Tuesday ended up being a really busy day. I had John in the morning since his dad was still on his camping trip, so I couldn't do my usual run. My options were, once again, the neighborhood (shoot me in the head), Heavenly Hill (I've run this 76 times, and probably walked it more), the treadmill (tempting since it's in the cool basement) or wait until John's ninja class in the evening. I opted for the last option, even though it would only give me an hour to run. I'll choose a shorter trail run any day over the first three options.
Since the morning was now open, I decided to bite the bullet and rent a lawnmower from Coleman's again. The lawn mower a friend gave me won't start, so I let the yard get way out of control. It turned into a field with grass up to my chest. It HAD to get taken care of. I picked up the mower and got in about 30 minutes when the thing cut off and wouldn't start back up. I waited another 30 minutes to see if it just needed to cool down or if maybe I flooded it trying to start it so many times (and yes, it had gas!!). No luck after waiting. I called the guy for tips on how to fix it, but since they are literally at the bottom of my neighborhood, the guy said he would just drive up and take a look at it. As is my luck, he didn't do anything to it, and the thing started right up. WTF. So I start mowing again for maybe 2 minutes, until I noticed my little dog ran out, so I had to stop mowing to put her back in. Sure enough. I couldn't get it started. And then as I moved it, the blade fell off. I put it back on. Still wouldn't start. Moved the mower. Blade fell off again. That's when I realized that half of the piece holding it on was missing. It must have broken and fallen off somewhere in my yard. I had wasted way too much time at this point, so I put it back in my car and drove it back to Coleman's. The guy said he would fix it and bring it back up to my house. The only problem was that I was about to leave and not be back until 8pm or so, but I agreed.
John and I went to the Sandwich Spring to fill up our water jugs. We brought the two girl dogs along and took them on a short walk after on the Brook Path in Wonalancet. We last did this walk at the end of winter when the trail was still icy, so it was nice to walk on dirt path. It's very pretty, and there were surprisingly no bugs.
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| Brook that the Brook Path goes along. Creative name. |
We did swing by the house to drop off the dogs and then headed to Conway Lake to swim since it was SO hot. Right around 4pm, I get a text from John's dad asking if anyone had called about finding our 3rd dog, Chill. He said Chill ran off the night before while he was camped on the river, and he thought he was really gone, maybe killed by coyotes. Are you f*****g serious? So here it is, about 16 hours after Chill went missing, and this is first I'm hearing about it. Apparently, he gave up on Chill the next morning and just continued on down the river to finish up the trip. Wow. Okay. That's nice. So then I had to tell John that Chill was missing, and he got so upset. He loves Chill. I felt so bad.
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| John with Chill when he was 4, and Chill was 5 weeks old in North Carolina |
There wasn't anything I could do at this point. I had a feeling Chill was just wandering around. He tends to take off if he's left out untied, and he's been gone for hours before, but this was longer than he'd ever been gone. I just hoped he would show up.
After the lake, we had to go to Whitaker Woods for the Summer Series awards night. I had to hand out the gifts for the Livingston's who put it on every summer, and I had won the 30-39 age group for women. We finally got started, and I was supposed to go first to thank the Livingston's and hand out the gifts, but I got interrupted 3 times so other people could talk first. I didn't mind the first 2, but the 3rd time was completely uncalled for. I was mid-sentence when this other guy just interrupted me and started talking over me. I had literally started talking; it was SO rude. So I stood there looking like an idiot waiting for him to finish what he had to say about something completely non-running related. Anyway, I finally got to thank the Livingston's and give them some gift certificates, and then the awards were under way. Julbo is the sponsor for the awards, and I was crossing my fingers for some decent sunglasses this time. And then I saw the boxes. Omg. The same freakin' sunglasses they gave for Cranmore awards!! The worst sunglasses ever!! Ugh. They aren't even sports glasses; I'm not even sure what they are supposed to be. In case you missed my Cranmore write-up, here is the pic I shared again. They are so big they wouldn't even stay on when I moved my head!
