Mornings With Ballerinas

I'm trying to get started out on the right foot with this whole job business, to stay on top of things and get my life in order.  I admit that my house is an unholy mess, and there may or may not have been a little snafu with the water bill this week, but that's okay!  Because I've gone to the YMCA to work out EVERY MORNING this week before work.

It works out pretty well for me -- the downtown Louisville Y is right around the corner from my on-ramp, they have excellent water pressure in the locker room showers, and their hair dryers are better than the one I have at home.

There's just one problem:  ballerinas.

The place has a morning ballerina infestation.  As in, actual, real live dancers with the Louisville Ballet.  Coming to MY Y  and clogging up the elliptical machines with their hair in cute little buns, and their perfect posture, and their ballerina gossip.

I have nothing against the ballet, mind you.  I don't even hold a grudge for how mean Baryshnikov was to Carrie on Sex and the City.  But at 7:00 a.m.?  When I'm trudging along on an elliptical?  Looking how I look in sweatpants, no makeup, and slept-on hair?  It's all just a little hard to take.

I have to admit, though, I find them FASCINATING.  Apparently, they report to all day rehearsals of different types, and eat lunch together, and a certain number of them cry every day.  And I don't mean to gossip, but there is a certain male dancer who doesn't have the arm strength to do lifts correctly, and he should really work on his hand position, and holding the girl he is attempting to lift closer to his body so he can use technique to balance out his lack of strength for the lift.  Someone should really tell him before he ruins EVERYTHING.

I don't think they ever eat.

I'm going to tough it out for awhile, but seriously -- if anyone knows how to handle a ballerina infestation, please, for the love of all that is holy, let me know.

Namaste, Bitches

Please forgive me if you find this post title offensive; I saw it on a t-shirt, and have been dying for one ever since. I just feel that it sums up my philosphy of, well, everything. 

I may bow to what's honorable in you, but there's no need to get all touchy-feely about it.

In the Great Year of Unemployment, yoga became a big part of my life.  I had been to a few classes before, but it had never really stuck.  This time, thanks to A LOT of free time, a desperate need for some emotional peace, and a fantastic teacher (Hi, Rebecca!), it stuck.  It was very, very sticky.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first:  yoga is great exercise.  It will make you sweat, and make you out of breath, and you'll be sore the next day. (There's really no way make that sentence non-suggestive, so just go with it, 'mkay?)

But what I have fallen in love with is a lot less obvious. 

First of all, yoga completely changed how I feel about my body.  Truthfully, I have spent 38 years hating my body.  Mostly, it sucks.  It's too big, both in height and weight, and it's very slow-moving.  It can't catch or hit anything that is thrown at it. It trips a lot.  It gets tired way before anyone else's does.

But in yoga, I discovered some things to like about it.  It's pretty strong, and it's surprisingly flexible.  When I'm patient with it, it will sometimes do things that I never thought it could (camel pose, I'm looking at you).  When there's nothing to trip over, it's graceful, and it has some great balance when it's allowed to really concentrate.

These don't seem like big things.  But armed with just these few things to like about my body, I started to stand a little straighter and prouder, and feel just a little more at peace with it.  I almost started to apologize to this poor ol' misunderstood body for being so mean to it all these years.

Then there are the spiritual aspects of yoga.  The Southern Baptist Convention can denounce yoga practitioners as heathen she-devils all they want, but yoga brought me closer to God.  It's a discipline that demands patience with yourself, the universe, and God, if you believe in one.  It also stresses acceptance of things as they are, and a practice of living in the moment, being aware and conscious of your present. 

I'm probaby not expressing this very well. But I can tell you, on a spiritual level, yoga helped to fill in a gap in me. It didn't replace my religious beliefs, it just rounded them out, made them more personal.  My time on that yoga mat became my time to be with God, to grieve for lost things, to rejoice for what I have been given, and to listen for what might bring me peace. 

'Cause you know, everybody could use a little more peace.

Namaste.

101 Things: Day 400

Well, since I am woefully behind on blogging these days, it shouldn't surprise you that I am writing my Day 400 post about a week late. But really, when you're talking about 1,001 days, what is a few days?

Unfortunately, the past 100 days haven't been very productive. (Obama has accomplished WAY more than me. I am a slacker.)

