45

Um, Er, Well...Huh

Getting crafty

I don't consider myself to be a particularly creative person. I am not one of those people who looks at yard as a blank slate, and can picture how I would landscape it. I don't walk into a craft store and imagine all I can do with the bits and pieces in bins. Food in the fridge aren't ingredients unless a recipe is nearby. Rather than being a "vision" guy, I tend to be more on the production side of things. Give me a set of plans, and I am on it.

I do have an occasional corner of my world where I try to stretch my legs. In the past, I made DVDs at the end of each year, and I enjoyed laying out the pictures, movies and music to try to tell a story. When I wrote my novel, there was a front and back cover to design, photos to stretch and twist, and a website to arrange.

These days when I have a project, creative or not, solutions can generally be found online. CreateSpace, Kindle Publishing, and PubIt made it possible to produce the various versions of my novel. I found a great (free) program in GIMP that allowed me to design my book cover myself. YouTube videos have taught me how to fix appliances, re-key door locks, and snake drain lines.

When I started brewing beer, I found lots of creative people willing to share their knowledge and excitement. I have spent (too) many hours surfing websites and message boards looking for every bit of information I could find. Once I get this homebrewing down a little better, I will look to create my own versions of beers, but for now I am sticking to the recipes.

In the meantime, I have been pouring a little creative energy into the stuff surrounding the actual beer. I found plans to make beer crates quite cheaply out of scrap wood. I will use these to store the beer in the crawlspace, away from the summer heat. The guy who drew up the plans also showed how you could antique the wood with a little steel wool and vinegar, and imprint a logo with a color printer and an iron.

Here is how they turned out:

Plain crate

Logo imprint

Antiqued and filled with beer

While I was waiting for the beer to ferment and condition, I created a label for the bottles.

The little QR code on the right will lead you to a webpage with the statistics, recipe, my brewing experience, lots of other beer nerdiness. There is also a link to the website in the sidebar (if you're into that sort of thing).

I opened the first beer last night. Mistakes were definitely made during my first batch, so I was a little worried that the beer would be undrinkable. In the end, it was just okay - not great, not terrible. It was a little flat, and I was little disappointed that the hop character didn't come through. Afterward, I opened up a Red Hook ESB, which is what the recipe was based on, and I realized that my version wasn't as far off as I thought. I guess I remembered Red Hook being better than it was.

So far, I am really enjoying the brewing process, and having a small creative outlet. I already have another batch of beer fermenting, and I can't wait to see how it turns out. I know that I love the beer the recipe is based on, so I have higher hopes.

I have also started using the website Pinterest, which is an endless stream of inspiration and creativity - crafts, recipes, re-purposing and re-imagining everyday objects. Kristy has bookmarked lots of cool projects already. Who knew there were so many things you can do with wine bottles, mason jars, and wood shipping pallets?

I am starting to see little glimmers possibility in the bits and pieces, and I now find myself stopping more often at the local fencing company to look through the scrap pile. I just need to keep looking over the shoulder of those creative types until it really takes hold.

Boxes full of memories

Your house is on fire.

Fortunately, your spouse, roomie, dog, cat, houseplant and pet Goldfish are all on a field trip to the zoo. Everything alive is already safe. You have 30 seconds. What do you grab?

The answer for most people, is pictures. They are the record of your life, a visual diary, the moments that make up the whole. My Mom would have to have a large cart to haul out all of her photo books, but now for most of us, that would mean grabbing our computers. Pictures are digital bits rather than squares of paper sitting under a protective sheet of plastic. This usually keeps them better protected, but at the same time, they are locked away, rarely seen or shared.

Of course storing them digitally is not a perfect solution. Computers crash, hard drives fail, and they are just as vulnerable to heat, water and other methods of destruction. My housemates recently lost several years of their (photo) life when the backup drive stopped working. Gone were several years of photos, including the ones during the first year of their daughter's life.

