TOP NEWS ITEMS

OK, highlights only, in the interest of brevity (and readability):

I finished Cecile's bedspread!!! And got it in the mail. At 12#, it cost slightly less than a plane ticket to France for the wedding would have been.


A corner, to show you the edging.

I also sent her a skein of each of the yarns, the hook I made it with, and a darning needle, in case it ever needs repairs. And the label with fiber content and washing instructions.

Oh, forgot to mention.... she's 6 months pregnant! We're going to be grandparents again, finally! Due around Christmas/New Year's. Maybe my birthday, Dec. 22. Now we HAVE to save for another trip to France.

Massachusetts sightseeing trips:

Gloucester:

The Fisherman's Memorial (immortalized on the label of Gorton's Seafood Products)

The crew of the Andrea Gail, subject of the book/movie "The Perfect Storm." From a humongous plaque listing all known victims of the sea off of Glouster.

I think I've found a new sport. Read closely.

Next:

When will people learn to use the apostrophe?? And understand the possessive? (The front of his cart had it correctly: Joe's Hot Dogs.)

Here, they let it go a little too far before they replaced the sign. The tree hasn't completely swallowed the old one yet.



Provincetown, MA:

Abbie, our youngest grandchild, has started school. Pre-K, which is approximately equal to the First Grade of my school days. Here's her first day:

And, to show you how little she really is....

(Yes, Accident Elementary School. Yes, that's the name of the town. Yes, we take a lot of razzing. Accident Volunteer Fire Department. Accident Rescue Squad. And, the doctor I worked for was on Cemetery Road in Accident, MD.)

Finally....

My Backpack

I bought my Appalachian Trail Thru-Hike backpack!! Granite Gear Vapor Ki, (click link for details), 3300 cu. in., 2# 15oz, eminently comfortable filled with 30#. I have to keep my load now to around 30#, since that's the maximum recommended carrying capacity of the pack.

Rain Gear
And I bought authentic raingear. Didn't even jury-rig 'em out of garbage bags. Marmot Precip (click link.) I'll also use it for a warm layer, over my running tights and yoga pants, on cold nights. Unless they're already wet from rain/snow..... not sure what I'll do about that. Gotta plan to keep one warm outfit absolutely dry in a garbage bag along with my sleeping bag.

Can't believe the start of my 2100+mile hike is just 6 months away.

ACCOUNTABLE

If you're reading this, you no doubt noticed my new weight-loss-goal ticker up under my banner. Maybe having it there will make me feel more accountable for success or stalling... or encourage my friends to hold me accountable!

Don't let me slack! I have been, and my weight this morning was truly shocking. Middle digit I thought I'd never see again. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the chips. Maybe it's from just friggin' eatin' too darn much.

But I ran 7 miles today! Well, ran most of it... did it in cycles of walk 5 min, run 15.

THE WEEK THAT WAS

Wow. The week was crammed full of happenings, and we had no internet, so I've not able either to keep up with my friends or enable them to keep up with me.

Now we're in a different place and we're connected. So here's the update. After which I'm going to bed because I'm whupped.

We stayed the whole week in Bar Harbor, ME. I became a walker: 7 miles one day, 4 another, 6 another. Walking is..... well, slower than running.

It rained a lot while we were in Bar Harbor. But it was still beautiful, maybe more so in a moody sort of way.

One of the sunny days, we rented mountain bikes and rode around the dirt "carriage roads" in Acadia National Park. Lovely. It's been years since Steve went biking with me.

The plan was to stay Wednesday - Sunday, and leave for Gloucester, MA on Monday. But Saturday Steve discovered a major problem under our camper, requiring welding, and of course we couldn't contact a welder till Monday, so we stayed some extra days. On Monday, to kill time waiting for a welder to call us back, we decided to drive around the island (Bar Harbor is on Mount Desert Island) to see all the harbor villages. We turned the wrong way, discovered it after about half a mile (we were going to drive into the ocean if we kept going that way), and turned into a parking lot to turn around. We saw a couple running toward us waving their arms. Flick, focus.... holy cow, the young couple who own/manage the campground in Winchester, VA, where we worked all last winter!!! She's the one who arranged my whole work schedule (and thus, everyone else's) around my Ironman training schedule. So here we are in Bar Harbor due to a crippled camper when we thought we'd be on the way to Gloucester, turning around in a parking lot after a wrong turn, and we just happen to run into Karl and Selena, who were on a cruise of the New England and Canadian coast, and their ship was moored in Bar Harbor for just that day. Of all things!!!! That's their cruise ship in the background. We stuffed them into our truck and all went out to a great seafood restaurant for lunch.

The welding guy fixed our trailer that afternoon. But we still hadn't toured the harbor towns, so we stayed one more night (7th night free after you stayed 6) and drove our final tour of the island yesterday.

Bass Harbor Lighthouse

Finally we packed up and left for Gloucester today. Long ride, and with about an hour (or what should have been an hour) to go we saw this happen right in front of us:

That's one car, not two; his right front end hit the truck's left rear and stayed there and the rest of him went spinning. I thought at first the truck had a blowout, debris flying everywhere. Luckily we weren't so close we became part of it. I called 911 on my cell phone and told the dispatcher the driver was breathing but unresponsive (the dispatcher told me to calm down -- I hadn't realized I was yelling.) He regained consciousness in just a couple minutes and was coherent and oriented although he didn't know what had happened. Amazingly, he appeared to have only minor injuries, at least to the naked eye, even more amazing since he hadn't had a seat belt on. Steve and another driver (who was a paramedic) held his head and we all just kind of stayed there with him reminding him not to move, till the ambulance came.

Irony:

The driver of the truck that was stopped on the side of the road said, "I pulled over so I could reach into my cooler for a soda. I wasn't about to do that while I was driving.... didn't want to take a risk."

Well, now we're in Gloucester, or, more correctly, Cape Ann. And we have wi-fi. And it works. And I'm whupped. So I'm going to bed. What a day. What a week.

ROAD TO AUSTIN

I can do this. I can marathon-train again. I ran my 4 miles yesterday (or thereabouts.... ran for 40 minutes, anyway.) Next weekend, I'll do 5. The marathon is 24 weeks away. I can work up very, very gradually.

I'm not running more than 2 or, at most, 3 days a week. I do my best running when I haven't been running much.

LINE BREAKS AND PARAGRAPHS

Does anyone know why, when I post, sometimes there's no line break between paragraphs, and other times there's an inch or more of space between them? The too-much space happens if I leave the post as a draft, go somewhere else on the internet, and then come back to the post.

When I preview a post and there are no spaces, it doesn't help to go back to composing and just hit "enter" one or more extra times. Still no space.

I don't know how to fix this. It bugs me.

Naturally, this post is looking OK (at least in Preview.)