Pre-workout meal

Note to self: lasagna is not a good pre-workout snack, even if it's just a little piece and you give yourself an hour to digest. Never.

Nice, if you're into that kind of thing...

Today I ran along Mystic Valley Parkway and the Mystic Lake. While the name suggest a place with princesses, dragons, faries and warlocks living in peaceful harmony and place where Elvis and a dinosaur can kick back and have a cocktail together, really it's just a lake with a road next to it. While yesterday I ran through my first drinking stomping ground, today I ran along a street that I mostly remember for being where I used to ride in Allie's car back and forth, up and down, up and down in smoking cigarettes and talking.

I took my camera along, and lo and behold, when I was looking for nice shots, I found them everywhere. My town really is pretty in that quaint New England kind of way. The vanity of it all still kind of tickles my gag reflex, though. Crazy I was so focused on the self-conscious landscaping of the town that I never stopped to appreciate it. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a photographer and I had the camera on the "portrait" setting instead of "landscape", so the pictures turned out a little blurry. We'll pretend like that's Dramatic Effect or something.

This is a faux water wheel stuck on the back of a building built circa 1996, but I think the original building that was there vaguely resembled something like this. Now it's a photography museum that no one goes to on a street everyone parks on, but even though it's that cheezy self-conscious kind of nostalgic architecture, it's nice from across the lake.

The duck pond, where I almost fell in yesterday. The water's pretty nasty, you wouldn't want to fall in, but it's nice to look at, I suppose. When I was little we used to make popcorn and come down here to feed the ducks. Ducks don't like popcorn, so I would throw it at their faces and say, "DUCKY, WHY WON'T YOU EAT MY POPCORN?" But then the Canada geese moved in and started pooping all over the place and now there's a $50 fine for feeding the birds.

Running around on dirt with green all around me I realized that it's been forever since I've run on anything that wasn't hard and black or grey. I was really getting to appreciate this.

This one I only took because I needed a breather. Maybe I'll swim here later in the week.

The most polluted river in New England. Every once in awhile it floods and horrible things happen to the buildings around it, but most of the time it's nice if you don't look too closely at the water.
Another excuse for a breather...

In other news, I went down to the basement yesterday to get the bike and bring it to the bike shop to get it fixed up and I realized... IT'S TOO BIG! I'm pretty freakishly small, see. I'm 5'2" with 90% of that being torso. Straddling this frame (probably a 55 or 53) I wouldn't even be able to reach the ground below me. There goes that plan. Anyone got a wicked tiny bike to lend to a wicked tiny girl? I promise I'll take good care of it!

Homecoming

Why is it that every time I come home I'm expecting it to be like one of those "blow your mind" sort of experiences where I see everything in a whole new light and see myself as a whole new person, but it never works out that way? As soon as my parents and I are back in the car and we're driving up 93 through (and now, post-Big Dig, under) downtown Boston, and then I step into my house - same old back door, same old kitchen - it just seems so anti-climactic, like I didn't step out of some airplane, but a time machine that sends me back to shit-town suburbia like I never got out.

This time I think I figured out the anti-climax: flying. I hate flying, hate it! I'm not afraid of flying. Mostly I just hate airports and how you have to give up all the stuff that you deemed indispensable for the next few days of your life and hand it to a complete stranger and assume that they're going to give it to the right person who's going to give it to the right person who's going to put it on the right plane going to the right airport, where it will make the right connection on time to the next right plane that's going where you're going. And am I to trust them that my stuff is going to be there and intact with you when you get there? And then, after paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for the privilege of flying you have to pass through a security check where they make you strip down so they can check every item of your personal effects, walk through an arch that puffs a gust of machine breath all over you to decide not if you smell nice enough to spend hours within 2 inches of a stranger, but to see if you touched any of 1,000 god-knows-whats since your last shower, and then walk around next to angry-looking dudes in uniforms with machine guns. And in this post-September 11 climate they ask even more stupid questions, take more and more stupid shit away from you and treat every passenger like a criminal. And don't even get me started on customs!!!

So, the conclusion that I reached yesterday is that I'm usually so traumatized by getting to the airport on time, being called a terrorist for forgetting to dump out my nalgene bottle, making connecting flights in unfamiliar airports, the reproachful questions by customs officials, and the anxious wait for my baggage, that the only thing I care about when I get back to Boston is that it's all over.

I've had a lot of really bad flight experiences, but yesterday might have been the worst. Delays in Barcelona, getting lost in the Paris airport, rushing through security again, running to catch my flight, and then sitting on the runway for 6 hours in Paris in a fully booked double-decker, 10-seat-across plane with no air conditioning. When we landed in Boston at 1:30 in the morning (local time - 7:30 a.m. Claire's body clock time) the only earth-shattering self-discovery I'd made from the trip was that I'm too stupid to do Sudoku without cheating.

Here are some thing I've noticed today in my first day home:

• God! There's so much crap on television! "Real people solving real murders", is that even legal? It seems like it has "MISTRIAL" written all over it, and I'm supposed to believe this is reality?
  
• Macaroni and cheese isn't as good as I remembered. "French bread" is not good either.
• I heart public libraries, especially the ones where there are more than 500 books and I can read everything on the shelf because it's in a language I understand.
• The back of my salad dressing reads like this: The Great Salad Dressing Balloon Race Across The Boot of Italy. An armada of balloons loaded with Light Caesar. The starters (sic.) gun - Bazoombah! They all rise majestically into the air. Newman's Own Balloon, with fewer calories, more taste, and secretly propelled by charity, flies faster than Kraft (R) and further than Wishbone (R). First across. First on the ground. El Piloto quaffs mucho quaffs of Newman's Own Light Caesar in victory. A medium light Italian starlet, daughter of Butch Cassidini, named Bitch Cassidini, leaps into the balloon basket, kisses piloto, her lips smeared with Newman's Own Light, she murmurs, "You taste of Sicily, of Vesuvius, of Naples, baby", and patting his fanny she whispers, "and no fat".
  No fooling, it really says that. Most of those aren't even real sentences. And that's not even ITALIAN, it's Spanglish! And it says "Bitch", on my salad dressing. Did someone really get paid for this?! This country is weird.
  

This morning, properly fueled and caffeinated I went on a run through the woods and was surprised to find that it's hot out here! I've been scoffing at the bloggers from the northeast who have been complaining about the heat, but truth be told it's as hot here as it was in Barcelona. Given, it's not that "chew the air" humid, but the sun's a lot stronger when you don't have that protective bubble of smog around you! The thought occurred to me for the first time in my life (far too late) that maybe running tights are only a winter thing (long ago was the day I could run in spanky shorts without winding up with some kind of embarrassing and uncomfortable chafing between my thunder thighs).

I went up to the woods where we used to lug kegs in high school to drink where the police wouldn't be likely to chase us in the dark. This small "nature reservation" is conveniently close to my house, it's funny I never run in it. I decided to just run around until I found a road again. But I found a road in about 4 minutes, so I decided to follow some trail indications. Now, I'm not much of an "outdoorsy" off-road kind of girl, so explain something to me: when you see a slash like this \ painted on a tree is it an arrow pointing up and left or down and right? After about 10 minutes I found myself right where I'd started. Then I decided to not follow the "arrows" and just keep the uphills on my right, that way I would probably run a loop around something, right? Another 7 minutes and I found myself in someone's back yard, 5 more minutes and I was back where I started.

This woods thing was getting old, and anyway, all the roots and rocks on the path were threatening to twist my ankle. I haven't run on trail since Lorraine made me barrel down that single-track in April and I couldn't walk for days. So I decided to run back through civilization and see my hometown while moving too fast to stop and talk if someone recognized me. I went through downtown and to my old middle school to run a lap around the track and get an idea of how fast I was going (just like I thought - slow). I realized that my town is actually really pretty if you can get over the Donnie Darko/Heathers/American Beauty-esque cynicism of small rich towns like that. After running around the track I went to get a drink from a water fountain that I remembered was there. I remembered that it was a gift from some graduating class and then when I saw the engraving remembered it was mine. I was really disappointed to see that the thing was busted and the water pipe mashed into its own little throat because I was thirsty. But it was satisfying all the same, maybe this town could let my soul go after all, maybe they'd already forgotten me and I had really gotten out. Then I ran along the river (one of the most polluted rivers in north America and almost fell in, but that doesn't fit into my story so I'll tell it later), through the goose poop, under the weeping willow trees behind the senior citizens center, and to my high school track. The football team has this tradition of painting the nicknames of all the varsity players and their numbers on the walkway out to the field and I felt good knowing that I didn't know who any of them were (I realized they were between 9 and 12 years old when I graduated, weird), and then I went home.

