I just added a few photos from the Bend, Or trip here.

Summer has arrived- it's 90 degrees here today. Not quite as hot as Moab, Utah, where several of our teammates and friends are participating in the Eco Primal Quest. PQ is a 10 day non-stop expedition race, approximately 400 miles and is absolutely brutal. We wish them the best of luck!

Last weekend we went to Bend, OR with Jerry and Stacy. We had an AWESOME weekend. I'll post pictures later tonight.

Tuesday night training resumes tomorrow with a hike up to Poo Poo point, around the back of Tiger and down the NW Timber trail. Meet at 6:30 in the lower Tiger lot off exit 20. Come prepared for the heat!

We're still in recovery mode after last week's race. It's funny, after doing such a big international event we're not too excited about any other races this summer. Wah. Call us spoiled if you want- we like doing races with helicopters and tv crews and tons of international racers :)

Neither of us have written up a race report, but here are a few tidbits to tide you over:
-Race was approx 270K (approx 167 miles), over 36 hours.
-We lost a teammate 24 hours before we were slated to leave Seattle, but found a replacement just a few hours later.
-We canoed a class 3 river...in an inflatable boat. And yes, we did fall out once. It all happened so fast and we were a little shaken up afterwards. However,we did manage to finish that 8 mile section and Eric did a great job of steering through the rest of the rapids. Woo hoo! We had a perma-grin for the rest of the day.
-We did a 900 ft rappel. It was awesome.
-We passed up 4 teams on the last canoe section to finish 23rd. The top 20 teams were all pretty much sponsored pro teams, so we're really happy with our finish.

-Karyn

Some race photos have been posted! click here for our personal ones.

Also, there are some shots of us on www.sleepmonsters.com:

-Race Start. Click on the photo that says Missing Link under it for a larger image. Click here to see it.

-Inline Skate. Click on the photo that says Mergeo.com (it's really us). I'm towing Eric with my fleece coat. Click here to see it.

-Whitewater canoe section. Click on the Missing Link photo for a larger image. Click here to see it.

We're back from the Raid! Too exhausted to do a race report- check back tomorrow or Wednesday. Here's a shot of the team at race check-in:

Check out this neat site- you can translate any webpage into one of several different languages...
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

I probably won't be posting again till next weekend; we're busy getting ready for the Raid. Our most current (and somewhat last minute) project is making a sail to use on the flatwater paddling section. We hope to test it out on Tuesday.

We'll post a race report once we get back in town.