coin-operated boy

Archive for June 2011

the one where he dreams

6/29/2011 life in general One comment

Ever since we took a vacation to Las Vegas last December, i’ve been bit. Bit by the travel bug. I also fell in love with Las Vegas. Maybe it was because it was my first “adult” vacation, maybe it was because I had no responsibilites, but I loved getting the heck out of Rhode Island for a while. I got to experience basically a whole new world, and its bigger than my home. it was great to finally meet people that up to that point, I had only talked to on the internet. Sure we use the excuse that we’re going to where ever for a race, but for me, the real reason is to travel.

Sure, I moved from Canada to here, and that’s travel but before, I really hadn’t gone anywhere. When I was in Army Cadets, I took the Master Gold Star test. It’s basically the final test for all things cadets. Up for grabs was a summer in England. Basically a trip of a life time. 6 weeks in England where I could train with the British Army. I studied for that test for a long time. Sadly when I took the test, I missed going by 1%. Another person from my Corps, got to go. I was so bummed about it. From then, almost every year I say to myself “In five years, I’ll have enough money saved to make the trip.” Well, like 15 years has gone by, and I haven’t gone. Then last year I said to myself, “By the time I’m 40, I’ll go.” Maybe that will happen, but with my track record, it probably won’t.

Then yesterday, I get a Facebook update. The Rock N Roll Marathon series has a new race, in Scotland. Scotland! I was so excited! There could be a chance that I could go to the UK! I retweeted it, and posted it on my Facebook. I was at work, but so very excited to read this, and I counted down the hours to get home, and actually read the details about this new race. After I read about it, I did what every other person would do; I priced out the flights. Using random dates, I came up with a price for Crystal and I, 9 days, and hotel for $2700.

Woohoo!

It won’t be next year, but maybe, just maybe in 2013, or 2014. Depending on how much money I can save. I have money taken out of my pay cheque each week. That basically is our “destination race” rainy day fund. Right now we’re saving up for the Flying Pig meetup in May 2012. Because dammit, I have a passport, and I want to use it.

We’ll see. I hope that we could do this. It would be really cool to go to a distant land, just Crystal and I. An actual honeymoon! Sure we had Vegas for that, but in my mind, it doesn’t really count because we had my parents surprise us, and Crystal’s mom came with us. Our honeymoon was 24 hours with just ourselves, and one night with some local friends.

Plus, it would be pretty neat to be an international runner.

the one where he got muddy

6/26/2011 running 3 comments

The trip to Warrior Dash New England started Friday after work. My mother in law and I drove up to Crystal’s work, so we could leave directly from there, saving about 2 hours travel time. (One hour for Crystal to drive home, and then an hour to get back to Crystal’s work.) So after waiting for about an hour for Crystal to get out of work, we got gas, and we were on our way to Amesbury, Ma. For some reason, our GPS took us through Boston. The traffic wasn’t too bad considering it was after 6 on a Friday night. Thankfully there was no sporting events happening in Boston to slow us down.

Plus I got to drive through the Big Dig. I really like tunnels for some reason. Crystal on the other hand, doesn’t. So she was a little nervous about them. The next time we go through Boston, I really want to be a passenger, so I can look around.

With a quick pit stop to use a bathroom, we were back on the road and making pretty good time. The hotel that we were staying at was *right* off of I-95 so we didn’t have to look around for it. We pulled in, and I called Frankie to tell her that we were there. She sounded annoyed and told us that she was 14.7 miles away. When she got there she explained why she sounded annoyed. She got on the Pike, and was stuck in a massive amount of traffic. She was actually supposed to arrive before us, but we made it about 15 minutes before her.

After we had settled in the hotel room, we were starving, so we grabbed a “where to eat in Amesbury” flier, and we were off. We knew where we wanted to eat, The Barking dog. But the flier didn’t have the street address. So after a quick Google we found the address, set the GPS, and were off. We found the place in like 5 minutes. It was packed, but we were shown right in, and ordered our drinks, and food very quickly. For an appetizer, I ordered the Kielbasa and spicy mustard. OMG that was so good. In practice of ordering some I usually don’t order, I ordered the Shepard’s pie. Again, super yummy. We drove back to the hotel to get ready for the next day.