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| Glasses from Cranmore. I look like a bug. |
Ugly, right? So here they are again as the award at a running event. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're supposed be grateful for having them supply the awards or else we would have no awards at all. Blah, blah, blah. Well, no. I call bullshit. My guess is that these are the glasses they can't sell (geez. I wonder why), so now they are just getting rid of the overstock. "Give them the shitty ones." Either sponsor the awards all-out or not at all. They want to be promoted at our event with their banner and flags; I think it's more important to promote your product by not giving away the overstock of your worst-selling sunglasses. Do you think anyone will buy your product now after seeing these bug-eyed monsters? Sorry to shit on Julbo, but I am not impressed. I didn't see a woman there who could wear those hideous things. So, needless to say, when I walked up to get my award, I refused them and asked for the lone Julbo visor on the table instead. Total asshole move, I know, but what was I going to do with another pair of those ridiculous glasses? I know this sounds silly for me to be complaining about it, but I have literally waited YEARS to finally win a pair, and now, two times in a row, this is what they give us, as if we won't mind. We're cool with it. Yeah, well, I'm not. We aren't a bunch of desperate rednecks who have to be thankful just to be getting something. And now I regret ever giving them a dime of my money for a pair of their ski goggles that I wear (which I actually like a lot!). Those will now have the logo Sharpied out when ski season rolls around. And I won't be wearing that visor either (even though, I did wear it, reluctantly, for the group photo). I'm sure this will get back to the people at Julbo at some point, and maybe it should. Maybe they actually have some valid excuse for these sunglasses. If so, I'd love to hear it. I won't apologize for this post, since this is a true, honest impression of them as of today, but I would definitely share anything pertinent in a future post. I sound like a complainer now, but sometimes you have to be. I wasn't going to post this photo, since it actually promotes Julbo, but here it is anyway.
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| Whitaker Woods Summer Series Winners. Notice how bad these glasses look on the women. |
Rant over. After the awards, John and I had to head to his ninja class, but since we were going to be really early, I decided to take a drive up East Conway Rd to see if we could spot Chill running around. No luck, and John was in tears. Fortunately, the tears were short-lived since he perked right up when we got to ninja class; it's his favorite thing. He ran into the gym, and I headed out on my run. Right across from the gym is a trail that meets up with the trails through Redstone that hook up with Corridor 19 and the mountain bike trails in the Green Hills, so I ran that way hitting the Outer Limits trail until I had run about 30 minutes out. I hit a connector trail to Corridor 19 to run back to the gym. I was pretty tired, and it was hot, so I ran an easy 6.1 miles with a little over 500ft of elevation gain. I got back with a just a few minutes left of John's class.
We went right home from there, and when I pulled in, the lawn mower was there waiting for me. I had kind of hoped they would forget so I wouldn't have to mow, but no such luck. I had to get it done. I made us dinner first, then donned a headlamp and got the mower started. And it took FOREVER. I was pouring in sweat, too. Like literally dripping sweat the entire time. I had to grab a cold beer in the middle to cool off. :)
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| Baxter Brew and the Coleman's mower in the headlamp light |
I knew it would take me a long time since my yard was huge and the tall grass thick, but I guess I didn't realize how long. 3.5 hours. I finished at 12:30am. Ha ha. I decided to load the mower back into my car while I was still gross. This isn't an easy feat. I have to use a wood board to roll it up into my car since I can't lift the mower by myself. The problem is that the board is only wide enough for one set of wheels, so it takes some balancing. Well, this time, it didn't go so well. I lost the balance of the mower on the board, then lost my balance in the sand and mower rolled down slamming right into my shoulder. It freakin' hurt, and all of the sand stuck to my sweat. Ha ha. I was covered in sand, grass and sweat, so I had to shower. I wasn't in bed until 1:30am. 4 hours later, I was up to get ready for my 24 hour shift. After mowing for 3.5 hours the night before, there was no way I was getting up at 4:30am for a run, so Wednesday ended up being a zero day.
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