Duluth

Such a white sparkly winterland out there.  Dusk to night.  Overlooking the St. Louis River and Duluth/Superior in our treehouse at the top of Spirit Mountain.  Skiers still skiing.  Steve all bundled and enjoying a cigar and Thirsty Pagan beer on the deck.  After listening (appropriately) to Trampled by Turtles, 1971 Neil Young at the Massey now sings Old Man, which, of course, makes one reflective.

"24 and there's so much more."  Wow.

Last full day of vacation.  Sigh.

Packers/Vikings play-off game at 7 and going to President's to watch the first half.  Really??

Running in the Pool

Not an actual pool, but it felt like a pool. We started this morning with the air fully saturated - so muggy it was foggy. Steve had a 16.2 miler planned (he's training for Whistlestop too) and as the weather forecast crystallized, he started complaining. On Thursday. This pretty much continued through this morning until we got to where I was starting our run in Victoria. Then I took off (I was doing 20.4) and mom & dad got to ride with the Mister Complainy Pants until he started his run in Excelsior.

But he rocked! I'd planned our runs so we'd get back to our house about the same time, and he beat me by a full 10 minutes. And when we talked about it afterward, he even liked parts of it! The Budweiser frogs, the beauty of the fog over Lake Minnetonka, the woodsy trail. The best part was finishing and polishing off a Blue Cow Caffrey's sandwich (roast beef, a little bacon, blue cheese - mmmm) and a wheat beer.

Post Boston

It was a good day to run. Good weather, great crowds, and a finishing time of 4:14:11 - 16 minutes faster than my sandbagged 4:30 goal time. The course was deceptively easy until Newton, and then the real marathon started. They tell you about the Newton hills, but they're even bigger in real life. At least you have all the drunk guys at Boston College to cheer you over the top and down the other side. I have to say, though, I ran a good race with a 2:08 first half and 2:06 second half. And even better, we got to spend 6 days with our excellent friends David & Michele and their kids Marten & Consi & Enya.

Hola Amigos/as !

It seems We are mudded. That means white walls and even primed and ready for paint.

Many thanks to The Action Team including: AlienAllan Carr, Jimi Owens, Brian Mccarthy, Mark GutzGutzmer, Jimmy theK Kleinman, Rev Barry White, and Wifey Nancy for their intellectual, physical, and ergonomic efforts. It's starting to look like it might get done. Stay tuned...

RIP Uptown Bar

So many wonderful, fun memories, from dating days to married days, hanging out with Michele & Mort Necros & all our other neighborhood pals, eating nachos, enjoying the best chef salad in Mpls, curing hangovers with bloodys and hash browns (and the #7 with fiberglass cheese). It was Steve's after-bartending hangout. Steve went to the second-to-last concert there last night and got to sing with the band - dressed in his Elvis suit. Sigh. All good things come to an end :(

The Race

It was the wind that woke me up - the sound coming into my fragmented sleep, shaking the leaves, whooshing up the street. I got up and looked out at the streetlight, taking in the inch of wet snow on the ground and the horizontal slashes of snow in front of the light. A good time to pee.

I knew the bad weather was coming. You train and train and train for a marathon, but when the day comes, nature sees it as any other day, and any random crazy weather thing can happen. So on this day in early October, nature’s randomness produced snow and sub-freezing temperatures. Okay. What are you gonna do? Go back to bed, get a couple more hours of rotisserie “sleep,” and see what it looks like at 6:30.

At 6:30 the snow had stopped, there were pretty, puffy clouds scooting across a sky with occasional peeks of just-dawn blue, and the temperature was 25. At this point the questions are purely practical ones: What will the weather be during the window from 9 AM to 1 PM when I’m running? Tights or capris? Tee-shirt under the jacket or long-sleeves? I know I have Steve planning to meet me at miles 8, 16 and 20 along the course, so I will have the option of dumping clothes or taking more on, but I’ve also learned that it’s good to be prepared for your person not being there at all (anything could happen! It could snow in October!) I dress in things I know I can handle for the whole distance. Just in case.

