Oops.

Kim is a Speedo Girl!

I don't keep in touch with my High School girls NEARLY as much as I should but I can't tell you how cool it was to get the Speedo catalog with Natalie Coughlin (another Lafayette girl) on the cover and Kim Vandenberg with a TON of spreads in the catalog. She looks gorge as always :)

Kim is top seed going into 200 Women's Fly in 2008 Olympic Trials next week in Omaha. I think she swims in prelims on Wednesday, July 2nd so hopefully they'll be broadcasting it on TV. The Campo girls will definitely be routing her on from all over the US. Super exciting!

Catoctin Mountain and Spices

Couldn't resist this totally vintage picture I found searching "Catoctin Mountain" on google images. It screams, "Hey KIDS! Respect your National Parks and don't start forrest fires!" Anyway that picture is where I ate lunch on my hike on Saturday. I found the hike in my 60 hikes in 60 Miles of Washington DC book and it was perfect! Catoctin Mountain is out near Frederick, Maryland - so a good hour and 15 mins or so from DC. The trail I took was actually a bunch of various trails combined to make a 9 mile loop back to the visitors center. I saw a waterfall, three or four vistas, and even a deer. The trail was busy enough where I didn't feel unsafe (I was alone) but not overcrowded to the point of not having any solitude. This part of the country is just so beautiful - and in a very different way than California.

I had been craving good sushi for awhile so Saturday night I went to a great spot called Spices up in Cleveland Park with Lauren, Remi, Anna, and Anna's roommate Dustin/Dylan (I never got it right the whole night... whoops). Anyway I definitely got my sushi fix for awhile. Highly recommend the restaurant.

Sunday - Nats Game with Patrick, Bobby, and David (thank you AIR!); REI run with Patrick to get him a GPS run tracking thing followed by reading at Caribou; and Gone Baby Gone movie night. Gone Baby Gone was really... complicated. I liked it. Any plot that circles around gray area ethics has good potential to keep me interested.

Now back to work for a few days, then MADISON!

Buzzard Hill Hike

Last Saturday morning Shane, Lauren, Sweeting and I drove out to the Virginia/West Virginia border to hike a part of the Appalachian Trail called Buzzard Hill. It's about a 9.0 mile trek, 4 difficulty, 3,020 feet elevation gain. We went early so we'd beat the weather and were expecting thunderstorms in the late afternoon. So we're hiking along and I'm semi-keeping up. Shane is a speed demon and I'm out of shape soooooooooo that was not the best match up. I was holding my own until a ridiculous grade just zapped my energy. It was hard! The trail was rocky and steep! I kept going, but had the other three go ahead so I could go at my own pace. SO we end up agreeing they will continue and I'll start going back (we were almost to the end and I wanted a head start). Well at about 2:00pm or so I'm guessing, I start hearing thunder... and the woods start getting very very dark... and the wind starts howling. Pretty soon there is incredibly intense lightning, thunder, and ultimately a complete flood of rain. I'm like OH. MY. GOD. Haha it was seriously kind of scary! So I'm just saying to myself... Carrie, keep moving! Meanwhile a few Appalachian Trail hikers are speeding by me with their high tech boots and hiker poles and ponchos and are asking me if I'm okay and have everything I need. I look down at my gym clothes and sneakers and little dinky $10 Reebok backpack (if you can even call it that). Mmm hmm. Yep. Doing just fine! An hour and a half later, the storm subsides and I make it back to the lookout to wait for Shane, Lauren, and Sweeting to catch up. They do a bit later and get this... so Lauren grabbed for a tree to steady herself as she was going down hill. She saw a flash of light go into her hand and her arm went numb for a few minutes! We think that tree was about to get hit by lightning and she took the counter charge out of the tree! CRAZY! We saw a fallen tree on the way down to the parking lot that had a full bolt of lightning go straight through the trunk. It wasn't split or anything, just straight through from the top to bottom. Weird. Anyway we made it home and took long hot showers... we were pretty gross!