The Next Day.

I work up about 10 minutes before the wake up call (that actually never happened), and was greeted with a downpour with thunder and lightning. I turned on the tv, and the storm was actually so bad, that we lost the satellite on the tv! After about 15 or so minutes it came back and we discovered that we were going through one fast moving cell of weather, and that there was another one coming. We thought ok, we better go now.

Finding the parking was very easy, and very well organised. After a quick trip on a school bus, we were at the Amesbury Sports Park. And it was pouring. We got our race packets, and checked our bags. With it pouring, we were soaked. We took refuge under the A/V tent, and waited. For an hour we waited for our wave to start. We were cold and soaked, so I came up with the idea to hijack the next wave.

I said, “Ok, when this wave starts to go, I say we run over and start.”

Everyone agreed, and when they started running, so did we.

The first obsticle was the HILL. This hill was muddy, and steep. Of course with every race, we forgot Crystal’s inhaler so after the hill we all silently decided to walk the course. That was fine with me, as it was still raining out. So hard in fact, I thought our second challenge would be to build an ark and find animals for it. We walked through the forest, sliding down a hill on our butts, and jumping of small rivers of rain water flowing down the hill. There were a couple of really cheesy “obsticles” not really worth mentioning only because they only required us to dodge hanging tires and ropes. The rain started to let off, and then just stopped completely. There were some climbing challenges that I didn’t think I would be able to do, but made it though.

Then there was FIRE.

The fire was almost at the end of the course. We jumped the fire, and were at the top of the hill that we first climbed up. we ran/slid down the hill, and there was the final obsticle; the MUD PIT. Up to this point the tutu’s held up. Not after we jumped in to the cake batter like mud. The tutu’s that held up were almost pulled off our bodies because of the mud. The mud added almost 15 pound to us, so we left them at the cargo net. Later after we got home, Frankie showed me a link where it looked like someone else picked up one of the tutu’s and was wearing it. It kind of annoyed me because it was ours, but then I thought, hey someone else is enjoying it too.

WE FINISHED!

We got our medals and a couple of cups of water, and we changed. Looked for the free beer tent, where we got our free Coors Light. After that, we checked out the merch tent and bought some shirts.

We hopped on a bus and went back to our truck, got cleaned up a little more, and had some lunch at Friendly’s and started the two hour drive home. This time only on 95 south. Got home, showered, and took a two hour nap.

I had to wash the clothes twice, they were so dirty. The first time I had set them to heavy duty, heavy soil with an extra wash and rinse. The second time, just a normal wash heavy soil, with an extra wash extra rinse. 4 hours in the washer, and the clothes were clean. Yay!

the one where he is embarrassed

6/16/2011 news from home No comments

“In Canada, once the Riot Act is read (and it was, last night), merely disobeying the order to disperse is a crime punishable with up to life in prison. Not that they’d actually sentence anyone for that long, but they do have their legal bases covered.

The wording of the Act is delightful, too:

Her Majesty the Queen charges and commands all persons being assembled immediately to disperse and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business on the pain of being guilty of an offence for which, on conviction, they may be sentenced to imprisonment for life. God Save the Queen.”

I woke up this morning, knowing that the Canucks lost. I was prepared for it. Then I saw the first image of the riot. Half asleep, I thought it was photoshopped. But a quick look on cbc.ca, showed me that I was wrong. This was the worst riot since the 1994 riot. In 94, we lost a hockey game too, and they did it then too. Watching videos, and looking at pictures made me sick. For the first time, I am embarrassed to be a Canadian. I lived in Vancouver for 6 years. I makes me embarrassed to have called myself a Vancouverite.

