The Boy and His Dad

The Girl had ballet recital and sundry other issues (issues being the operative word), so today turned into an all-day father/son fest, which was a great time. We started off, after much cajoling and even a little bribery, with a hike from the Mountain Home Inn down to Muir Woods and back, which my nifty new Garmin 405 (review forthcoming) clocked at about 2.5 miles. Living in Marin County is amazing in so many ways; I genuinely feel like it is the greatest place in the word, but my favorite aspect is the hiking/trail running.

As I have noted before, you could hike in Marin virtually every weekend for the rest of one's life and still not see every trail, and I mean that quite literally. I decided it would be fun to try something new today and even the boy, who I much to my chagrin doesn't enjoy hiking nearly as much as the Wife and I (he'd rather be playing baseball) was having a blast. As a sidenote: there's essentially two different types of hikes here: open firetrails, with sweeping, panoramic ocean views; and deep forest Redwood trails that in certain circumstances are almost rain forest-ish in nature. I personally prefer open, Ocean views (and then there is the Dipsea, which offers both) but I must say this one was nothing short of spectacular.

After our hike we came home, got a quick snack and loaded the Little Boy's bike in the back. I ran and he pedalled besides me and I was pretty impressed with his effort. We went nine miles in total, including a few good climbs at the end which he really killed, and as a reward I let him go off road in the mud for a mile. We were as muddy as you could imagine, as was my car, but it was an absolute blast. I took the Little Girl biking yesterday. She didn't go quite as far -- only five miles -- but this girl is FAST. No doubt she's going to one day be a triathlete.

And if that wasn't enough, we came home, changed yet again (we accumulate quite a bit of laundry around here) and headed to the pool, where I swam laps with the Little Girl for about 30 minutes while the boy watched a little league game. After that we played baseball .... and now they are in bed. And if they aren't sleeping inside of ten minutes I will be astonished.

All in all a pretty full day in all respects and I think collectively we got enough exercise to last a month.