My town really is very pretty, I guess I'd never noticed it before. I was so terrified of running into someone I know, but I didn't recognize anyone I saw while I was running around. It was nice. I'll have to take a camera out with me one of these days and take pretty pictures to remind me of this fact, because I know that pretty soon all I'm going to see is the polluted river, the goose poop everywhere, the SUVs (why on EARTH do you need a hummer in suburbia?), and the snotty yuppies who recognize me but don't wave and I only know they've seen me because they tell my mom later that week when they see her in the supermarket. I'm pretty sure that soon I'll only be able to see all the stuff that more fittingly symbolizes how I feel about this town. For now I'm trying to be optimistic.

A montage of recent occurances and revelations

I don't have any material/brilliant thoughts for a complete blog, but there are a bunch of little things floating around in my head. Seeing as I get on a plane tomorrow back to the US, I'll give more of a summary of what's been brewing in my noggin.

Results released for Sunday's Fucked-Up Triathlon Extravaganza

After obsessively checking the results page from Sunday's Crash Course in Xenophobia I finally found the results posted on the Catalan version of the page. I can't be sure it wasn't just a "happy accident" that when I opened the Catalan version of the page for the first time, the results were there when they hadn't been on the Spanish version (because I didn't check the Spanish version for several hours afterwards), but it should be noted that the page loads in Spanish by default. But, let's just assume they were being elitist assholes.
After comparing my unofficial data with the site's, I found that I would have come in 34th out of 67 female athletes, exactly in the 51st percentile. The most significant discovery from my scouring of the website every 5 minutes, however, had nothing to do with me. The bitch who looked down so mightily on my aero bars (evil number 12, an unlucky number for me in billiards) is actually the 3rd ranked triathlete in all of Catalonia at the moment. She finished just over 10 minutes in front of me, 3rd in the overall female results for this race, and her name is Mar. I have declared war on this tri slut and plan to beat her into the ground next season if I'm here. Mark my words, Mar, your ass is grass!
In other news, the chip confusion was all my fault. It figures. I'm always a bit of an airhead, but in general things aren't as well explained here. It turns out that I was supposed to have gone to federation HQ to pick up my chip in advance, but since it didn't occur to me to ask, how was I to know?

Barcelona in the dark since Monday morning

A major power line somewhere in the city fell at 11am on Monday morning, causing subsequent short-circuits and dramatic explosions in 4 of Barcelona's prominent power circuit hubs. 80,000 houses and businesses were without electricity on Monday, and 50,000 continue without power tonight. Only 60% of the city's traffic lights have been restored at this time (37 hours after the original incident). It is estimated that normalcy won't be restored until sometime Friday (which, knowing Barcelona, may be Friday of next week). Hospitals are running on generators and the federal courts just had to switch to battery power this afternoon.
The city is in some sort of subdued chaos. What else can you do but keep going? We were among the lucky ones to not lose power, but half of our block has not been so lucky. To the right is one of the few stop lights that still works in western Barcelona, but you have to walk half a mile to find another one that works. On our block only one business has not lost power- the psychic downstairs, leading me to believe in her powers. Many businesses have decided to close including BOTH my gyms (between a 20 and 30 minute walk away each), but it's amazing who has decided to stay open. "Do you want to buy furniture in the dark?" "Come buy our fruit, we have a generator!" "Come to the Kwick-E-Mart, we have no power, but we'll charge you more for the beers in the fridge anyway." The pizza shop downstairs stayed open in order to make some revenue off the cigarette vending machine, and kept someone on the job just in case the lights came on.
Yesterday evening I saw the neighborhood drunk standing on the sidewalk with his head against the wall smoking a cigarette. He looked in despair. I understood when I looked across the street and saw the bar, HIS bar, with its doors shut. Tonight people took to the traditional manifestation of social unrest, begun in 2002 with the invasion of Iraq and instrumental in the election of the current Spanish president 2 days after the terrorist attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004. For 30 minutes people stood on their balconies with pots and spoons and banged away constantly to show their disapproval with the situation. Had I lost power too I would have been the first one out there with pots, pans and whistles.

Claire lands on US Soil tomorrow (7/11) at 9:00 pm EST

At 9:00 Eastern Standard Time on July 26, 2007 I will land in Boston Logan International Airport for my longest stay on American soil since 2005. Allowing 2 hours for delays, 45 minutes for customs (they always have a lot of questions after "And how long were you in Barcelona?"), 30 minutes in baggage claim, 10 minutes walking to the parking deck, 15 minutes for my mom to figure out the parking ticket validation machine, 5 minutes to find the car, and 90 minutes for my mom to drive home at 5 miles per hour I should be safely at home. I should be home at 2:15 in the morning barring exceptional circumstances. Wish me luck that there aren't further delays!

At least the T-shirt fits

I call myself a triathlete, but a lot of people call themselves triathletes who really shouldn't - like people who did one season of triathlon, and continue with an active lifestyle after that, but don't actually get around to doing another triathlon; and since they aren't really swimmers, and they're not cyclists, and they're not runners, they continue to identify as triathletes. In other words: me, I'm a fraud triathlete. Since October of 2005 I hadn't done a triathlon. Last year I spent all my season preparing for ONE race, and then couldn't go. I got in great shape, but no triathlon. All spring I've had all these races on my schedule, but for whatever reason, no triathlons.

Can I confess something to you? Really, yeah, I could have done other triathlons but I made excuses (that were pretty good ones), most of them financial, some of them logistical. But you want to know the truth? I was scared. Effing terrified, actually, which makes absolutely no sense, because I have tons of open water experience, tons of racing experience in the 3 diciplines, and more than enough endurance to survive a half ironman most of the time. But what I've seen around here in Spain and Europe is that things are really competitive. Either you give it your all, or you stay home. There simply isn't the Soccer Mom/Team In Training contingent that you can always count on to come in behind you (not to smack TIT, they're the greatest, but not just for the cancer thing, also you can count on someone to be elated to come in behind you). And I don't have the balls to come in dead last, at least not if I see it coming. So I procrastinated... until today.

This rediculous 5-race minimum that my club puts on the girls in the club forced me to get off my ass and sign up for something before there weren't 5 races left to do. The event: a sprint right here in Barcelona, only about 3 miles from my house. I'm not in terribly good shape at the moment, and "sprint" is never something I do well. I'm more of the tortise than the hare, "slow and steady", but I can keep that same slow pace forever. So, in light of all the decisions I have to make these days, I decided to just go and have a good time, keep my eyes open, and enjoy. No expectations, just finish and get a feel for the Spanish tri scene.

I got out everything I needed the night before so I wouldn't be late and rode down to the start to be there by 7:00 when the transition area opened. When I got there there were already huge lines to get in to the transition area. "Licensed athletes to the right, unlicensed to the left!" screamed the race official every minute or so to the crowd waiting to get checked in to transition. So I went to the right and waited. This chick from the other line with all these piercings in her face said something to me in Catalan and looked with distaste at my bike, you could tell she was a bitch just by looking at her. It took me a minute to figure out what she was saying (you know, the Catalan thing), "You can't have 'horns' that stick out farther than your brake hoods," she informed me, not so graciously.
"Ok, I'll take them off, don't YOU worry," I said. I'd read this rule on the web site, but I interpreted "horns" to be those vertical things sticking up off of hybrid handlebars (left), and not aerobars. I didn't think this applied to me, my confusion was supported by the fact that this photo (right) was next to the sentence in question, and under a heading if this is your first triathlon.
Then I got to the front where the guy took one look at me, "Girls over there," he snapped, pointing at the other line. Sheez I thought, trying to find a good place to cut in the other line, at least he recognized me as a girl.
When I got to the other official he looked at my aero bars and said, "You can't ride with those."
"Okay, I'll take them off. Can't I just do it in there where I can leave my stuff?"
"No, you have to take them off out here..." And I sighed and reached for my bike tool. "...Somewhere where you're not in the way," he said, violently pushing me away with his tone of voice. So I had to snake through all the people and bikes to find a nonexistant place that wasn't in the way.
Aero bars off and hanging from my elbow (they're the cheap kind that are wrapped in foam rubber and come together at the end in a big loop) I got back in line to wait. When I got up there the chick said, "Ok, number? Name?" (Checking her list). "Helmit? Chip?"
Oh shit! When they gave me my Catalan Triathlon Federation pack I had 2 bibs, 1 bike number, a cap, a membership card, but no chip. "I don't have a chip. I never got a chip," I said.
"Are you licensed? If not, you have to go to those tables over there and get your chip and number."
"Yeah, I'm licensed you just saw me on your list. You saw my number and federation bib. I just never got a chip."
"Well then go over there and find the federation representative." Double fuck.

