Okay, I did find some more pics

A happy, goofy family.

When my sister was still asleep on the couch at 11:30 one morning, I tried to draw a Hitler mustache on her with a marker.

She was an awfully good sport about it, though.

Windsor takes up a lot of space!

Hi, Tracy!

I didn't find too many pictures--man, are they disorganized! Here are some of the ones I did find:

Nick and our talking dog, Sebastian.

I shaved my you-know-what.

I'm not allowed to ride the motorcycle dressed like this!

Nick and Sancho.

Tyson has a trout in the Box-Death Hollow Wilderness, Utah.

This is my imitation of Tyson after he saw a spider on the trail.

Sebastian and his cone.

Mmmmmmm....chalupa!

I dyed my hair to match this shirt.

Wildlife in Yellowstone

In our whirlwind tour of Yellowstone, we saw a grizzly bear, a black bear, a wolf, a river otter, bison, deer, elk, and the world's fattest marmot--all in the space of about an hour and a half.


The world's fattest marmot. I saw marmots everywhere we went, including City of Rocks (way hotter and lower in elevation than I thought they lived), further reinforcing my suspicion that we share a spiritual connection of some kind. Or maybe just a talent for sleeping.

Thanks to Picasa, this black bear came out really good. He was trotting right through the rest area, just as calm as you please.

Okay, this stonefly isn't as exciting as some of the other animals, but it's always neat to see the real-life versions of the fly patterns you've been fishing with for years.

See? I told you he was fat. Seriously, I had to double-check to make sure he wasn't a badger.

Bison.

More kayaking pictures

Nick paddled all the way back (about 3 miles!) by himself!



Tyson and Nick in the tandem on Leigh Lake.

Teddy mugging for the camera just moments before falling out of his boat. We had to tow him and his waterlogged kayak back to shore.

Nick and Teddy, just before they started screwing around and Ted fell in the water.

Kayaking in Teton National Park

As promised, here is the first batch of pics from Grand Teton National Park.

Although you wouldn't guess so, driving up the 89 from Jackson, there is a string of lakes that parallel the Snake right up against the mountains. We spent three different days on the water in Teton, and all three involved some kind of adventure.

String Lake is barely more than a wide spot in the river between Leigh Lake and Jenny Lake, but it is a very popular place for kayakers and canoers. Our first evening in the park we loaded the four of us into our three boats (it was awkward, at best), and dropped Tyson, our friend Teddy, and one of the kayaks on the far shore of the lake so the guys could fish the creek and Nicky and I could paddle. It was all good, tame fun until a sudden thunderstorm blew up from the back side of the mountains--then it was good adventurous fun as Nick and I paddled our asses off to get back to shore in the choppy water. Considering that the lake was no more that 10 feet deep, it probably wasn't really very dangerous, but the little bit of adrenaline made it really exciting.

By the time we got the boats back to the trailer, Tyson and Teddy had walked back, leaving the third kayak on the far shore. Tyson had to paddle across and tow it back. We realized then and there that we would need a fourth boat.

The next morning we started out on String Lake again, this time headed to the north shore and the short portage to Leigh Lake. Ditching the smallest, flattest kayak, we rented a tandem so that at least one person at a time could rest.

Everything went great all the way to the other side of Leigh Lake, a total paddling distance of over two miles. We pulled the boats up on the far shore and walked the half mile to Trapper Lake, where we were very nearly suffocated by the swarming flies. They would have been tolerable if we had caught any fish, but we didn't.

The picture-uploader is not happy with more than two photos, so I will continue the Saga of Leigh Lake, etc, a little bit later.

My "Battle with Cancer" ends abruptly and anticlimactically

And, thanks to the top-notch plastic surgeon my insurance company sent me to (okay, this is one reason I actually like CCSD), I probably won't even have a noticeable scar. I think it will actually look better now than it did after the dermatologist took a knife to it the first time.

So how did this all come about, you ask? And why am I spending the once-in-a-lifetime feeling of having beaten cancer tapping away at my pathetic little blog instead of starting some kind of cancer foundation or competing in the Tour de France?

Do I really have to answer that one? It's because I'm pathetic. There was no life-altering realization of my own mortality, no sudden epiphany, nothing. So, ergo, no post-cancer afterglow to report. Just three (very neat, I might add!) stitches in the side of my nose and a funny little tugging sensation when I smile or eat or smell something funny. I'm also grounded from getting sunburned for the rest of my life.

I had a spot on my nose (thank you, mom and Tyson, for harassing me nonstop from Thanksgiving until February), so as soon as I got the new insurance I found a doctor to cut it off for me. Over spring break, in between climbing in Joshua Tree and lazing on the beach in Oxnard, I got diagnosed with a superficial kind of melanoma and got an appointment with the plastic surgeon, who said I was just about the youngest person he'd ever cut this particular type of skin cancer off of. The original plan was to cut a dime-sized hole in my face, leave it open for two weeks until the pathology report came back, then take a skin graft from behind my ear to patch it back up, but when I went in on Monday, I got stitches instead.

So that's pretty much it. Granted, I still have what the plastic surgeon calls "scar therapy," which I'm guessing is some fancy way to put that scar-reducing lotion on (hello, people, look at the ingredients--it's just sunscreen and lube!) and getting the stitches out, and in about ten days I'll have official lab results back saying everything's good.

Unless it's not, in which case maybe I'll get a shot at that life-changing epiphany after all.