Sunday was ANOTHER concert at Nissan. Tim McGraw -- beautiful day, great weather, fun time with friends. We have a couple weeks break now until Brad Paisley.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

So for the second weekend in a row (and next weekend will mark the THIRD) I trekked out to Nissan Pavilion for what ended up being one of the best shows I have ever seen hands DOWN.

The weather last weekend was near-record breaking. Apparently some of the hottest June weather we've had here since like the late 1800s or something like that. REALLY... really... REALLY hot. So tailgating was more of a stand-in-the-little-speck-of-car-shade-and-drink-water concept. When the sun went down the temperature did not really drop, so we resigned ourselves to the sweat and being part of the sold out crowd. At one point during the concert, Petty was like "well how appropriate to be playing here on a hot Southern night." Crowd went wild.

The concert was just so good. I feel like I'm being annoying with how much I'm raving about it, but it was just SO good! The sound was great. There was a LOT of aggressive dancing going on.


He played so many of our favorites - Mary Jane's Last Dance, Won't Back Down, Even the Losers, Free Fallin', Honey Bee, Rebels, You Don't Know How it Feels, Learning to Fly, Don't Come Around Here No More, Refugee, Running Down a Dream, American Girl... I was only really sad about not hearing Wildflowers :(

Muffin and I kept shaking our heads and commiserating that we were born in the wrong music era. Pretty awesome we still get to see some of these legends while they're still around and touring!

Annapolis

In an effort to make the most out of summer, Bobby put together a list of a bunch of fun day trip ideas and activities we should try for. So last Saturday in the most miserable boiling DC heat ever, we headed for Annapolis hoping for some sea breeze. Patrick and Bobby hadn't ever been there and Keylin and Marco (our awesome Venezuelan hermana y hermano) came along also.

First stop- NAVY! Campus feels so different without all the Mids around, but we did manage to spot a few uniforms here and there. We walked by the Chapel and toured Memorial Hall. We watched the video on the way out of Memorial Hall and Keylin and I are pretty sure we broke all the rules when we were in there. Loud talking, cell phones, Patrick doing Ballet. Not very classy of us.

Patrick and Bobby trying to look tough by one of the flags. Bobby looks especially hard with his robo-boot...



We found a torpedo! Took this photo in honor of Little Vito (this is an indication on how much we are looking forward to the Madison weekend and how often we think about it)


Special homage to Big Wiz Allen...


After walking around the Naval Academy and Annapolis, we headed to a highly recommended crab place called Cantlers. Cantlers was a bit off the beaten path but that made it SO fun and local! I know I haven't found a place like that before so I can only imagine what the Venezuelans were thinking haha. It was so neat! Bobby was brave enough to go with the whole crabs. He had a tutorial from our super sweet waitress on how to attack the beast with the mallet and then went to it! It was impressive.


Too cute to leave out of Key, Marco, and Bobby...



The crew... This is a good one of the overall ambiance of the place too, I think. We had a great time!

Summer Megaticket Kickoff!

WOO HOO!!!! Nissan Pavillion Summer Country Concert season kicked off this weekend with the WMZQ fest featuring Sugarland! These concerts have become one of my favorite summer traditions. There are a few people I only know because of tailgating at these concerts ha. Poor Yale damaged the muffler of his car while backing up onto the embankment (because clearly we're too VIP for the average parking spot), but he was a good sport about it! Also we somehow avoided the torrential downpours around the area and had great weather.

We got in the pavillion in time to see Phil Vassar, which makes me think of High School days singing Six Pack Summer and Just Another Day in Paradise in my Jeep. Sugarland was great too - sang Baby Girl, Everyday America, One Blue Sky, Just Might, Settlin'... you know, all the good ones. Tim McGraw in two weeks!

I wish we had a picture of the dude standing next to us - He was wearing this shirt that said "Christian, Pro-Gun, Heterosexual, Republican... Any Questions?" We were all like ummm... no, no questions I guess. Like seriously!!?? Seriously.