Lose 20 pounds. Woohoo! I am on my way. I had really hoped to get to the "lose 30 pounds" mark during this 100 days, but alas, it was not meant to be. I was on a big roll, and then after vacation -- although, oddly not WHILE on vacation -- I hit a big crash and burn and then had to deal with the same 3 pounds going off then coming back on for nearly two months. Bummer. I think I'm on track now, I've actually lost 23.6, so I'm really, really hopeful that by Day 500 I'll be at 40 pounds lost.

Take at least 3 yoga classes. I've mentioned this one a few times, already. I am a semi-regular yoga-class-taker now, and have bought my own mat which I am anxious to use. I like yoga, I like it a lot. And even if the guy who teaches my class does freakily resemble a pretzel at times, I am determined to keep on keepin' on.

And, yeah, that's it. But seriously, there are so many things in the works, I have great expectations for the next 100 days. I'm still going through the Artist's Way program, and I'm THIS close to settling on my novel idea (frightening!). In June, I will have completed my one year of violin lessons (and I'm going to keep going). I've been trying and trying to go on my Cave Hill Cemetary walk, and I think I'll get it in soon, probably combined with my little solo picnic. My roller blades are sitting out ready to go, and best of all? I am SO going to see Mellencamp in July.

So watch out, Day 500, I'm gonna kick your ass!

This Post Doesn't Even Have a Title

I wish I were going to write something beautiful and insightful tonight, but yeah, I don't think that's happening. It's Derby Week in the Hall of Justice, which means light dockets and lots of leaving early. Last week was kind of a hard week, both work-wise and social-commitment-wise, so I'm taking it easy this week.

Here are some things I am loving this week:

Yoga. Believe it or not, I like it, and I think it's even exercise.

Korean food. Had it for the first time tonight, and it was mighty tasty. I ate a fermented black bean, and I would totally do it again.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Two. I'm rewatching, since I got Seasons One and Two for my birthday. Ahh, the good old days, when Angel was hot, Buffy was a virgin, and Spike was still deliciously bad.

Dollhouse. Oh, Joss Whedon, how I love you. You have made me love yet another show, even though you made the poor choice of Eliza Dushku as the star.

My new air popcorn-popper. I haven't tried it out yet, but I'm super excited about it, since I'm a weirdo who likes neither butter, oil, or salt on my popcorn.

You Think I'm Just Lounging About, But It's SO Not True

I'm so very tired, you're only getting a skeleton-y post today with a smidge of what I've been up to . . .

1. Canoeing on Saturday. Not the best exercise in the world, but such a gorgeous day. Canoeing, and even more so kayaking, are two things that Todd introduced me to that I have really loved.

2. Easter Sunday. Big church crowd. Lots of brass fanfare-ing. Lots of bad food-eating at Brunch. Tried a walk in the park later, but it didn't make up for all those bazillion points.

3. Skipped Weight Watchers meeting for first time since January 1. (See above re: Easter brunch.) Back on the wagon now.

4. Saw foot doctor on Monday. Bad, very bad. More shots, maybe surgery.

5. Today, yoga. Holy Namast-oly, was that hard. I fully expect to be dead by tomorrow morning.

6. Also today -- I broke a nail while swimming. Don't ask.

A Brief Addendum to Yesterday's Post

I've been saying that my legs are really achy, and I don't think my husband believes me. Last night they were SO achy, I dreamed they had been cut off and reattached.

Joining the Club

A few years ago, I decided I was going to walk a 4K race, one of the Polar Bear Grand Prix races they have here in the Winter. I don't really know why I thought this was a good idea, I know I didn't do much work to get ready for it.

So on the morning of the race, I start out walking, and realize that there is no one, and I do mean no one, who walks as slow as me. I panic, and decide that I don't want to be last, so I'll RUN the race. I reasoned to myself that people always talk about the adrenaline, etc., and I figured that would get me through the race and maybe I would beat at least a few of the slowest walkers.

Well, adrenaline got me through about three fourths of one of the four Ks, and I called Todd to come get me.

After that, I very publicly denounced the whole "race" culture, and swore that I'd never attempt to walk one again, and in fact would never run anywhere unless there was something really big and scary chasing me -- like maybe that #41 from the UConn women's basketball team.

But recently it's started to bug me, that while I have surprised myself with bike riding, and swimming, and kayaking, and camping, and a whole host of things, I have never gotten over that hump of at least being able to run around the block.

Then I was told by more than one person that running will "melt the pounds off like butter," and that it is a "brutally effecient" exercise that gets big results fast.

Since I'm going for that 77-pound weight loss in one week, I figure I should give it a try. So I've been doing the Couch to 5K program.

