“We need to get out in the backcountry so that we stop drinking so much.”  – Michael 

We’ve been touring the land of great microbrews and it’s catching up to us.

It all started with the Ebola virus.  Well, that’s a lie, but it could be the truth.  Michael’s sister, Kim, has been gone for over a year in Sierra Leone as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  She planned a short trip home in early August and we wanted to spend time with her.  So southbound we drove, from the wilds of the Canadian Rockies to the dairy farms of Tillamook.  As it turned out, our small window of time with Kim was not so small after all; the PC volunteers in Sierra Leone were all evacuated the day after Kim got home and she is now indefinitely on something bureaucratically dubbed “administrative hold.”

As a silver lining (at least for us) to the Ebola outbreak (is it bad to say that?), we were able to spend several days with Kim before heading further South to California for my sister’s wedding.  The three of us went for a short backpack on Mt. Jefferson, long enough to hear stories about the MANY amazing-sounding things in Sierra Leone that are not related to Ebola.  Kim very much wants to return to her small community of Fadugu and, most of all, her kids (she volunteers as a teacher there).  Kim is definitely an inspiration to us.

Our next stop, after yet another day of southbound driving, was the Bay Area to meet our friends, Loren and Natalie Nee, for wine and beer touring with their baby Aubrey in tow.  The wine touring failed for budgetary reasons (so expensive!), but the beer tasting was far too successful.  I’m afraid we may have ventured deep into the world of beer snobbery, never to return to our college days of Natty Light.  Good Beer is one of the many things I’m certain we will miss when we go abroad.

Fisherman’s Wharf with the Nee Family

Our mornings for the week were mostly spent in internet cafes, working on both our legal cases and international travel plans.  The afternoons were dedicated to enjoying the beautiful small towns of Northern California with the Nee family (often at some spectacular brewery), and in the evenings we cooked dinner together, visited, and played games.  Overall, the week was laid back and fun, in part thanks to the hospitality of our good friends Kirsten and Bingo McKenzie and my cousins, Lori and Scott Tate.  It was so good to connect with them… and to have laundry and hot showers!

The Line Up

Beer Tasting with the Nee Family at Lagunitas Brewery

One morning was different.  Michael is nothing if not ambitious (er… stupid?) and the man decided to run the length of a marathon, across the golden gate bridge and back, without telling anyone, without training, and without food or water.  After his mysterious 3 ½ hour disappearance, he hobbled in with sore knees, aching muscles, and a little more humility – but also with a harrowing account of jumping two six-foot fences and running across the busy six-lane highway 101 (stopping in the tiny unprotected middle section for a good couple minutes for a traffic window).  That experience is now checked off of his list; he is certain that he will never ever run the length of a marathon again.

Next, it was a rapid change of pace from camping and breweries to the final days of wedding preparation.  As of Sunday, August 17, my sister went from Carsen Smith to Carsen Tazi and we got a new brother-in-law, Mehdi, who comes with a fantastic family who traveled from Morocco (and other locations) for the event.  Highlights included seeing our dog Bugaboo again (whose recovery from double knee surgery with my pampering parents went very well); watching the poor woman giving me a pedicure spend half the time cutting blisters from my feet and tsk tsk’ing my short and beaten toenails; wedding morning prep with my sister, mom and best friend, Megan; watching Mehdi tear up as my beautiful sister walked down the aisle; and that unexpected moment when it really hit me how happy she is.

 Getting Ready for Carsen’s Wedding

 

Mr. and Mrs. Tazi

 

Life has a way of coming full circle.  From that beautiful, happy celebration we raced back to Tillamook for the final days of Michael’s grandmother’s life.  Barbara Sutter, Lois’ mom, who we called Granny Barbara, passed away on Wednesday, August 20, surrounded by family.  There’s much more to the story, but it somehow feels too raw to blog about.

Granny Barbara doing the limbo at our wedding in 2010

Certainly, Carsen’s wedding and Grandma Barbara’s death are extraordinarily important events in our lives, and I have so much more to say about both of them.  Yet, I haven’t extended my blogger boundaries that far, particularly when they center around the lives of other people.

Michael and I understand that life is so vastly greater than climbing and traveling, but these are the activities to which we’ve dedicated this time and this blog.  So onward we travel with mixed hearts but open arms.