The other thing is having a backup race plan. I want to run this marathon in under four hours. Bad. In 1991 I ran my first marathon. I finished in 4:00:51. Since then I’ve run eight more, none of them faster, and a few far slower. But the last two have been good - my most recent one in May qualified me for Boston in 4:04:40. My plan had been to qualify for Boston in today’s race, but by the grace of the running gods I got it in Madison. So here I am with my final running goal: break four hours; a goal I’ve had in front of me for almost 20 years. It’s bigger than Boston. It’s personal. And, almost 20 years after I almost got there, I really wasn’t sure if I could do it.

But the thing about goals like this is that if you fail to meet them, you feel crappy - and I don’t want to feel crappy about finishing a marathon, or even attempting to finish one. I still recognize this as a pretty cool accomplishment. So - the backup plan. I have three running plans: the “in my dreams” sub-four-hour time, the time I know I can do, and the “I’m just gonna finish” time. Today, though, because the weather was looking very iffy, I had a fourth plan: bail out and run a different marathon two weeks later with the hope of breaking through the four-hour wall then. Part of the reason to have Steve at miles 16 and 20 was to have the option to say, “Uh-uh - not today.”

Yeah, but I still really want to do it today. And when we get to the start, the wind has let up, the snow has stopped, and the morning is actually, truly, quite lovely. Snow hangs on the leaves, which have all their fall colors. The sun breaks through the clouds. Every breeze shakes down crystals of snow that sparkle in the sunlight as they fall against the reds and yellows of the leaves. It’s cold, but cold is better than hot for running as far as I’m concerned. It’s, well, perfect. And after a couple of manic photos, we are off.

It takes a couple miles to get into the groove, and after that, it takes some concentration to deal with the dirt trail on which this marathon is run. It’s loose in the middle, and the sides are only slightly better. But, man, it’s awfully pretty, and soon the miles are clicking by, and the trail is improving, and I’m feeling good, very good. I see Steve, I reach the halfway mark at almost 1:59, the spectators and race volunteers are wonderful, I see Steve again at 16 and finally again at 20, still feeling very good, and then somewhere between miles 23 and 24, I start running out of steam. This is where it gets real. But I am still on track to finish in under four hours - all I have to do at this point is maintain anything under a 10-minute mile. And I’ve been running just under 9s. I know I’m going to make it. This alone is enough jet fuel to get me through those last three miles.

The wind had picked up a couple hours into the race, but it’s been felt mostly as a tailwind or maybe a crosswind as we’ve run the forested course. But at mile 26, making the turns in the open to the finish, we feel its full force. It is a mighty wind that makes me grateful I wasn’t running into its maw for 26 miles; I just have to suck it up for the last two tenths. How hard is that? And look at my time coming to the finish line - 3:54!! I pump my arms and smile huge: a good day to run after all.

Happy Vacation Wonderland

Vacation=wake, coffee, run, breakfast, newspaper, read, adventure, hammock, fish, cocktails, dinner, fish, read, doze, repeat.

Bayview lodge was almost a month ago but recent snow[s] remind of us blissful 2 weeks of perfect sweatshirt mornings followed by sunny afternoons. We scored on the weather and lost track of days= perfect. Mark and Jenee joined us for tequila, action was tempered with idleness, and relaxation was achieved. So good to return to magic place of boyhood wanderings [?].

We could handle being retired up here ...

Ankle Envy

It’s pretty sad when you look at your friend’s brand new baby, all fresh and new and gurgly, and your eyes wander down to baby’s pudgy little ankles - the right ankle, to be precise - and all you can think of is how brand new and undamaged all those fresh, new ankle ligaments and tendons are. How unsprained.

I’d grown complacent, obviously. After surgery five years ago to tighten up my loosened ankle tendons caused by too many sprains to count, I had gone without a single injury to my bionic ankle. It was like new! Like that baby’s! Except for the hideous surgical scar, it even looked normal. Sigh.

