Excuse me, Mr. de Gaulle

First of all, this will be my second post today, and by far the least important, so if you only have a few minutes, please check out my last post about Bob Almighty and his crusade for the Blazeman ALS foundation.

That said, there's been something really bothering me. Yesterday I flew back to Spain on Air France, and as happens with these things, I had a 2 hour stopoff in the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. August is tourist season, and it seems like every man, woman and child in Europe, and the greater part of the rest of the world sets foot in some airport somewhere. In the 2 hours I was in the CDG airport I saw no fewer than TWO small children with full-blown chicken pox.

Now isn't chicken pox like the most contagious virus known to human beings? In second grade one girl came to our school for 10 minutes while she was out with chicken pox to take a troupe picture for the (Girl Scout) Brownie leaders that year, and 95% of the kindergarten, 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders came down with it in the next month. I remember one day my class was decimated to 7 kids. And after all the bird flu scares each summer, aren't they supposed to keep people with contageous diseases from contaminating different areas? Not to mention all the people who are stuck in a closed tube of air that keeps getting recycled over and over with these kids. I'm sure that there are other kids on those flights with vacations to enjoy, not to mention some adults who've never had it. And adults who get chicken pox suffer 10 times worse than the kids. And most of all, I'VE NEVER HAD IT!

Now I can understand the parents' point of view, they've spent all this money and put in for the vacation months ago and they're not going to abandon it now. But, come on, be fucking conscientious, responsible adults. Really!

Team Blogger Victory!

My day started at 2:00, but I would be lying if I said that I even slept that long. As I ate breakfast I printed out both Mapquest directions and the directions from the race page. I walked out of the house as the clock was striking 3:00. First stop: the gas station to fill up and get my Gatorade for later in the day. I pulled up to the gas station and was pleased that I guessed correctly about which side the gas tank was on (remember this was a rental). I opened the driver's side door to find the lever to pop the gas cap thingy and didn't see anything, no matter how close I put my face to the seat and looked (maybe it was really tiny...). So I did what I've learned to do when I'm at my wits' end: ask a boy for help and try not to look feminine while doing it. The townies who work the graveyard shift at the 24 hour Exxon station are not masters of diplomacy, and even as I asked him if he had any idea where the lever might be I realized the answer, there WAS no lever, you just opened it with your hand. But I'd already started talking, so I finished asking my stupid question to the slack-jawed obese attendant anyway. Sure enough, we went outside and he flipped it open with a disinterested flip of the wrist and said, "It's automatic. You going to fill up?" Yeah. "You paying with a card?" Yeah. "You can just pay at the pump." Of course. I'd forgotten that. I haven't pumped gas in 18 months, you forget little things like that.

Getting settled in for the long haul I realized another problem with the car, I could not, for the life of me, find the dome light. Crap! How was I going to read my directions? 93 to 95 to the Mass Pike to 84, I knew that, but then what? I looked at the directions from the race website, "Take the exit for Rte. 10". I looked at the Mapquest directions which had a little symbol that looked like this and next to that it said "Merge onto CT-4 W / FARMINGTON AVE via EXIT 39 toward FARMINGTON", only I didn't read the part after the picture because I'm an idiot and don't read things, nor did I look closely at the little "West" over the 4 and thought it probably said "exit"anyway. Like a real sleuth I looked at none of the clues and deduced that I would be taking exit 4 to rout 10. When I got to Connecticut and the exits started counting down it seemed to make sense that I would take exit 4. Wasn't I going to the western part of Connecticut anyway? So it would make sense that I would cross the whole state before getting off the highway. Yeah, that's it. Only around 5:45 doubt started to creep in and the sun had crept over the horizon and I could see my directions clearly, and I could see that that little word above the 4 did not say "exit" and then I read all the words next to it and I saw "exit 39" and I looked up and saw that I was at exit 23 (a couple of exits past where Angry put me back on the freeway several hours later) and realized that I had gone 16 exits too far, that I had 20 minutes to backtrack, and it was getting dangerously close to 6 o'clock.


