Dearborn Cottage Weekend

When I was 17 I had the idea to invite my good friends from Dearborn CRC up to my cottage for a weekend. I didn't really have permission and we got all excited about it before I asked if I would be allowed to. Somehow my parents and my friend's parents let us rowdy boys drive across the state for the weekend and we happened to survive. Jeff and Luke were 16 at the time and Eric was a very scrawny 15. The weekend involved a lot of horsing around, Eric and Jeff doing everything they could to drive me crazy, and a lot of fun.

Over the years we've made every attempt to pull the weekend together every summer. Multiple times its come down the last minute and all of the sudden we have a weekend that works so we pack up and go. Once Luke found out at about 9 pm on a Friday that he could go so off we went. The weekend has been a big part of keeping our friendships going as we've spread out throughout college and travelling abroad.

This past weekend was our 7th such weekend in 8 years (2 summers ago Jeff was in Hong Kong until the end of July which is when Eric left for Budapest for 6 months). Again, we just squeaked it in as Eric is leaving for Japan in 6 days and will be gone for 1-2 years. The weekend was filled with intense volleyball, tubing, cards, spirited debates, and camping in the woods.

Fully Accomplished

Weekend Summary
-biked from Zeeland to Grand Haven
-Veldhof family birthday party for Erin at the conference grounds
-Veldhof tennis
-11 mile run at the cottage
-felling some large trees
-tubing
-skiing
-going to a fair
-cards
-church
-napping
-completing a jump roll
-fishing
-booking a trip to Thailand in February
-watching the movie "End of the the Spear" (very good)

It was a weird weekend at the cottage in the fact that there were NO kids under 16 years old until about 4pm on Sunday. As you can see I finally completed a jump roll which was pretty exciting.

And just because I don't like posting without any pictures, here are some more amusing photos from the past:

I've never had a problem sleeping in cars

I had a nasty case of the chicken pox but it didn't damper my ever-optimistic mood.

This bookshelf now sits in my basement; perhaps my kids will sleep in it some day.

Michigan Summers

There are so many beautiful and unique places in this world. It seems whenever we or someone we know comes back from vacation the question that comes up is "why do we live in Michigan?" Well Michigan is beautiful too. It may not have mountains, oceans, or tropical rain forests, but Michigan summers are awesome.

Upgrading to Video

Click on the "x" to get to the video of Evan's jump-roll.

Supertubing

AWESOME!!!








Evan is ridiculously good (Darren did a couple as well). Darren has a good description of our tubing weekend...

2006 Pickerel Lake Triathlon

The 2nd annual Pickerel Lake Triathlon was another tremendous success. We ironed out a few bugs from last year and had a great and competitive race this year. One of the most obvious observations of this year's triathlon is the huge improvement in times over last year.

We started early Saturday morning but this year we positioned buoys out in the lake for the swimming leg instead of starting at the boat launch. The swimming leg was 0.33 miles and was brutal. Basically everyone agrees that it is a killer first leg because it exhausts the entire body and most people don't really train for it. I was heaving the entire time and it was a good 15 minutes on the bike before I felt like I had recovered from it.





The bike was a very hilly 9.5 miles but unlike last year, no one got lost thanks to Jason and Darren's chalk arrows everywhere.

The final leg of the race was a tough 5.2 mile run around pickerel lake.

As expected the fan support was great. Everyone from the cottage association that wasn't participating was there cheering and some other friends and relatives also came to keep us motivated.

Place:	Name:	Overall 2006:	Overall 2005:	Difference:
1	Dwayne	1:23:21
2	Jason	1:24:52	1:35:59	0:11:07
3	Darren	1:27:10	1:33:40	0:06:30
4	Jake	1:30:38	1:53:58	0:23:20
5	Mark VH	1:32:18	1:34:24	0:02:06
6	Randy	1:32:41	1:35:31	0:02:50
7	Paul	1:33:17	1:40:41	0:07:24
8	Evan	1:34:06	1:56:53	0:22:47
9	Dan Kuiper	1:43:47	1:56:57	0:13:10
10	Roger/Claire	1:46:51	2:00:30	0:13:39
11	Dan Kett	1:47:03	1:36:00	(0:11:03)
12	Doug	1:49:48	1:57:31	0:07:43
13	Terry	1:49:56	1:47:32	(0:02:24)
14	Steve	1:53:09	2:02:41	0:09:32
15	Sam/Seth	1:53:36
16	Marv	1:57:01	2:02:41	0:05:40
17	Anna	2:06:02
18	Linda	2:09:16
19	Sarah	2:12:09
20	Maria	2:26:00

Jason and Dwayne beat last year's fastest time. My time of 1:32:41 would have been 2nd last year but was 6th this year.

