Visits Galore I - Friday

I just had a fun (but exhausting) weekend with Daniel & Tim. Daniel decided to take Amtrak from Conneticut, not because it was a cost savings, but because it keeps you from having to drive through New York City, Jersey City, Philly, Baltimore and DC to get here. The train came in late Thursday night to Union Station, where he transferred to the extremely convenient DC metro. He was a little nervous about taking the subway, because his only subway experience has been in Chicago, where you need to make sure you're wearing the right gang colors before you ride certain routes. Compared to that (or the urine-tense NYC subway) the metro is about as threatening as the monorail at Disneyland. I picked him up at Suitland, which scores an 8 in convenience but about a 9 in shady-ness.

Friday we got up early, but not early enough to avoid the heat on my weekly long run. Daniel, being the good sport that he is, decided to join me for the first (of two) lap of the 10-miles. When we started it was cloudy, hot and humid, but it soon cleared up enough to be sunny, really hot and humid. We soldiered on for the first lap, after which I dropped him off at the drill hall and started on lap #2. I sealed my fate by saying "I'll see you in about 45 minutes."

Now, usually my long runs are a fun experience. It's hard, but I've always found that if I pushed on I could do the whole distance, and usually a little more. This, however, was the most disappointing and humbling experience that I've had since I started running. It was awful- it proceeded to get even hotter out, and I probably walked more than I ran. I would try to run, but my legs just wouldn't. I was basically doing run/walk intervals, but instead of run 2 minutes/walk 2 minutes, it was walk until I see someone coming in the opposite direction/run until I pass them. All in all, the loop took me about an hour and 10 minutes, which is about 50% longer than usual. Daniel was waiting for me at the drill hall, wondering where the hell I was. He and I were sort of raquetball arch-rivals in college, so we had tossed around the idea of playing a game or two after the run. Given how we were both feeling, we decided to try something easier, like trying not to pass out or vomit.

After we got cleaned up, we went back to base to see what was flying because (as I said in my last post) now he can appreciate how cool it is that so many different Navy aircraft are just sitting out or flying around base. We were able to see lots of Sikorsky H-60s, but there wasn't an H-53 (the platform Daniel works on) to be found, which is odd because they're usually everywhere. We rounded out the day with some Donkey Konga (always an excellent time) and a couple movies. First was Kung Fu Hustle, which gets an enthusiastic two thumbs up. Later we watched Equilibrium, which gets two lukewarm "mehs." We had to go to turn in fairly early because we had a big 'ole day planned for Saturday.

Well, I was going to do the whole weekend in one post, but this is getting a little long. To be continued!