For more than a year, there was this hole. They tried to access the photos in multiple ways to no avail. They put off a trip to a computer shop, delaying what they felt was the inevitable judgment that all was lost. When they finally enlisted the help of an expert, they learned the external drive was indeed toast.

I have felt something similar the past three years. The photos from the first few years of my marriage were pre-digital, and the only copies were those we had developed. Camping trips, cruises, parties, random moments, and of course our wedding - they all sat in a box a thousand miles away in J's storage unit. When things were split up, it was understood that I wanted copies, but actually making that happen kept getting put off. I don't know if I would have gone through them soon after our divorce, but the fact that they were missing made the hole in my past even larger.

The scanning of copies was a big project for her, but I think the delay was more related to not wanting to go through them. I can't know what they meant to her, but I am sure she anticipated some sort of pain during the walk through the past. I understood her hesitance, but would bring up the subject every six months or so. I think after three years, the lines of diminishing pain and increasing insistence crossed on the graph, and she sent them to me last month.

We exchanged some friendly emails in the process, and she remarked that the job she had been dreading ended up being somewhat enjoyable. Two large boxes were soon on my doorstep. My housemates were going to be out of town for a few days, so I set them aside for a week until I could go through them in privacy. I wasn't sure how they would hit me, and it was something I needed to do alone. The first night they were gone, I opened a nice bottle of wine and broke the seal on the box of memories.

One box had the wedding photos, and the other everything else. Not knowing which was which, I opened the wedding photos first, but immediately set them aside. For a couple of hours, I went through piles of photos, loosely grouped by event, but with a little bit of random chaos mixed in.

She had initially separated out photos of herself in some hopes sparing me painful surprises.While I appreciated the sentiment, I told her it was unnecessary. I didn't go camping or take those trips alone. This was the time we were together, and there is no magic eraser to take her out of my memory, or the pictures that hold them so tightly. Even if there was, it would be just one more hole in my past.

I looked through them with a mix of feelings, of course. Smiles, regret, surprise, wistfulness and warmth. Even with the photos filling back in the hole in my life's timeline, there was still a lingering vacancy. The feelings behind those captured moments are now different, but it was still a blessing to look through them. Although nothing is clearer than it was three years ago, time has done some of its work nonetheless.

After going through the first box, I hesitated over the second. It was getting late, and I debated saving the wedding for another day, but decided to press on. More regret, but still more beauty. We had put out disposable cameras on the tables, and there were some good candid shots, but oddly the staged, professional ones seemed to capture the day best. As much as I had wanted to see them a couple of years ago, it probably would have been a semi-masochistic exercise. They still grabbed me looking through them now, but with a gentler hand. I imagine the next time I go back to them, they will look different all over again.

Fortunately, my housemates were able to recover most, if not all of their photos a couple of weeks ago. The other Sean had made copies of the photos when he was setting up their Apple TV and creating some slide shows. Before he arrived with a stack of DVDs, I had burned some as well with pictures that I had from that era. Going through those sort of prepped me for the boxes on my doorstep, and made the walk through the past a little easier.

I am glad to have the pictures back, for all they represent. I will still stumble over it, but the hole is filled in a little bit.

Just a few moments in time, starting with a couple of old ones that were mixed in.

A much younger me

My brother during our 1992 Japan trip

 A couple of kisses on my first Caribbean cruise

Some good friends

Camping goodness

(I had just eaten dirt-encrusted Jello off the ground)

Wedding day

  And to finish, Sierra in her younger days

With Holly

With young Carson

And in the chair where she waited for us to come home

There are more photos from even farther back, languishing in my own storage unit. I need to dig them out before anything can happen to them. I can only imagine what I might find, and anyway, they shouldn't be locked away, never to be seen. These moments are who we are, and once in a while it does some good to remember.

Quote of the day

Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.