And so, early one morning three weeks ago, I ran on the dirt trail next to the paved path around Lake Calhoun. I do this because it’s easier on the knees (irony here). The morning light was wan, dusky, inarticulate. I was still half asleep and distracted by the noisy conversation of the two chattering women running a little bit behind me. And I stepped on a big, fat rock in the middle of the path - one that’s been there forever, and which I have not stepped on, ever, in years of running that path. I’ve since gone back and found the rock. It’s a tip-of-the-iceberg rock; completely undislodgeable. I want to paint it bright orange to warn others, but I fear that they’ll be so distracted by the orange rock that they’ll actually step on it and be similarly sprained.

I knew immediately it was bad. I even heard a crack when it happened - not super loud; just enough under the decibel meter to allow me to think, “It could have just been the tendon snapping over the bone. Yeah. It was that.” It swelled instantaneously. I mean, literally - I pulled down my sock and it was all puffy, right away, like that baby’s pudgy ankle, but in a really bad way.

I recently read about a study that was done, presumably using college students, showing that cursing actually makes people able to tolerate pain better. (I told a friend of mine about the study and she said, “They had to do a study to show THAT?”) I hope those women behind me knew I was exercising pain management that morning. I do know that all the effenheimers I expleted helped me get to the endorphin stage, where my body basically deadened my ankle pain for the mile I had left to get back home. (Just so you know how sickly addicted I am to running: for a brief moment, I actually thought, “Maybe I can run through it.”)

After the urgent care x-rays showed no broken bones, I was told to see a specialist a week later as follow-up. I sheepishly went to my old surgeon, whom Steve fondly calls “Dr. Cheeks” (because he’s always running a little behind - thank you Bart Simpson). The bruising went from my toes halfway up my calf. I told Dr. Cheeks, “I’m so sorry - I ruined your beautiful surgery.” And he told me I could run. I had to take it easy, I had to wear a horribly uncomfortable brace and pay attention to pain and swelling, but I could run.

So, I think I’m back. I replaced the Brace-of-Torment with strategically placed athletic tape. Last Sunday I ran 12 miles and it was good. I’ve run this week. I’m planning 14-16 miles for tomorrow, depending on how it feels. But I still look at the skinny, undamaged, colt-like ankles I see running around the lakes and, indifferent to the people who own them, I covet them.

Weekend Workstorm

Hola  Amigos, 

The Carpenter here, with the news.

The remodel progresses.

All rough-in, and Utility inspections have been approved. The Cabinets are here, the tile is here and the walls are only just insulated. Drywall is  necessary to install both. We are ok per tile but behind on Drywall. It’s been a productive solo effort this weekend as Nancy is doing homework, too.

Optimism is beneficial,and necessary. A fire under your butt gets some serious mojo working. 

It’s madcap hijinks, and also serious fun. Sleep is for the weak, progress is good !

Enjoy the sunlight, and sleep fast !

-Stelvis 

[after a busy weekend and some good jamming at Paul and Marys Skishindig]

The Unbearable Tightness of Flying

Remind me never to fly into Philadelphia again. It’s close to other eastern city airports. Tell me to fly into them, rent a car, and then drive to my Pennsylvania destination.

To keep things in perspective: it was not the quintessential undiluted nightmare scenario of sitting on the tarmac for 13 hours without food, water or working lavatories, which is my personal standard of the truly horrible air travel experience. It was only an hour and a half waiting in Minneapolis because of the back-up in Philadelphia, and then another hour waiting in Philadelphia after arriving, and then on return to Minneapolis two days later, waiting again for almost an hour in Philadelphia because they were all backed up. On that leg I was next to John Ginormitron, a six foot five inch, circus big, hairy white guy IN SHORTS who took up fully half the air space of my seat. Sitting on the wing would have been more comfortable. Unfortunately I couldn’t fully hate him because his air travel sob story was way worse than mine. He and his family (yes, screaming kids, too. But that’s still a choice) got to the airport at 4:30 AM, and, after a number of ridiculously unlikely fiascos, wound up finally on my 5:22 PM departing flight that actually took off at 7:30. And he was a pretty nice guy, even after all that. A nice, super huge, guy. I just made myself a two-dimensional, piece-of-paper-person pressed up against the inside of the plane, face shmooshed up against the window, coveting all that nice, open space outside the window.

