I’m not going to do this or that, or something else from now on. That’s what my usual New Year Resolutions look like. More often than not, by my birthday in mid January, not only have I broken them all, but I’ve forgotten what the heck they were! (That might have something to do with the 60`s – I`m not sure!)
Years ago, (maybe 20,) Lynne and I found ourselves in an Ethiopian restaurant in Washington D.C. That alone has it`s own story but, we`ll leave that for another time. We decided to write down what we thought the year would have produced for us by the time the next New Years Eve rolled around. neither of us can remember today what we`d written. We do recall that they were amazingly close to how the year unfolded for us both.
A few years ago I thought it would be cool to sign up and participate in an Ironman Triathlon. I was 55 years old. I couldn`t swim, didn`t even own running shoes and hadn`t ridden a bike since I was a kid in public school delivering newspapers. I`m not sure if it`s good luck or bad luck, but I can`t stand to fail at anything. If I say I`m going to do something, I`ll kill myself trying not to fail as I attempt whatever crazy thing it is. The only thing worse for me is having to face someone else and admit that I failed.
I got that to work well for me with the Ironman thing by telling EVERYONE I knew, or met, that I was going to do it. 2 years later after ‘God only knows’ how many miles of swimming biking and running, and what seemed like a never-ending string of longer and longer races, I finished that Ironman in 2007. I had a great coach, (thanks Adam) met an amazing number of like-minded Tri-Folks who became friends along the way. There were a number of times that I wanted to quit, but kept going because I couldn`t possible face everyone and say that I`d quit.
I think I`ve tripped over something that works for me! So . . . . . .
2011 – New Years List to be checked in 365 days.
1. We`ll spend another 3.5 months in Mexico. We`ll leave mid April to head `home`, in Newmarket.
2. The Honda Shadow in the garage with 2900k on it will have at least another 6,000k on it before it`s time to winterize it again.
3. Lynne and I will have completed walking the Camino de Santego hike (about 800k) through the top of Spain in the fall.
4. I`ll finish writing my book and have it published, one way or another!
5. I`ll have started on the public speaking tour and will have had at least 4-5 paying gigs with it. (Jeff – looking for your help on this one . . . . . coach!)
6. Christmas will have been spent with all of my kids, and even better, with Mom included, in the Great White North somewhere.
So – there it is! Number 1 is easy! The rest will take some work but – I`ve just told the world. Here`s hoping my theory on `how to accomplish anything`works for me again!
Happy New Year to all!
Love and Peace
G
Filed under: Ajijic, General Update, Greg Collett, Hiking, Pets, Travel Storys
In some ways, lots has happened since our last update. In other ways, not much really.
From Dallas we drove through to Laredo where we spent the night before crossing the border. Both the US and Canadian travel warnings tell folks not to drive across the Mexican border. They say if you have to go to Mexico, fly in to the middle somewhere. We want to bring our stuff back with us when we return in April so, we need the car. The girl at the car insurance office told us that she usually has lineups of people buying insurance before driving into Mexico but, as of when we were there, we were only about the 3rd policy they’d written so far, this year! She went on to tell us stories of why non of them go across the border anymore. Non of this helped us much with our nervousness of crossing in the morning. We’d decided to cross about 9:00 AM. My thinking was that the ‘bad guys’ stay up wrecking havoc under the cover of darkness and should be asleep until noon. Neither one of us got much sleep that night.
In the end, all of our worries were for not. The border crossing went smoothly and we were well on our way after getting out of the customs office with Lynne’s visa and our sticker for the car. I got my 5 year visitor status a while ago.
The drive from Nuevo Laredo (the Mexican side of the town) to Ajijic was uneventful. We stayed out one night and arrived here in the middle of the afternoon on the Wednesday afternoon, just a couple of hours late for the weekly market that takes over our street in town.
It felt good to be back. Not as exciting as it had been last year. We felt the same way about the trip down here. Last year was very exciting and all new. This year it was, well, it was just work getting here. We’d done the tourist thing in Nashville, Memphis and Dallas which we enjoyed, but the rest of te 4500k trip wasn’t much fun at all.
Great to see our friends from last year, Paul and Kay from the east coast when we got here. The pups all came running which was pretty cool for me. They looked skinny which bugged me a bit. I’d left 5, 13k bags of dog food for them before I left. I guess the folks on the ranch fed all the dogs with that. Now (3 weeks later) they are pretty fat again. The owner here had given “Moose”, the biggest male to his boyfriend just before I’d gone back home and somehow the guy managed to let it die in the 5 weeks I’d been away. The owner gave him another one so, we were down to 5 pups left. Someone bought one the other weekend so, now we’re down to 4. God only knows what’s going to end up happening to them.
