Hope Walks

Well, it was another good weekend with the Hobsons in Rocklin. The highlight was the Hope Walks event on Saturday morning. That is an annual fund-raising walk held at various venues all over the USA to support a number of charities. The Sacramento venue was the William Jessup University (a small, private university), which is right on Colin and Janet's doorstep.

The walk itself was only 1.6 miles, on paved paths around the university grounds, but was very good fun. It was a little overcast which made for rather pleasant walking conditions. We met up with some friends, Larry and Lori, and walked with them for most of the way (the finish line photo shows Janet coming in with Larry and Lori). The charities supported are mainly Christian organisations working in Africa (with AIDS orphans) and Cambodia (with child sex slaves — a huge problem in that area). The Sacramento walk had over 1000 walkers and reportedly raised about $35000, which is pretty good going. After the walk there was a chance to see some exhibitions on the work that the various charities are doing, including mock-ups of a "typical" African home and school.

After that we all went off to watch Erin's soccer match (even her brothers came this week!). That ended in a 2-all draw after a fairly evenly matched game. Thereafter I treated us all to some do-it-yourself frozen yoghurt at Big Spoon Yogurt. That was a rather interesting experience: you decant your choice of flavoured frozen yoghurt into a cup and can then add various sauces and toppings (from 75 choices!). After all that your cup is weighed and you pay for the total weight. After some in depth research, I can thoroughly recommend a generous serving of strawberry yoghurt, topped off with cherry sauce, mini cheesecake chunks and flaked almonds! (Decadent, but we had done all that walking earlier in the morning!).