Trying to get the attention of another official in the crowd was enough of a challenge. "Excuse me, Ex... Ex.., Hello? ExCUSE me? Hi. Who do I talk to from the federation? I'm licensed, but I don't have a chip."
"Do you see that girl? The one over there, sitting, next to the redhead with the glasses." I looked, looked and said I didn't. "Do you understand me?"
"Yes, I understand you, I just don't see her."
Sigh "Come with me." We walked over to the table and she pointed to a woman tucked away behind so many gates and people standing in line with bikes. "That one."

I waited in line awhile, then realized that I could get to the woman by walking around yet another line of temporary gates. After much effort and frustration I managed to get to her.
"Hi. I'm licensed through the federation, but I don't have a chip. I never had one."
"Well what did you do in the other races?"
"It's just... this is the first race I've done this year. I guess I just thought I'd have to get it at the start or something. It wasn't in my pack I got from the federation."
"What's your name? What's your number?" I was on both the list of federated athletes, and the list of participants. "Crap, we're going to have to call Lola." (Gets on walkie talkie) "Somebody get Loli over here, we've got a problem with chips."
Waiting for "Lola" some other dude came up who was on TWO lists, licensed and non-licensed but he had different numbers on the lists, neither of which were in a race pack that existed anywhere in the starting area. When "Lola" turned up he jumped in and went first. She couldn't find a solution to his problem and so sent him somewhere else, then turned to me. I explained my problem again.
"Name? Number?" I was on both lists.
"And you're licensed?"
"Yes."
"Through the Catalan Triathlon Federation?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"YES! You just looked me up on your list. I was there. I'm licensed. I just never had a chip."
"What's your name?"
I told her, again.
"That name doesn't sound familiar."
"I haven't done any races yet this year, but I'm licensed. Look, I have the bib and the bike number, here's my passport, my federation card with my name on it, my registration confirmation slip and everything, I just don't have a chip."
"Are you sure you're licensed in Catalonia? Through what club did you sign up for the license?"
"Club Natacio Catalunya (Catalan Swim Club). Listen, I'm not from here but I live here and I'm licensed here. I just don't have a chip. It wasn't in my pack."
"Name?" she said, rifling through packs identical to mine except for the name and number written on the front in felt-tip marker.
I told her my name yet again.
"Doesn't sound familiar, I don't recognize your name." Was this on some hidden camera show or something?
"Listen, I have everything but the chip. Maybe it's my mistake, I don't know, but I know that I HAVE THAT PACKET and there was NEVER A CHIP INSIDE. Listen, I have another chip, by the same makers and everything, that I bought for the running races I do. I could put that one on, you could write it down and when you have a chip with that serial number in your data you'll know it's me because you'll have it written down and later you can just assign that chip to me."
"No, whatever you do, don't put on that chip because it has nothing to do with us."
"But can't you just change the serial number of my chip in your database?"
"No, we don't have the machine. Whatever you do, don't put on that chip. All I can say is that you can do the race, but you won't have any results. And when you finish, well, just find an official and tell them that you're done so we can have a record of you finishing."
"Are you kidding me? Alright, whatever."
Back to the transition area, and after 45 minutes I got to explain it one more time. "Okay, but you won't have any results," the girl said as she wrote NO CHIP next to my name and let me through.

As you can understand, before even starting I was in a bad mood, and when I found my number on the rack some bitch with an Orbea had taken my transition spot. I crammed all my gear into a space about 20 inches by 8 inches, chucked my backpack under her Orbea and scoped out the transition are looking for one of my gym buddies that was doing the same race. When I didn't find him and the announcer was urging everyone to get to the start I went to look for him down at the beach. I didn't see him there either so I waded into the sea to take a quick pee before the start. Maybe it was beause of the bullshit with the chip, or because I wasn't expecting anything, but I wasn't nervous. For the first time ever I was thinking, 'Nah, I know how to do this, it's just a question of not embarrassing myself. I can swim, I can bike, I can run. I'm only tripping about someone ruining my race... and the people who have already.'

The Swim

The start was late. I stood somewhere near the back in the middle and swung my arms around like I knew what I was doing. The water was 79 degrees, so I was totally comfortable in the WETSUIT ABSOLUTELY PROHIBITED atmosphere. Once the gun (or fog horn in this case) went off I wished I'd moved farther up in the pack. I've never been so cramped in a swim start (possibly because I'm used to leaving in a pack of under 50 instead of 400). It wasn't like I got really beat up, but I did have a lot of feet caressing my face and found myself grabbing a stranger's hand trying to pull my arm out of the water a lot. People kept stopping and doing breast stroke at the most unpredictable moments and it seemed like there was a solid wall of bad swimmers in front of me. (Note to self: It is better to be swum over than to be kicked in the face by a crappy swimmer - next time start farther forward in the pack). On the way out around the first jetty there seemed to be a pretty strong current working against me, and at the turn at the first buoy I had to full-on stop for a few seconds to find a place to swim around. After the jetty I found myself surrounded by girls (which really got my competitive spirit going) and was only bothered seriously by some Backstroke Boy who couldn't seem to go in a straight line and I couldn't figure out how to get around.

Other scary swimming things:
The water was a lot darker and murkier in Barcelona than it was in Vilanova and I couldn't see the bottom most of the time, which was okay, since I knew it wasn't that deep. BUT when I came around the jettys (of which there were three) I could see all these mean-looking rocks. These aren't the nice, round, happy-looking rocks of natural coast lines, but mean, pointy-looking things dumped there my men in bulldozers to protect Barcelona's precious imported sand. People are not supposed to swim out here. And I could see lots of ropes going to unseen buoy anchors. Also, I got lots of nasty ocean water in my mouth. Just at one moment when my lips were puckering from the saltiness and I was trying not to think about all the little sea monkies that were in my mouth and what I saw the time that they made us look at a drop of ocean water through a microscope in science lab, a wave got me square in the mouth. I gagged and sputtered and almost puked for a second.

Swim time: 15:40 (750 m), either there was a current, the course was long, I went off course, or I (and others around me slowing me down) swam excedingly shittily, because normally I swim significantly faster than that.

T1

Sprint races are cool cuz you hardly need to take anything along. Right sock, right shoe, shit, my helmit, sunglasses, left sock, left shoe, and off I go. Total time from water to bike mount line (don't know where real transition CHIP boundaries were), 2 minutes exactly.

The Bike

This is my favorite part. The whole time I was sitting there on the beach I was thinking, "I can't wait to get to the bike! That's where I'm comfortable!" However, once on the bike for the first of 3 laps, I was decidedly NOT comfortable. Actually, I was reminded of the reason why I'd quit cross country when I was in high school. It's kind of embarrassing, but I don't care. When I was in high school I felt desperately like I had to go #2 before every meet, but never could (it was just nerves, not a REAL need), so I had to run every race as fast as I could feeling like I was going to crap my pants. It really created bonding among the girls' team because other girls could admit to the same problem, but I couldn't hang and quit after 1 season. Now, on the bike, after the change in muscle groups from zero gravity, upper-body stress, to sitting on my butt, lower-body stress my intestines were distressed. I was so distracted that at the first turn I forgot to concentrate and almost crashed into some cones. I was passed by a few people and I passed a bunch of guys on mountain bikes. I don't know if I lost positions or gained them because it was a 3 lap course and it's so hard to know who's on what lap. What I did notice was that girls who bike in swim suits have really hot asses (cuz you can see all them glutes and hams working), and that guys on mountain bikes can't go in a straight line (maybe because most of them were wearing running shoes and bashing down on their pedals in too high a gear) and they're damn hard to pass when they're swerving. I went an average of 20.3 miles per hour and felt like I could have gone much farther and faster, but I was scared of the run and went conservatively. When I got back to transition I was surprised to see that my bike computer only registered 18.6km (it was supposed to be 20), and even more surprised to see that my watch said that only 55 minutes had passed when I racked my bike - after a fairly long run in my cycling shoes in transition. Total bike time: 37:20.

T2

Rack bike, take off helmit, decide whether to put helmit on bike or throw on the ground, throw helmit on the ground, take off cycling shoes, put on running shoes, tie shoes, put on headband (for horrible in-between-length hair), grab water bottle (which I refuse to be without), grab race belt, go, put on race belt while I go, hear whistle, turn around to official who says "not you", continue. Time across chip strip, 57:30. T2 time, 2:20.
I heard the announcer saying something like, "It really goes to show what talent the licensed athletes have, since the winners only came through T2 at xx:xx time. The athletes of the federation would find that time pathetic..." or something like that. Dick.

