I get home on Friday night after a fairly productive week at TRW. I bring in my neighbor's mail (She's away in San Francisco and Canada again.) and my mail. There's a postcard from Florida in my mail. It is from Sweetie. Sweetie has taken the time out from his honeymoon to drop me a postcard from Florida. When I realize who it is from my stomach knots up with the usual sinking feeling. And my hand is shaking - I keep knocking the other postcards off the mantle - as I try to put the postcard on the mantle with all of the other recent postcards from vacation-bound friends. I decide that I need to relieve stress. I choose the best method that I know how to relieve stress. I put on my running shoes and run 8km. (I'm into this european and international system of measuring things these days, you know?) Now I feel better.
Later in the evening the KM calls (or maybe I called the KM) and we have another version of "The Talk". We talk about what we're doing and where we're headed. It is an hour long talk. About an hour later, we have an electronic version of "The Talk" as both of us surf the Internet. Finally with my eyes blurring, I discontinue the electronic version and go to sleep.
A good road bicycle ride on Saturday morning gets the day off to a great start. I pretend, once again, to be Peter Luttenberger in the Giro d'Italia prologue and have fun. A lot of fun! But then I zombie through the rest of my tasks of the day as I'm hung over from the ride.
Joe calls and we postpone our Saturday night plans in favor of Sunday night plans.
How did I get myself into this situation? On Sunday morning I'm lined up at 8am in Griffith Park for a 100km (No, this is not a typo - it is 100 km.) bicycle ride through Elysian park, downtown Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, Vernon, Sout Gate, Compton, and North Long Beach all the way down to the ocean along the Los Angeles river. And back! (http://www.labikecoalition.org/larr.html#1) Actually it was an NPOESS invitation and, seeing that I cannot say no, I'm lined up at Griffith Park on Sunday morning. The organizers of the race are somewhat disorganized and on the way home we get lost in East Los Angeles and it takes my rudimentary command of espanol for us to find our way back to Griffith Park. And, continuing the disorganization of the organizers, they have measured the course wrong. It is not 100 km. It turns out it is 130 km. (This is verified by a number of people's cyclocomputers.) I am tired at the end of the ride but happy that I did it.
I grab a quick dinner and, again not being able to say no, agree to meet Joe and Brandon at a party. It is a big party with lots of people and music and stuff. I run into two friends that I had not seen for a longtime. One a former ice hockey teammate and another a guy who wanted me to join his running club. We catch up on old times and vow to get together soon. Joe and Brandon are also having fun. But I'm starting to get tired - 130 km of cycling starting to affect my body. We end up staying not very late and I am home at a reasonable hour. Ready for recovery.