Thank god I didn't get any more lost, but I still had some 30 minutes to drive on the back roads to get to the start, and even though I told myself to relax, that there was nothing I could do except keep driving, I knew I was screwed. I convinced myself not to panic, but that didn't stop me from having an anxiety attack which makes me shake, makes my joints ache, makes my mouth dry, and gives me tingles all over my body. I found the start at about 6:45 and yelled at the guy in the orange crossing guard's vest, "I GOT LOST! WHERE CAN I PARK?!" He pointed me down to what I later found out was volunteer parking right next to the beach "There should be spaces down there," he said (Angry and Bob had to park a good mile away at the top of a hill). I threw my front wheel on my bike (forgot to fasten the quick release on the brakes) and sprinted to the transition with precious little time. "Where's regestration?!" I yelled to the first person who I saw.
"Over there," she said pointing about 100 meters away back towards where I'd parked. Shit! (I'm not quite sure that this was under my breath) and I started to turn away. "Why don't you leave your stuff here?" she suggested. Good idea! I racked my bike (on what I would later notice was the relay rack), started to unpack my stuff and realized I had no bibs, caps, or anything. I ditched my stuff as it was and sprinted to registration.
"Hi. Myname'sClaireXxxx. Spelled X-x-xxx. Idon'tknowwhatmynumberis..."
"Okay, did you fill out one of these?"
(Whining, pleading) "What?!" She waved some kind of release slip in my face and I ran over to the other table to fill it out. I don't even think I spelled my name right and definitely didn't date next to my signature. They sent me over to get marked while they looked for my packet and chip. I ripped off my shirt and stood there in my bra and shorts while 2 women wrote all over me.
"How old are you, honey?" one asked.
"24, oh God, PLEASE hurry. I still need to change!"
"Don't worry, honey, I'm sure they'll wait for you." Then I heard the announcer calling everyone to the beach for a pre-race meeting. I grabbed my race packet and dashed into a changing room without closing the door to put on my tri-suit. I shoved my dirty undies in one pocket, threw the suit on with reckless abandon (those things aren't easy to put on under any circumstances due to the built-in bra that has to fit over your hips first) and ran off with my bra in one hand and clothes in the other to set up my transition area. Either I was so anxious or so thirsty that I had cottonmouth so bad that my tongue was sticking to my lips and the back of my teeth as I ran back to transition. I'd left my nalgene bottle in the car. They'd already cleared transition when I got there, but the kind souls guarding it let me in. Bike shoes, sock in each shoe, sunglasses... sunglasses... where are my sunglasses? Screw the sunglasses, helmet on top of shoes, Gatorade open... "Hey, you! Excuse me? Can you give me a hand?" I yelled to the grandfatherly volunteer guarding transition. "Can you please open this?" I asked, handing him my Gatorade bottle. Running shoes, headband, water bottle, CRAP! I forgot my running water bottle! Race belt, oh no, have to put number on race bel... Grandpa was handing my Gatorade bottle to me with a smile. "I think there's a tab inside under the cap," I said, wrestling desperately with my race belt and bib number. "Can you please pull it off?"
"By golly, you're right!" he said, pulling out the plastic tab.
"Thank you so much. I'm sorry, I'm just so late, I don't mean to be bossy, it's just, I'm afraid I'm going to miss the start."
"It's okay, that's what we volunteers are here for!" he said good naturedly, and somewhere an angel got its wings.
"Thank you so much, really!" I yelled, already dashing back towards the beach where they were clearing people out of the water. With my heart going the way it was, I didn't need a warmup.

With all the coffee and water I'd drank on the 3 hour drive over I'd had to pee since the state line and now with everyone clearing out of the water, I had no idea how I was going to relieve myself. Then I heard a voice far above my left ear, "Claire! No Wetsuit Girl?" I looked up and saw a face that was not entirely unfamiliar, but nor would I have recognized it in a crowd. "I'm Craig, the Angry one." Only his name's not Craig.
"Just like how I write in my blog, I'm really that angry," Angry said.
"Just like how I write in my blog, I'm really that dumb," I said and explained how I hadn't gotten lost so much as missed my exit by a long shot. I asked where Bob Almighty was and we had a bit of smalltalk, but it didn't take me long get to the tactless speech that makes my friends cringe. "I have to pee so bad I think I'm going to burst!" I admitted to Angry, a guy that I'd really only met about 2 minutes ago. Angry pointed out where the porta-poddies were. "Actually, my suit's all one piece, I was kinda just thinking of going in the lake..."
"It's all the same to me," said an uncomfortable Angry, to whom it probably WASN'T all the same.
Angry introduced me to Ken, who was volunteering, before they corralled his angry self back into the water. "Where's your wetsuit?" asked Ken.
"I don't own one!" I said, proudly.

