What's that speck in the distance?
Growing ever closer.
Oh look, it's Matt!
He's jogging toward me because the Rugged Manic takes place at Portland International Raceway (PIR), just a hop, skip and a jump from our house. So we walk. Except he forgot something, so had to run back and get it, then run back to catch up to me.
Anyway, there's massive road construction going on around PIR. And here, you can see where they have installed a new asphalt path for pedestrians. They had to remove part of the PIR wall and shrubbery to do so.
Matt poses in his Edge shirt. It's his first race since the extinction of Edge.
Ready to race. And for the Athletic Supporter to hold that t-shirt he has in his hand.
We had some time before the race started, so we wandered. We found this platform where you could jump into a poofy air pillow thing. We both jumped. Matt isn't so fond of heights, but for me it was much like jumping off the high dive at Borah Pool. (The high dive at Borah Pool no longer exists, but it did when I was growing up.) The hardest part was getting off of the poofy pillow. I found it best to roll.
We also discovered the mechanical bull, which had a very short line of children waiting for it. I was immediately thrown, which was all kinds of fun. Matt lasted quite a while. I said there could be no pictures because I have seen too many 80s videos of mechanical bull riding.
Waiting for the start, I took a picture of this baby hanging out. He was fine by himself in the shade until he wasn't, and then he cried and his mom came and got him.
Right after the horn blow. If you know what you are looking for, you can see a tiny bit of Matt in this photo.
And here he is, coming out of the gate strong.
Then I wandered around, scoped some things out, found a place to sit, set a timer for 20 minutes, read Jan's novel. When the timer went off, I packed up my stuff and got ready to watch for Matt. To my surprise, he appears suddenly before me. He is faster than I think! I had to run to catch these next set of pictures.
Climbing over an obstacle.
Climbing over an obstacle.
And another one.
Coming down on the other side.
Going up over the top.
With an assist.
Climbing the net to the water slide.
Perfect speedy sliding form.
Out of the water and headed for the finish line. (Also one of my favorite photos this year.)
Completed!
Posing.
Close up of the ruggedness.
On our way out, there was a dance contest, which Matt entered.
This guy said I could be the judge until I said that I knew someone. So a girl picked a winner who wasn't Matt. Silly girl.
I had fun with the timer function on my camera and made a short movie with no sound. At various points through the day I set the camera to take photos at regular intervals and then set the camera down next to me, or held it steady (mostly) to see what it would capture. Some fun pictures came of my experimentation. The last set is the start of the race where you can see Matt run by.