~ Pablo Picasso

Relax. Don't Worry. Have a homebrew

So after learning more about quality beer, I finally decided to take the plunge on brewing my own. Homebrewing has been clanging around in the back of my brain for a decade or two, but I never pulled the trigger. The other Sean has been back to homebrewing for more than a year now, so along with the inspiration of the brewery tour, I had been hearing about his first hand experience. I had also been sampling his homebrews, including the excellent porter he created in honor of my birthday last year.

I found a good brewing kit on Craigslist for about a third of the price of what it was at the local shop. The kit was actually sent out as a prize from a Sam Adams contest, but the winner passed it along to her son, who then sold it to me. I had nearly everything to brew all in one big box, including a book and DVD on how to do it.

I watched the DVD, read the beginners section of the book, and then helped (watched) Sean brew a batch of his own. Seeing him in action made it less intimidating. At its core, brewing beer is remarkably simple - you prepare a sugary mixture, add some yeast, and the yeast converts the sugars to alcohol and CO2. There are only four basic ingredients (water, malted grain, yeast, and hops), but of course you can make it as complicated as you want.

With thousands of recipes in books and online, each with variations on types and amounts of grains and hops, you can get overwhelmed by the choices. My kit included the ingredients for a basic ale for the first batch, but from the shipping label it looked like it had been sitting around for 9 months. I decided not to risk it, and planned to get fresh ingredients.

But what to brew? I decided on a recipe that said it was a clone of Red Hook ESB, one of the early craft brews and a staple back in Seattle. Recipe in hand, I walked into the local brew shop and fessed up that I was a newbie. The guy was happy to help me out, locating the appropriate grains, and showing me the proper way to measure and grind them. He chatted me up about my approaching first attempt, and even gave me a 10% discount on ingredients and tools. Here we go.

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing describes in great detail all the things that you need to focus on to make a good homebrew. You need to pay close attention to time, temperature, and most of all, to sanitation. He emphasizes the importance of each step, but then puts you at ease by saying, "Relax. Don't Worry. Have a homebrew." Although these things are important to the beer coming out right, it is forgiving of a little variance. Relax, it is just beer.

So the basic process is to steep the grains, much like making a large cup of tea.

Add in extra sugary goodness (unless you are only using grains)

  Measure out some hops for bitterness and aroma.

Then boil it all for 60 to 90 minutes.

(You are encouraged to have a beer, while you are brewing beer. Preferably it would be similar to the one you are brewing, but the store was out of Red Hook. Since it was originally a Sam Adams brew kit, I thought it was a good second choice.)

After the boiling, the mixture has to be cooled (preferably quickly) to about 70 degrees. Each yeast strain is a little different, but if the water is too cool, the yeast won't activate as well. If the water is too hot, you risk killing the yeast before it ever had a chance to do its thing. Things have to be just right, more or less (relax, have a homebrew).

Once the yeast is in, the soon-to-be-beer is sealed up. A one-way valve is attached so the CO2 can get out, but no contaminants can get in. It perks along for a couple of weeks until a majority of the sugars are used up.

You can transfer it to a new container half way through to get it away from some of the sediment, which is what I did this weekend.

In another week or so, it will be time for bottling. The beer conditions and carbonates in the bottles for two weeks, and then it is ready to enjoy and share with your friends.I am excited to see how the first batch turns out, and I am already searching for the next recipe.

This could turn out to be a fun hobby. Similar to cooking, it combines the structure of a recipe, with the freedom to modify and be creative when you get more confident (or when you make a happy mistake). There is lots of measuring equipment reminiscent of a chemistry set, and lots of numbers to track if you are so inclined (which I am). And like so many other hobbies, there is a passionate community ready to nerd out with you. Again, you can make it as complicated as you want, or you can simply relax, and have a homebrew.

Stop by in three weeks, and I will have a cold one waiting for you.

I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I'm usually standing on a concrete floor

"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."

~ Dave Barry

San Diego has a large, and growing number of craft breweries. Some have made it big, like Stone Brewery that now sells its beers across the nation, and has grounds worthy of a state park. However, most are probably not known much outside the area, and are typically housed in an industrial warehouse looking something like this

With big fermenting pots on one side of the room. 