The first week I handled the 60 second running intervals okay, and even increased my speed a little. Today I did the first day of week 2, which moves up to 90 second running intervals. And let me tell you, those extra 30 seconds KICKED MY ASS.

I thought I was going to have to apologize to the woman on the treadmill next to me for breathing so loud, then I realized she was wearing headphones, so maybe that muffled my gasping a little.

And a few times I felt myself moving farther and farther toward the end of the treadmill, and had to make myself use enough umph to not fall off the back. I often seem to veer off to the side a bit, too, so I'm thinking my run is not the most attractive-looking thing in the workout room.

And I absolutely cannot imagine running for a WHOLE 5K. Or even for three minute intervals, which I think comes up next week. So all you readers out there, all FOUR of you, please keep your fingers crossed that I can get through the whole two-month program without breaking a leg, or having a stroke or something. And I'll let you know when I hit that 77-pound week.

But -- boy howdy, are my legs sore.

Monday Stuff

1. Today, because my violin playing was so bad, Hannah (my teacher) decided to "cheer me up" by playing for me the next song in my line-up to "show me what I have to look forward to." Two lines into the song, I started laughing. I thought it was a joke, see, because it was SO RIDICULOUS to think I could play that. I even said, "Really, do you think I'm ready for that?" Luckily, my current song is so hard I will likely be 40 before I get finished with it. Oh, and can I just say that Vivaldi sucks all kinds of violin ass?

2. At Weight Watchers tonight, I lost 3.8 pounds. And I was TOTALLY not happy with that. You know why? Because I was hoping for more. Just 77 more pounds tonight, and I would have been done.

3. If I have one weakness as a cook, it is that I never remember that more is not always better. I made a Pampered Chef recipe for a chicken club pizza that I had at my party last week, and put waaay too much chicken and cheese and bacon on it. Now I feel like I need to just go eat lemons until sometime around Wednesday. Blech.

4. I went back to the holdover today to talk to a pro se defendant, and another defendant said to me, "Are you a lawyer?" When I said yes, he asked, "Are you a public one or a REAL one?" Hooh, boy, was that the wrong thing to say to me! So I said to him, "Boy, was that the wrong thing to say to me." Then I told him that I'm a prosecutor and that I'll be watching out for his case.

5. I am once again trying to work my way through The Artist's Way. The first few weeks demand that I figure out who is to blame for my stagnant creativity. I'm pretty convinced that it was that college poetry writing professor who laughed so hard at my poem, then at the end of the semester, asked me to read it again so she could laugh at it some more. Yeah, I'm thinking it's totally her fault that I didn't write Harry Potter.

The Highs and Woes of Weight Watching

Okay, I recognize that you might eventually get a wee bit tired of hearing about my weight loss efforts, but you know what?

I get a wee bit tired of my weight loss efforts.

When last we visited this topic, I was most unhappy because I had gained four tenths of a pound. In the week following that tragedy, I worked pretty hard, even foregoing ice cream when Little and I went to see Cirque du Soleil (which was FABULOUS, by the way). Because I had been so worried about missing a meeting on the upcoming vacation, I went all the way across town to go to a DIFFERENT meeting the day before we left.

And a wonderful meeting it was, because I lost 3.5 pounds. Cool. Sunshine and rainbows, and all that.

So I go off on my vacation, in which I not only figured out where the hotel gym was, but actually went INTO it and WORKED OUT. ON VACATION. Never have I done such a thing. Then, when Todd went on his Eagle Scouts-only backpacking trip, I walked SIX miles of the South Rim Trail. I have to admit, though, I ate a lot of what I wanted to eat, and by Friday, had given up counting points altogether.

When we got back? I lost ANOTHER 3.5 pounds. Boy howdy, we were talking SERIOUS sunshine and rainbows at that point.

So, for those of you still reading along . . . last week was hard. It was the final week of Lewis Birthday Stretch-Out, and it involved one drinks with friends, one doughnuts with coworkers, one dinner with hubby, one dinner with dad, one cookies with coworkers, a second dinner with hubby, a dinner with niece, and a dinner with brother and sister-in-law. I tried, I really tried, but apparently I did not try hard enough, because . . .

Is the suspense killing you? Hello? Is anyone still there?

Anyway. I gained four pounds. No, not four tenths, FOUR POUNDS. One, two, three FOUR pounds. Huh. Didn't see that one coming.

There are no sunshine and no rainbows around here this week. No, sir, just rain and clouds and carrot sticks and water. Birthday Stretch-Out is officially over.