The Run

What the hell was I thinking? I HATE running. This hurts. I can't breathe. And then I saw my first km split, somewhere just under 5 min/km. That can't be right, I don't EVER run that fast. The course must be badly marked. Then I saw Lucas, the Argentinian from my gym who makes me feel guilty on a daily basis for slacking off. "LUCAS!" I yelled. "EP!" he yelled back. Fuck! I hate running. This sucks. Don't run so fast, chill out. Kilometer 2: under 10 minutes; either I'm running better than I ever have before, or the course is badly marked. Into the tunaround there's a dip and then a tree and you turn around. I fly way around the outside of the curve, oops. I hate my life. Slow down. This sucks. Never again. Just finish, don't you dare walk. Next turnaround to lap two, wow, people are turning around with me, shit, that's weird, they're not lapping me. Only 2 kilometers to go, but my watch can't be right, it says that only 1:13 has gone by since the start, in other words I'm running faster than I have... ever. Suddenly I'm conscious of all the people along the way who are smoking... QUIT IT! I'M TRYING TO BREATHE! Coming in to the last half of the back half of the second lap, 750m to go, I consciously slow down. I've puked before on things like this, my legs feel stiff and they're moving funny. I hate running. My breathing is wheezy and feels yucky, but I'm still running. Run, run, run, FINISH. I'm perplexed. My watch shows 1:20:28. I would have been happy to run in under 1:30. But even more perplexing is that the clock shows only 45 seconds. Then I get it, the next wave has started, the MALE licensed athletes - the important ones. Final run time: 23:00, a full 1 minute 3 seconds faster than my 5k PR (10 years standing). The course must have been short.

I wandered around looking for Silvia and didn't find her. Not surprising, since we'd had a miscommunication about where and when to show up. I went to where people were supposed to turn in their chips and said, "Hey, I don't have a chip... the woman from the federation said to tell someone when I'd finished, so here's my number, I'm done." She wrote it down in highlighter in the margin of her list, and I wasn't so sure it would ever be read by anyone.

The transition area was closed (since the MALE LICENSED athletes had to be catered to) and I couldn't get to my phone, so I started milling around looking for Lucas. "CLAIRE!" (only it was pronounced more like "CLER!") I heard, and found Lucas standing with another guy who works at the gym who never gave me the time of day.
"HEY! LUCAS! How'd you do?!"
"Great! I finished in 1:01 and change!" I congratulated him, but didn't know quite how excited to be for him since I knew he hoped to finish in 56 minutes. "I won!"
"WHAT?! You won?" This was a serious question since Argentinian accents have always been difficult for me. I never know if I understood correctly.
"Yeah, I was the first of all the non-licenced guys! Everyone!"
"Oh my god! Congratulations!" We gave eachother a kiss on both cheeks. "No, really, that's so awsome! CONGRATULATIONS!!! Give me a hug!" And I gave him a hug and meant it. Shit! First!
"How'd you do?" he asked me.
"1:20:28!" I said.
"That's cool." Boo! He knew I'd be happy to finish in 1:30, but I guess he was euphoric.
"Yeah, it's strange," he said, and I thought by the way he said it he was going to say that he thought I'd be farther back in the pack when I saw him. "But when I came out of the swim I was in sixth and when I was on the bike I thought, where is everybody, but I was in first..."
"Jeez, that's great!" I said, and patted him on the back.
We talked a bit more and I went off to look for Silvia again, sure I wouldn't find her. When I WAS allowed in trasition again I called her and she hadn't even left the house yet. I told her I'd call her if I needed her, don't trip.

Waiting for the transition area to open again I heard the MC talking about some poor schmuck who'd had worse luck than me. "Lluis Velasquez Mas (name invented for dramatic effect) has just taken off for his SECOND 5k. He forgot his bib number in the transition area before leaving for the run, and when he got to the finish line the officials said he would be disqualified if he did not do the run with his number on, so he's off doing it again. That's what sticklers we are for the rules here at Tri-Trials..." I guess my experience could have been worse. I could have been THAT guy.

A memory from when I couldn't sleep last night

I don't know if this happens to you, but when I can't sleep and I'm just laying there looking at the ceiling and trying to find the cool part of the pillow one of 2 things happen in my head:

1. I get ideas that seem totally brilliant, until day breaks and I realize they're stupid. ("Yeah, I'll call up my ex-girlfriend from 3 years ago and give her pointers on how to be a better person. That way she'll thank me and stop talking shit about me behind my back and we can be friends and I can get back at her for being such a bitch to me.")
2. I remember things that happened to me years ago that I never bothered to remember since they happened.

THE FOLLOWING STORY IS ONE OF THESE MEMORIES:

When I was living in California I rented a room from a retired soldier who was a compulsive over-eater and spent most of his time writing editorials to the local paper. In the house next to ours lived about a dozen college students (as happens in any college town) as well as their girlfriends, boyfriends, squatters, dog, 3 cats, and untold quantities of beer and weed. We shared a driveway/back yard with the Animal House and I would even exchange a word or two with them every once in awhile, although I never got so far as to learn their names, or who actually lived there.

One afternoon I was sitting at the end of the driveway wrestling hopelessly with an inner tube and the wheel from the 1970s Pugeot that I was training on for the Big Kahuna (a half-iron distance race). The tires were original and they were stiff, and my pump was a PoS, and in general I'm hopeless with these kinds of things. As I was tackling this impossible feat of mechanics and the minutes were ticking away, it got harder and harder to hide from my neighbors that I didn't know what the hell I was doing. They were all were standing around in the driveway drinking beers and smoking cigarettes and casting, 'Who's going to be the big man' looks my way. Finally, one guy came over and said, "You need some help with that?" I did what I typically do when I don't want to look like a stupid girl, I made excuses, blamed it on the bike, and then handed over my tools, but not without sticking my hands in his way every once in awhile to make it look like I was helping. To my relief, after about 20 minutes he told me that, in fact, it was a hopeless situation - but not before having a very interesting conversation. I can't remember what his name was, so we'll call him Jeff.

Jeff: So do you ride long distances on your bike?
I didn't know what to respond. At the time getting to my 56 mile gole was almost inconceivable, and I was amazed at myself the half dozen times I did it. I didn't know if this merited an affirmitive answer or not.
Claire: e. Ummm, I guess. Longer than most I suppose. I think I got up to about 60 miles once.
It turned out that my long rides every couple of weeks did not merrit long distance standard as Jeff was defining it, but he had the grace not to tell me so.
Somehow it came out that I had been studying in Barcelona the year before (obviously, previous to this particular stay) and that I was planning on moving back.
Jeff: Oh really? I just got back from being in Europe for a year. I was riding my bike, see, that one over there.
I was well on my way to tri-geek-dom at that point and when I saw a hybrid (on the mountain side) that he was pointing at with horns on the handlebars but no shocks on the forks, inwardly I scoffed. (Keep in mind, that at this very moment I was incapable of changing the tire on a 197? Pugeot, a brand they stopped producing in the US in the mid-80's).
I was real into asking questions back then. You can learn a lot more from asking a really open question than talking about yourself, I thought.
Claire: So what were you doing over there? I was expecting him to say something like "I wanted to see the French countryside, so I visited all the suburbs of Nice on my bike" or something.
And then Jeff surprised me: a surprise on par with the first time I swallowed the scope of a marathon, an ironman, a 100 mile trail race, or a Tour-type effort. (I hope I'm not the only one who has these moments where someone forces you to stretch your concept of what you thought possible). Jeff kicked down my mental barriers of what was possible for any Joe Schmoe around the world with words something like this:
Jeff: Well I landed in the Czek Republic, then I went up through the former USSR like Estonia and all that. I spent a lot of time in the former Yugoslavia, you know like Bosnia. And then I went west through Poland, Hungary, Germany. I was in Italy and France for a couple of days, but I never made it to Spain. Then I really wanted to go back to Eastern Europe so I made my way back. I had to get my return flight through Prague anyway.
By this point my jaw was on the ground. I'd only ever made it to San Mateo county (the next one up from Santa Cruz) on my bike.
Claire: So, if you don't mind my asking, how much did you spend on this trip?
Jeff: Well, I got the ticket and I think I went over there with $1,000, that included the money for my trip back home.
Claire: So how did you, like LIVE and stuff? I mean, lodging and food and stuff can really add up...
Jeff: Well, I camped a lot. I had a tent in my *inseart word for the little packs you put next to your back wheels, the ones hippies carry their books to class in*. When I got to a town I searched through a lot of trash bins. When I couldn't find anything, I would ask people for food. People were really nice. They usually gave me something they were going to throw away.
Claire: But do you speak any Slavic languages? I mean, how did you let people know that you were hungry.
Jeff: Mostly like this *bringing hand to mouth*. When I could I told people that I was riding my bike through Europe and they seemed to understand. I met a lot of cool people.
Claire: Wow, that sounds so cool. I'd like to do that some day.
Jeff: (Somewhere in here the fact that I'm a vegetarian had come up). I wouldn't recommend it. You can't be to picky. I mean, you're eating out of the trash. No one knows what a vegetarian is out there.
Claire: And what did you do if you ever had a technical difficulty? This was suppremely significant, considering the situation with the Pugeot.
Jeff: Well, I mean, it's Europe. There's a cycling shop in every town. But I met a guy from Estonia along the rout who had some weird tire dimension that they only make in the old Eastern Bloque. He told me that he couldn't find a spare tire anywhere in Western Europe and that one of his tires had some 113 patches on it.