The main reasons for the improvements were:
1. Transition Time - many people took valuable time last year to change after swimming. My dad, Marv, Paul, and Steve all estimated close to 5 minutes of change time last year compared to 1-2 minutes this year.
2. Course Knowledge - last year about half of us took a wrong turn at some point on the bike course. My wrong turns only cost 30 seconds or so but Evan lost over 15 minutes and others lost 2-5 minutes.
3. Superior Bikes - Jake upgraded from a 1970's dirt bike to a nice mountain bike and improved his time by better than 20 minutes. Jason, Darren, and Dan all used road bikes and shaved more than 5 minutes off their bike times.
4. Better fitness - I think it is safe to say that just about all of us were in better shape this year than last. That is one of the best parts of this triathlon, it really promotes healthy living and hard work.

Here are the bike times:

Name:	Bike Time:	Pace(mph):
Darren	0:31:54	17.87
Jason	0:32:54	17.33
Randy	0:34:39	16.45
Dwayne	0:34:45	16.40
Jake	0:35:04	16.25
Evan	0:35:07	16.23
Dan Kuiper	0:35:22	16.12
Mark VH	0:36:03	15.81
Paul	0:38:35	14.77
Dan Kett	0:40:00	14.25
Sam/Seth	0:40:37	14.03
Maria	0:40:37	14.03
Roger/Claire	0:40:40	14.02
Doug	0:41:20	13.79
Steve	0:43:39	13.06
Terry	0:44:04	12.93
Marv	0:45:59	12.40
Sarah	0:48:46	11.69
Linda	0:54:46	10.41
Anna	0:57:35	9.90

The top 8 bike times were better than the fastest bike time from last year!

Here are the swim and run times:

Name:	Swim Time:
Dwayne	0:10:24
Dan Kett	0:10:36
Jason	0:11:09
Mark VH	0:12:06
Darren	0:12:15
Anna	0:12:27
Paul	0:12:37
Maria	0:13:39
Evan	0:13:41
Dan Kuiper	0:13:42
Jake	0:13:45
Steve	0:13:57
Randy	0:15:19
Linda	0:15:23
Doug	0:15:35
Marv	0:15:53
Sam/Seth	0:16:02
Sarah	0:17:42
Roger/Claire	0:18:42
Terry	0:18:57

Name:	Run Time:	Pace(min/mi):
Dwayne	0:38:12	0:07:21
Jason	0:40:49	0:07:51
Jake	0:41:49	0:08:02
Paul	0:42:05	0:08:06
Randy	0:42:43	0:08:13
Darren	0:43:01	0:08:13
Mark VH	0:44:09	0:08:16
Evan	0:45:18	0:08:29
Terry	0:46:55	0:08:43
Roger/Claire	0:47:29	0:09:01
Doug	0:52:53	0:10:10
Dan Kuiper	0:54:43	0:10:31
Marv	0:55:09	0:10:36
Steve	0:55:33	0:10:41
Anna	0:56:00	0:10:46
Dan Kett	0:56:27	0:10:51
Sam/Seth	0:56:57	0:10:57
Linda	0:59:07	0:11:22
Sarah	1:05:41	0:12:38
Maria	1:31:44	0:17:38

The only tragedy of the triathlon was Maria's run. Maria is in tremendous shape but was new to the race this year and didn't get a chance to see the course beforehand. She made it through the biking just fine but at the beginning of the run she wasn't sure where to go. She ended up taking the familiar bike route instead of just going around Pickerel lake and ended up running 9.5 miles instead of 5.2. She still finished with a big smile on her face and was able to run the whole way. Next year Ria.