Spring Break 2006: This year, the Drummond clan headed to Southern California for spring break; at least, we were there for half the time, staying with the Fees (UD friends Martin Fee and Janis Drexilius Fee) in Orange County for the first half of the week and at Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for the second half of the week.

As is my usual practice, I spent the month or so before the trip working out so that I could ski without much fatigue. Mostly I kept to the gym, but occasionally, when the weather was nice, I'd ride my bike down to White Rock Lake. The Tuesday before we were leave for spring break, I decided to ride my bike instead of hitting the gym, and to make a long story short, I had a wreck and sprained my ankle. After the initial fall, I thought I was just scraped up, but my left ankle was stiff the next morning, and the day after that I couldn't put any weight on it. Initially I thought it was an achilles tear, since the pain was right at the back of my heel, where the achilles tendon attaches, but an MRI came up negative. I was on crutches for a couple of days and in a walking boot for about a week, which came in handy at Disneyland. After hobbling around the ridiculously crowded park for the morning, Anne Marie discovered that people in wheelchairs got to skip to the front of the line for lots of the rides. Next thing you know, ol' Jeff's renting a wheelchair. There were a handful of folks renting chairs whose handicaps were, shall we say, difficult to observe; I'm glad I had the walking boot on, so at least I looked like I might really need the chair. The other Disneyland highlight was when Mary got lost. She was only gone for about 5 minutes, but it seemed like hours. We weren't more that about 100 - 200 yards away from her, but like I said, the park was exceptionally crowded (it had been unseasonably cloudy and rainy the few days before, but sunny and bright that day, which probably really brought out the crowds).

We also spend a day at the San Diego Wild Animal park (the part of the San Diego Zoo norhteast of San Diego), and a day exploring the "OC," particularly the beach cities. The Drummond girls do love the beach, that's for sure. Midweek, we drove through the "high desert" to Mammoth for skiing. On the trip we saw plenty of Joshua Trees, and even took a detour to check out some hot springs, which was pretty cool. Mammoth had benefitted from a huge snowfall this year, and I still don't know what the town really looks like: all the streets were canyons carved through the snow. My concerns about my ankle were quickly assuaged when I put on a ski boot and realized it was doing an even better job protecting my ankle than my walking boot. Ellen was a little under the weather, so she only skiied (grudgingly) the last day, but Gina and I did get to make a few runs with her at the end of the day.