Randall recap, 23 and dropped, all time fav

Since Randall was now not arriving until Saturday morning and Cindy was in Key West for a triathlon I had a now unfamiliar Friday night alone.  Well that isn’t really true since I had picked up the dogs on the way home.  The three of us had an enjoyable evening and I attended to various duties I otherwise would not have a chance to do over the weekend.

Originally Randall said he was going to leave the east coast at 6AM and arrive at my place around 8.  Now I know Randall well enough to realize the odds of that happening were very slim.  My premonition turned out to be correct when Randall sent me a Glympse a little after 7:30 saying he had just left.  The good news was Randall no longer needed me to run 6 miles with him on my still touchy right knee.

I put the extra time to good use, I always have something available to do.  The use this time was walking around the pool area and trying to knock down the endless cobwebs that are around the cage frame.  I was disgusted with just how nasty the pool cage is, probably the greenest/blackest I have ever let it become.  I am now mentally committed to making sure I pressure wash it before Xmas hits. It looks so bad.

I set up my pool barrier of chairs, cushions and other items so I could let the Roombas run wild.  I figure having most of the sand/hair pulled off the pool deck before pressure washing can only be a good thing.

As soon as Randall showed up he was inundated with dog love.  Both Nicki and Sadie laid down on Uncle Randall whom they hadn’t seen in close to a year.  They laid there with him for a long time, it was very cute.

Randall came bearing gifts.  First he had my clothing that I accidentally left at Tracy’s place when I last visited month’s ago. He also had a collection of gadgets/accessories that he grabbed at the Office Depot employee sale.  OD employees are allowed to fill a box they pay a flat rate for with as much stuff as they can jam in it.  He grabbed me some stuff for my Iphone and Kindle, it was nice of him.

So after catching up for a little while Randall and I laid out a game plan for the day.  I saw that this weekend they were having Snowfest, an event I never attended.  At one of the local parks they throw hundreds of blocks of ice into a wood chipper to make “snow”.  I have seen pictures of it and thought it would be a fun thing for us to check out. We hopped in the SSR and headed out.

I didn’t bother to check Snowfest’s location, I was sure it was at the Golden Gate City community park.  Earlier in the week I saw signage talking about parking for the event, reenforcing the events location in my head.  I thought I would be “smart” and park in a shopping center parking lot that I thought was next door to the community center.  Well as is often the case, my internal compass was a bit off.  We were actually at least a half mile from the center.  Oh well, it was a nice day for a walk.

Our walk took us by the Golden Gate library.  Randall said he had to use the bathroom so I told him I would just wait outside.  As I did I noticed a Ford Tempo looking vehicle that was parked in the handicap space.  My eyes were drawn to the rear bumper which was created of 2×12 lumber, painted to match the color of the car.

There was a very old and frail looking woman in the drivers seat with the door open.  For some reason she must have thought I looked trustworthy, despite the “Blood Makes the Grass Grow” t-shirt I was wearing.  She asked me if I could get her wallet out of the folded up walker in the rear seat, she said her car keys were in it.  Of course I I had no choice but to say yes.

I reached into several of the walker pockets and felt various items that I didn’t really want to be touching.  I then found her wallet in the the last pocket I tried.  I hand it to the woman and close her rear door. I expected her to pull out a key ring and be on her way.  Instead she opens a small snap in the wallet and dumps a small collection of individual keys into her hand.  She slowly fumbles through them until she locates the ignition key.

The process was so slow that I felt I should be assisting her somehow.  I did my part by closing her fully open driver door part way so she didn’t have to reach out far to close it.  Finally she finds the correct key, closes the door and waves.  I wave back.  She then very slowly backs out and misjudges how much room she required for her three point turn.  As she pulls away she jumps the Tempo up onto the curb and slides a good 2 feet up onto the sidewalk before she manages to bounce it back down to asphalt.  She then continued out of the parking lot at a slower than walking pace.  I am pretty sure my mouth was involuntarily open as I imagined this woman out on the open roads.  Holy shit…

When Randall emerged from the library I shared my experience with wood bumper lady as we resumed our walk to Snowfest.  We approached the building and saw a good amount of people and a bunch of tents that appeared to be some sort of flea market but no “snow” was to be found.  WTF?

