just been riding to school this semester and have been do no such "training"! So I don't know what exactly made me think that I was ready to go on a long ride to break all our records. I think I have some crazy idea that all Tyler's training transmits to me and I'm somehow just as in shape as him.....wrong!! Well, I didn't think all of this through before we started on our ride and at 15 miles, I was feeling good!! Our plan was to go about 20 miles out, then come back home, but like I said, I was feeling good! "Let's just go 25 miles, then come home! Wouldn't it be so cool to say we rode 50 mile!!?!"

...and those were her last words....

Just joking! Well, at about 25 miles, I realized that I was not in shape to be doing this ride, but what could I do now, we just had to get back home! Wow, 50 miles is a lot! We hardly ever even drive 50 miles!! Needless to say, I complained the whole way home, but Tyler, as sweet as he is, just kept encouraging me! Although, I think it would have been more encouraging for him to join in on my complaining so I didn't feel like such a baby. But anyone who knows Tyler knows he would never be so negative, but after the ride he confessed that he was hurting too! Well, 4 hours after embarking on this journey, we finally came rolling home!

(can you tell I'm a little out of it!)

And, you know what? I think it was worth it! We are so proud to say we've done a Half Century! (That's biker lingo for 50 miles) Who knows, maybe we'll do our Century by the end of the summer!

Saturday was our recovery day, but on Sunday the fun started back up! We went up to Yellowstone to camp for the night. It wasn't the best weather, it rained most of the evening, so our tent was wet, which meant our sleeping bags were nice and moist! But we woke up to beautiful sunshine!

...after only a few short hours of sleeping...who knew I was so paranoid about being eaten by bears in the night?! Poor Tyler learned this lesson as I woke him up many-a-time to ask if he heard "that noise" and if he thought it was a bear. After several assurances that there were no bears in our campsite, and a journey to the potties, we finally got some rest!

On Monday we did the whole Yellowstone thing: