Saturday 9 June 2007; 10:34

Greetings Fair Readers,
It's been sometime since my last post (over 6 months!) my how time flies?!?!
We had a nice winter, cold and wet but so far a fairly nice spring with a number of days of very nice warm sunny days here in the NW.

Henry and I completed the 2007 Washington Tour de Cure in May and Henry was one of the top fund raisers and was invited to a privte meet and greet with 3 time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond but Greg'sMother wastaken ill just prior to the event so he was unable to make it to that or the ride forwhich he was scheduled to be the leader of the 45 mile route. He did however send a signed yellow jersey for each ofthe two kids that were high fundraisers and Henry was one of those two. When Henry heard Greg's Mom was ill, he printed an 8X10 of himself finishing the last Tour de Cure on glossy paper and autographed it, "To Greg, From Henry". It was a high point of the evening when Henry presented that to Greg's manager who had delivered the jerseys. The day of the ride was very nice and although it began with rain, it ended up being sunny and cool to start but warm by the halfway point. We made some new friends, the Peterson's and Henry rode with another boy named Conrad most of the way.

Conrad rode with his Mom while his brother Nyk(the other high fundraiser and recipient of the other signed yellow jersey) rode the 45 mile route with his Dad, Kurt. Conrad's Mom Celeste was a much stronger rider than I so she held the front, the boys stayed somewhere in the middle and I brought up the rear most of the day so we were ableto let the boys ride on their own quite a lot and still keep an eye on them.

Once again it was a terrific adventure and between us, Henry and I raised over $3000.00 including the matching funds that are still to be tallied for diabetes research. It is a fun event and we will continue to participate in the coming years. Here are our Tour de Cure websites. Thank you all for your support of us and this great cause.

Henry - http://main.diabetes.org/site/TR?px=3320838&pg=personal&fr_id=4393

Jim - http://main.diabetes.org/site/TR?pg=personal&fr_id=4393&px=3287783

Our newest project is Woof World. Henry and I have gone into business and will be touring the Puget Sound farmer's markets throughout the summer as purveyors of handmade tasty all natural dog treats. We are in high production mode and beginning to pack the car for our first foray into the market in the Fremont neighborhoold tomorrow. We are very excited about this venture and have completed many, many packages of our treats. We have put all 6of our curent flavors through extensive taste tests with our friends and have a number of testimonials to their goodness.

Here's one from our neighbor Gracie, "Woof, bark bark bark, grrrrrrrrr WOOF!"

And another from our founder Butch, "WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOOOOOOO grrrRRRRR".

This has been a lot of fun and we have begun making friends in the farmer's market community for advice and direction. The recipes are all original and we have been in development for a number ofmonths. I am taking this opportunity to teach Henry a few things about business and economics as well. We started with $300 in seed money and he is starting to learn about budgeting and operating costs; even taxes as we are now official and have a state business license and must collect sales tax. I will do my best to update this site with our new adventures throughout the summer and our successes and failures. We are now working on a Woof World website, http://mywoofworld.com/ check often as I am working on getting the site up and running as we speak and hope to have going by July 1.

In closing, let me provide a couple pictures that I think say it all as to why we're doing this.