Even though, and in spite of all that, I still love flying. What I love best is the take-off when this huge, multi-ton, metal container goes faster and faster and faster and you fear you’ll just run off the end of the road but then, LIFT, up up up up, and you’re flying. Flying! What a crazy, miraculous thing. And you watch the earth drop away from you, and your stomach feels buoyant, and you see this living geography below you, with cars and the lakes you just ran around this morning, and it’s like seeing it on TV because it’s framed by the window, but it’s real, and those are real people in their cars, talking on their cell phones and texting like idiots. You are detached from the earth, like a spaceship only in a lower orbit, and if you’re flying alone, all your people are down there, and here you are, in space, flying above everything. It’s pretty cool.

A funny thing happened on the way to the finish line ...

I sit here on our lovely screen porch, having some Chex mix with peanuts, listening to the wind blow through the trees, admiring Kismet's ability to sleep 20 hours a day.  The gimlet helps medicate the still-sore quads from yesterday's race.

And what a race it was.  I set out hoping for a best time of 4:15 on a hilly course.  I ended up running a whole 10 minutes faster, finishing in 4:04:40.  Which qualifies me as a 50-year-old woman to run the Boston Marathon.  AIEEEEEE!!!!!  Don't think I didn't think of this as I saw myself within one hour of the finish at 20 miles.  I only had to keep cranking out 9-minute miles - a pace I generally don't run even in a 10k.  Which was exactly the distance to the finish.

But I did it anyway.  Yes, I made pathetic little crying sounds the last two miles.  But I made it in with, technically, one minute & 19 seconds to spare (because the qualifying time is 4:05:59).  And I ran the second half of the marathon faster than the first (2:03:38, 2:01:02).

But enough about me.  Steve ran the quarter marathon and did 100% of the driving on the trip.  We had a little adventure with a flat tire in Eau Claire on Friday night, and got to meet the nice people at Saturn of Madison on Saturday to get a new tire put on.  We got to spend some time with folks from our running club, the Minnehaha Marathoners, who were running the 4-person relay at the race.  It was good.

But the best part was qualifying for Boston.  I still can't believe it.

50

Well, it does look like a big number, but then again, it depends on the context: it’s what you’d pay to buy Baltic Avenue in Monopoly (or is it Mediterranean Ave?). If it were a lottery payout, you’d think it was a pretty small number. Compared to the age of the universe, it’s a blip. So, 50 is really only as big as you make it. If you even want to make it a deal at all.

But it is kind of a deal. If I don’t do something stupid and die before I’m 100, 50 is smack dab in the middle of middle age. It feels like a bigger deal than 40. I suppose when I turn 60, I’ll be saying the same thing about 50. But it’s kind of a landmark - like New Year’s, it’s a time to take stock of your life.

Phrases like, “take stock of your life,” automatically make me want to rebel and go out and break minor laws. The words are uttered in a faintly British accent, in sonorous, serious tones, and I’m fairly sure the products thusly stocked involve Serious Endeavors, Reproduction (and of not just average children, but of highly achieving, Mensa members), A Lot of Money in the Bank, and A Very Clean House.

I have none of these things.

What I do have is the memory from a bicycle trip where my bike was leaning up against a picnic table, panniers front and back, and I looked at it and thought, “That’s all I need.” So when I look at our messy, mid-remodel house, and my messy, unemployed delight of a husband, and my I-love-it-most-of-the-time job (and the fact that I have a job at all), not to mention my sweet family, my most excellent friends, and my most adorable and fuzzy kitty, well, I have to say, I feel like I’m doing okay.

We’re up here in the very frozen northland of Superior, Wisconsin, on the edge of Lake Superior, which is ice for a good mile out from the harbor. The ice buckles up into a ridge where it meets the open water, and the ridge is visible from the shore. It makes a person feel very small and easily frozen.

But somewhere between the expanse of the whole wide universe and the minutiae of me lies the Anchor Bar in Superior, and the in-the-moment pleasure of a great burger and fries and excellent beer. Life is where you grab it and make it great, and may you do so whether you’re 5 or 25 or 50 or 89. Cheers!

