note to self: goosebumps do not fill in cellulite

trust me on that- i speak from experience.

i know, i know- just when you'd given up on me (except the spammers, who will believe in me until the day the internet goes down in flames, i suspect), i reappear. perhaps i should officially become a blogging groundhog. i'll promise to surface once a year to check out my shadow, if you promise to occasionally poke me with a stick to make sure i'm still alive over here.

so, anyway, i've decided to hop on here long enough to share a few pictures from my recent road trip, perhaps relate a quick story or two, and then maybe i'll be in the right frame of mind to do some actual work this evening.

what inspired a quickie road trip to dc? well, a good friend from high school hopped on facebook and posted a link to cupid's undie run, along with the message, "anyone wanna form a team?".

my response? "do you have a couch i can crash on?" (thankfully, jenna forgives me for my tendency to let participles dangle.)

a couple of months later, there i was- cruising up I-95 to washington dc. it was a 14 hour (and fifteen minutes, thanks to the crowd at subway on the way back home yesterday) round trip to run (most of) 1.1 miles in my skivvies.....but it was for a worthy cause, which makes it totally okay. (besides, i'm one of those odd people who loves road trips.)


no trip up 95 would be complete without at least a picture of south of the border. sadly, i was already running a couple of hours late and didn't have time to stop.

google maps claimed that the trip would take 8 hours one way. to this i say, "nonsense!". it took me just a hair over seven hours, including two attempts at parallel parking my chariot in dc. (attempt #2 became necessary after i called jenna after attempt #1 to ask if being 2" from the line for the bike lane was considered "close enough" to the curb. sadly, it is not. however, attempt #2 resulted in perhaps my most beautiful parallel parking ever. it also resulted in a call to my dad yesterday, during which i told him i now understood why, whenever we ventured into dc when we were younger, he'd kick sibling and/or myself out of the car to help guide him into parking spaces.)



after an evening spent viewing a timeless classic ("the jerk") with jenna, her husband, and their neighbors, it was time to rest up for the big run.

the next afternoon, jenna, her friend sara (the other member of "the love handlers"), jenna's husband, and i headed off to pour house to register and pick up our free shirts/boxers/beverages.


as you can see, bodhi was there to lend a little moral support.

after getting a little liquid courage (which most runners were doing. in fact, i think i was about the only person there who was drinking water), it was time to strip off our clothes (and a few inhibitions). while initially a little self-conscious about my less-than-toned thighs, after about five minutes of seeing love handles and cellulite (and hearing disgustingly fit 20-somethings whining about the state of their bodies, which was admittedly, a little unexpected), the fact that i was in my underwear no longer fazed me.










just a hair before 2pm, the 400+ of us who were running filed out onto the street in front of pour house. there were cameras everywhere. hopefully, the sight of my thighs didn't break too many of them.





it took a couple of minutes for everyone to get organized, so our team had time for a quick group shot:


the beaver hat was a necessity, as it was maybe forty-something degrees outside. besides, i don't live in dc, and the chances of anyone remembering me in a year should be pretty slim.

oh- you'll notice in the picture above that there's a web address written on jenna's arm. if you have a moment or two, go check it out. (i'll wait for you to come back.)

then, after a false start, we were off. my initial plan was to try and stay in the middle of the pack, where my thighs and i could hide. sadly, the middle of the pack got ahead of me. however, i'm pleased to report that, possibly for the first time in my life, i ran the greater part of a mile, and wasn't the last person across the finish line. (a small victory is still a victory, dammit!)













post run, we retrieved our clothes from jenna's husband and wasted no time whatsoever putting them back on. other folks, however, were less modest...like the guy jenna and sara overheard saying, "let's go back into the bar. maybe we'll put our clothes back on; maybe we won't." it was a vaguely tempting thought, but since we needed to make our way back home so i could hit the road for the return trip to south carolina, we passed.

besides, there's always next year.