The folks who run the ranch built a small pen for them in a dark cold corner of the ranch so that they wouldn’t be running around pooping all over the place as it fills up with the Snowbird set. I took the dogs out of there and told them that at home I could have them charged with cruelty to animals but keeping them there. For some reason they listened. They often put the pups there during the night, but they are out and free to run all over during the day. Maybe I should stop calling them pups. They were born on August 18, they’re over 4 months old now, and getting pretty big!
So far, we’re not having as much fun as we hoped too. There’s something very exciting about finding and exploring a new place. Coming back again is, just that. We’re here again. Climbing in the mountains is still cool except my ankle that I wrecked in NYC still sisn`t back together properly. I hiked for a few hours last Sunday and had trouble putting weight on it for the rest of the day. Nothing new, all very nice, but we’re both feeling a bit that it’s just the same again. We won’t be back next winter! That’s not to say we’ll never come back, but we still have a lot of the world to see and a ton of new stuff to check out.
Christmas was quiet. We saw some friends, went out for a nice Christmas Eve dinner, met with some other friends for dinner on christmas day, but I think we were both thinking more about my kids all up in Ottawa. Kids, grandkids, extended family, 18 for dinner. Mom alone in Peterborough. Yup – we’ll do that differently next year for sure. I did manage to get out and get a haircut just before the holiday.
Jordan arrives in a few hours for about 9 days. We’re both super excited about seeing him. I have a couple of buddies who may come visit for a bit in January and February. Lynne lifelong girlfriend is coming for the month of March. Ron and Bev are planning to come the first week of April. We’re planing on starting the trip home on April 15th.
I’ve got that new bike waiting for me at home. I’m looking forward to putting some mileage on that next summer. I’m hoping to get a few race announcing gigs with the HSBC series. I’ve dug out all of my notes and the beginning 30 pages of the book I’ve been threatening to write and plan to work o n that before heading back home. I’m looking into how to turn that into a cool speech that I could take out on the road and have some fun with as well.
Lynne and I are looking into the Camino walk through the top of Spain for next fall. I keep hearing about it. It’s an almost 800k walk from France, through the mountains and across to Santiago. It should take about 30 -35 days of hiking. I must have run into 20 people of late who have done it. 15 of them have done it more than once so, we`re thinking it looks like a pretty cool adventure too.
Lynne and I sat in an African restaurant a few years ago in Washington on New Years Eve and wrote down what we thought the next year was going to look like. The possibilities for next year are endless for us right now. I think we`ll spend more time back in Ontario and, by all the things we`re looking into, I think we`ll ave a few pretty good adventures to write about too.
Happy New Year everyone. I hope everyone has some great adventures coming up soon too!
Filed under: General Update
A simple rifle, bought from a mail order catalogue for $12.75 changed the world. Unbelievable!
We drove into Dallas yesterday afternoon. The temperature rose as we drove from 0 in Memphis to 13 in Dallas. There were a couple of buildings that looked like pictures of the book depository as we drove in but then, there it was. Standing on the corner by itself overlooking the road where history was changed.
We parked nearby and walked over and into the building. Another audio tour but strict rules about taking pictures. I guess I wasn’t the first guy to try walking around with my camera hanging from my neck with the lens cap off. Some security guy pretty much walked the tour with me. (Funny, It worked in Rome!)
Kennedy being shot was a big deal in my life. Like most I guess, I remember where I was and what I was doing. John Lennon being killed bothered me a lot more. The tour of the building was good, great actually. still shot pictures and movies everywhere depicted the mood of the country, of Dallas and then every move the Kennedy’s made from driving down the road through to the funeral. Pictures of the riffle, frames from some guys movie, one frame showing a pink glow over the presidents head as that shot removed part of his head. It was chilling.
There is a plexiglass wall around the corner where Oswald took those three shots. Boxes were set up the way he had a ranged them that day. A wall of boxes behind him so that no one could see him, sitting on a box with a couple of boxes leaned up against the wall and window that he steadied his $12.00 rifle on.
The road is marked with white X’s where the car was as each bullet tore through JFK. I’ve seen all the pictures of the view from that window. There’s something really eire about standing in the window beside “the” window and looking down over the trees to the spot. There’s still a lot of tears shed on and around the area.
The display on the 7th floor shows a few pictures of Jack Ruby and tells a bit about him. His grey hat, the one that filled sot of the picture as he walked forward and shot Oswald was on display.
This trip seems to be out “Dead Guys” tour. We started out visiting the the gravesite where Lynne’s Mom and Dad are. On to Nashville, The Ryman theater and the Grand Old Opry with stories of all the early but now dead musicians. On to Graceland for the Dead Elvis Tour, and now the Dead Kennedy tour.
