This is the time of year when it is cold enough to order hot chocolate:
And it is, therefore, also the time of year when you remember the problem with hot chocolate: there are no cups capable of holding the large amounts of hot chocolate required or desired.
We went to see our friends Paige and Kevin today. Paige was our wedding photographer, and the current joke is that since we took engagement photos in a 17-degree Nor’Easter and our wedding photos in something like 126-degrees heat index, then we really, really have to do something meteorologically fancy for our 10th anniversary. Fortunately, we have some time to figure that out.
Their daughter is a real cutie:
And she gave me a sticker. I’m told I am lucky because she doesn’t give her stickers away to just anyone.
Mickey and I go way back, of course, so it was a great gift.
We made it back home yesterday. No one was more pleased than her:
She’s such a great traveler. We don’t let her in the driver’s seat, but she splits her time napping in the back and cuddling whoever the passenger is at the time. She’ll look out the windows, the big trucks either intrigue her or freak her out, but she’s very calm about the whole thing. When we slow down, she perks up a bit. Maybe we’re there. But if you think about a long drive, there’s a lot of disappointment in that as the defining characteristic.
We hang the left and then the right into the neighborhood, though, we hit a roundabout and you start doing that crawling neighborhood speed and she knows something is up. She’s up in the windows checking everything out. You’d think she thinks she recognizes it, but she only knows these views by the way of the windshield. She’s an inside cat.
But then you hit the garage door, turn into the drive and then she knows and this patient passenger turns into a dashboard diva.
It sorta works against her. She wants out of the car — through the windshield if need be — but climbing up there hampers her exit from the Magic Moving Box.
We ran a turkey trot this weekend:
The Yankee won her age group. I won my age group.
This was the course, which I ran in the wrong shoes, because I realized about two hours into the drive, that I’d forgotten my running sneakers. So I ran it in my walking sneakers.
They are walking sneakers for a reason: they were lousy running sneakers.
On our drive back we found some cotton fields that hadn’t been harvested yet. We, of course, had to stop for pictures:
I wonder why it was still in the fields. People that passed by probably wondered the same about us, though.
The Yankee was out of town visiting with friends and family this weekend. It goes like this: her godparents have known her parents, individually for years. Her godfather and father grew up together. Her godmother and mother met in nursing school.
Now the two of them met at their friends’ wedding. They got married. Along came The Yankee and they became her godparents. The godparents had two daughters and The Yankee’s parents are their godparents. Now those young ladies are of course grown and have beautiful families of their own. They all got together this weekend.
The oldest of those kids was up for a story. So I found myself digging through, and passing along, photos last night.
Here are two now.
This first one is from the Cayman Islands. It was a graduation trip. We were off diving for a week and the locals helped us find a dolphin. He’d just turned up one day, they said, and was very social. They figured he might have been a part of a Central American dolphin venue, where customers likely interacted with him, but a hurricane had damaged where he lived and so he was back in the wild. But he enjoyed people. He didn’t like SCUBA divers, but he’d swim with you. And if you tried to out-swim him, he’d let you know who was boss.
But to swim with a dolphin, to pet and play with a dolphin in the wild, that was a terrific experience, just one small part of a great trip.
And here’s one of The Yankee and me:
It was one of our first family trips. My bunch went to Belize, where we did a lot of diving and horseback riding and exploring Mayan ruins. We didn’t see any dolphins this time, but I did get to catch a bunch of reef sharks by hand while SCUBA diving. (I’ll have to find those pictures.) That was another great trip. Even the snorkeling selfies were great.
Saturday in Louisville. Sunday in Louisville. Today in Louisville and then back in the car. But yesterday, let me tell you about yesterday.
A person doesn’t enter into endurance racing lightly. Well, sure, we were at an Italian restaurant several years ago and decided we’d try some triathlons. But there are different lengths. And you train differently for all of them. Some of them require more time. And you don’t enter into that kind of commitment lightly.
The Yankee ran under a banner last night that she’s been working for for over six months.
Along the way, there has been a marathon and a national championship in the Olympic distance and some smaller tuneup races and hours and hours and hours and hours of training. You don’t enter into these things lightly.
These events, these long, physically and mentally grueling events are achievable, but they take a person doing the work. And then doing some more. They take time to figure out. How will your body react in the heat? How will your guy feel with this fuel or that fuel? You have to learn about what your body is really telling you, how to listen to it and when to ignore it. You put some things on hold and you hit some benchmarks that you wouldn’t have previously considered. You keep doing that until some of those achievements almost become a matter of course. And then you wind down in preparation of the big day.
And on the big day you wake up very early. You’ve lugged all of your stuff down to the starting area, you wiggle into your swimsuit and put your cap on and you wait for your part of the race to start. And when that happens, you swim. At this distance that’s a 2.4-mile swim, this time in the Ohio River. You climb out of the river and run up the ramp and get peeled out of your swimsuit. You throw on your helmet, your bike shoes and set out on a 112-mile ride. There’s wind and rain and dogs and hills and you come in off that ride, which is no small thing on a bike, and then you take off your helmet and change shoes. And then you set out for a 26.2-mile run.
And you smile a lot.
That’s The Yankee’s experience. She had a great race. I saw her all of those times and jogged alongside her for a few moments. I caught up to her again halfway through the run and gave her a great big hug and a kiss. She was in great shape, so it was just down to wait at the finish line, for her and two of her friends.
And speaking of the finish line, this is what some people did when they got there:
Even if you aren’t interested in doing these yourself, you should go and watch the finish line sometime. The energy is palpable, and incredible. And you’ll see there a lot of friends and family looking like this:
None of them entered into this lightly, but many of them felt light on their feet when they finished. It was later, and today, and for the next several days, when they’ll feel the extent of such an impressive accomplishment.
