Every year for the past 15 or so, Jeff and his brother and a group of their friends have taken a trip to the Oregon Coast to ride quads in the sand dunes near Coos Bay. It is about a seven-hour drive from where we live (no, I don't know the distance. I am a girl. We know minutes, not miles!). This annual outing is Jeff's favorite thing in the whole world, along with his True Love-the Seattle Seahawks, and all things Hi-Tech and Sci-Fi. I suppose I might be lucky enough to make the top 5 of his list. But only when I wear the Sea-Gals uniform or the Princess Leia Gold Bikini. But I digress...
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| Pretty sure I could pull off the one on the far right... |
Last year I was unable to accompany Jeff on this trip and he sulked and pouted and made me promise to attend the festivities this year. He promised that it would be the MOST FUN I'VE EVER HAD. Jeff DID divulge certain circumstances that led me to believe that this may not be the truest statement he had ever uttered. I will not share those reasons here, because I fully intend to marry this man someday. I would like it on record that I did express to Jeff that MAYBE this was not the year for me to go with him. But he sulked and pouted some more and I promised I would go with him. And we brought Katie and her best friend Rilee, too.
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| Katie (in Jeff's old riding gear) and her best friend, Rilee. |
The drive down was nice-we stopped and visited some of my relatives, the girls slept a lot. We blew a tire on the trailer on the highway (Was that a sign we should TURN BACK NOW?), but luckily we were near a Les Schwab ("Doing the right thing since 1952") and they fixed us up right there on the side of the road in less than 45 minutes. We got to the campsite around 8:00 that night, set up camp and settled in.
The next day, I was sick. Not deathly ill, just fatigued and nauseated. When I was a kid, I used to get car-sick all the time. Mom would dope me up with Dramamine ("The Perfect Travel Companion") before those long car rides. Not the pills, mind you, the liquid, which is wretched-tasting stuff that made me sleep on the ride but left me queasy and tired when we arrived at our destination. I haven't had the problem of motion-sickness in decades, but it seems to have reared it's ugly head once again. Super.
So on our first day, I tried to rest and Jeff took the girls out to teach them how to ride quads in the dunes. Both of the girls had a great time. They rode every day and they loved it. Jeff had borrowed a couple of quads from friends, so we had three quads for the four of us to share. The girls started out taking turns on the 400 with the push-button start, with one driving and one riding on the back. On their second day of riding, the girls took a spill and Katie decided she wanted to ride the bigger quad with the kick-start so she wouldn't have to ride doubles anymore. I'm so glad she did! When the three of them came back from that ride, Jeff told me he was glad I had not been there to see it. Watching the girls sail over this hill and tumble down the other side, all he could think was "How am I going to tell my girlfriend I killed her daughter?" Thankfully, nobody was injured and nobody had another fall after that.
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| Katie and Rilee riding on the beach. |
My first ride happened on the second day (BEFORE the girls tried to "Thelma and Louise" it over the dunes). First of all, you should know that I am not mechanically inclined. My experience with vehicles that are not fully enclosed is minimal at best. I have ridden on the back of street motorcycles since I was a kid, which is a very different experience from riding through sand dunes on a quad. I took a motorcycle safety course 25 years ago where I drove a little 250 around a parking lot for a few weeks. I never owned my own bike. I have not driven a car with manual transmission since I was about 20. There is no chance that I could ever be mistaken for the late, great Evil Knievel. (Kids, if you're not old enough to know who that is, Google him for heaven's sake! You're on the Internet anyway. It's not like you have to walk to the library. Sheesh!)
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| Yeah, this is a little more my speed... |
The sand dunes in Oregon are beautiful. The hills are enormous and steep. You can look at photos or have it described to you, but you really cannot fully comprehend the awe-inspiring magnificence until you see it with your own eyes. For someone like me, with a healthy respect for Mother Nature and a desire to not injure myself, the prospect of careening over these mountains of golden sand was more than a little intimidating. In my younger days I was more adventurous, less fearful of heights and speed and the unknown. I am older now, well aware of my mortality and I have so much to live for-kids, granddaughter, Jeff. I prefer to keep all of my body parts connected and in good working order. Jeff has busted himself up pretty good on these trips in the past-separated his shoulder, broken his leg and hip. I have never broken any bones. That is not something that is on my "to-do" list. I'm good with keeping everything in it's proper place and good working order.
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| Jeff in his happy place. |
I wanted so much to enjoy this adventure and to be good at riding and to make Jeff happy. Listen, there are a lot of things I'm good at. I bake an excellent strawberry-rhubarb pie. I have a decent singing voice. I am really good at Trivial Pursuit. I am great at organizing things and I'm a spelling-bee champ. NONE of those things require me to be mechanical. None of those skills are particularly useful either, but I am what I am.