We’re off to Laredo today. I’m guessing there’s no “Dead Drug Load” tour there. We’ll pick up our Mexican car insurance and fill up the car with food stuff that we can’t get in Mexico. Important stuff like Kraft Creamy Peanut Butter! We’ll cross the Rio Grand first thing tomorrow morning. The border between Mexico and the US is where all the drug lord danger that we read about endlessly takes place. We figure crossing early in the morning is the best time. Drug Lords hang out late at night so, we figure they’ll all be asleep when we cross!
We may not find an Internet connection along the way through Mexico as we make the final 1000k run down to Ajijic. Depending on how quickly we can get across the border and through customs, we might make a straight long drive, or we might stop for one night. Either way, we should be back to our Mexico home and back online by Wednesday at the latest.
Filed under: General Update
I’d forgotten to write about the Opryland Hotel. It was one of the stops on the Nashville tour. Well, not a stop so much as a pick up sport, but the tour operator talked about how amazing it was. Our hotel was only about 1k away so, we go off there at the end of our tour. The grounds are HUGE. Trees and bushes al covered in lights looking absolutely beautiful. The place must have been designed by one of the Vegas type architects. It went on forever. The perimeter was all hotel rooms with little french style balconies overlooking the covered gardens inside. We felt like we were back on the River Walk in San Antonio, except, it was al indoors. We walked for probably an hour or more inside and only covered about 1/2 of the place. I’m not sure if my pictures came out well or not. I’ll check a bit later.
Friday we got up again to cloudy overcast skies with bits of rain here and there. The temperature was about 8 degrees. Nice at least that it wasn’t still below zero which it’s been every night since we left Toronto. We took our time getting away from the hotel after breakfast in the morning and headed off for the 3.5 hour drive towards Memphis and Graceland.
We made a couple of stops for gas and some fast food lunch. I’ve heard it said that there are places in this world where there are ‘no branches on the family tree’. I think we stopped at a couple of those places! I’m willing to bet the four people in front of me at McDonalds are still waiting to place their orders now, and that was 16 hours ago!
We’d put Graceland as the way mark in the GPS so, we drove straight to it. driving down Elvis Presley Blvd, past the Elvis Presley cleaners, the Elvis Presley grocery store, Elvis Presley motors, and into the Elvis Presley tour parking lot! The place was cool. he big old southern 2 story mansion with huge pillars out the front looked just as I expected it to look. Smaller though. I’d seen pictures over the years and, by todays standards, not a huge house. The grounds were just under 18 acres I think the guide said. The main house was roped off so we could only walk through the halls really and peek into the ground floor rooms. Upstairs was roped off and no one was allowed up there.
It was amazing to look at the walls (off the main house) that were covered with gold and platinum records, awards and and ‘Everything Elvis’ memorabilia. I don’t think it possible to love music and not get a kick out of Graceland. I was never a real Elvis fan, but I did enjoy the tour. I walked away with a real feel for how he lived at home. Pretty cool!
The tour continued across the road at the Elvis garage. From Pink Cadillacs to a pair of Rolls Royces, from snowmobiles refitted with wheels (it doesn’t snow much in Memphis) and motorcycles. Amazing. The guy sure knew how to play. It looks like a lot of the cars he gave away were bought back by the estate and were on display there too.
There are times I get an opportunity to see something that I’ve heard about for years and, it’s disappointing for one reason or another. Not so with Graceland. It’s not been very high on the bucket list, but I’m glad we did it. I managed to get out of the gift shop without any tacky Elvis stuff too!
We headed straight out from Memphis towards Dallas, our next planned stop on route. We drove for an hour or so. I think the Memphis to Dallas leg is about 7.5 hours long. It was good get an hour or so of that out of the way. We ended up in a little town of Brinkley Arkansas. It’s a small town that just might in the “Asshole of the World’” award. We drove around looking for a place to eat. I ended up at a Subway store where it appears they get in fresh lettuce and tomatoes every other month. (I think the trucks coming next month!!) Lynne could stand the look of the frost covered toppings and dirty looking Sub Maker Dude so, we headed over to the local grocery store. You know that southern, “Bless your little heart” and “Where u-all from?” and “U-all come back now U hear”. They really do talk like that. Again, not too many branches on the family tree it appears!
The WiFi didn’t work last night, but the TV did. WiFi fixed itself while we were sleeping so, we’re madly checking email and writing before we go for breakfast and head out again.
Dallas Book Repository and the JFK memorial coming up, then, the early morning crossing at the Rio Grand and a long drive home again. I heard from Paul and Kay who are already at the ranch that the pups are doing well! Can’t wait!!!!
