the solstice with the mostest

first, a disclaimer. we had a most adventerous summer solstice, but we also all forgot to bring our cameras, so you are just going to have to take my word for it. think you can do that? i thought so.

i started off the longest day of the year by riding my bike over to the avenues bakery to meet suvi for breakfast. she was in town for her sister's wedding, and it was wonderful to see her and hear all about her big city adventures. she works at the UN. pretty rad, huh?

then it was up the big hill home to start our kayaking adventure. last weekend when heather came over for frances cake we cooked up a plan to go kayaking on the great salt lake. none of us know much about kayaking (in fact, most of us had never been), but it didn't seem that hard. just go to REI, rent some kayaks and head out. right?

well, only sort of right.

for starters, REI didn't have any kayaks available to rent. though they did have a lot of canoes.

me: is it a good idea to rent canoes if you happen to be the kind of person who has swamped every canoe you've ever been in?
rob: i don't want to be in your canoe.

instead, we found another sporting goods store that had plenty of kayaks to rent. there was all kinds of discussion about how many we should get and what kind and then there was the issue of loading them onto the trucks, which took a pretty long time. by now it was the beginning of the afternoon, so we decided to bag the great salt lake and head just a few minutes up the canyon to mountain dell reservoir. it's a protected watershed area so you can't swim, but you can "fall in," which sounded good enough to us at this point.

i wish we had taken a camera just so you could see how beautiful mountain dell is. clear, sharp blue water and green, green mountains. sunny, open sky and a mountain breeze. it was truly gorgeous.

our next obstacle hit when we unloaded the kayaks (no small feat with the super-complicated knots the sporting goods guys had used to secure them) and realized we only had three paddles when we needed five. we still have no idea where the other two paddles ended up. it was ok, though, because two of our kayaks had foot pedals so you didn't really even need paddles. it was basically like paddle-boating in a kayak, which might seem like cheating, but it was also all kinds of fun so i didn't really care. jessica did have her pedals in backwards for a while, but once we got that sorted out it was smooth and most enjoyable sailing (unless dave was in the vicinity, trying to "help" you fall in). there might be nothing better in the world than floating for hours on the water.

loading up the kayaks wasn't as hard as we thought it would be...

heather: that went faster than even at the store.
rob: which might not be a good thing.

...and all the boats, paddles and people made it back in one piece. then it was off to a delicious dinner of fish tacos at lone star taqueria. whoever thought of fish tacos is a genius whose hand i would like to shake.

we wrapped up the longest day of the year with sallee and joan's annual summer solstice party. plenty of delicious food, dancing, guitar playing, poetry reading and sallee and i performed our now-famous rendition of "charlie on the MTA." joan (that's sallee's mom) thanked us all for coming to "celebrate the time when the universe changes" and i felt happy and full and alive.

welcome back, summer. welcome back.