I had a 50-mile ride to do that day, so when I gave my tire up for dead I had to walk to the nearest bike shop and leave "Jeff" behind. But, how COOL is that?! Jeff had rode all around Europe on that crappy bike, and he'd also rode across America in the same way. His next plan was to ride from San Diego to Alaska. Alaska! On a Bicycle! And this dude was just visiting some buddies and smoking a cigarette and drinking some beers with his homies. He wasn't all into gear and training zones and treating his body like a temple, and still he did all these crazy feats for fun, not glory. This is the kind of thing that would get most people's picture in the paper. I want to do an ironman someday, I want to do a 100 miler before I die, but my main goal is to be a real lifestyle athlete like Jeff was. Who says you can't see the world on your bicycle and $1,000 a year? Now, I pretend that I'm a badass, but really, Jeff was (say it with me so I don't feel like such a cusser) ONE BAD ASS MOFO!!!

Triathlon itinerary

Ok, after very little deliberation or thought I have decided on races that I am going to do while I'm home.

August 5: (Picked out of a hat)
The Witch City Triathlon in Salem, MA. I plan on grabbing one of the traffic cones in t2 and running the whole 5k singing the Wicked Witch's theme from the Wizard of Oz with the cone on my head. I might even do it so slowly that I'll get to steal a broom from someone cleaning the course. Oh what a finishing photo that'll make! Anyone coming with me?

August 11:
The Nutmeg State Sprint Triathlon in Washington, CT. Just getting down to the start in western Connecticut before 7 am will be an event in and of itself, but it'll be worth it to meet such blogging supahstahs as Angry Runner and Bob Almighty.

I'm still hoping to meet up with other blogger buddies for bike rides, runs, or open water swims. If you're down for a NWsG-type adventure, hit me up. Also, since I'm kind of in love with NYC I may try to take the chinatown bus down for a few days and stay with friends in Brooklyn. I hope the Big Apple folks would be willing to show me the good places to run around the city.

"It takes a stiff upper lip just to hold up my face, I gotta suck it up and savor the taste of my own behavior"

If you came here hoping for one of my witty posts about my mishaps and mis-adventures in which I'm the butt of all my own jokes, I suggest you check back at a later date. This is not one of those posts. This post is a downer. I've been listening to heartwrenching Ani Difranco songs from the period when all she wrote were unrequoited love songs to make you cry. It's not so much that the mood has rubbed off (I was already feeling like that), but some of the poetic histrionics may find their way into my writing. Sorry if that threattens your manhood.

As I told you in my last post, I'm going home next week. What's been germinating for months that I haven't had the balls to share with anyone until Sunday is that I'm so incredibly homesick. Now that I finally have what I've been working for for so long I'm getting cold feet about committing to years and years of service in the Spanish work force. Sunday night found me sobbing in bed next to my girlfriend, wanting so badly to go home, and not wanting to lose her. But she'd taken a sleeping pill and although she woke up, her there theres didn't quite hide their intended purpose of getting me to shut up so she could just go to sleep.

For months the only thing keeping me here has been her, but I guess life had different plans for me. So yesterday, amid so many tears we made the decision to go our separate ways. (God, just to write it makes me start crying again). This wouldn't be our first breakup dress rehersal, and I have no idea whether it will be our last, but this time something in me was different. Maybe not different, just stronger. Something inside was saying, Claire, do NOT fuck up this chance. "Chance" is a weird word for the situation, it implies that I'm some sort of abused or neglected. No, it's not that. And it's not that I don't love her, if I didn't I wouldn't be in this situation. It's just that it seems like lately, ever since last March I'm making one bad decision after another: drinking (my achilles heel), skipping training sessions to do things of absolutely no emotional, physical or intellectual return, and gradually, by degrees, giving up things that are important to me in order to save the relationship. There's something about being in a situation where your emotions/problems are constantly being overshadowed by someone else's. It puts you in a desperate place because no matter what you do, the problem is still in someone else's head, and there's no way you can get in there and fix it. I moved well beyond the quantum physics type, pro-active type "all this is in your head and for you to change it you have to work actively to change it" rhetoric months ago and have resigned myself to trying to work behind the scenes and do anything I can, which usually takes the form of just being there and being strong. The chance I needed was a chance to think about me. And somewhere between the feeling of being kicked in the stomach and the feeling of being about to faint, I had this soaring sense of relief.

When I was in California it seemed like everything was an incredibly enlightening adventure where you learned something new around every corner, like a science museum. Everyone I surrounded myself with seemed to be on the same page of making life a journey of self-discovery. Maybe it was just that I was in college and that's what people do in college, learn about themselves, but I felt like I was getting somewhere. It's been a long time since I felt that I was getting somewhere. And then, stupid as it sounds, I saw Little Ms. Sunshine and there was this scene on a pier in Long Beach and it brought back this enormous sensory memory of the piers in Santa Cruz and Capitola and how happy and excited I was every time I went there. In fact, I was excited every day in California. The feeling from Little Ms. Sunshine was so strong I couldn't shake it, even after sleeping on it. Then Girlfriend came at me with Enormous Girl Drama X, the kind of thing that you read about in a 3-page human interest article in a women's magazine, and she needs my help.

So then push came to shove and I heard myself saying, I'm really homesick. I'm not happy. I think I want to go home. It was what needed to be said, but it wasn't what I'd expected to say. So when I found myself alone for 10 minutes and had time to think I thought, Don't fuck up this chance, Claire. Oh God, give me strength to follow through with this. Many tears were shed last night, conversations were had, thoughts were exchanged, and phone calls were made. But the important thing was that I finally gave myself permission to stare in the face the possibility that I might go home. If that's what I want...

... So what do I want?

So today I had an unorthodox workout. I wanted to be out in the city, but I wanted to pay attention to more than just my breathing and my heartrate. I wanted to take it slow, see the world around me, and be able to think. So I decided to walk the length of the city (Barcelona's not that big) from the sea to the mountain, let the sensations wash over me, and just be. I don't know why I always think this is going to work, because it hasn't ever.

Here you can get an idea of the rout that I walked. A Microsoft Paint line on a blurry photo can't really match up to the accuracy of all y'all's GPS devices with internet flair, but there's something to be said for using a picture I took mayself this afternoon.

Anyway, I took the train down to the beach where I was planning on walking on the path behind the sand, but then Creep (Radiohead) came on my iPod, which starts "When you were here before, I couldn't look you in the eye. You're just like an angel, your skin makes me cry." Then I remembered that Silvia and I met a little ways down this same beach and our first kiss was on one of the stone breakwaters that punctuate the coast. I wanted to cry. Instead, I took off my shoes and socks and walked barefoot through the waves. There was something symbolically necessary about touching this sand (which is imported, by the way) and walking through the Mediterranean in my bare feet.