Can a Girl Get a Break Around Here?

I tell you what, it is definitely Monday around here, at least it was between 5:30 and 7:00. First, I had a terrible violin lesson -- I swear, sometimes I think my teacher thinks I am playing badly just to annoy her. That is NOT the case; I would, in fact, love to be able to play double stops AND vibrato EVERY SINGLE DAMN TIME, but it does not yet seem to be in the cards for me.

Second, I experienced the ultimate Weight Watcher tragedy -- I GAINED .4 pounds this week. Combined with my stunning loss last week of .4 pounds, it seems that in the past two weeks I HAVE ACCOMPLISHED ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Okay, I'm taking deep breaths now.

On a happier note, on this day just 39 years ago, a teeny little baby was born, and wouldn't you know? He was just destined to "come live with me and be my love."

Happy Birthday, Todd! (Even if it IS Monday.)

Do Not Despair

That last post down there? Kind of depressing, and I just had to pop back in to say I'm actually not depressed at all, because I LOST 2.4 POUNDS THIS WEEK! Woo-to-the-hoo!

I Think Someone Stole My Saturday

Oh, for pete's sake, it's Monday. I don't know how that happens so FAST! Here's some randomness for you and your own personal Monday . . .

1. At my Weight Watchers meeting tonight, I lost 1.2 pounds. Todd cannot understand the misery that comes with being told you have lost 1.2 pounds when you hoped for, at minimum, 2.2 pounds, which would put you into a "new" set of numbers, or, even better, 4 pounds, which would earn you another five pound gold sticker.

2. I have discovered that there is a strong inverse relationship between how hard I practice the violin and how happy I am with my playing during the week and how much I suck at my actual lesson. (Or is that a direct correlation? Anyway, if I do good during the week, I suck ass at the lesson.)

3. I have officially given up on finishing Todd's Christmas scarf this winter. Goodbye, poor beautiful, cable- and bobble-filled scarf, I will see you in the Fall and you will be ready for Christmas 2009, I swear.

4. Edgar Sawtelle never did start to suck. It was beautiful and heartbreaking right until the end. I balanced out all the heartbreak with the latest in a fabulous werecat series. Ah, trashy supernatural romance novels, how I love you.

5. In organizing some files at work this afternoon, I realized that I have been prosecuting the priest-stalker since August 2006. When I started her case, I wasn't even married yet. Sheesh, priest-stalker, can't you give me a break?

6. This Friday, the latest Joss Whedon show debuts on Fox. Who is Joss Whedon, you ask? He's ONLY the creator of the best TV show in the history of TV shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So I am sure you can imagine my excitement.

7. Little and I went to a "Solve the Sherlock Holmes Mystery" event thingy at the Frazier Historical Museum a few weeks ago. We failed utterly at solving it. I felt so guilty about our performance that I'm reading some Sherlock Holmes stories for the first time ever. He was a wee bit pompous, wasn't he?

8. After making fun of them mercilessly on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, I am listen to The Ting Tings incessantly. They make me want to put on my blue wig and dance.

8. I have a new dress from Old Navy that I got for $9.99, and it's totally cool. (Told you this post was going to be random.)

101 Things -- Day 300-ish

Day 300 came and went last week during The Great Ice Storm/Power Outage of Louisville 2009, so I missed blogging about it. Not that I lost power and COULDN'T blog, I just didn't. Something about being snowed in makes me feel extraordinarily lazy. I spent the days wandering around the house, watching a little TV, reading a little, playing a few notes on the violin, then taking a nap to recover from the hardship of it all.

Anyway.

So, Day 300. I haven't been the most industrious 101 Thing-er lately, but chill out, dude, I still have 701 days. Here's what I DID do:

Work on a political campaign. Okay, so I didn't sit around at some candidate's headquarters for weeks on end lettering signs and scheduling stump speeches, like in the movies. What I did do was make two days' worth of phone calls at one of the Louisville Democratic Party offices for Bruce Lunsford, John Yarmuth and Barack Obama. It wasn't much, but that, combined with my teeny little financial contribution, t-shirt wearing, and yard sign-having, made me feel like I was invested in the campaign. And what a campaign it was! For the first time in a long time, I think people were voting FOR something, rather than just AGAINST something else. And DAMN, did it feel good.