Filed under: General Update
We got on the old folks bus with, well, old folks for the afternoon and did the tour through Nashville. The driver was a dick with his Vietnam Vet hat and his anti Obama this and that. I guess he got a bit too much Napalm in the head earlier. There was some old loudmouth broad on the bus that I could have slapped. I remembered my southern belle friend (TL) who explained to me years ago that, in the south, “Bless your little heart” means. “Go fuck yourself”. I was blessing her heart all afternoon.
Apart from those two folks, the tour and the town are absolutely amazing, I’m not a country music fan. I understand loving your dog, but the truck, the train , your momma, and getting your girl stolen by your old best friend . . . . . not really a big part of what I relate too!
I’ve never listened to the ‘Grand old Opry’, but walking around the Ryman theater was amazing. Looking out from the stage reminded me of playing Massey Hall once. You can actually feel the great acoustics, A whisper carries from stage center to the back corner to the top balcony. learning the history of the place. Getting the inside scope on the famous country folks that played there, many of whom the stage manager had to run over to the bar around the corner moments before they were to go on stage to drag the half in the bag artist out was great!. I love learning the history of great old music halls. learning stuff like, that old ‘grand pa’ character was actually 22 years old when he crated the character that he played until he, well, until he was an old grandpa! I love that stuff.
The drive down music lane was cool. The old studio where Elvis recorded most of his songs. The Sony and RCA studios. There are something like 257 recording studios in this town.
I met up with my old buddy Jim in Whitby a week or so ago when I was home. Jimmy is a GREAT musician. He’s been writing music since we met in the early 89′s. Great stuff. Luck has it that he didn’t get to be a rock star, but he could have been in my estimation. Jimmy was talking about trying to get into writing country music now. We touched on Nashville and, maybe, he should get his butt down here for a bit. Jimmy – Do it pal. You want some country inspiration? It’s infectious here buddy! You can’t help but want to grab a fiddle player and start up!
We stopped at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Again I was thinking that I don’t really care about country music when we were dropped off, but had done a 180 on that throughout by the time we had to get back on the bus. I could have spent a whole day in there. From the life stories of all of these great old musicians, to the displays of old gold records to gold cars. Elvis, Dude, that old caddie was great!!!!
There had to be millions of dollars worth of great old guitars on display. I would have loved to have been able to get my hands on a few of them to play for a minute. You cold just tell how mellow or sharp they were going to sound. We only managed to get about 1/3 of the way around the place when it was time to go. These tours are great to give you and overview of the town and to show you what you want to go back and spend more time at.
We’re heading off the Memphis and Graceland today. I hope what I expect to be goofy, turns out to be as captivatingly interesting again today!
I’ll have to bring my laptop into the room tonight I guess. I’m updating the blog though email to WordPress via the iPad. I haven’t figured out how to embed photos into it though.
Filed under: General Update
It’s almost noon on Friday Dec 3. We’re sitting in our hotel room in Nashville, waiting for the tour to start at 1:30. I always feel like such an old fart when we get on these bus tours whenever we get to a town but, we love them. In a couple of hours we’ve got an overview of the town and can decide what we think is worthwhile going back to see. What I don’t like is, all the white hair. I feel like I’m way to young to be hanging with the ‘Really Old Fart’ crowd. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m lucky to be able to do this. If the mortgage market ever fails back in Ontario, I could end up being the welcome guy at Wall Mart, but I don’t want to even think about that possibility!
The trip, so far, hasn’t been too eventful. We left Wednesday morning for St Catharines to spend the afternoon with Jordan. I wish Michelle, Gavin and Christine lived closer. Seeing everyone would have been amazing!.
We got to Jord’s around noon, headed out for lunch and a bit of last minute Canadian shopping, dropped Jordan at Blockbuster for his evening shift and headed out across the border. I always feel better AFTER crossing the border.
We had the easiest crossing ever. He said, “How you doing?”, took our passports, smiled and waved us on through. Nice!
It was almost 6:00. We figured we’d drive for a couple of hours and hunker down somewhere. 10 minutes into Buffalo we both commented at the same time that it was starting to snow. 2 minutes later, we couldn’t see 10 feet in front of the car. Amazing – Fall changed instantly into a ferocious winter blizzard! It stopped pretty much at the south end of Buffalo. We drove for another hour or so and stopped . . . . nowhere really. Another Comfort Inn at the side of the road. (Sorry Ferdonia/Dunkirk – You don’t really rate as a real place!)
The roads were a bit snowy in the morning, but not too bad. We heard on the radio that the highways were closed from Buffalo though.
