A mountainous, inky Saturday

Saturday was a pretty wild day for the two of us. I started my training for Mount Rainier with a fairly leisurely hike up Little Si, carrying an extra half gallon of water with me to weigh me down a bit. The hike ended 1200' above the trailhead -- not nearly that of Mount Si, but it still gives a great view of North Bend and the Cascades below:

Better than the view from Google Earth

I've been using Strava for tracking my walks, runs, hikes and bikes, but I did also try Google's own My Tracks app with comparable results. For now, Strava gives better analysis, so I'll probably stick with that for a while.

A small creek on the way back down

The bridge over Middle Fork Snoqualmie River leading to/from the trailhead.

I finished my hike quite a bit ahead of my expectation, and I happened to make it back to Seattle only fifteen minutes or so after Andrea head handed off our boys for their own independent adventures -- Jacob with a classmate of his for a birthday party and Reed with a classmate of his for a play date.

Getting back into town, the 12th Man is everywhere.

Andrea and I have discussed for some time getting tattoos, so while she was still in Minnesota over Christmas, I checked out Hidden Hand Tattoo in Fremont. When we found ourselves temporarily child-free, we decided to go check it out together. Of course, Andrea is the kind of person that makes a decision quickly and doesn't waffle, so she decided that she'd get her tattoo right then and there, given the opportunity. So when we found that Asher had some time, Andrea picked out a font right there, filled out the requisite forms, and waited for her turn.

Preparing Andrea's wrist

Tracing the text. Nice bumper sticker, by the way, dude.

The finished work.

Andrea did pretty well with the needle, stopping only for a few minutes after the first "you" to regain her composure. The text, "I love you and you are Mine," are lyrics to her favorite Catholic song that is particularly important to her.

Somehow, Andrea was able to get her tattoo in before I got mine. But mine will require some design, as I intend to get a cairn.