We asked a cop where the snow was?  He said that Snowfest is actually at another local park, a couple miles away.  The signs I saw indicated you should park where we were but there were school buses shuttling people back and forth.  Great.  Well we walked all the way back to the SSR and headed over to the other park.

As we approached the park entrance we saw a long line of cars waiting to turn left and police by the turning lane.  The cops were going vehicle to vehicle and talking to them.  They did the same for us, informing us that we had to park in the Publix parking lot another mile away and take a school bus to the event.  Oh geez, ok.

So I pull into the Publix lot and am dumbfounded by the amount of vehicles parked there.  I knew Snowfest was popular.  I did not know it was this popular.  Randall and I saw a huge mob of people waiting for school bus shuttles.  We made an on the spot decision that Snowfest was not  worth dealing with that sort of humanity.  Instead we pulled out and headed to the Miromar Outlets.

Randall is a big fan of Under Armour gear and Miromar just happens to have an UA outlet.  In addition they have other outlets we like to check out like Nike, Adidas, Oakley and a few more.  After eating lunch there we walked the grounds.  I bought a few gift items and a dirt cheap shirt for myself at Oakley.    While we were there Randall tried on some high tech and surely astronomically expensive ski goggles that featured an in mask HUD. (heads up display)

After leaving the outlets we stopped at Trader Joe’s so Randall could load up on stuff not readily available in his area since TJ is yet to open a store in Lauderdale.  The bed of the SSR was pretty loaded up by the time we headed for the house.

I got a report from Cindy on her triathlon.  Despite her normal playing down of her performance, she did well, getting 5th in her age group despite some very windy conditions.  She had taken the van for the long drive and was on her way back.  We made plans to go out to dinner at South Street.

While we waited for Cindy to get back I introduced Randall to the world of quadra-copters.  I took my Blade MQX and Syma X1 in the backyard and flew them a bit before handing the controls over to Randall.  As you would expect Randall had a a lot of unintended impacts of the copters to terra firma but none of them were fatal.  He was able to maintain a decent hover occasionally.  He definitely thought it was fun, fun enough that he mentioned getting a cheap Syma X1 of his own to play with.  The Syma is definitely the better choice to cut your teeth on since it is a third of the price of the Blade and has a much less aggressive control rate that is more forgiving for a beginner.

Cindy got back and quickly got ready so we could head out to South Street, a place I never took Randall to previously.  When we got there it was moderately busy but not packed.  We grabbed three stools at the bar, ordered some beers and food.  Randall had never met Cindy prior to Saturday.  The two of them got along well which was cool.  We had a good meal that Randall graciously paid for.  By the time we left there were people mongering for our bar stools.  As soon as we got up they were claimed by other patrons.

So on Sunday morning Randall and I planned to do a bike ride.  Cindy also agreed to do it with us, despite competing in an Olympic distance triathlon the day before, pretty crazy.  Randall does a TON of cycling, more than he ever has before so neither Cindy or I expected to be able to hang with him for the long ride out to Ave Maria.

On the ride out the three of us actually did stick together.  The consistent headwind made staying close together advantageous for all.  Randall, Cindy and myself all took turns in the front of the line breaking the wind.  On the way out to Ave Maria our speed probably averaged in the mid 16’s.

Randall hadn’t been to Ave Maria in quite awhile, things had changed considerably.  Ave Maria has benefited from the resurgence in the real estate market, there is quite a bit of new construction going on.  We first grabbed some chocolate milk at Publix as a recovery drink and then headed over to The Ave Maria Bean to enjoy a cup of coffee before riding back.  If you disregard the religious back bone of Ave Maria it still stands alone as a beautiful and peaceful place.

On the ride back the first 3 miles on the long winding road that leads to the town was still at a slow pace as the wind was smacking us around.  However once we got out onto Oil Well Road the wind was finally at our backs.  Randall was in the lead and hauling ass.  I was going 23 mph and he was still pulling away so Cindy and I just let him go.  We were content to zip along at a steady 21-22 mph.  Randall eventually waited for us to catch up, saying he was holding a steady 27 mph for quite awhile.