One thing about Barcelona is that you can't walk 20 minutes in any direction without finding yourself in a totally different world from where you started. That was what was important about my walk. I wanted to get a good cross-section of the city, not only in that I would go from the sea to the mountain, but also that I would see all the different layers of this city that I was trying to decide if I would stay in or abandon forever. When I put my shoes back on I began walking through the port which was crammed with tourists milling around trying to find their way back into the city in a maze of roads that all end in docks. I took Via Laetana up towards the center since no sentimental mood was worth elbowing my way up the Rambla which is stuffed building-to-building with tourists, kiosques, street performers, and pickpockets. At the Gothic Cathedral I moved in to the old gothic streets. I saw a couple in breathable linnen clothing holding hands and meditating on a bench next to the cathedral and wondered why I couldn't think like I wanted to. They were restoring the façade of the cathedral and over the scaffolding was a giant advertisment for a bank, "0 euros interest, 0 euros comissions, 0 commitments". People were taking pictures of the cathedral anyway. This seemed to have some ironic significance, but I couldn't make any metaphorical sense of the scene. Then I walked through the gothic streets for a couple of blocks to get to Plaza Catalunya, an enormous square filled shoulder-to-shoulder with all kinds of people in a hurry to get wherever they're going and no one getting anywhere very fast for the crowds (I don't think anyone passes through there on purpose except the tourists, but I needed to walk through on this particular excursion). I then walked up Passeig de Gracia, the Rodeo Drive of Barcelona with shops like Gucci, Burburry, Luis Vuitton, and McDonalds as well as 2 of the city's most famous buildings. I passed a Scandinavean family eating a picnic lunch right there in the middle of one of the most congested sidewalks in Barcelona and wondered what the hell would possess someone to do that, even a tourist. Then I made a left, and only one street over, the language of the street changed from people speaking English, German, French, and anything but Spanish to solid Spanish and Catalan. This is a beautiful pedestrian street with sidewalk cafes and musicians, but it's like a well-kept secret for everyone in the city to be able to walk downtown without having to walk down Passeig de Gracia and all the duck-and-roll tactics involved with passing through crowds of tourists. Then I crossed Diagonal, the central artery of the city (2 guesses in which direction this street cuts the city) and the hustle and bustle was gone. The only people left were smartly dressed business men smoking cigarettes in doorways and the occasional pijo (posh/rich person) milling around. Here I was in familiar territory in that I had worked around here teaching English to snot-nosed kids in their beautiful homes in beutiful neighborhoods while I could barely afford a sandwich in the bar downstairs. The irony of this situation is apparent, but a familiar story, so I'm not going to waste anyone's time beating a dead horse. Finally I trapsed up past the absurd decorative houses of Av. Tibidabo which are feats of modernist architecture occupied with such unlikely candidates as a dance club, an eating disorder clinic, the Chinese embassy, and a nursery school. And then I was out of the city and onto trails up to a flat fire trail that snakes its way like a hula-hoop around the mountain with views of the city. I found an electric box with a good view of the city and sat there staring at the hazy city splayed in front of me. I tried so hard to call up some emotion sitting there staring at all of it, but all I could do was try to recognize buildings I knew from way up here. I listened to a few sad songs and gave up and set off back to the train.

I was walking for a total of 3 hours, I'd been through no fewer than 9 prominant parts of the city, and didn't know how I felt any more than I did when I left the house this morning.
It's a big decision, a decision that's really hard to go back on, no matter which way it goes, and most of all, it's a difficult decision. I know what you're thinking, 'God, who wouldn't want that kind of experience, to live in a foreign country with beaches and woods and public healthcare and a beautiful climate (or at least that's what you think till you see August)'. But you know what, it took moving to Europe for me to understand how great America is. Sure, you may scoff and spit, or you may pull out your stars and stripes and put your hand on your heart, but I assure you that my patriotism is neither of these. It's not for America the empire or America the symbol that I'm heartsick for, but America itself in all the little details that we assume are normal. I miss:

• Being able to eat lunch and dinner every day of the week at 14 different restaurants from 14 different countries (all of which have vegetarian options on the menu... that is, if you're not in Oklahoma or something). Call it "lack of national cuisine" or "cosmopolitanism", but there's something to be said for a country where you don't know the menu simply by walking through the door.
  
• The concept of space. There's something phenomenal about a place where people from Concord, NH commute to Boston for work, or where the 7 hours from San Francisco to Los Angeles is something that no one blinks an eye at. Love cars or hate them, Auto Nation keeps everything within reach, and that's a beautiful thing.
• That feeling of being "in the popular clique" where everyone feels like they're part of something important. Americans assume that since our TV, movies, music, books, politics, and products are shipped all over the world, that everyone is watching our every move and envying us. What you find when abroad is that people generally don't care one way or another about the Great U S of A. But even though that celebrity is all imagined, it's nice to feel important.
• The fact that individuality is valued. Marching to the beat of a different drum is the golden standard in the US, we like and look up to the odd ducks. It creates a giant, nation-wide brainstorm, I guess. In Spain people are bred to be sheep - don't stand out, don't say anything contradictory, keep the peace, keep the conversation comfortable. As someone who can't help but be an oddball, I feel like a "octopus in a garage" 90% of the time.
• There are so many different dialects and accents in the US that hegemony is the norm. Here, the second I open my mouth people's body language changes visibly. Yes, I have an accent, but no, I'm not stupid. I have friends who were born in the US and still have latino accents. If people can belong in a country even when their accent is from somewhere in between, why can't Catalans deal with an accent from a region 300 miles away? People from Madrid and Andalucia are called "foreigners" here.
• I understand exactly what people are saying at all times at home. You get to value that when you're living in a different language and they hand you your loaf of bread but you don't know if you actually said it right, or if they just got what you were saying. It DOES hurt when I say something obscure like "armpit" and give it the wrong gender and people laugh at me.
  

And, you may ask, why am I telling you all this, dear blogosphere? Why aren't I writing to my friends, the ones whose real names I know and the ones that I would recognize in a crowd? Because I don't want to know what my friends think. They either think it's too great to give up this opportunity or they think that I never should have left them in the first place. Or, worse of all, they're complacent. "Whatever you feel that you need," they say. Meanwhile, they're chomping at the bit to tell me "I told you so" about my girlfriend without giving me the credit that I might actually love her. And, well, they want me home as much as I want them to visit. No, I just want to talk to an unbiassed ear (or eye). So I'm chucking this out there. I don't expect much of a response, I guess, but I need to put it out there for someone to read, because if not, I'm just stuck with this muttled mess in my head, which isn't getting me anywhere.

Blog candy

I'm usually not into all the different variations of a chain letter that the internet has to offer, but Phoenix nominated me as a "Rockin' Girl Blogger" and I'm flattered. So, to share the love here are 5 chicks that I think are worth reading:

1. ReneeMC, Angry Feminist Running Rants
2. Warrior Women
3. The newly-discovered IM Able
4. Phoenix herself
5. Greyhound, who is NOT a chick, but has written so many kick ass feminist blogs that he can't be left off this list!

I'm realizing that most of the blogs I read are by guys... weird how I never noticed that before...
Check them all out.

Incoming!

Did you know that I'm Italian? I've always been Italian in that my father's mother is Italian and his father had Italian blood from the Ellis Island era; but now, I'm Italian like from Italy. I have an ID number and everything, but still no document to prove it... but we'll get to that.

If you're pressed for time then you can skip over the small type and move on to the big news below...

As you may or may not know, for the past year and a half I've been living as an (whispered) illegal immigrant here in Spain. What I haven't shared with all you people is that I've been working for much longer, well over 2 years, to get my paperwork sorted out. When I came I thought, 'This is Spain, not Texas, and I'm American. No problem.' It IS a problem, as it turns out. Which is why I've been driving myself crazy and starving to death teaching English, because no other industry will hire an illegal.

I've had a couple of minor heart attacks in this time, like the time that the Spanish department of work came to inspect one of my classes, the time they questioned me for 20 minutes in the Amsterdam airport, and five uncomfortable trips through customs in Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Ireland.

I tried everything to get my papers worked out quicker. I considered getting married. I tried to find a business that would sponsor me for a visa (there were a few that were willing to do it, but then called me back after a couple of days saying, "How about you just call us when you have your papers sorted out?" - Thanks a lot, assholes!). I thought about going back to school; went to the university to get some information about visas and wound up walking out with another English class. I talked to a lawyer (actually, no, I talked to friends who were talking to lawyers) and found out that unless I was a surgeon or civil engineer then there wasn't going to be any amnesty for me. I even tried the idea that was too simple to work, just renewing my ID from when I was a student here. No dice.