And tap handles drilled into the wall of a refrigerator on the other side.







As indicated by medals earned in the world competition this past week, their humble settings are not an indication of the quality of their brews.

Most all of the San Diego breweries have banned together to form a guild to help increase the visibility of these hidden gems. Since most of them are tucked away in industrial business parks, they are difficult to just stumble upon. The guild put out a flier, complete with a map, and Sean and I have been doing a little tour over the past couple of years.

While one warehouse room looks much like the next, and though many of them put out similar styles of beer, each brewery approaches them from a slightly different angle. Most are open only a few hours a week (adding to the "speak-easy" feel), and are restricted to serving 4oz tasters. While I can't afford to drink really good wine anymore, I can spend a couple of hours sampling really good beer, and walk out for under $10 most of the time.

Most have chalkboards similar to this one from Ballast Point

Each beer listed has information not only on style and alcohol content, but also more detailed information on the grains used, their original & finishing gravities, and a a measurement of bitterness called an IBU. You begin to learn that there is a lot more to beer than "Rocky Mountain water", half-time commercials, and bottles that change color when the beer is cold. (Not that there is anything wrong with a nice macro-brew once in a while).

After tasting all of these fine beers, my palate is improving a bit. I won't claim to be a connoisseur, but all the chalkboard information and chats with the brewers have been educational. I have learned that Belgian style beers are not my favorite, that I prefer Pales and IPAs with an IBU at 70 or below, and though I don't care for scotch, Scotch Ales are quite tasty. Of course, nothing can beat a good stout or porter.

In a couple of the breweries, you will see something like this

What are these you ask? Why, they are bins filled with grains you can buy to brew your own beer. And that is just what I have started doing...

Running past morose

As you can tell from the titles of recent posts (running on empty, relapse, sick), we have been rolling through a bit of a trough lately. Running is usually the antidote, but after getting re-energized at the 5k on April 1st and wanting to get back to running, I was sick for two and half weeks, and didn't run a step. At the same time, what I have been eating has been from the wrong side of the food pyramid, or plate section, or whatever (out of) shape it is right now. Though I haven't been running, it seemed I woke up sore more often, so even after finally kicking the cold, I was left feeling blah, overweight and out of shape.

I started over. 

Now that I was finally healthy, I had no excuse to prevent me from lacing up my shoes, other than inertia. I don't have a race on the horizon, but I plan to run three times a week as if I did. Part of starting over was checking how far I had fallen. The scale smiled sarcastically from the corner of the room. 

I hadn't weighed myself in weeks and was dreading what the scale would reveal. How I feel and move from day to day is a better barometer, so I try not to obsess over weight, but the plotting, tracking, and Excel side of my brain needs some hard data. I plugged in my gender and height and stepped on. This is going to be ugly.

If I had been drinking, I would have done a spit-take. The number that popped up was equal to the lowest number I have seen in a decade. Before I could finish my "Holy Crap!", my brain thought "Wait for it..." 

After alighting on the weight number, the scale counts down from five before showing you the estimate of your body fat percentage. Not sure why the countdown is there, maybe to give me an opportunity to brace myself. The surprising weight number was offset by an increase in the fat percentage number. In the past month, I had been trading muscle for fat. One number told me I hadn't fallen behind, and the other told me I still had work to do. I went for the first run in three weeks. 

It was a bit of a struggle, getting my body moving again. The corners of my lungs still felt a little gunked up, and my muscles creaky from lack of use. I planned to take it easy, and my body made sure I kept my promise. I ran three times this week, all on the same three mile loop. Though it was no easier to get out the door, I felt a little better after each run. 

I was looking at the stats on the Garmin site and for some reason zoomed in on the map of my route. I had never noticed the street name near the finish, but it seemed appropriate. 

Running past morose.