Overcast sky. Bits of rain with bits of snow was what Thursday brought to us. We were planning to stop in Columbus Ohio and spend the night with our buddy Rocco that nat night. rococo phoned the night before and left a message, sounding very much like, if his cold got any worse, he wouldn’t make it through the night. We chatted a bit on the phone Thursday again. He sounded terrible and, he didn’t want company anymore than we wanted his cold. Hopefully, we can see him on the trip back in the spring.
We stopped for lunch at a Bob Evans in ‘god-knows-where’ Ohio. Apparently, God only makes lunch-time Bob Evans eaters in EXTRA LARGE! Holy crap! Those folks could all afford to forgo the french fries at least!! I think Lynne and I have visited our last Bob Evans too. Lynne tells me I have to stop being negative so . . . . “I’m sure the food there tastes every bit as wonderful as my old running shoes would!” (How was that? Was that a bit more positive?)
We drove through to Lexington Kentucky Thursday. We’re a bit over 1000k on our 4,500k journey. Another Comfort Inn (You get the third night free if you stay for two nights you know!) With all the nights we seem to spend in motels, it’s an OK deal!
Out to the Olive Garden for dinner. Myers and Coke and a bit of steak in my pasta – MMMMMMMM – good! We talked to Chris the waiter. Nice guy. Surprised to hear that we were from Canada. They don’t get a lot of Canadians in there. He laughed hysterically when we asked if it’s true that Canadians have a reputation as being poor tippers. Apparently, we do!!! (15 – 20% is right my fellow Canadians – quit being cheap!!!!!) What we didn’t know is that most servers in the US, according to Chris, make $2.15 an hour, plus tips. I’m not sure that’s true, but it did get Chris a 20% tip last night anyway!
We got to Nashville about noon. We’re not really sure what time we got here. We crossed a time zone somewhere and couldn’t figure out, or remember what time it was for a while. I just knew it was weird when the GPS showed that we were arriving at the tour joint, 40 minutes ago!
Now we need some food. I’m sure we’ll put on 5 or 10 lbs along the way. Our pal Nadia gave us a big bag of candy as we left the house. We don’t want to eat it, but we don’t want to be rude!!!
More later – Off to Opryland!
Filed under: General Update
Day 1 travel done. Short drive to St Catharines to spend the day with Jordan. Snow, wet, cloudy. Good day to not drive far!
I don’t really know why I wanted to run this race. I’d built up some endurance over the 4 years of Triathlon training, but I’ve sure lost most of it by now. I’d entered the NYC marathon lottery when I first started up with all of this athletic stuff. It seemed like a good idea at the time, even though, running was my slowest and least favorite discipline of the three sports. I had decided to quit all of this athletic stuff after I finished Ironman in Lake Placid in 2009.
The way the lottery for the marathon works is that if you enter for 3 years in a row but don’t get picked, you’re automatically accepted for the 4th year. You still get o pay of course, but, you’re “In” if you want to be. When I got the email that read “Congratulations, You’re in . . . . .” I figured I might as well. What a cool way to end an otherwise rather exciting and wonderful athletic chapter in my life. I had moment fo thinking that perhaps I could finish it in under 4 hours which is my required Boston Marathon qualifying time but, there were two problems. One was that there are almost 45,000 people running the New York marathon. The course starts on a bridge and the bottleneck means that you’d walk for a while before being able to find room to run. That would kill some time for sure. The second problem, and the real one really is that, well, I’m slow! My pal Bryan offered to come along and pace me. If I’d gotten all of the training in, it might have been possible, but . . . . . .
I’d come to Toronto in the summer for a few weeks. Id have 12 weeks left when I got back to my place in Mexico to train. 16 weeks seems to be the normal time folks train for a marathon for, but, I wasn’t headed there to win. I figured I’d be in pretty good shape in 12 weeks and be able to finish in some sort of respectable time anyway.
I headed out for my first run on August 15. A somewhat slow 3.75k, but, a beginning. Over the next 8 days I got in 6 runs for a total of 36k and the, I motorcycle terms, I had a “Special Moment”. A 360 degree turn, just a touch too quickly on rough cobblestones, a touch of the front break and ‘bang’ it was all over. The bike went down in a second and pined my ankle against one of the cobblestones. I tried to rock the bike to get it off of my ankle, but I couldn’t get it out. A couple of guys came by and gave me a hand. I’d been wearing all my safety stuff. I thought I’d just pinched it and sprained it a bit. I stayed off it for a couple fo days, iced it, kept it high, all the stuff they tell you to do. It got bigger for a couple fo days then started to shrink back down but, when it stopped getting better about 10 days later, I decided to go get an X-Ray. Sure enough, I’d cracked the bone on the outside of my ankle. The doctor called me over to look at the picture and explained that I’d have to wear a brace to 4 – 5 – 6 weeks. I told him that I had a marathon in New York in about 10 weeks. He just looked at me a quietly said “No you don’t”.