Then I see things like this: a Facebook page where people are coming together to clean up the city. Seeing the pictures of everyday normal people coming together to clean up is great. This picture sums everything up:

The other images in this post came from The National Post. There are more pictures there to see.

the one where he had a birthday

6/12/2011 holidays, life in general and quest for a tattoo One comment

I guess I really should update here for the 2 or 3 readers I haven’t lost yet. Its been a whirl wind couple of weeks that now includes a weeks vacation, and a week of work. In fact, I’m usually faster at vacation posts, Crystal even beat me with one! I really meant to update sooner, in fact I have a draft with one or two paragraphs saved. But I’m not going to look at it. Its Sunday, and I really don’t want to go into work in the morning. I had a nap today that was way too long. So long in fact, that I’m worried that I’ll have problems falling asleep in a few hours.

My birthday. I had an awesome birthday this year. A few days before hand, Crystal got me a surprise birthday present. She took me down to Eastern Mountain Sports and I picked up a pair of Vibram Fivefinger toe shoes. They are so comfortable. I haven’t worn a pair of regular shoes since. I wore them to work all last week, and the whole birthday week with my parents. Honestly, the more I wear them, the more comfortable they become. It took a few days at work with people not noticing them, to everyone seeing them, and asking about them. Everyone thinks that they are weird. One of my co-workers calls them gorilla feet. I laugh, and tell them that it feels like I am walking around barefoot. Since I have to walk through the store most days, I get some customers looking too. Kids seem to really like them and will point and yell “Mommy look at his feet!” Their parents will shush them, and I have a little laugh as I’m going about my business.

I would have no problem buying another pair of these shoes in the future. I just have to learn to run in them. I did one run with them while I was on vacation, it was a different experience to say the least. I have to concentrate a lot on my form, and to make sure I am landing on my feet in the proper place. I don’t know if I will run exclusively, because I have to concentrate so much, I can’t lose myself in the running. It was nice to run, but not nice enough (right now) to run all the time in these shoes.

Before I knew it, my parents were down, and it was my birthday! My mom asked while we were at my birthday lunch at Olive Garden, how it felt to be 36. I stammered, doing some quick math in my head, blurted out that I was only 34. We all had a good laugh at that. We had the unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks for my birthday lunch. It was so yummy, we ate way too much. We ate way too much for my birthday week. But that’s ok, that’s what vacations are for.

At the end of the week, Robin had the day off so we all went to Newport for the day. My parents have never been down there, and I always love going down there. Its so peaceful in Newport, especially during the day while everyone is at work. We wandered around until my mom got hungry. We rallied with our little tourist maps and found the Barking Crab. And omg, the food was so good there. I had the fried shrimp platter.

It was the best birthday/vacation I’ve had in recent memory. Crystal made it awesome by taking the same time off as me. It was great to be able to wake up each morning with her beside me, knowing that she didn’t have to go into work. Also, it was awesome having my parents down at the same time. we had timed our vacation to have a couple days before and after where it was just us. perfection.

Fast forward to today. I made an appointment for my birthday tattoo (from Robin) to noon today. We got there about 12:50 and pulled up just time time to see my tattoo artist, Val get out of her car, and go and unlock the shop. We gave her a few minutes to get situated. At this point, I realised that I had forgotten my reference sticker, so I snapped a picture of the sticker on the back of the truck. Val had me email it to her. She had to actually had to draw it out because their thermal printer was on the fritz. Again, as I was getting tattooed, I was questioning the placement of the tattoo only because its in a tender area. Heh, its all good, and I think I am equal to the number of tattoos that Crystal has now.

I was actually going to ask Val, that since she was all set up and just about finished, if she could give me a finger moustache, but as soon as the though popped into my head, she declared that the tattoo was finished, and I promptly forgot about asking for the tattoo. (if I had remembered it, I would have mentioned that it was my birthday tattoo that I was getting, and maybe she would’ve done it! omg, I’m such a nerd. In all seriousness, Val is awesome.

After the tattoo, we went for lunch with some friends, and then went home. Home, where I promptly fell asleep for like 3 hours, all snuggled up with my princess.

Good weekend. Very good weekend.