Arizania

Winter?  What winter?  Today it reached 76 degrees in Tucson.  Sadly, we had to wear shorts.  We drove to Sabino Canyon to run up the 3.7 miles to the end and back, and finished off the trip with sammies & Tecate.

We are ensconced here in the casita of our Bisbee pals, Paul & Lynne, right in the middle of Tucsonia, and have been enjoying some down time just with our own personal selves after holidaying it up with Nancy's parents in Sun City, as well as her brother David, gorgeous wife, Judy, and typical teenage son Alex (what, me smile for a picture?? No way, man).

After the Christmas thang, we drove up to Sedona to see Nancy's college friend, Nancy Ho, along with her sis Judy & mystery boyfriend, David, who is also internally 14 years old, just like Steve.  Two days with them and too many cookies (is there really such a thing) equals happy Christmas fulfillment.

We are looking forward to New Year's Eve with Clay & Lisa (who made a brief clandestine tequila rendezvous Sunday PM to our delight) and Paul & Lynne and other folks when we go see Los Lobos at the Rialto.  And then three more days in Bisbee with them as we celebrate Steve's birthday on January 3rd.

Stay tuned.

Fall

We are on the waning side of the season. That's okay, though - it's been a pretty outstanding October.

We started the month celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary on the 8th by spending two idyllic nights at one of the octagonal "villas" at the top of Spirit Mountain overlooking Duluth & Lake Superior (www.mtvillas.com). Since I was in marathon taper mode, I could eat anything and everything, especially if it was full of carbs. This was fun.

Next, we drove to Bayfield where we stayed with Michelle, Tom & Isaac for the weekend. On Saturday the 11th, Steve & I rose early to get to the buses taking runners to the full & half Whistlestop Marathon starting lines (www.whistlestopmarathon.com). Steve ran the half - a great accomplishment considering he'd been hobbling around on crutches just 3 weeks prior (some kind of Achilles inflammation). I ran the full marathon and had a great race till the last 3 miles, when I wanted to die. But I sucked it up and ran those last 3 million miles anyway, finishing in 4:14:04. This is under 10 minute miles (9:42s). Considering I was hoping to finish in 4:25 at best, I kicked some serious butt. Mostly my own. But still. The next morning I could barely walk down the stairs. This pleased Tom, who said it was nice to see someone younger than he is feel the way he does every morning.

We got back home on the 12th, worked for a few days, then headed west to Seattle on the 17th to visit Rob & Kim and do a little road-tripping. After the traditional oyster feed at the Brooklyn, and accordian rhapsodies by Kim (with Steve on rhythm accordian), we bid farewell to Rob, who was heading out on yet another fishing trip for his job. Poor Rob. He gets paid to fish.

Monday morning we rolled bleary-eyed out of bed at 4:45 AM to drive up to Anacortes and catch the ferry to Sidney, BC, on Vancouver Island. We had, surprisingly, wound up renting a hot red Mustang (the other choice was a Crown Vic, which intrigued Steve for its cop car qualities, but which was about as long as the ferry). We expected to get at least one speeding ticket, but we must drive like old people now. We didn't even get pulled over.

From Sidney, we drove south to Victoria, where we had lunch above a dive shop & talked to the divemaster there for awhile (totally unpredictable vis, he said; totally teeming sea life). Our Vancouver Island destination was Nanaimo, where we were staying a night at the Pine & Picket, a B&B that had good verbiage on Trip Advisor (www.thepineandpicket.com). We weren't disappointed. Our hosts, Ania & Ingvar, were really nice. Ingvar shared a bottle of homemade wine with us, and Ania made the best eggs benny & scones I think I've ever had. Nanaimo was a little weird, though - can't really say why. It just had kind of a weird vibe. It might have been the bar we stopped into in the old part of town. An old guy came up to me and said, "Who do you work for? Who do you work for??" I said, "General Mills. We make cereal," all the while thinking, "I hope he likes cereal." (Note - I won't make a cereal killer reference here.) Then he scuttled away.