I laughed my ass off. In some ways I was really happy. Not to have a broken ankle, but the fact that I could quit running and not have to feel like I just ‘quit’ felt pretty good. Being part of the ‘gang’ back home was great. I was lucky enough to be part of the biggest and most supportive group of folks anyone could hope for. We all cheered each other on, razed the crap out of anyone who missed any workout and, had a great time training. Things were different in Mexico. (I just took a little break to get something to eat. I can’t believe how hard it is to walk even now almost 48 hours after I finished the run!)
There’s no running group that I’ve found in Mexico and really only a couple of routes to run. The work ‘boring’ doesn’t even begin to explain what running was like there for me. So, this broken or, cracked bone wasn’t a great thing but, it gave me an out without losing face from continuing with running and racing.
I took all the time the doctor said I should and slowly the ankle got stronger. October 5th I went out and ran 3.5k, but had to lay low for the next couple of days. The ankle wasn’t happy! On October the 12th, I went out again for a 6.25k run and, I was sore the next day, but it wasn’t too bad. I figured that meant the ankle was OK now. I think I was right!
I had decided, or at least, the doctor had decided, I wasnt’ running so, I didn’t bother running anymore. I went for a couple of climbs in the mountains and had a coupe of 1/2 hour swims and then, headed back to Canada to meet up with Lynne. We had planned our New York trip a long time ago. Michelle and Gavin were coming along to cheer me on in the race. When i had to back out, we all decided we’d still go and just ave a fun New York weekend. I had the odd momentary thought of wondering about maybe giving the run a try. I saw my chiropractor the day before we headed out for new York and told her of my thoughts. She explained that if I cracked it again, I’d probably need surgery to put screws in it and, running would be a really bad idea. Fine – I won’t run. Decision made!
Lynne and I left on Thursday around noon and headed down to St Catherines to visit with Jordan and then drove through to Corning New York for the night. The GPS took us on a crazy route through every little town it could find but, eventually we got there. In the morning we headed to NYC and arrived about 3:00 in the afternoon. We met up with Gavin and Michelle who were already at the hotel and we all went to the Javits Center to pick up my race kit. I might not be running the race but, I want my damned shirt. After all, it’s really ALL ABOUT THE SHIRT anyway!
You know, there’s something really infections about those expos. I got my shirt. I looked at all the athletes (almost 45,000 people ran that race!) I think it took me all of 5 minutes to change my mind and decide I was doing it. I told Lynne, Michelle and Gavin that, if my ankle started to hurt I’d drop out.
We went out and explored the town all day Saturday. I did a bit of shopping. I had my running shoes with me and a pair of gym shorts. I thought of all the wicking, CWX stuff that I had back in Newmarket. I wasn’t about to replace that stuff for one race, but I did need some warm clothes anyway. I found a soft pair of black track pants with stripes down the side and a couple of shirts that I could drop along te way. I headed back to the hotel late in the afternoon to rest up a bit and got to bed early.
Sleep didn’t come too well and 4:15 came pretty quickly. Michelle and Gavin got up and came down to the library with me to where I had to catch my bus. When Michelle did the race a couple of years ago, she’d had to wait for a couple of hours for the bus. I figures we’d all talk and keep warm together while we waited but, the bus was there and I was on my way in 5 minutes. The ride to Statin Island was uneventful. Waiting from 5:45 until 10:40 for my race start felt like forever. It was cold and windy. I did get inside one of the tents and talked to a few of the folks in there for a while. Amazing how many people have the 50 marathons before turning 50 mentally. It’s always interesting to drop into other people s worlds and seeing what makes them tick too!
The first wave of 15,000 people headed out at 9:40, 10:10 was the 2nd wave 0f 15,000 and our 15,000 left at 10:40. I was in the 2nd last coral which ment there were probably no more than 1500 people behind me to start. Our start cannon went off and we just stood there. No one could move. We laughed about how we thought the race would be harder than this for the 10 minutes of so it took us to actually get to the start line. I was hoping to stick to a nice easy 7 minute kilometer pace for the race. That’s about a minute slower than I used to do and I thought that would have been a good and reasonable goal.
We headed out across the bridge from Staten Island to Brooklyn. The crowds of people on the other side of the bridge were great. The streets were lined from one end of the race to the other. I was hoping that I could keep about a 7 minute per kilometer pace. That was about a minute more than my usual times, but, I didn’t know how that would equate under these circumstances. All the way through Brooklyn I felt great. Every time I felt my heart rate picking up too much I slowed down. I kept slowly passing people. (That was one advantage of starting almost at the back!) I didn’t have my GPS or even a watch. I’d thought of borrowing Michelle’s GPS watch but then I thought it would probably be better if I just ran by feel. They say never try anything new on race day but, this was a day to try anything new! I never did dump any of the clothes that I’d bought to keep warm and dump. It was pretty cool in the shade. There was about an hour mid day where I was a bit warm, but I knew it would cool down again before I finished.
