31 posts in thirty-one days: The end of the month

Ok, ok...so it wasn't THAT big of a deal. So I wrote a post every single day in January. Whoop-de-doo. Originally, it was meant to be a small, personal challenge to myself... to get myself back into the swing of blogging or get into the blog swinging thing...or, well, you know what I'm trying to say.

Since I was previously a - maybe - twice a week blogger, it's interesting for me now to look back at all the (mostly goofy but some serious) stuff I blogged about: packing away the holidays, goldfish in stock tanks, biting donkeys, egg laying, library books, freezing temperatures, surprise snowstorms, teasing my dog, freezing rain, suspicious pumpkins, extreme humidity, chicken death, fixing a sweet donkey's bad feet, new additions to the farm, fog, family, and animal abandonment, among other things.

Now that I'm on the eve of the end of my blogging challenge, I'm wondering where to go from here.

This was the amazing view I had from a restaurant table in the city of Astoria, on the Oregon coast, today:

This is the Astoria Megler bridge:

It connects Oregon and Washington at the mouth of the Columbia River where it meets with the Pacific Ocean. The bridge is 4.1 miles across and its main span is 1,232 feet in length, making it the longest “continuous truss” in the nation.

I have been fascinated by this bridge for years. It calls to me - I don't really know why. But whenever we find ourselves in Astoria, I make sure we drive over it. Even if we don't have any pressing need to be in Washington state.

The Astoria Chamber of Commerce website states that "The bridge is designed to withstand some of the toughest attacks of nature. Wind gusts of 150 miles per hour from the fierce Pacific storms that occasionally batter the coast still leave the bridge with a safety factor. The concrete piers are built with an eye toward the river flood speed of nine miles per hour when whole trees sometime are swept along by the raging water."

It was as I sat looking at this bridge today that I realized what I'd like my next personal challenge to be: I would really like to run across this bridge on October 2, 2011 in the Great Columbia Crossing. This race is the only time that this bridge opens up to foot traffic. And I really want to run across this bridge.

The race description states: "It is a 10K/6.2 mile interstate road walk/run over the 4.2 mile-long Astoria-Megler Bridge crossing the Columbia River near its mouth."

I haven't done any sort of running in almost five years. Do you think nine months is enough time for a farm gal to work up to a 6.2 mile run? Be honest, now.

Here's a seemingly random bit of trivia for you - I married the man of my dreams and keeper of my heart in this building in Vancouver, Canada eleven years ago today:

Guinness Book of World Records classifies it as the narrowest building in the world. It is only six feet wide. Funny, but on the day I was inside it, it felt incredibly spacious and it seemed like everyone was smiling at me.

But... to come full circle, this is why we were in Astoria today. We love the beach. And being together. Being together at the beach is just a combination that can't be beat, especially on our anniversary:

In just a titch of farm news, Skippy, one of my three new hens (the white one), has left the building, er, I mean coop:

She was last seen happily free-ranging, running madly about, in a way very similar to the kooky nature of Dottie, my White-Crested Black Polish hen, scooping up bugs and nibbling bits of grass:

The integration of the three new hens continues...