The next morning we boarded a cruise-line-like BC ferry for Horseshoe Bay, just north of Vancouver. An hour & a half later, we were cruising along the mountain road in our red Mustang, just like a car commercial. We took a little side trip up to the Cypress ski area, where some of the 2010 Olympic events will be held. Lots & lots of building and activity. Then we headed to our hotel, the Sylvia. What a great location! We were just south of Stanley Park, a beautiful, pristine park on the northern tip of the peninsula where Vancouver is. It reminded me of San Francisco. We explored Stanley Park on a couple morning runs, and rented bikes one afternoon to go around Stanley Park, False Creek & Granville Island.

Though Steve tried valiantly to find Cuban cigars at a reasonable price, he was thwarted in his efforts, and we crossed back into the US with no contraband in our hot red Mustang. We spent Thursday night with Bob Hal & Rebecca in Seattle - Steve & Bob went out to Connie's Rimrock (fave neighborhood haunt) and stayed up till, like, 3 AM, which didn't hurt Vacation Boy too much, but which I am sure caused poor Bob some pain when he had to get up at 7 for work.

On Friday we headed to the Hood Canal "cabin" of some friends of Kim's to meet up with Kim & her parents, Mike & Joni. It was a gorgeous place with a very cool beach, especially at low tide when Steve & I discovered that oysters & geoducks under the sand like to squirt water up like a mini geyser and get your jammy pants wet. Kim made us puffins, her new, accidental invention using Self Rising flour in the pancake mix. They were yummy.

The five of us headed up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympics on Saturday afternoon - a stunning place with insanely spectacular views and a great hike to the top of a mountain. The path was all paved. Even Steve, who is terribly afraid of heights (except when skiing - go figure), was able to navigate the trip without barfing & screaming.

Saturday night brought us back to Seattle and one last dinner with Kim & her folks before all us midwesterners headed back home, Joni & Mike in the morning and Steve & I later in the afternoon. What a nice vacation! (Many ginormous thank-yous to all the people who put up with us, er, put us up during our ramblings!)

Bayview RARA

After a nice Labor Day weekend at the Port Wing Fish Boil (50th) and dominating the Fall Festival 5k and 10k races, we like to head east to Bayview Lodge for some R, Action, R, and ...  Bayview Lodge is located on Presque Isle Lake in famous Presque Isle, Wisconsin.  It is the lake of Steve's youth.  Grandparents John and Della Brissee had a place there and reside there now in the boneyard.  It's a sentimental, pristine oasis of Northwoods splendor.  It has become our place to go, and chill, on an annual basis.  Time hasn't changed things much there as you can see via the photo gallery.  We manage to fill the too quick days with lots of Actionpea activities in a slow, easy mode.  We run, eat, fish, and cocktail in  a classic style.

Two weeks, next year ???

Sound and Fury?

It's a serious wind blowing through the screen porch.  The ever-skittish Kismet's ears are perked up, and while she appears to be sitting calm as the Buddha, inside you can tell she's lit up like a radar showing the incoming storms.  There's something just on the other side of the screen that's creak-creak-creaking in the wind, and somehow it reminds me of The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy is talking with the fortune teller and looking into the crystal ball, and outside the storm is brewing and building.

Maybe I'm overplaying it.

This happens here, you know.  You think some kind of massive superstorm is rumbling your way like a crazed, relentlessly advancing sky army outfitted with lightning bolts and tornadoes, and you go outside and look at the weird, green clouds bubbling up out of the west, and then ... nothing.  Well, nothing as spectacular as you imagined.  Just a lot of rain, and maybe some hail and whooshy wind.

It's a little disappointing, actually, but when the left brain kicks in, you realize it's probably for the best.  Tornadoes tend to leave a lot of badness in their wake.  Big storms with big winds and big hail can be destructive in a big way.

I think it's because I've watched too much TV and seen too many smash 'em, crash 'em movies (which I admit I kind of like).  I want lots of sound and fury, but in the end, I'd like it to signify nothing.

Is this thing on ?

Hi, It's Stelvis.

It's 3:30 am do you know where your thoughts are ?

Old guy syndrome dictates nocturnal ramblings. The brain turns on and the thought machine starts...

This has been happening since the start of the big project. This week the French doors go in, something to appease the city inspector. It's 2 stories of monolithic whiteness. The roof looks good, soffits pretty, and trimboards nifty. I like the Tyvek siding, the Hardiboard can wait.