The Swim

Waiting for my wave to start I deliberately got int the water WAY to the inside so that I could have some privacy to relieve myself without anyone else having to wade through my considerably-sized warm spot. This put me more on the inside than I usually like (I was the inner-most girl), but I was still having an anxiety attack and was just glad that I was there at the start before the gun.

The start was uneventful. I was so far inside and so far forward that hardly anyone was around me and they all fell quickly back or pulled up right away so I found myself in no-man's-land immediately. I was uncomfortable swimming alone since I had no one to follow and had to sight way more often. Luckily, even though Saint Bob was kind enough to bring an extra wetsuit for me just in case, and even though I arrived too late to take advantage, it didn't matter since Lake Waramaug was comfortably warm and beautifully fresh (as in not salty). I found that I was actually within bounds and not too far to the inside of the buoys after all and everything was going well until we came around the second turn buoy and faced back towards the beach. Do you know that Ani Difranco line, "Virtue is relative at best, there's nothing worse than a sunset when you're driving due west"? It was like that, only it was sunrise and I was facing east. I couldn't see buoys. I couldn't even see girls 25 yards in front of me. I couldn't see ANYTHING when I looked up except the blinding sun in the sky and its blinding reflection in the water. I felt my way along, looking up every once in awhile and hoping to spot some shadow. I managed to find heads some of the time, but I would come up on them fast because they were treading water trying to get their bearings, and then they were behind me and of no use to me. Finally the sun ducked behind some trees and I stood up prematurely to run in thigh-deep water just so I could see where I was going. Coming up off the beach I saw Ken and yelled (loud enough so that others could hear me and therefore know that normally I'm pretty badass, really!), "It was so bright, I couldn't see a damn thing out there!"

Swim time: 15:31, 1:43 per 100m (could've been better, but it could've been worse)
3/7 in age group (43%), 31/110 overall (28%)

T1

Ouch! Those plush astroturf mats could have gone all the way to transition, there are little ROCKS here. OW! I passed the bleached-blond announcer and she yells at me, "You go girl! Top 10 women." Really? I'm pretty sure she lost count.
Helmet, Shit! Should have put it on between when I rented it and right now, this thing is going to choke me. Left sock, left shoe. Right sock, right shoe. That sun was too bright on the swim, I'm going to look for my sunglasses. I wasted a good 2 minutes turning my backpack inside out looking for my sunglasses. Fuck it, I'm out of here!
T1: 3:23... and I would have spent another 5 minutes there if I could have found my sunglasses. Alas, they never turned up.

The Bike

Since I'm here with Angry and Bob who talk Big Man talk about the big ring I wanted to do it in the big ring just like them. Only the big ring screwed up my cadence and I was breathing hard already and who needs that? So I clicked back down one and started picking off anyone within sight (and in the end changing gears didn't turn out to be too big a deal since my bike split was within 57" and 1'36" of Bobby-Boy and Angry respectively). In the whole bike split only one person passed me, and he was a dude, so he doesn't even count.

I was sailing along like nobody's business when suddenly I saw a little hill ahead. It didn't look like much, and I didn't think anything of it until I started climbing and my bike stopped moving. Down through the gears I went until I got to the smallest gear on my small (but not granny) ring, and still I wasn't getting anywhere... and I was feeling way more uncomfortable than I like to be in competition. A recently picked-off guy was breathing like a freight train behind me so I knew I wasn't alone. "Where did THIS come from?!" I said out loud.
"There's a bigger one after this," said the freight train.
"You've got to be kidding me!" I said. "Flat and fast" my ass, Angry!
I hardly pedaled coming over the top trying to get my breath back and just when I was getting my game again I came up on the second hill. It didn't look like much. It looked nice and gradual, but then when I got on it I thought my bike was going to tip over I was going so slow. Down to the granny ring, down to the easiest gear, and still on some of the ridges in the pavement where a bump made it even steeper (if only for a foot) the grade threatened to stop my pedaling altogether. I'd ridden grades like this tons of times before, but I wasn't ready! (said in petulant child's voice). I blame Angry.