Cindy had said she was really struggling earlier in the ride which was expected since she just raced the day before.  I tried to help her as much as I could, being the wind breaker for the first 10 miles of the ride back.  With 5 miles to go Randall said he was going to sprint the rest of the way.  I bid him farewell as he pulled away.  At the same time Cindy said she wanted to lead the last 5 miles in our two person peloton.

She zooms by and is pacing even faster than I was.  She was holding a steady 23 mph.  I had to stay down on my aero bars and work hard to stay close enough to get any wind advantage.  I guess her legs felt better. 🙂 I showed the overall pace for the ride as 17.5 mph.  When you factor in that 18 plus miles of the roughly 30 mile ride was into a decent wind that wasn’t bad at all. Randall really enjoyed doing a long ride on wide, unobstructed roadways, quite the difference from the traffic clogged streets he typically deals with on the east coast.

Cindy made herself and Randall some made from scratch pancakes for lunch, I stuck with my typical PB wrap.  It was now time for the Eagles/Detroit game.

I had heard some bits and pieces about potentially bad weather in the northeast but I was SHOCKED when I turned on the game.  It was a blizzard.  Huge flakes filled the air, making it difficult to see what the hell was going on.

Well I have said many times before, there are few things I like more than a football game in snow.  This wasn’t just snow, it was near white out conditions.  The only thing better than a snow game is when your team does well in a snow game and unfortunately that wasn’t the case for a good portion of the game.

The Eagles offense appeared to be totally derailed by the snow.  They totally abandoned the pass and had little to no success with the run, not managing to get a first down until well into the second quarter.

The Lions on the other hand were actually moving the ball pretty well.  Luckily for the Eagles the Lions also were turning the ball over.  The snow crusted ball slipped out of their hands several times as they were deep in Eagles territory.  The weather was so atrocious that only one kick attempt was made the entire game which was blocked and resulted with David Akers sitting on his ass.  The teams instead just went for the two point conversion every other time.

As much as I was enjoying the action in the snow, the game was clearly going the Lions way.  Despite their turn overs they manged to score TWO touchdowns on special teams, one on a kick off and another on a punt return.  To do so with such horrible running conditions was pretty incredible.  I had chalked up the game as a loss.  Then came the fourth quarter.

In the span of 15 minutes the game went from a fun snow game to one of the most memorable Eagle games of my lifetime.  The snow, which never stopped coming down had at least lessened in intensity.  It seemed that after 3 quarters of playing on a white, slick field the Eagles finally figured out how to play on it.  LeSean McCoy went absolutely crazy, breaking off long run after long run contributing to an incredible two hundred PLUS yards of rushing for the Birds in the 4th quarter alone!  The running was mixed in with minimal but effective passing to lead an incredible charge winding up in a huge 34-20 Eagles win.

McCoy’s performance was historic.  Not only did he set the Eagles single game rushing record, he accomplished most of it in 15 minutes of play in some of the most treacherous field conditions the Eagles have ever seen.  It was such an incredible game, one I will never, ever forget.

All of a sudden this team that I wrote off as being in the midst of a rebuilding year at 3-5 is now instead sitting atop the division at a very respectable 8-5.  It’s hard to believe how drastic of a turnaround the last month or so has been.  Is Nick Foles the next Tom Brady, a QB that came out of nowhere to suddenly perform at an elite level?  We can all only hope so.

The NFL was filled with a TON of incredible games this week and I think each one had white stuff on the field.  Awesome.

Randall had to shove off for his cross state drive shortly after the game ended.  I thanked him for his brief but fun visit.  He should be back again in late January.

I made two trips back and forth to Ali’s condo Sunday night.  The first time to drop off the dogs and a second time to drop off the dog supplies I stupidly forgot to throw in the van.  I took the SSR the second time to make the drive more enjoyable.

I have a busy week coming up, a theme that is going to probably continue until the day after Xmas.  I have a number of running club related to do’s all compressed into a small time frame. Promoting and handling details of the events will be a challenge.  On Friday I got a chunk of my Xmas shopping knocked out courtesy of Amazon.  I still have a pretty large collection of holiday items to cross of the list before my mind can be at ease.

Speaking of which, I still have not been sleeping straight through the night.  Each and every night I wake up before the alarm.  Maybe this is just my new normal, great.