Lose 10 pounds. For fuck's sake, I've only been working on this one since, oh, THE VERY FIRST DAY OF THE 1001, but I finally accomplished it. Back in the first week of January, I posted about my New Year's Weight Watchers Ritual. Believe it or not, I have stuck to it since then. That's four whole weeks! I'm not gonna lie, often I feel like a barely sober alcoholic who's scared to walk past a liquor store, but I'm hanging on. I would love, love, love, to be able to mark off the 20 and 30 pounds lost by Day 400.

Make a fleece blanket for myself. I should probably have a picture of this, but I don't. Just take my word for it that the blanket is quite pretty, all in shades of turquoise blue and brown, very snuggly, and very warm. It was fortuitously finished just before the above-mentioned Ice Storm of 2009, and was an integral part of all those snow-day naps.

I don't know about you, but I'm already looking forward to the next 100 days!

It's That Time Again . . .

I know I said just yesterday that the holidays were over, but I nearly forgot about the one last holiday wrap-up ritual that I celebrate every year: the January Weight Watchers meeting.

I admit, I am a Weight Watchers snob. I have been known to change meetings lickety-split if I don't like the meeting leader, and woe be to the Weight Watchers leader who has lost less than fifty, okay, I'll be honest, one hundred pounds. I can't tell you how many intros I've sat through, only to roll my eyes when ol' Sally Skinny-ass earnestly tells me that she's managed to keep off a whopping twenty pounds for two years.

My favorite leaders have been the ones who deal with the kinds of issues I deal with. There was Debbie, who cut the elastic on all her underwear because they were digging into her legs. And Jean, who ate an entire bag of chocolate covered pretzels while grocery-shopping, and had to stand at the check-out lane while the clerk called a manager to find out how to charge her for something that could no longer be weighed.

And my favorite, Angie, who decided that she was just NOT going to be tempted any longer by the Halloween candy she had bought, so she "pitched" it out of the car as she drove down the road. Then she got pulled over for littering, and the cop made her go pick up all the candy. (This same leader also confessed that she had thrown away candy she had just bought at Kroger when she ran into a WW member in the parking lot.)

These are women I can relate to.

So I was pretty pleased when the leader tonight informed us that she had lost 103 pounds, that sometimes she has to use three days worth of journal pages to fill in all the food she ate in one day, and that she was so cheap with her points that she preferred to buy the "nasty" Kroger plain oatmeal so she could eat more of it (with copious amounts of the aforementioned Sweet 'n Low). Oh, and this Christmas, she ate a whole sweet potato pie -- by herself.

Yeah, I could get to like this woman.

Nowhere to Go But Up

I've been working on this quasi-resolution/aspiration/goal thing, mostly the one about acting like a skinny person, exercising and such, and brother, is it hard.

Not the actual working out part, although that goes without saying, really, but just the going-to-the-gym part. Because I don't know if you've noticed, but mostly, at the gym?

It's all fucking skinny people. Even the not-quite-skinny people are kind of mean, like the gray-haired lady in the water aerobics class on Saturday who rolled her eyes at her friend, and said, (loudly), "I give all these people until March."

Seriously. I have to really work myself up for it, telling myself, "You have as much right to be here as anyone. You paid your $50. You are working on improving yourself. You have as much right to be here as anyone."

All the while, I am scanning the room for someone fatter than me. Come on, you know you do it, too. The quick I'm-just-seeing-if-there's-anyone-here-I-know routine, when really, you're mentally doing a guess the weight game in your head. And after a week of doing this scan, I can attest that no, there isn't, in fact, ANYONE FATTER THAN ME. Sheesh.

Today, after I finished the 25 minutes of PURE HELL that others refer to as the "elliptical machine," I went down the pool to do some laps, where at least I am submerged during my workout. And as I'm going up and down, up and down, I see out of the corner of my eye, in the next lane over, a girl who, if not larger than me, is at least about my size. We smile at each other. It's a moment. I feel better about the Y in general.

Then, she dusted my ass.

Mind you, I have no illusions about the speed at which I swim. At my former pool, I was routinely dusted by both the 80-year-old man ordered to swim to improve his circulation, and the girl with one leg. (No, I am not kidding. One leg. And I first noticed her because she was swimming AT A SPEED WHICH I ASPIRED TO.)

Even so, today, it hurt me to be beaten by my size-twin. I can now attest that, no, there isn't in fact, ANYONE SLOWER THAN ME.

SHEESH. And HARUMPH.

I tell you what. Next week? I am so moving to that other resolution, the one in which I get to sit at a coffee shop and write bad poetry because DAMMIT, it's creative.