Ridiculously photogenic guy

There is a photo that has gone viral and spread around the internet, or a "meme" for those more savvy than I. It is called "Ridiculously Photogenic Guy". It is photo a smiling man named Zeddie Little running in the 2012 Cooper River Bridge Run, a 10k in South Carolina. Not that he needs to be pointed out, but he is the guy in the purple.

It is a little weird what takes off on the internet, but I will admit it is a surprisingly good picture for someone running a race. After the finish of a big event, it is always tempting to look at the photos to relive the experience, but most race photos are not very flattering. Most of us are not pretty when we run.

Assuming you are putting in more than a minimal effort, your face is usually strained and sweaty, and though you are exercising, you seemed to have gained ten pounds since the gun went off. This, and the fact that race photos are ridiculously expensive means that they rarely get purchased anymore.

There are the occasional decent shots when you see the photographer and remember to smile, like this one from Eugene in 2008.

Some aren't pretty, but at least show that you are pushing hard toward the finish line, like this one from the Carlsbad 5000 last month.

But most of the time you are in your own world, slack-jawed, fighting inner demons and monologues like this one from Long Beach last year

According to the story, Mr. Photogenic guy had just seen and waved to a friend, so he had a genuine smile on his face. I have written previously about how friendly faces at the side of the road can give you a boost, even at mile 26, so I am not surprised that this is why he is practically beaming. The better photos I have from races are when I have just seen friends in the midst of the battle.

Like these from the Carlsbad Marathon a couple of months ago

Or this oldy, but goody from the 2006 Marine Corps Marathon

But one of my favorite photos from a run is one from San Diego back in 2007. It was a great event - I was running with six friends, it was only my second marathon finish, and I was running on the day of my 40th birthday. We saw friends at mile 4 and mile 8, but then I wasn't expecting to see anyone until the finish.

Matt and Holly surprised a few of us by cheering us on at mile 21. This is usually the point where the Wall appears, so a friendly face is a God send. Add in the surprise factor, and I was soon smiling when I wanted to be weeping.

Though it is a decent shot of me, what really makes it is the gal just ahead of me. I don't know what prompted her reaction (maybe Holly was dancing a jig or something), but she is not only smiling at mile 21, but letting loose a huge laugh. It makes me smile every time I see it.

Maybe this one will make it around the world as "Ridiculously Happy Marathon Runner".

Book quote of the day

"There is a wonderful line in a book by J.M. Barie - and no, it's not Peter Pan, and I'm not going to ask you to clap if you believe in faries..."

Here everyone laughed again.

"But in another book by J.M. Barie called The Little White Bird...he writes..." He started flipping through a small book on the podium until he found the page he was looking for, and then he put on his reading glasses. "'Shall we make a new rule of life...always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?'"

Here Mr. Tushman looked up at the audience. "Kinder than is necessary," he repeated. "What a marvelous line, isn't it? Kinder than is necessary. Because it's not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than needed. Why I love that line, that concept, is that it reminds me that we carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness.

~ from the novel "Wonder" by R.J. Palacio

Book quote of the day

"I think there should be a rule that everyone in the world should get a standing ovation at least once in their lives."

~ August in the novel "Wonder" by R.J. Palacio

Sick

I swear we are going to rebound here.

I don't know if it is the sunnier weather, the running, the infrequent use of vitamins or just dumb luck, but I rarely get sick these days. Even though there is more exposure (lots of friends with kids dragging home sniffles) I have managed to avoid catching anything that has blown through the circle of friends. It felt like I was coated in Teflon, and germs had no place to grab on. I'd like to say it is the clean living and good diet, but I think we would all know that to be a lie.

My spotless record is no more. This time I got taken down, and I have been sick for almost two weeks. I am not even sure where I picked it up, but I know how it got in.

The night of Kristy's birthday kicked it off. Not so round meals, plenty of sangria and wine, and a very short night of poor sleep. I was up at 5:00am the next morning to run the Carlsbad 5000. The next two days were filled with shovels, concrete and jackhammers, and shorter nights of sleep as we were working four hours from home. My body was beat down and the welcome mat was out for any virus to come waltzing in. They brought lots of friends and have set up camp.

