A very happy anniversary

With my second week of school done, I was really looking forward to what the weekend had in store for me. Ally had a horse show down in Albany, and since my mom teaches at OSU on Fridays, I just asked for a ride to the arena. So here is my weekend broken down:

Saturday
This day we spent the whole day with the horses. For me, it's always a learning experience when I go. I'm not even close to being horse-smart, but I enjoy learning new things (and sometimes being forced to try new things). We had fun just hanging out or prepping the Daniel (Ally's horse) for the show. When I first met Dan, I was definitely intimidated by how big he is combined with how non-horse-smart I was. Now knowing a little more about horses, I'm pretty comfortable being around him which made this show much more fun because I hugged his face and snuggled with him which is actually quite comfortable. Ally also brought her slightly overweight miniature named Bucky to the show. Bucky's job was to show in the costume contest, but nobody knew that and we kept it a secret. When the time came around, we dressed up Ally in her usual running attire and then put XXL shirts and shorts on the Mini, gave him sweatbands, and put on shoes over his hoofs. He looked extremely cute as you can see in his half-dressed stage below.

Sadly the judges didn't judge on the character of the horse and owner in the arena, but only judged them by how they looked, which kinda took the fun away from Ally and Bucky running circles around everyone and then running through the finish line. 

Once the event was finished, we drove back to Silverton so we could go to our Color Vibe run the next morning. I was driving because everyone else was tired, and we were about 3 miles away from her house when there was something white in the road. We all thought nothing about it since it looked like a garbage bag. It was only when we were seconds away from hitting it did it rotate its head to look at us. I couldn't swerve, I couldn't hit the brakes, so I just kept on trucking, and that's how I killed an owl that night. After a scream from Ally, and a thump-thump from the owl, it was quiet. There was like a moment of silence before we all started freaking out and even though I felt horrible hitting the majestic creature, I coped with my guilt by laughing. 

Sunday

It was an early morning for us. Waking up so we could get to the race that started at nine. It was a chilly morning, and we left our sweats in the car because we didn't want to get the other clothes stained with color. We all had on our Color Vibe shirts, and Ally, Ally's mom and I met up with some of Ally's relatives at the race. Only Ally and I were going to run, and the others were going to walk the course. Well we all received yellow powder in the sign-up packet so we opened it up and were playing around when Ally thought of the brilliant idea to color her hand and smack me. The result was a pair of perfect handprints on my Gluteus Maximus.   

We snuck in to the first wave, and made our way to the front of the line so we could take off without having anybody interfere with our running. There were four color stations, starting with green, blue, pink and then ending with purple. A tip to anyone running these would be to close your mouth when you run by the stations or you will have blue teeth for the rest of the run.  We ended up running very consistent miles 6:41, 6:47, 6:45 ending around 20:40 if I remember right which counts as a new personal record for Ally. At the end of the race there was a very happy Ally and a very proud boyfriend by her side! (Also proud because every single person I've paced has a run a new personal best!)

After the race, we drove back to the horse show where Ally finished out her performances and we helped pack up camp. Ally's parents took the dogs and Bucky back home, and Ally gave me a ride back to OSU. We ended up walking to a Dutch Bros. on campus and got dinner at West Dining hall. Before Ally had to leave to go catch the season premiere of The Walking Dead with her family, and I had to attend elections for Hall Council where I was elected to be the Secretary/Treasurer for Sackett Hall. 

Long post, but all in all, an excellent anniversary weekend with an amazing girl! Thank you for everything Ally 

OSU to U of O

After the first week had finally finished here at OSU, Dereak and I made a semi-spontaneous decision to bike down to Eugene. Dereak wanted to hangout with some old high school friends and go to a concert known as "Life in Color", and I wanted to meet up with Kylan and hangout for the evening. Well since we are college boys, plans never really go accordingly. Our expected 7 am wake-up turned out to be 9 o clock, and we were about an hour and a half behind on departure (not that it really mattered). The total bike ride was going to be 50 miles, and we were following Siri's instructions and focused on taking backroads instead of major highways in the area.

The first long stretch was probably the worst part. We had about 18 miles or so on highway 99, and it was hard to get started because the miles were ticking away ever so slowly. I was also pretty relaxed during the trip and failed to hear Dereak's turn command or recognize his turn signal (The real reason was that there were sheep on the side of the road and I was "Baa-ing" as I passed by). So Dereak turned down a road, and I had to wait for it to clear before biking pretty hard to catch up.

The road we turned on was a really nice back country road of about 8 miles. It reminded me a lot of Silverton backroads, and was pretty awesome since we only saw 3 cars take the road we were on. We took silly videos on Snapchat, and Dereak sent one in to Snaporegon where we got featured, so he was pretty stoked on life when we decided to take our break. We stopped in the shade at a little house on the side of the road, and got some water. Taking a break is probably one of the worst ideas because starting back up seems a hundred times harder. We took about 20 minutes on the side of the road before tackling the last stretch of the backroads which lead us into Junction City.

In Junction City, Dereak and I wanted to find a convenience store to get some fresh cold water at, and we were almost out of the city when we found a tiny shack on the side of the road. It's one of those things that looks slightly sketchy, but you give it a shot anyways. Turns out it was really good because we got bottled water that tastes like mango for fifty cents. We took another 15 minutes here for a break before biking along the highway for another 8 miles.

Once we got off of 99, it became much more turn oriented as we were lead to bike paths in Eugene. This part was absolutely brutal because our thighs are already sore, my hips were tight, and my hands were raw from the uncomfortable handlebars.

Once we made it to Dereak's friends' apartment, we split up and I went to find Kylan and meet his friends. We had an awesome time catching up, I got to meet many new people who were equally surprised that I was a beaver and that I biked down from Corvallis. Admittedly, U of O's campus isn't as bad as I thought it would be. The feeling of being in a major city isn't appealing, but I loved the food there. Being a runner, it was like heaven when I heard that Ky's dorm (Carson) had an all you can eat buffet.

After staying up all night playing Risk and watching movies, we had the brilliant late-night idea of building a fort in the commons. We used the sofas and put bedsheets crossing over from one to another, and put chairs on the sofas to hold down said sheets. It looked really cool, and once we added the bed mattresses quite comfortable too. However, once it became noon and an RA walked out of her dorm, it was another story. The UO students all got written-up, but I was under the care of Ky so there wasn't much they could do about me. So that was a win on my part.

Dereak and I decided that that trip was freakin' awesome, and so we're looking to continue doing spontaneous biking trips. I don't know where we'll go next (Silverton? The Coast?) but I'm totally pumped for another adventure.