Sacramento Marathon (CIM): Friday

Today was a travel day and I'm sleepy. As travel days go, everything went really smoothly. We woke up early, drove ten minutes to our local airport, hopped on a plane or two and about eight hours later we were in Sacramento. The toughest part was dropping of Daisy last night.

You remember Daisy, right?

Julie convinces Daisy to try a tummy rub.


Here we see Daisy napping on a futon.

A squirrel munches sunflower seeds under Daisy's watchful eye.


An outspoken advocate for equipment safety, Daisy thoroughly inspects Julie's marathon shoes.

While we're wearing ourselves out in California, Daisy will be hanging out with our friends the Millers. They live with another fuzz ball (Kiwi) and the two should get to run around and have lots of good dog fun.

Still, I'm totally uncomfortable not having Daisy around the house. She jumps on stuff and helps me get into (and out of) trouble. Sometimes she chases the cat and I'm sure Sophie missed that. It was a rough night.

Like I mentioned earlier, the trip itself was pleasantly dull. Everything was smooth and on time. We had a long-ish layover in Dallas, but we managed to get by.

Julie gets her Angry Birds on in Dallas. I liked those chairs.

Once we arrived, we met up with a fast runner named Dan who was nice enough to let us hitch a ride from the airport to the hotel. Which was awesome. Thanks Dan!

However, before that could happen we all had to get from the airport to the car rental area via bus. This trip hosted the first surreal experience thus far. Recall...

Last time we were in Sacramento, two years ago, the cab ride from the airport to the hotel freaked me out just a little bit. I wouldn't say that about just any cab ride either, this lady was weird. It started out normal enough, she talked about how she was trying to get a license to be a ship captain. Then she started talking about he recent firearms shopping frustrations. Then she segued into conspiracy theories - the government is going to combine those anti theft thingies at store doorways with chips implanted in children's heads to track everybody. Then she passed back a family photo album with a bunch of pictures of her ...daughter, niece, ...some girl relative. Wide-eyed, we tried to politely peruse the photo album while she played us a CD of the same girl singing something. She occasionally leaned back to make sure we looked at certain photos. Then she dropped us off, we paid, and she drove off. It was weird. I did not like it.

So, today we get on this bus to get from the terminal to the rental place. The bus driver lady, not 5 minutes into the trip, busts out a big ol' enlarged picture of one of her daughters and starts telling us her life story. I guess it's a Sacramento thing. This bus driver turned out to be cool, but still. Still... Meh.

In the end, smooth sailing. Dan dropped us off at our awesome hotel, we met up with our friends, found the expo, and everybody went out and had a great dinner. Here's a picture of a seriously fast group of ladies:

Nervous smiles.

Michael and I wanted them to line up from darker to lighter hair color (we felt it would be a smooth gradient). But we were already "off the radar" by the time we had the idea and I really don't think they would have realized how cool that would have been.

There is a bit of drama unfolding weather wise. Here is a special weather statement for Sunday.

Congratulations! Rain and gusty winds.

Wind and rain mixed with some rainy wind is not a very fun idea for those of us planning to spend 2.5, 3, or even 4 hours out there running in it. I'm hoping the weather friendlies up a bit in the next day or so.

Comments

Evelyn said…
We enjoyed your blog and stories- the pictures and captions of Daisy were adorable, especially the one of her checking out Julie's running shoes. All the best to you on the weather for the race!!
Ev said…
Great writing and information on your trip. All the best to you and Julie on your marathon!! Thanks for sharing.

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