Meanwhile, since early spring of 2005 I've been trying to become Italian. With a passport from any EU country you can work legally in any other EU country. It's like having a driver's license from Montana and working in Florida. You see, Italy has this law that if you have Italian lineage on your father's side and you can come up with all the documents to prove it, then you can be Italian too. I told my parents this in 2004 and they laughed at me. Then, in beginning of 2005 my dad called me and said, "Did you know that if you have Italian family then you can get an Italian passport?" The conversation went like this:
Dad- I was just talking to Bill (Something Italian) from work and he said something about having an Italian passport. He said that you can get an Italian passport if you have Italian ancestors.
Claire- I know, I told you that last year and you laughed at me.
Dad- Oh, well I'm sure you didn't have all the information.
Claire- Yes I did, I told you just as you're telling me now.
Dad- Oh, well I was thinking maybe it would be a good idea...
Claire- I know, that's what I said last year. I even sent you a link to the embassy's web page, didn't you read it?

So we started the process. I planned to move in about 8 months, that's enough right? Some of the documents were hard to find though, and my parents wound up paying $150 per document to something like a private investigation agency to get some documents. Other things were hard to find too, such as:

• My grandmother's birth certificate from Milan, 1924. (This required a couple of emails and phone calls to our Italian cousins who don't like Americans and don't speak English).
  
• My mother's birth certificate, the long form. You can get the short form through the mail, but to get the long form you have to go to the hospital yourself. This chore took two day trips to Manhattan.
• My dad's birth certificate from the Hackensack, NJ town hall that changed addresses without leaving a forwarding address. It took 2 months to track them down.
  
• My grandfather's death certificate from Florida.
• My grandparents' divorce certificate, which hadn't been seen since the 1970's.
• My brother and I had to officially change our names since our middle names are our mom's maiden name. In Italy you can't have 2 family names, and therefore we had to officially change our names in a country that still had no official record of us.
• My grandmother's valid US passport, which hadn't been valid for 10 years. So my dad had to cart my her out of the nursing home to get passport photos, then to the US post office to order a renewal.
• My grandmother's naturalization papers, which she said were somewhere in the apartment she sold 4 years ago.
  

Finally we rounded everything up and took it in to the consulate where we found out 2 things:

1. I had to present the papers IN PERSON, so I would have to come home from "California" where I was on an "extended vacation".
   
2. We had all the wrong forms. All the certificates (birth, death, marriage) had to have an official stamp on them called an apostele (or something like that), so it was back to town halls in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Florida.
   

And then, in March we had it all together and I flew home for 3 days to hand in the paperwork. "You can probably come in with passport photos in about 10 days," the Signore at the consulate said. April went by, no answer. May: no answer. In June we finally got a letter in Italian. I can understand Italian, but I couldn't understand this damn letter. I understood the words, but not the content. There were numbers and acronyms everywhere and a bunch of ambiguous past participles. When my brother got the same letter later that week he went in to the consulate to get some answers. What they told him: we're finally Italian, we have an ID number, and only need to get the passport to have proof!

So last week my brother finally got his passport. My brother is now Italian and we know that there are no more hoops for me to jump through. So...

I ' M C O M I N G H O M E F O R 3 W E E K S !

That's right, folks! My neoprene-free ass will be in the United States of America from July 25 until August 14. So here's the real reason for me writing this blog: Who wants to do stuff with me?!

Unfortunately, for a place where I lived for 18 years of my life I have surprisingly few resources in the Boston area. I will have no pool to swim in (unless I find a masters team willing to take me in) and so I'm down for all kinds of open water swimming (Cape Cod anyone?). My bike will be my mom's old bike from the 1970s which I will deck out with clipless pedals, a bottle cage and nothing more. I have no idea where people go for long bike rides in Boston?! The only thing that I'll have that won't be ghetto is lots of lovely New England roads and trails to run through (and FINALLY a track!). I won't always have a car at my disposal since the car I learned to drive on, the Battleship (born in 1992) was just sold to some friends for $1 and I'll be sharing a car with my mom, but hey, I can get around that.

However I WANT TO TRAIN AND RACE! Does anyone know any triathlons/open water swims/running races in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island or New York in the next 3 weeks that still have open registration? Also, other than the car constraint, I can be flexible about schedules since my only commitment in those 3 weeks will be 2 mornings in the Italian consulate.

My parents' house is in Winchester, which is a small town about 20 minutes north of Boston (inside 495), so if you are within like 100 miles of there, let's get together. Who's coming with me?! C'mon, it'll be fun!

Pictures of the soggy homos (no worries, PG rated)

With traditional Spanish punctuality the pictures from last weekend's open water swim weren't sent out for 5 days. But here is a visual recap of my last blog. Stay tuned, there's more news from yours truly at the end...

Loading up the kayaks

I think all the boys adopted that pose to make their muscles look good

I'm doing that thing with my hands because the water's cold, not because I'm drowning or anything.

... you can't say that he doesn't

The resolution on this picture is really crappy, but you can see how I got so sunburnt!

Alberto has really come along this year. Last year he couldn't get across the pool, this weekend I was swimming next to him!

I don't remember his name, so we'll call him Juan. Juan brought up the rear not so much to sweep for drowning swimmers, but because he'd never been in a kayak before and had trouble keeping up.

...

Some of the guys came out with bloody boo-boos, so I'm glad I didn't go in. I didn't want to attract sharks!

(there I go)
This is what George's shawl looked like, but really, you can't see here just how fabulous it was, especially since it made the whole trip in his boyfriend's kayak.

And finally here's a picture of everyone but me. I had swim away because there wasn't ANY way I was going in that cave.

It's late now, so I'm going to save my big news until tomorrow... Sorry to disappoint! It's really not my style.

No wet suit, but I've still got on more than you

(I include this video to set the tone of this post hoping that somewhere out there, SOMEONE speaks Spanish! This is hillarious!)

Logistics is my main challenge out here. I run on a treadmill because there aren't any tracks nearby and there aren't many wide open spaces in Barcelona without traffic lights that aren't teaming with tourists (do you like how I snuck my treadmill justification in there? Smooth, huh?). I couldn't go to my race in Portugal because I couldn't get my bike to Portugal. I slept on the beach one night last year because there wasn't bus service early enough to get to an open water swim on time. I missed a duathalon because of the same bus situation and I wasn't about to sleep under a bridge in mid-March. When I saw that my swimming club was going to be doing a 2,500-5,000m swim (the distance kept getting longer as time went on and more emails were sent out) in Vilanova I thought, "Vilanova has a train station! I can do that!"

Now let me give some background information on my swim group. It's a sports club with branches in soccer, swimming, bacci, volleyball, mountainbiking, hiking, sailing, and swimming. What's so special about it? Everyone's gay! I'm a member of the swimming club and I call my teammates the "soggy homos". Technically, it's co-ed, but there are only 3 girls who show up ever and about 30 guys on any given day. You would think that they all get together to touch eachother in the locker room, but actually the training sessions are pretty serious, although there is some ass-grabbing and checking out of speedos going around. Yesterday, I was the only girl in a group of about 20 dudes (and some boyfriends), but everyone used the feminine forms of nouns and adjectives to talk about themselves anyway. "I'm pretty strict (estricta)," said Jacques, who's from Belgium. "Estricto," Vicenç corrected him, "although you can be estricta if you want... Really, it's up to you honey."

I hadn't really told the guys that I was coming and when Jorge, the organizer of the whole excusion saw me he said, "Claire! I didn't know you were coming. I don't have any food for you. At the restaurant where we're going there's only meat, no bread. Just meat."
"I'll survive," I said. "I just came to swim anyway. I'll just, you know, swim and then go home."
"Yeah, but how did you get here? By train? How are you going to get back to the station?" My heart sank. "Well, you know, we're going to be stopping a lot. If you want you can just leave the kayaks behind and go on alone and then walk back when you get there." I don't think Jorge likes me much.
"Don't worry about me, I'll figure something out," I said, a little uncomfortable and telling Jorge to go to hell in my mind.

It took us a full hour and a half to actually get to the water. The boys had to rub sunscreen all over eachother, kayaks had to be rented, and everyone had to dance to Madonna in the little beach bar before we could get going. Jorge explained the course to us, "Ok, you're going to swim around that little peninsula there and there's a little beach, then we're gonna come around another corner that you can't see from here and there's another place to stop, then we're going to swim around that peninsula where the house is and swim out to sea a litte farther because there are a lot of fishermen..." "Fishermen! Fishermen! Yum, yum! Did you plan it that way, Jorge?" everyone was screaming and giggling about fishermen and chanting "Fishermen! Fishermen!" or "Jorge! Jorge!" I feel like maybe I was missing out on some play on words here.

