Dirty Dash - Oceanside - Picnic and Ride

We lived a few interesting days of late.  

Ginette and friends participated in a humongous dirt defying race, this past Saturday...

A family/friends ocean side picnic was shared this past Friday...

Another picnic in the park was lived late Saturday afternoon.....

...and a Sunday motorcycle ride provided a cooling effect in the Rolly Lakes District north of Mission/Maple Ridge.

A lot of activities captured our attention, since our last blogging foray.  It was fun too....whether as a spectator or participant.

Ginette and Darcie

The Friday family/friends picnic on White Rock beach followed a yearly tradition between our family and the Hains family.  Long time friends, their kids and our kids gew up knowing each other and they remain friends today.  Lorne and Mariette live on the coast but one of their sons is a fire fighter in the city of Edmonton, Alberta.  His little family was visiting and it was fitting to throw together a last minute beach picnic.  The timing was not good for me though.  Friday is our regular men's golf round and I was hosting this past Friday.  I could not get out of that event.

Peace Portal Golf Course

Our golf outing was great fun....and the course of choice was Peace Portal Golf Course. It was only mere minutes from where the families had gathered for the beach picnic. 

Jeanette's cousin's daughter, Darcie, who lives near Victoria, BC, Vancouver Island, spent the weekend with us and she joined in on our family activities. Several of her 'Dirty Dash' race photos are evident in this blog.  She hustled along the course to capture photos while Jeanette and I looked after Easton and Brie near the Start/Finish line.

Being fired at by mud cannons (right side in this photo)

What would draw sane minded young people to enter a race that would take one through a mud infested obstacle course?  I don't know!  What I do know is that Ginette, Trevor and another couple did enter the 'Dirty Dash' race this past Saturday. At the last minute, Trevor could not participate but the others loved the event and had a blast! Thousands of registrants met at the Thunderbird Equestrian Centre in north Langley for this well organized event.  It was a HUGE event!  I did not realize that muddying would be such an attractive event for people - young and old.  Oh yes, I did see  several +60's participants getting dirty.  Jeanette and I would most likely have been participants in this type of event when we were younger.

Some mud wrestling before the race.  OK to watch, I suppose, but certainly not an event I would enter at this stage in life.

The music was stupidly loud and the announcer must have ingested too many sugar/performance drinks because he was over the top with yelling.  Loud is one thing ( I can take some of that) but over the top screaming is simply ridiculous! Although the younger crowd loved the hype, I sure didn't....at least not the deafening sound!  We were looking after Brie and Easton and we needed to get away from the noise. That yelling had to be really tough on young ears!  When Easton covered his ears a few times,  it was clear that the sound was annoying him too.  We had to find a spot where the giant speakers were not directionally pointed at us.  Phew! We found a shaded spot that also provided some really good reduction in speaker noise.

Let the race begin

It took about one hour to run the extremely difficult 4 kilometre race.  Under normal circumstances, a 4K race would take about 25 minutes.  This obstacle course proved most challenging.

The first obstacle - to swim through a mud filled slough

Part way through the course....

A hard climb before sliding into a mud filled ditch

Getting dirty

Anyone who knows our daughter knows that she (along with husband Trevor) is always up to testing her physical prowess.  Offer up a challenge and they will go for it.  Anything to test their physical stamina is fun.  At the last minute, Trevor was summoned to the Langley Fired Department and was unable to run the race.

One of the easier obstacles

One of the tougher obstacles

Ginette, and her teammates, had a great time.  So did the thousands, upon thousands, of other registrants.  It was fun for Jeanette and I (with baby Brie and Easton) to watch the start and finish.  Ginette and her team members' heat was for 10:00 am. We were told that heats started much earlier in the morning and the last set of heats would roll out by mid-afternoon.  

We were back at our home by noon, Saturday.  Ginette showered and later, when Trevor was freed from his firefighting duties, we headed to a local park for a nice afternoon picnic and barbecue.  A fitting close to a fun day in the sun (and mud too, for some).

A nice Saturday afternoon picnic in the park

Our house guest, Darcie, was leaving back for Vancouver Island on Sunday. I left early for our regular 'Open Mic' coffee meeting in White Rock.  Back home, I shared breakfast with Jeanette and Darcie before she followed us to Ginette/Trevor/Easton and Brie's home.  We said our bye byes and motorcycled off on a cool down ride through the heavily forested mountains on the north side of the Fraser River in the Mission/Maple Ridge district.

Being in the trees did have a cooling down effect.  The higher we climbed, the nicer it was.

The west coast has been hit with some very high temperatures.  Although unusual, it does happen and to find cool places is another reason to ride.

We took a break at this southern end of the Ruskin Dam area.

Back home at 4:40 pm, Sunday, our home was nice and cool and we stayed indoors till the evening air offered a pleasant outdoor temperature to sit out in.

And that covers our activities from here, for now.

Thanks for dropping in.