I wasn’t sure of my time but, but the half way point I felt like I was pretty much on track with the pace I was hoping for. It ends up, looking at the times, I was almost dead on at the 13.1 miles in 2:36:08. But then, it started to fall apart and fall apart fast. I’d been extra careful of not hurting my left ankle, but I must have been putting extra pressure on the right because that right leg was starting to hurt. Both knees and my quads started to burn and then my ankle started to hurt. The right one, not the left one that I’d cracked a couple of months earlier. I was walking through all of the aid stations for Gatorade in one and then water in the next. I’d bought some Gu and was eating that every 45 minutes or so, but, as I felt my energy drop, the pain in my legs was building.
After we crossed the Greensboro Bridge, I was almost not able to run at all. I’d been pretty happy about running almost every step of the first half of the race, but it was next to impossible now. My left arm was starting to ache. I knew it was swinging oddly, but I couldn’t get it to work properly. I had a feeling that maybe I wasn’t running straight either. I knew I wasn’t able to straighten my legs out completely either so I must have been running and been squatting a bit at the same time. I thought of all those pictures from Ironman where people are running like crabs (John!) and hoped I wasn’t doing the same thing. Just after the bridge we crossed 79th street. Our hotel was just a few short blocks away. For a couple fo minutes I thought of just saying screw it and heading over to my hotel but, I knew I’d want to kill myself the next day if I’d done that.
The fun factor had gone a few miles back. My head was down and I just concentrated on trying my best to navigate myself up the center of the road. Out of Queens and into the Bronx and around to Harlem. There were a few spots in the race where I could see for miles straight up the road. It was a pretty cool sight to see so far and see nothing but runners. I started noticing that there was a [pretty steady stream of people passing me now. It was disappointing but, there was nothing I could do about it. My feet had swollen bunch. I felt like I wanted to tear my running shoes off.
We finally turned into the park. Michelle and Gavin had said they’d see me around the 100′s streets, but I didn’t know where they were, or if that was going to be on the way up or down or when so, I just pushed along. I tried to guess how long each mile was taking. How much longer I had to be out there, but I couldn’t really do any math in my head and, I didn’t really have any idea how fast, or slow, I was going.
As soon as I turned into the park I heard Michelle calling me. Oh my God what a great sight. There was Michelle and Gavin cheering me on. I collapsed sobbing into her arms. She sobbed, I sobbed, people arround laughed. We didn’t care. We got our shit together rather quickly and talked and walked a bit. They thought they’d get tossed off the corse pretty soon but, I think the race folks were happy that someone was looking after me and it wasn’t them!
I knew we had about 2.5 miles to go when I finally got into the park. During the day I’d noted the 10% mark, the 20%, the 25% the 1/3 and the 50% marks. Now we were down to the last 5% and it felt like it would never end. I’m conscience of the fact that my head can play games with me on a race course. I wondered if this had been a 50k race, if these 2.5 would have felt as tough. I couldn’t figure that out. I just wanted this to be over. A couple fo times I got concerned about the time and did my best to run. I pushed for all I was worth. Head down. No distractions. Just ran. I looked over at Michelle and Gavin who were on either side of me, walking along! Damn – running wasn’t working for me. It just wouldn’t happen!!
Michelle and Gavin stuck with me and talked to me until we got to the 800 meters left mark where they were tossed off the course. 800 meters – it’s nothing – 800 meters is not even hardly a warm up distance – It felt like it took forever. I was shocked when I got to the 400 meter mark. They’d had to have made a mistake! 200, 100, there’s the line and . . . . done. Where’s the dude to catch you so you don’t fall? Don’t they do that like they do at an Ironman? I guess not.
Eventually I got my medal (which once again doesn’t read “but he sucked”), finisher bag with recovery stuff and was out of the park and on the way back to our hotel. It was odd that I couldn’t find Michelle and Gavin then but, I was a hurtin’ puppy at that point os, I looked for a minute or two and then headed out.
What an amazing event that was. I had a great time for the first half of the race and, the lack of training and endurance kicked in and, the second half was . . . . not so much fun.
That’s it! I’m done with this. I can hear the fat lady sing and it’s over! On to new adventures with great memories and great friends from this chapter. What’s next? I’m not sure. Lynne and I are leaving again for winter in Mexico on December the 1st. I can see a cool motorcycle tour on the horizon. We’re talking about perhaps doing a walking tour across the top of Spain next fall. Who knows. Right now . . . . maybe another nice warm bath and a good nights sleep!