Coming down the Monstrous Surprise Hill at a million bajillion miles per hour I heard something fall off my bike and clatter to the ground. Crap! I hope that wasn't something important! I thought, imagining my bike deposit disappearing. Then I looked down... MY GATORADE!!! I'd been so busy breathing that I'd hardly had a chance to drink and I was concerned after my morning cottonmouth. Again, I blame Angry, it's his fault I was on this stupid hill in the first place.

Despite some unfortunate grades, the course really was beautiful. Apart from the hills the road clung close to the lake, which still had wisps of the morning's fog sticking to the surface like little cotton balls. I really wished I had my camera on me, but there were "bitches to stomp" (as Bob says) and I was really a bit chilly to stop now.

Bike time (for 9 mi):30:43, av. speed: 17.6 mph (damn! and I thought I was faster than that!)
Bike stats:2/7 in age group (29%), overall 39/110 (35%)

T2

Change shoes, put on annoying but useful headband, no Gatorade to grab, off I go. Pooh, do I really have to run?
T2: 1:24

The Run

(Teeth clenched) Stupd fkng rnning! Stupid, dn't wnt to do ths... I left the transition and immediately my right pinky metatarsal and my left tibia hurt. Stupd rnning, no good for nythng but gtting injured... 100m up the road I hear feet behind me, "Do you know where we're supposed to go?" I let the girl pass me so I could see where she was pointing: which was UP. StOOpid hlls nvr did nybdy ny good... And the hill didn't relent it just kept going up and up and up. Screw this! I'ont need to be no hero now. And I started walking. You don't have hills in triathlons, at least not like this one. Bob had tried to warn me that the first half of the run was "tough", but I thought, it's only a mile and a half... in a triathlon, how hard can it be? The first 1.7 miles were pretty much solidly uphill, and I was pretty universally unhappy about it. I blame Bob. I ran past a couple of women standing at the side of the road. One of them started clapping and said, "And you're the one who was late. Now look at you!" What? I thought. I knew I looked like crap. I was giving out places like Halloween candy letting women pass me without giving up a fight, but hell, it was better than making the effort it would take to catch them.

I came around the turnaround where Ken was cheering something I don't remember. It was all downhill from here, literally, and it was nice to be running faster than a speeding bullet without any real effort. At this point I'd pushed past the T2 stiffness, warmed up most of the aches and pains, and only my shins were bothering me. Shins are a bad thing to be bothering you when you're running down 400 feet over 1.3 miles. And then I was running past transition and across those inadequately astroturfed pebbles again, "Ouch, ouch ouch, OUCH!" (my foot twisted just so in that way that really hurts).

I crossed the finish line and the crowd roared. I didn't even think I was going to puke this time around!
Run time: 30:05 (I'm actually surprised it wasn't slower for all the walking I did), av. speed: 9:42 min/mile (with how much I hate running I'm thrilled with anything faster than a 10:00 min/mi).
Run stats: 5/7 in age group (71%) ~ OUCH!, overall 85/110 (77%) ~ DOUBLE ouch!

Post Race

Angry found me scavenging around the food tables and we looked at the results. It didn't look like Bob had placed, he was going to be pissed. I counted more than 5 20-24 chicks ahead of me and decided not to look too much closer, it might be depressing. I started to complain about the hills and started to rebuke Angry for getting me into that situation. "Oh, come on! You can handle it. The Claire went over the mountain, right?" It was weird to hear my words being quoted by someone else, and I tried not to give him a sullen dirty look for catching me.

We went to transition and I met Bob. Bob knows EVERYONE, man. I could hardly get a word in edgewise to introduce myself before he was off talking tri-geek-speak with another competitor. I understood all the triathlon talk, but all those funny names of places and races in Connecticut were completely beyond me and I couldn't follow. Angry and I left Bob to his mingling and went back to get some grub.