I don't like taking pills. I'm not sure why or how it started, but I avoid medication if I can. It is not a distrust of "Big Pharma", though I am bothered by all the commercials telling me to "ask my doctor about..."  How about if my doctor who went to school for all those years suggests an appropriate drug, and not the patient who saw a commercial between episodes of Survivor. I digress.

If something is seriously wrong, I don't hesitate to take the appropriate medication, but my reflex is to let the thing run its course. I don't take Advil after a hard run, for example. Not only do I know exactly why it hurts, but the pain is the body healing itself and I don't want to interfere with that. Nearly (probably every) drug has some sort of undesired side effect. Advil is hard on the stomach and kidneys, Tylenol is hard on the liver, etc. Let the body fight its own battles when it can.

I read some article years ago and it stuck. It said that all of these over the counter cold remedies did nothing to speed your recovery. They attempt to mask the symptoms, but you actually don't get well any more quickly. The side effects of the medication are probably less permanent, but much more noticeable. Decongestants make me spacey and/or sleepy, things I don't need any help with, so I usually just let the thing run its course without any interference or delay. I don't think the article said that you actually get better more quickly by avoiding medication, but that is how I have taken it. Let your body be sick, let it recover.

Except for coughing.

At some point of the cold, after days of sinus issues, the hacking cough arrives in the dead of night. Out come the cough drops, tea with honey, throat sprays and anything else I can think of. It is always worse at night, and sleep is precious. My body needs sleep to recover, and I don't want to keep everyone else awake by hacking through the night. Out goes the aversion to drugs and I dig through the medicine chest for relief, hoping that what I find doesn't have an expiration date from the 90's.

Exhaustion and the desire for sleep will trump many a principle, especially those based mostly on hunches. Thank you Chloraseptic. You haven't aged a bit since your expiration date last June.

Relapse

Sierra had another episode earlier this week. She could not stand up, would not eat or drink, and was panting and whining out of fear. She had a similar episode back in October, and the emergency vet diagnosed her with Idiopathic Vestibular Disease. From my last post,

The vestibular system is what gives people, and dogs, their balance, coordination and equilibrium. When dogs develop IVD, their equilibrium becomes disrupted suddenly, dramatically and without warning. The profound symptoms of this disorder can incapacitate the dogs and are frightening for owners, as well.

And of course the Idiopathic portion of the name means they don't know the cause of it. Just like last time, I was at work when the symptoms came on suddenly, and Matt and Holly were left to try to comfort her. Only this time my job site was four hours away from home. From their description, it didn't sound like it was as bad as last time, but I still felt terrible being so far away. From our last visit to the emergency vet, I learned there is little more you can do to treat the symptoms other than comfort her and keep her safe, which is helpless in its own right, but being so far away left me feeling doubly helpless.

I made it home by 10:30pm to find her panting and whining in my room. I sat down, pet her and said her name over and over trying to calm her down. It didn't help much. Holly let me know that she had been able to hand feed her and then give her normal insulin shot just before I arrived, but she still wasn't drinking. Since the disease causes her world to spin and make it hard to track the horizon, I sat in her bed with my arm around her to give her something to brace against. After about 45 minutes, she calmed down enough to drink some water and fall asleep.

Although it was clear she was panicky and disoriented, she again didn't appear to be in any pain. Since there is little that the vet can do other than give her fluids and nausea medication, I decided to just keep her home and see how she was the next morning. Now that I could see her in person, it was also clear that this episode was not as bad as the last. She was so far gone last time with her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth that I was convinced she had suffered a stroke. There was head tilt again, but it was more like she was perking up to listen to you. Her eyes were also not flicking back and forth nearly as much. We were both happy to sleep through the night without incident.