Filed under: General Update
Life often changes. Usually though, I don’t know when or why it’s changing. Today is different.It chanages at 2:00 pm when I leave the ranch towards Guadalajara.
Looking out from our front doors
I’ve have this amazing . . . . . no . . . ‘wonderful’ experience of solitude over the last couple fo months. Not complete solitude, but close. I’d see my friend Lina, who is also our Spanish teacher twice a week. Douglas, or Donna and Douglas every ten days or so and Harold and Diane, two folks I’m doing some work for, but who are becoming friends also. I could see folks if I wanted to, or just hang out with my puppies for days on end by myself.
It’s been . . . . . yea, wonderful.
- The bike looked good, and was, when it ran!
I tend to want to say that if I’d had reliable transportation that it would have been perfect, but then I think some more and realize that, I’ve ridden 3200k and am pretty comfortable on a bike now. I’ve visited some cool towns within a few hundred kilometers of home base here, and, I have some good stories to tell along the way. Getting back often turned out to be an unexpected and painfully slow process. I’ve adopted, or at least, I try to adopt the sailing mentality of, “It’s the journey, not the destination”. I’m really lucky to have had some action packed journeys along the way!
Now, back to my sweetie. Back to the Great White North. Back to hustle and bustle. Back to what I think of as the land of the frantic! Maybe I’ve got it wrong. I hope so. It’s going to be weird going to my new home, that’s all set up and ready, but I’ve only seen once when the other owner lived there.
The New York trip is going to be fun. I have to pick up my marathon shirt at least from the race. I’m guessing it will be the most expensive shirt I’ve ever acquired! I haven’t given much thought to the marathon. (I had to drop out when I cracked my ankle 8 weeks ago) I don’t think it will bother me that I’m not doing it. I seem to be having a hard time putting ‘tri-life’ behind me. That was another wonderful 4-5 year trip.
- The gang waiting for “The hand that feeds them”
I’ve got 4 hours before Lina comes to give me a ride to Guadalajara. I’m going to spend the night at the airport hotel so that catching my 7:00am flight isn’t rushed. I’ve just got to hold onto this “easy peaceful feeling” for as long as I can! Finish the laundry, pack, get to the town square to get my camera back and them play with pups for as long as I can. The snow bird gang will have started to arrive when Lynne and I get back down here in early December, then another chapter begins.
What a cool ride this is. “Thanks big guy. I appreciate the break”
Filed under: General Update
One more week. That’s how much time I have left of this solitary life that I’ve created for myself. I’ve got pretty mixed feelings about it.
I’m excited to get back together with my sweetie, the New York trip with Michelle and Gavin, and getting back and seeing all my old friends for a bit. I think I’d be a lot happier though if I were just going for maybe ten days or two weeks and that Lynne and I were coming back here then.
Entering Canada on our last trip was somewhat shocking. Strangely reminiscent of a winter trip to the Caribbean. You get on the plane in Toronto in a huge blizzard and freezing weather. A few hours later they open the door on the plane and this wall of hot humid air rushes in and smacks you in the face. Wonderful. The trip into Canada had that same sort of smack in the mouth only, it wasn’t that warm blanket of peacefulness, it was the rush of busy, hurried, frantic life that I’d been accustomed to for all of my life until we’d left on this adventure 9 months earlier.
That rushed feeling never really left until I walked back into my ‘casa’ here in Mexico again.
This solitary bit of my life has been really interesting for me. It started out with the “Yea, I’m all alone and don’t have to even think about anyone”, then it slipped into, “Oh my God, I miss my sweetie and I can’t wait for this to be over” and then slowly, of late, it’s turned into. “What an amazingly peaceful quiet easy way of life this is”
The rainy season here is over. Temperatures at night are about 45 – 50 (7 – 10) but reach into the mid to high 80′s (28 – 30) every day. Humidity is very low so, even the afternoon heat feel ‘gentle’ to use my sweetie’s term.
We plan to leave Ontario on December the 10th, hopefully before any real snow falls, and make a bit of a bee line back down here, arriving on about the 15th. A few of our ranch sharing snowbird friends will be here when we get back. The rest of the folks will be here shortly thereafter. We enjoyed everyone here at the ranch last winter. There will be on or two new couples. hopefully we have as good a time with everyone this year as we did last winter.
For now, or at least, in a week, the solitary chapter of the book is over. I may head back to Ontario with Lynne in the spring, or I may stay here, or . . . . . John Lennon said “Life’s what happens when you’re busy making other plans”. It’s one of my favourite sayings. Maybe, for the moment, I’ve got enough plans. Time to just let life happen!
