Naples

Last Friday, Jan 14-Monday Jan 17th I went to Naples, FL for a long weekend.  I went for many reasons but the big ones were to run the Naples News Half Marathon with Mark, to see Mark, Sue and Mark's dad Jim (which is where we stayed) and to see my Godfather Brent and see his house and hang with him for a day.  So needless to say, lots of really good reasons to go to Florida in January.  Oh yeah, and because Florida is the only state without snow and here in Buffalo it's always snowing, everyday, sometimes multiple times in a day.  I didn't take my shorts off the whole trip!  It was awesome.  

I flew in early Friday morning and Brent picked me up at the airport.  One slight miss-hap getting off the plane.  A person on our plane couldn't wait 3 hours to smoke and was caught smoking in the bathroom on the plane.  So a man in a haz-mat suit had to check out the plane and the police and eventually the FBI had to have a fun visit with this man.  Federal offense.  Dumb idea.  Anyway.  Other than that the flight was great.  I highly recommend Jet Blue to fly with.  Brent and I headed to his house, I met his friend Jim and then we headed to the beach.  And oh was the beach beautiful.  White sand, lots of shells to pick, beautiful (but cold) water. 

Back of Brent's house

Barefoot Beach (Gulf of Mexico)

Shells

Barefoot Beach

Beautiful

We did a little more sightseeing and then headed to Jim's house.  Where I met this pretty lady.  Trudy.  Trudy and I became good friends over the few days I was there.  She's a sweetie.

Trudy

Saturday Mark and I went running, in shorts, and then went and picked up our packets and did a little sightseeing. After lunch we hit the beach.

Beach with Condos in the distance

More condos in a pass

Beach

Pelican

Sunday was the race.  Mark and I ran together, both with colds but we made it.  It was funny to see all the natives there with jackets and long sleeves and even some gloves and hats.  Mark and I had on sleeveless shirts and shorts.  Funny!  The race was very well run, there were about 2,000 runners and the course weaves though the "high rent district" of Naples.  Some major money where we ran.  Beautiful homes.  We even had a priest bless us, twice, on the race course.  A very nice race and one we hope to do again and hopefully feel better.  The rest of the day we just relaxed at the beach. 

Monday, Mark and I went running on the beach.  Past some beautiful beach homes.

And picked some shells.  It rained pretty much the rest of the day so we did a little shopping and hit the Naples Pier.  This pier has been rebuilt year after year when it gets knocked out from a hurricane.  We also saw some people wind surfing since there were actually waves.  Cool stuff!

Wind Surfing

Naples Pier

Naples Pier

And a great way to end the trip.  A rainbow over the lake outside Jim's house.  (On the left is a key lime tree.  Awesome key lime pie was made as well!)

Chestnut Ridge Park

The week before Christmas I had a day off so Asher and I were thinking up things to do.  Simple, let's go play in the snow.  One of Asher's favorite things to do (he has lots of favorite things).  We headed to a great county park here called Chestnut Ridge.  They don't plow most of the roads in the park in the winter so you can snowshoe, cross country ski or snowmobile through the woods all over the place.  So I just let Asher run.  He loved it.  I got a few pictures of a couple pretty streams and Asher in the snow.

Snowing....again

Yep, it's snowing again.  Kind of in spurts, sometimes hard, sometimes not at all.  And just a few short miles away, the sun was shinning.  You gotta love lake effect snow.  Good news is the lake is starting to slowly freeze over and when the lake freezes over the lake effect snow stops.  Still a long time but the process is starting.  It's been cold and very windy here this week.  Same story over the whole US.  The snow sure is pretty when you are inside though.  And oh how Asher loves to play in the snow.  It is rather scary when on the morning news they tell you, you will get 1-2 feet, yes feet, of snow like it's nothing.  Odd measuring snow in feet instead of inches.  Stay warm everyone!!

Rain

Last Friday night, August 20th, 2010 we got some of the craziest weather I have seen in a long time.  It was warm and humid so a perfect recipe for storms.  Some storms started brewing and moving across the state.  About 3:30 things started to get pretty dark.  Right around 4:00 it started raining and hailing the hardest I have possibly ever seen in rain.  It rained for about 30 minutes and caused some major travel issues.  Most roads were blocked because the storm sewers couldn't keep up.  Here are a couple pictures of the water on my street and a couple streets near me.  Overall in about 30 minutes we got just under 3 inches of rain and there were over 13,000 lightening strikes. 

Ash St.

Ash St.

Ash St.

8th St.

Spruce St.

(yes, that car is stopped in the middle of the lake in the middle of the road)

Swimming at Frank Murphy Park

Sunday I had an open house at my house so Asher and I headed out of town to go swimming.  It was almost 90 degrees at home.  Asher was in need of a hair cut and just looking outside made him pant so we headed to a cooler place...the water.  Asher loves to swim and I usually have to drag him out of the water when it's time to leave, full of sand and water and all.  It's tough to find beaches that are dog approved around here so we headed to Frank Murphy Park in Door County on the bay side. 

The Bay from the beach

The Bay from the beach

They allow dogs and they have a very nice beach.  This is where the Door County Triathlon is held.  When we got there it turned out to be about 15 degrees cooler than at home because of a strong East wind.  It was okay though, definitely still warm enough to swim.  So Asher played fetch and swam for over an hour and a half.  He had a blast and was exhausted for 2 days after wards.  Oh yeah, this is after he ran 12 miles in the morning in 90% humidity heat.  As most know, he can jump about 8 feet in the air, from a stand still.  He loves to display his incredible jumping abilities while fetching his ball in the water.  Here's a few pictures of him swimming and running and jumping. 

May Snow

Okay, this trend needs to stop....like right now.  Friday was nasty here, lots of rain and wind and it got pretty cold over night....and that's right, it snowed.  I don't know how common this is to get snow in May but I would have felt my life complete if we hadn't gotten any snow.  Here's photo proof:

April Snow

Woke up to this outside:

That's right....snow...on April 8th...we got somewhere between 2-4 inches last night.  Last week Thursday it was 75 degrees and I went biking outside, not sure what happened.  I guess this is spring in Wisconsin.  Gotta love it!

(The first picture is Asher at home.  The next three are out our window at work.  We have an awesome natural area behind our building.  It's very pretty with the snow hanging on the branches.  In the fall you can see deer every day back there.)