I had the next day off from work, so I was able to take care of her and monitor her progress. I used her harness to help her up, guide her, and carry her when necessary. Now three or four days later, she has slowly improved. She is still unstable when she walks, particularly on the hardwood floors, but she doesn't need to be led everywhere. She is eating and drinking relatively normally, and starting to lose the head tilt. We seem to be headed back out of the woods.

This morning she woke me up early to eat, so unfortunately that part of normal is back. When I filled her dish, she tentatively walked over to gobble it up. After going outside to take her morning constitutional, she crossed the slippery hardwoods without incident to the safety of the carpet. Then she let out a good sneeze and knocked herself to the floor. It was sad and a little funny at the same time. Anxiety changing to smiles is another good sign of progress.

Running on empty

click to enlarge

Although the St Paddy's Day Dash used to start off the running season for me, it now starts a couple of weeks later. Not that the running season ever really ends these days, but the Carlsbad 5000 seems to kick things off again in the new year.

This was my third running of the "World's Fastest 5k", and it was another great afternoon, if not my own fastest 5k. We had celebrated Kristy's birthday the night before, so it had been a rather short night of poor sleep. I had spent the previous days planning and working the party, and hadn't prepared very well for race morning. Trying to gather my gear and take care of all the pooches without waking the household took longer than expected.

I showed up in Carlsbad about 15 minutes before the gun was set to go off. I still had to pick up my race bib and track down the Hawkin's clan and our friend Steve. I had to run. I ran the half mile to the race check in, pinned my bib to my shirt, and found Sean and Steve standing in the nearby Porta John line (they were running late as well). Already warmed up from the run to the start, we walked the few blocks past all the old guys in our division. Steve is just getting back into running, and neither Sean or I had been running much, so we didn't press too far into the crowd.

The gun went off and Sean was still trying to get his gear in order and I hadn't stretched out my twitchy calves. Unprepared. Halfassery. The crowd walked forward until it reached the starting mat, then picked up the pace. We lost each other immediately. I weaved my way through a sea of runners, knowing I wasn't trained for a new PR, but wanting to do my best. The crowd thinned out a bit and I heard a few watches beep so I thought we must be closing in on the first mile marker. What I thought was a mile, was only a half mile. More questions about my conditioning.

When I had stepped out of my car just 20 minutes earlier, the wind was bending the tree tops and it was pretty chilly. In the first mile I was somehow already dripping sweat. When we rounded the first hairpin turn, I realized I was feeling so hot because I was running with the wind. No more. The next two miles were into the teeth of the wind and I was quickly chilled then dried. It would be slower going, but somehow the force pushing back on me focused my efforts.

I kept going at a comfortably hard level, and my pace slowly improved. After a few slow climbs and descents, there is a short drop near the finish line to give you a boost. I crossed the line 30 seconds slower than last year, and more than a minute behind my PR at the Turkey Trot, but after too little training and sleep (and a little too much birthday wine), I was pretty happy with the effort.

I looked for Sean near the finish line, assuming he had come in a couple of minutes ahead of me. When I couldn't find him, I sent Marci a text. She said they were coming in soon. Sean's goal for the year is to get Steve to the finish line of his first marathon. He plans to run a half marathon with him sometime later in the year, and at the last minute decided to run with him during the 5k. He cajoled, bantered and joked Steve to the finish line, achieving the goal of running without stopping.

We met up with Marci, swapped stories, enjoyed a free beer, and waited for Marci's division to go out. She did a great job, running strong only seven weeks after giving birth. The other two Hawkin's kids had run their own Junior Carlsbad the day before, and did a great job cheering us on.

I have been in a funk lately. I haven't run much since the marathon in January, and I have been taking in too many empty calories. I wasn't prepared, and wasn't as excited about the race this year. But the energy and dedication of race day, and spending time with friends at the finish line have re-lit the spark. I don't have anything on the race calendar right now, but I am ready to run again.

Though we run throughout the year, the season does seem to be nicely book-ended by St Patrick's Day and Thanksgiving. The Turkey Trot is a time to celebrate, and the 5k in the spring is the time to get the party started again after the hangover wears off.