Jeff has been riding for a long time. He loves it. He was so excited to get out and have me ride with him that he didn't give me much of a chance to really get the hang of it, get comfortable with riding. I'm the kind of person who needs to read how to do something, maybe have someone show me how it works after that. I need diagrams to refer back to and steps laid out for me. "First you do this, then you do that." I'm not that kinetic kind of learner that can just go in and "play". One of the many helpful features on cars and street bikes is this super-cool gauge that tells you when you need to shift. "Excuse me, Ma'am, but you need to take it out of first gear. You are currently shredding your transmission and it is about to eject itself right out from under you". Quads are not equipped with this feature (at least not the ones we had) and you have to know when to shift by the sound the quad makes. Have I mentioned I also have nerve damage in my left ear and my hearing is not so great? Jeff would try to give me some instructions, but I couldn't understand what he was saying over the roar of the motors. I kept having to have him repeat what he was saying. More than once he would repeat something three or four times and I still couldn't hear him. So I gave up asking and pretended I had heard what he said. So, you can imagine that I was not getting the hang of this. He kept asking me what I wanted to do or try, as if I had ANY clue what he was talking about. I tried, but I just wasn't getting it.
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| Honey, I'm gonna need a little more than that... |
Other factors were making this trip less than relaxing. Lots of little things and not so little things-stuff I'm not going to bore you with here. And I didn't want to complain. I didn't want to ruin anyone else's good time. So I bottled it all up. For 4 days. On Tuesday night I had a bad case of insomnia. By 2:00 in the morning I was an emotional disaster. I was convinced that Jeff and I would have to break up. I had nothing in common with my thrill-seeking boyfriend. This trip, that he loves so much, was the absolute worst vacation I've ever had. I couldn't wait to go home, and I certainly never wanted to do this again. My body ached, I was sun-burnt, I hadn't slept well, we had been eating junk food non-stop and we had not had any time to be alone together. So many things were stressing me out-too much to list here. And I hadn't told Jeff about any of it to spare him from my misery. It was really important to me that he have a good vacation and be able to relax and have fun.
I had a full-blown meltdown. Jeff woke up, we went for a walk and I told him about EVERYTHING I had been holding in. Which made me feel rotten for dumping on him like that. But he loves me and he made everything ok again. We finally got to sleep around 4:30 that morning.
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| Day 6 and he still loves me. Lucky me! |
The next couple of days were better. The four of us went for a ride and I started to get the hang of it (not really, but I had more fun trying). Then we went for a long ride with a larger group the next day. It was a good day, except that I ended up riding on the back of Jeff's quad with him. I had been doing more of that than driving one myself, because I wanted the girls to have a good vacation and I knew they preferred driving their own instead of having to share. And I didn't want to be the person everyone would have to slow down for. I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of Jeff's friends. I didn't want to embarrass him, either.
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So along with the big hills, there are these sections of the dunes that are really bumpy. Riding doubles is against the rules (I'm a rebel!) and for the one on the back, riding through these parts can be very painful. Going over the "whups" is an exercise in spine-crushing bounces. I tried standing up, which, when I was riding on my own made all the difference. But that was impossible riding doubles, I had to keep my arms around Jeff because he is not equipped with handlebars for me to grab onto, and the waymy legs were positioned as I sat behind him made it difficult to keep my balance standing up while holding on. So I bounced along for miles. By the end of that ride, I could barely sit down anymore. I had whiplash, my thighs ached, my backside was bruised and my spine resembled a Jenga tower right before the fall. I am going to have to learn to ride better so I don't have to double up ever again!
At the end of our vacation, Jeff came down with a cold (which he passed on to me) and it took my body four days to recover from all the abuse I put it through.
The beach was beautiful, Jeff's friends are really fun people and Katie and her BFF had a terrific time. Maybe we'll do this again someday and plan things out a little better next time. But it's more likely that Jeff will take this trip without me in the future.
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| Me and my sweetie-right after he tried to throw me in the ocean! |
As far as our weight-loss plan, Jeff had assured me we would be riding and sweating so much that we would lose weight on this adventure, even though we completely abandoned our eating plan. Jeff is a liar and cannot be trusted. I gained SIX POUNDS in the 7 days we were in Oregon! I am quite certain this is due to the lack of physical activity and processed foods that were quick and easy. Katie and Jeff have not been weighing in, so I don't know where they are as far as losses or gains. We have had a difficult time getting back to our low-carb lifestyle since our return. Katie has been at her dad's house since August 5th for his portion of the summer with her. She tells me she has been playing a lot of Call of Duty: Black Ops on the XBox. That's ok, it's her summer vacation and swim team practice starts next week.
Wednesday is Jeff's 44th birthday. We are going to have one last splurge of pizza and peanut butter pie at his favorite pizza place and then we are getting back in the swing of this weight-loss plan. No more cheating, we will find a way to make time for walking and, when Katie comes home from her dad's on the 24th, we will resume regular weigh-ins again.
If you wish to send me a comment or question, email me at sprout624@gmail.com
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