Here We Go Again

I recently ran into someone I hadn't seen in several years who happened to mention a mutual friend, also someone I haven't seen in a long time.

"She's HUGE!" he cried, "I mean, she's really gotten HUGE!"

And I just know he's going to say the same thing about me the first chance he gets.

Seriously, weight has always been an issue for me. I don't remember ever thinking that I was okay, size-wise (although looking at pictures from high school, I really wasn't huge then). And lately, it's becoming that issue that I really can't ignore anymore.

I get out of breath when I walk up the stairs. I worry that anyone who is looking at me is thinking, "she's gotten HUGE!". And I can't keep up with my husband.

(Actually, most people can't keep up with my husband. He truly does have some kind of super-human stores of energy. We went for a bike ride last night and he talked the whole time. Like, in a normal, not out of breath at all kind of voice, just like we were hanging out on the couch. Meanwhile, I was so out of breath that my mouth was hanging open, which meant it got all dried out from the wind, and when I tried to respond to him, all that came out was some kind of lame squeak.)

I spend WAY too much time thinking of things I would do if I were normal-sized.

I'd wear really cool clothes, and I'd never buy a single thing from Lane Bryant, ever again.

I'd go dancing regularly, even if it was only in my back yard, and I'd wear sleeveless tops and throw my arms over my head and shimmy like crazy. And I'd learn to do that cool hula-hoop dancing that the hippie girls do down on the waterfront. And to belly dance.

I'd learn to surf.

I would travel all over the world without worrying that I would get too tired to walk the trendy neighborhoods or that I'd be embarassed to be in the trendy neighborhoods.

I'd walk up to the MAC counter with all the confidence in the world, and tell those girls to do my eyes up right. And I'd maybe dye my hair blond, just for a weekend, or get PURPLE SYNTHETIC DREDS which would look great while I was hula-dancing on the waterfront.

I'd believe my husband when he tells me I'm pretty.

These are all things I would really like to do. And I'm tired of always thinking of what I WOULD do, if I weren't HUGE.

So I'm going to try to do something about it. Again. And this time, I can't quit. I'm posting this today because I'm hoping the ol' internets will somehow keep me accountable (since I simply can't abide the thought of one more Weight Watchers meeting in my life, and they may have finally banned me from the group anyway).

So, okay. I can do this. Seriously, I swore I could never learn to do a cartwheel and I did, PLUS I quit smoking, and, really, I can already shimmy pretty well, so I can do this.

I couldn't quite face a "before" picture here today . . . maybe later, when I can post an "after" picture along with it.

Working Off All That 3-Day Weekend Beer

Lord knows, I am not the kind of girl who has a bunch of t-shirts from various road races. Truth be known, those people who claim to get up early on a Saturday morning (not to mention going to bed early on a Friday night) to RUN MILES for what they call FUN . . . well, those people kind of scare me.

Yes, I married one, but that's a-whole-nother-story, as they say in Eminence.

I have to admit, though, that I actually like the Mayor's Hike and Bike that we have twice a year here in Louisville. Yesterday's drew more than 2,500 people. At one point, I could see the crowd ahead of us (because looking at the crowd behind you while riding a bike is dangerous) and couldn't resist saying to Todd, "Hey, look at all those people!"

He says that's what all those runs are like. I'm taking his word for it.

Anyway, I am quite pleased that I actually finished the 15-mile ride. Of course, if anyone had given me a "not-finishing" option at around Mile 13, I may have taken it, but they didn't, so I finished. I even made it up the one hill.

Yes, I had to stop in the middle of the hill and call Todd to come back and fix the chain on my bike that had JUST GIVEN UP and tried to escape halfway up, but after it was fixed, I (and my chain) made it up the hill.

What cracks me up about a bike ride with 2,500 people is all that "courtesy yelling" that goes on. I'm riding along, trying to catch a breeze, and all of a sudden 15 people in front of me are screaming, "HOLE!HOLE!HOLE!"

So I'm all, "What? Why are these people yelling at me?"

Then, I'm all, "Oh, hey, there's a hole."

And it wasn't just holes that prompted the yelling. Throughout the ride, I heard lots of "CAR!"

"BRAKING!"

"CLEAR!"

And my favorite:

"COMINGUPONYOURLEFT!ONYOURLEFT!"

Me? I just ride. Yelling stuff takes too much air and just might possibly destroy all my balance, which means I would have to call out,

"CRASHING!CRASHINGRIGHTNOW!OUTOFSHAPEWOMANONTHEGROUND!"