Bloomsday 2006

This was our first Bloomsday walk together as Carpenter Family + a little one! The day started out pretty cold as you may be able to tell by all the layered clothing and gloomy skies. There was a cold wind blowing too, so standing at the start line for about 1 hour and a half was pretty chill. Luckily being in a crowd of people helped generate some heat and block from the wind, but little Josiah's nose was still Rudolph red despite that.

We walked the race with our friends Kim, Chris & their son Colton, which was a lot of fun. At the beginning of the race, we saw this guy who had rigged a beach umbrella to his stroller to shield them from the drizzling rain. A couple of times throughout the race we saw his umbrella get blown inside out and finally he took it down on Doomsday Hill when the wind kept getting it. Kim also got a kick out of the fact that when they played some rockin' music at the beginning that I broke out into dance, pulling out the goofiest moves I could think of. She was busting up laughing at me. It was fun!

There were lots of entertainers along the way, of which included: an old man impersonating Elvis playing the accordian, a country rock band, a couple of punk bands, an aspiring 12 year old (probably wants to be an American Idol), an older couple playing according and bass (very cute), a mother's playing upside-down buckets band, a Blue-Grass band, a cover band and a few others. We also saw a group of people dressed in Star Wars get-up as well which was pretty funny. A funny point in the journey was when we went by these people holding signs that said, "There is no justice in the war on drugs," to which everyone who was talking before the sign was quiet and many whispered, "what does that mean?" and later we discovered it was some people who wanted to legalize marijuana usage for medical purposes. It was interesting to David & I that none of them looked like sick patients, ahem.

Little Josiah slept for about the first 2 miles, which was nice and we endured the rain that pelted us for the first part, but then it eased up mid-way or so. Doomsday Hill was tough, but we all made it up and didn't get eaten by the Buzzard (see photo in Snapfish). We saw a funny sign along the way, it said "Drive Safely" and it was sponsored by "Heritage Funeral Home."

I must admit...it was a tough journey for me, but as long as I kept moving I was able to keep going. At the end, we tried to go back and find where our church was having the BBQ, but it was too far away and we were really hungry. We had to wait about 30 minutes in line to get our shirts, which I was told was way longer than previous years. We ended up driving out of downtown Spokane and had lunch at the Red Robin in the Valley as a treat. Afterward, I could barely walk the rest of the day. I was limping around like an old lady! However, the next day I was doing better though I was afraid I would be worse.

Overall, we had a great time and hope to do it again next year!