Wish you were there...

Had such a blast at Granite Bay last week (June 30th to July 3) it was SICK!! We had a wonderful visit with our friends the Kelly's (Paul, Rachel, Chris & Mikey). I know, I know -- the Folsom area doesn't sound like such a happening place (on account of it just being famous for its prison) but we had such an awesome time!

The Kelly's have huge house which can accomodate lots of boys, thank goodness! They also have a boat and live 10 minutes from Lake Folsom. You're getting the picture now right? So what we do is go "tubing." This is when you ride in an "inner tube" for lack of a better term and get pulled by the boat. Here is Ben to give you an example of what it looks like.

You ride in the tube and get pulled by the boat at 20 mph max. It sounds slow but its not when you're in the water. This is what it looks like when you're being pulled:

So you get in/on the tube and stay in/on for as long as you can. The object of this exercise to disengage you from the tube. The fun part is when you get thrown off and hit the water hard. The driver of the boat then heads back and tries to find the person/s floating in the vicinity of the capsized inflatable water toy. Although looking like half drowned rats, you find these "victims" smiling after sustaing mild injuries as shown by Lizzie, Judith and Paul below.

I guess Ben got tired of tubing solo from last summer so before our visit, he wanted to get a new torture device where one can inflict pain to individuals "en masse". We went to Cope & Mcphetre's (a boat/watersport store) to check out if there was an inflatable that made tubing possible for more than one person at a time. There was. We got the "Saturn" which Ben & Joey refer to as the "missile." This baby seats 3 persons at a time. It wouldn't fit in the boat pre-inflated so it had to be blown up in the middle of the lake.

After taking turns getting on the Saturn 3, 2, 1 person/s at a time, Lizzie and I decided to go on just the 2 of us. Here we are just before the launch.

Here we were AFTER the launch and back on land.

After this trip I had a shoulder injury, Lizzie injured her ribs (or some organ close to it), and Ben hurt his knee. All 3 of us have not yet completely healed. It still hurts like a son-of-a-#*+! However, Paul says that if you do not go home with a "little bit" of hurt after 3 days of doing water sports, it means you didn't really have that much fun. I wonder about Paul...

We also went biking (prior to injuries of course) in between the water activities. There was this great trail that went downhill for 2.3 mi. (as per my odometer) in the beginning. Of course, it was a helluva job trying to get back to our starting point. Total we biked 16 mi. Not bad.

Thank God for the digital camera we had the opportunity to stop and enjoy the scenery...

...and a landmark

...or 2

There was of course, the inevitable mountain biking trail for Lizzie and Paul. This was an excursion I had to regretully miss --- NOT! After all was said and done, this was just a super duper holiday! It was awesome! All the while we were doing this, I kept thinking, wow, Elaine would have loved this too! Wish you were there E!

My biggest thanks to the Kelly clan! Thanks a million for your kind hospitality. You are so SICK you're contagious :) !! Hanggang sa muli, until next e-time...