Swamp Stomp 2008 Part II

Trek II - Amy making a "wardrobe change" before the 20-some mile trek. The temperature flucuated from the high 70's during the heat of the day to the 50's in the middle of the night.

Sunrise on Sunday morning. Very pretty. This was one of the bike sections. We traveled over 40 miles, but by this point we had to skip all of the bonuses and just get the mandatories to finish on time. Also, they shortened the course some at this point because all of the teams were running behind.

Swamp Stomp 2008

We competed for the second time in the Swamp Stomp 30hr adventure race. This year it was held at Myakka River State park in Sarasota. We knew the competition was going to be stiffer this year, as there was a pro team competiting in our category (2 person coed), but we didn't realize how good the teams would be. We ended up getting 10 of the 30 bonus points, as well as all the mandatory checkpoints in 29.5hours. Unfortunately we ended up with a 10 point penalty, which took away all our bonus points. However, the third place team had 11 bonus points, so we would have missed third place by one point. We ended up with fourth place. It wasn't quite as good as our first place finish last year, but we learned alot and had a lot of fun!

Amy at the transition area during the "pre-dawn hours" before the race. The race started at 7AM saturday morning.
Amy heading for one of the canoe checkpoints after landing on the shore.


Carey at our canoe as we were getting ready to "push off shore" and finish the first paddling leg. We had docked our canoe here, after paddling quite a ways, in order to complete the first main trekking leg of the race. We got both mandatory points and both bonus points on this portion, and since we ran most of it, we ended up passing a lot of teams.

Give Kids a Smile 2008

Feb 15, Dr. Amy, Dr. Carey, and Dr. Chris Bonham volunteered at Give Kids a Smile at the St. Pete P-Tec dental clinic. Feb. is Children's Dental Health month, and this program provides free dental care to underpriviledged children. It was a good time, but kind of sad because many of the scheduled children/families did not show up. There is a so-called "access to care" problem, yet there were four dentists (another dentist volunteered, as well) standing around, waiting to give out free dental care. Anyway, we each saw a couple of patients and helped them get work done that they would not get done otherwise, and hopefully improved their lives.

Snookin' it Up

Well, finally, after months of trying and watching my neighbors catch (and illegally keep) snook, I finally got my own. I guess the tides and the moon were right, and I caught and released two nice snook, two nights in a row.

They were both around 24-27" and I caught them on a Yo-zuri diving plug right off the dock. It just felt like a thump, and then they were on.
I think the second one was slightly bigger. I caugth that one on the first cast, Awesome.

LAS "tast" IK

Amy had LASIK eye surgery performed on both eyes. The procedure was quite quick and quite exceptional. She can now see very well with no glasses or contacts whatsoever. That is a big change after wearing corrective lenses since the sixth grade.

This is Amy's favorite picture, before they took her back.

I got to watch the surgery on a live TV, they put some drops and retractors on the eye, place the blade, it cuts the cornea, they lay it back, zap it with the laser, and then place everything back and move to the next eye. It is really pretty neat.

Florida Challenge Trail Run

We competed in the Florida Challenge 1/2 Marathon (13.1 miles) on Jan 27th. It is a very challenging course with lots of hills and singletrack, but we have done it for several years now, so we know it pretty well. It wasn't a spectacular performance for either of us, but we had fun, and still both got in the top 25 to score some nice hats.