It's getting nigh on time to crack into the existing house and kick some *** !

I'm quite excited , wifey = nervous.

Yet, there are marathons to relay, fish to catch, and Summers to savor before it goes away. Better to slow down and appreciate warm days and sunny porch time.

We've got plenty of time...

Anticip ......... pation

It's goofy, I know, feeling amped up about a run.  But it's a long run.  Very long.  I'm ratcheting up the marathon training, and tomorrow will be my first 20 mile run.  21, actually.  The marathon is the Whistlestop on October 11th (www.whistlestopmarathon.com), and it goes from just east of Iron River, Wisconsin, along a rail-bed-now-recreational-trail to Ashland on Lake Superior's Chequamegon Bay.  The trail is all crushed limestone, going through mostly forest and a little farmland, and in October it's beautiful - the leaves are changing, the air is cool and dry, the trail is isolated and the race small enough that there's a marvelous quiet to run in.

But tomorrow's run is strictly urban, though it will feel like country in some spots.  I'm running from Lake Minnetonka along the LRT southwest corridor (another converted rail bed) to the north end of Lake Calhoun, then south to Lake Harriet and east along Minnehaha Parkway to Minnehaha Falls.  There I'll meet up with our running club, the Minnehaha Marathoners, for our annual Lake to Falls pizza picnic.  It used to be that many club members ran from Minnetonka to the falls, but we're all getting older and things don't work as well as they used to.  For old time's sake, I thought I'd renew the tradition at least one more year.

I run alone and without music.  There are a few of us purists out there.  Not that one way is inherently any better than the other - I've run with music and loved it.  It's sort of like heroin, I suppose, or cable TV.  Once you start, you can't stop.  I'd just rather not be dependent on something with batteries that could run out and spoil my run, and I don't like to carry stuff with me, generally.  But mostly I like running without people and tunes because I like the connection with my body and the world around me.  I like hearing the loons when they call each other around the lakes.  I like hearing the cardinals and trying to find the spot of red in the trees.  I like the sound of the wind through the tall poplars along the trail.  In the winter, I like the crunch-squeak of my shoes on the snow.

So tomorrow is 21 miles, followed by pizza at the picnic and Cliff's cookies, and a rest of the day filled with well-earned lying around.  And a cocktail at cocktail hour, of course - strictly medicinal.

Our Porch

Nearly 10 years ago we bought our humble, antiquated abode.  There are some changes going on.  And it seems those changes will keep going on until hell freezes over.  But there are a couple things about this hovel - it may be 100 years old this year, but some of that old stuff is pretty good.

Like the porch.  The porch was an add-on or a revamp of a more primitive open porch.  Somebody had a lot of mosquito bites and put screens in, and now we find ourselves enjoying the setting sun and cocktails, just like our predecessors.  We found the house by sheer luck.  There was a FSBO (for sale by owner) sign in the front yard that Steve just happened to see.  The timing was awful - Nancy had just graduated and had a major education debt with promising career prospects, but we had no money in the bank.  Fortune or rash judgment smiled on us and we got the place for what now seems like a song.

Now that the economy is going to hell in a handbasket, we still think we made a good decision, because the porch rocks.  The addition on the back may eventually turn us homicidal, but as long as we're on the porch, we're like The Buddha.  At peace.

Sound and Fury

There's nothing like a good, old-fashioned midwest thunderstorm to rattle your eardrums like no woofer ever could. We, having never actually experienced a tornado, are of the school of idiots who run outside to see what's going on when the tornado sirens go off.

They went off last weekend while we were a couple hundred miles away in Rhinelander, and the forewarned tornadoes destroyed a a huge swath of the town of Hugo east of Minneapolis.  They went off again tonight, but the storms were contained and non-rotational.  (Every Minnesotan is an amateur meteorologist, in case you didn't know.)  Nonetheless, they dumped lots of dime-sized hail, which pelted the monkeys on our welcome mat, and when they continued to produce rain after the setting sun broke through the western clouds, they created a beauteous rainbow in the eastern sky.