Finally we got into the water and of course everyone had to flap their writs and scream like a little girl as we waded into the water. "The worst is when the water gets up to your ovaries," Vicenç said to Xavi. We swam off up the coast. It was about 400m before we got to the first little cove. There was a little bit of chop and some little currents. I was really trying not to swim off-course (whatever that meant), but with no buoys and a kayak that kept, like, moving around and stuff it was really disorienting. Also, these were "indoor swimmers". Hardly anyone knew how to swim straight (hehe) and it looked like something out of that Monty Python sketch with the footrace for the directionally challenged where the gun goes off and they all run off in different directions but no one is on the track. I was swimming along, breathing on my left side so I could sight off Alberto with the cliffs in the background. It seemed like a better plan than having to stop every 4 strokes and try to find the kayak, and as long as the cliffs were the same distance away, I must be swimming straight. And then, suddenly, in my field of vision were the cliffs about the same distance away, Alberto, and a big outcropping of rocks about 10 feet from Alberto's head! Alberto escaped a nasty bump and I swam farther out to find some toes.

Normally I'm kind of afraid of open water, but the Mediterranean is much clearer than the Pacific, and it's shallow! In the first chunk I could see the bottom the whole time, and there were no monsters, no fish, no sharks, just the sand with little ripples in it. And then... *Whatthefuckwasthat?!* It was a JELLYFISH, about 3 inches from my right shoulder! A big sucker, about this big (holds fingers making a circle about the size of an apetizer plate) with purple around the edges of his jelliness! Luckily, though, I was not stung. I swam all the way to the next cove wondering how I managed to miss those ubiquitous tenticles and imagining myself getting tangled up in one of those killer jellyfish, what are they called? Manereys? Portuguese man of war? Something like that.

There was more pain and danger in store. Away from the municiple beaches sand isn't shipped in, and the beaches are as God intended them to be, covered in loose rocks about the size and shape of eggs. Have you ever walked barefoot on something like that? It really hurts! To get out of the water we had to step gingerly around as the rocks shifted under our weight and waves made it hard to get your ballance. People climbed out of the water hanging on to their best friend or whoever happened to be around so as not to fall over.

At the first cove there was a "cave". I climbed up the beach, much to the anguish of my metatarsals to check it out. Actually, it was more like an arch. "I walked up that beach for this?" I said. "I could have just swum!" And then THWACK, I smacked my head on the top of the arch. That'll teach me to be nonplussed by the wonders of nature.

Swimming the next chunk the water got murkier and cooler and the current picked up. I couldn't see the bottom anymore, but what I could see was dozens of minnows per square foot just below me. This made me uncomfortable. What if The Monster eats minnows? The Monster might be hungry at this very moment...

At the next cove there were boobs. Nice ones too.

Swimming around the next bend I started to be able to discern the bottom again. It was rocky and seemed to be just inches from my fingertips. It got me really spooked. I kept picturing myself grazing my knuckles on one of those rocks, or that I was too close to the shore and I was going to get smashed against the cliffs. I tried to swim out farther, but it didn't get any deeper. You know, if I cut myself on a rock a shark would be sure to smell my blood...

I was so eager to get away from the killer rocks that I was the first to arrive at the next beach. There, all alone was a boy no more than 20 years old wearing nothing but flip flops and a pair of sunglasses. He was walking back and forth, butt naked, moving his towel, water bottle, etc from thier hiding places behind different rocks to hiding places behind other rocks. He was either cruising, or, well, working. He must have thought that he'd died and gone to heaven when 20 muscular gay men in Speedos climbed out of the water behind me. He came up and asked one of the guys for a cigarette. "Now really, where am I going to have a cigarette?" the soggy homo said. After that the boy got dressed and went back to moving his stuff from one side of the beach to another. Getting back in the water I slipped on the stones and fell onto the guy next to me, someone I'd never seen before in my life. "We'll make like we meant to do it that way and no one will know," he said and grabbed my hand so we could help eachother into the deeper water.

In the last stretch again I was in front as most of the guys had started to swim breast stroke. "Go to the cave and wait!" Jorge yelled from the kayak. I took one look at the cave, which was half submerged and definitely not an arch this time and said, "Hell no!" I treaded water watching most of the guys squeeling with glee as they went in to explore the cave and curiosity got the best of me, but when I got close and saw all those sharp rocks under water I said, "I'll meet you guys at the beach," and swam away on my own.

The beach was called "Dead Man's Cove", which sounds like it would be filled with pirates, but it wasn't. I was greeted with an eyeful of about 50 naked guys, a rainbow flag, and a little bar in the background. The slope out of the water was especially steep and hard to get out of. When I got to about a foot of water and still couldn't stand up I turned my back to the beach and sat down. I decided to take my cap off go back into the water to fix my hair, making like that was my plan the whole time, in hope that someone else would come up to help me out of the water. But no one came, so I had to try to tough it out by myself. The rocks hurt my feet and kept sliding around and I looked like a real dipshit pitching and tripping around out there as the little waves pushed me around. Scrambling up the little embankment to the beach my feet were really starting to hurt. I bet it never occurred to you that scrambling and stepping gingerly don't combine well. I looked up, and there, 10 feet in front of me were the boyfriends, laughing. Instead of lending me a hand Jacques's new boyfriend took out a camera and snapped a picture. "I'm thinking of crawling!" I yelled at him. I don't know if this had the desired effect of making me look like less of a loser.
"You did it quickly," he said when I finally made it to the towels. "We only just got her by car". An hour and 15 minutes had passed.

When everyone came in they unloaded the kayaks and passed around the bottles of warm water and Coke. That done, they all stripped off their bathing suits and started putting on sunscreen on each other again. I was surprised to see how many of them put sunscreen on their manhood. "Do I have any white on me?" one of the guys I didn't know asked. "Ummmm, only your white ass," I said, pointing at his speedo tan. George, the fabulous Brazilian who is more flaming than a bonfire, whipped out a fabulous black shawl with an embroidered vine pattern complete with sequins and draped it over his head like the Virgin Mary to protect himself from the sun. He looked like a gay Kramer or the Virgen de Guatalupe in a speedo, I couldn't decide which.

I learned something new there on the beach, Europeans don't circumcize. "This must be really weird for you," Sergi said.
"Nah, not really. The only thing that's freaking me out is the guy lying around over there wearing a cock ring."
"Where?"
"Over there."
"Oh, I see him. That is a little gorey, huh?"
"It's just like getting lost and finding myself in the men's locker room I guess." I didn't want to tell him that the only thing I was finding difficult was not to compare size.
"Yeah, I've always been curious to see a women's locker room. Just to see what it's like..." It was sweet of him to say, but I don't think he would really want to find himself in a women's locker room, even if it was the lockerroom of the Cowboys cheerleaders.

It had been decided that I should go back with Jorge to return the kayaks and thus get back to the beach near the station. I'd never been in a kayak before, I'd never even paddled anything except for canoes with my Dad when I was little. I used to sit in the front and leave most of the paddling to him. Luckily, somehow I had absorbed something about how to steer, but when they pushed me off and I tried to come back along the beach to say goodbye I found myself at the other end of the beach about to plow down a couple of guys feeling each other up underwater. By the time I righted myself I was pretty far from the beach, so I had to content myself with waving. No one noticed me all the way out there. "Are you having trouble going straight?" Jorge asked. "Yeah," (hehe) I said. He showed me how to putt out the... the... rudder (is that what the thing's called that helps steer boats?) and things got a lot better.

Kayaking is fun! It was so great to be out there in the middle of the sea and actually be able to see the landscape around me. It was like walking on water, but in a wheelchair. It was hard work though, pulling on those oars. It worked the same muscles as swimming, only with about 50 times the resistance. And as happens when I'm swimming and I get really tired, my right hand fell asleep. "Wait up, Jorge! I can't feel my hand, just give me a second."
"There's a tendency for your recovery wrist to flip back. Keep it straight and rigid and it shouldn't happen again." I wanted to tell him that if there was anyone in the group who didn't have limp wrists, it was me, but he was already way ahead of me when I thought of the joke, so I had to keep it to myself.

My arms were really worn out from all that swimming and rowing, but I felt really strong. My muscles were pumped up from all that work. A vain person would sit on the metro on the way back home and look at her reflection in the train window and marvel at her muscles. A vain person would stand up to have an excuse to grab onto a pole and watch how her muscles tensed up and popped out when she flexed to keep her ballance, or at least tried to make it look like she was flexing to keep her ballance. But of course, I'm not vain, so I didn't do that.

Despite putting on sunscreen before swimming and then before kayaking, I still got a nasty sunburn. This one will keep me from wearing haltar tops all summer...
...and I was only wearing sandals for less than an hour. They were of the shower sandal variety with a big, plastic band across the top and a big oval cut out in the middle. (I know I have ugly feet).

I will repost this with more images when they are available.