They started announcing the winners. After the initial REAL male and female winners (*showoffs*) they started with the under 19 boys and girls, then the grown-ups. "And third place of the men 20-24: Angry... Run?Runn...e...r?" Said the blond MC with the ditzy accent.
"What the...? Holy shit!" said Angry, dropping his cookie and going up to accept his prize.
"And in second place, Robity-Bob Almighty!" she announced, and Bob coolly went up to accept his prize, since he, unlike us, never doubted that he kicks ass.
I ran up and tried to take a picture of this moment (Angry in his famous Barloworld hat, Bob in his suave new Timex visor) but my camera was low on batteries and I couldn't replace them in time. New battery in place and ready to snap a photo of the 2 blogger victors I heard, "And for the women 20-24, in third Place, Claire... New Wit Soot Carl?" What the...?! I went up there, and none of the other girls whose names were called appeared. I tried to smile, but since I prefer a good candid shot to a bad posed one, I stopped paying attention to the camera at just the wrong time.

TWO THIRDS and a SECOND! Go team blogger!

Angry Runner: "You aren't as small as I thought you would be." Are you kidding?!
Left to right: Bob Almighty, me, and Angry Runner

Overall results: 1:21:06 (PR, but that hardly counts since the bike was shorter than usual).
4/7 (57%) ~No, I know, run more. I have no idea why I was 4th on the results and they still gave me a prize packet. Probably because the REAL winner already got one. Go Claire with another Booby prize! Well I'm not driving back to Connecticut to give back the water bottle they gave me, so ha! Overall 50/110 (45%)

Then we all drove to Waterbury, CT to have breakfast and rehash our victories. Angry turned out to be an impatient driver (no surprise there), but Bob-O the speed demon is actually a really cautious driver. Who would have seen that one coming?

Over breakfast Robidy-Bob revealed to us his plan to win IM New Zealand on his very first try. Bob was crunching projected race times with an optimism that I only allow myself in my most private moments. I think that Bob is of the McCormack school of talkin' the talk so that later you have no choice but to walk the walk, and that works for him because he's fast consistently places. I've learned the hard way to shut my trap (see last weeks profanity-riddled post for an example), because I've learned that no matter what, there is always a moment in a race where I think, "screw this, this hurts!" and back off and later I have to eat my words. Bob, though, means business, and he is going to will himself to a Hawaii spot, just you wait and see!

Angry had a much more reserved kind of boasting, "I could do better if I trained more." But who has time to train more? I KNOW I'll never run a 3 hour marathon... and certainly never after a 112 mile bike. Leave the hard stuff up to the REAL tri-geek competitors like Bob. Finally meeting Bob and seeing his face, his passion, his love for the sport the thought occurred to me, 'Bobby Boy wants to win an IM tomorrow. I don't care about winning, but I'd love to keep finishing funky stuff like IMs, swimming the English Channel, the Race Across America, Badwater, or a 50 mile pogo stick hop. There'll be time for Kona when I'm 90'. It's okay not to be Bob, it's okay if I'm a triathlete that sometimes does okay and sometimes sucks a big one. It's okay to swim without a wetsuit, bike on a rented bike, and run really slow (or even walk) if that's what I want to do. It's okay to do a swim race today, a bike race tomorrow, and DNF a running race on Thursday as long as I'm having fun. I haven't been having fun lately because I've wanted to WIN when I hadn't been down for the training to win.

... And today was really fun! Robity-Bob had to bring his pit crew (2 sisters) home after breakfast since they were fading from the early wakeup and sprinting after his breakneck pace to cheer him on on the course. Angry and I stopped by a Barnes & Noble for coffee before I took off and chatted some more. Without fawning all over him, let me tell you, ladies, Angry is one hot piece of ass... and even I might have swooned a little bit. We shot the shit awhile talking about anything BUT triathlon and (maybe he'll kill me for telling you this) Angry is actually one of the most easy-going guys I've ever met. He was pretty concerned about how I was going to judge Connecticut (what? like I've never seen a Dunkin Donuts, shopping mall, or awful highway interchange before?) and made a real effort to make sure that I had a good time while I was in the Land of Steady Habits" (really, it's called that, it's in wikipedia!).

Epilogue (optional reading)

Finally I had to bid adieu to Angry and drive the 4 hours back to Boston. I had plenty of time to ponder Angry's paranoia about driving in Connecticut and think about how it couldn't even compare to how perposterous it is to drive in Boston. I hate driving in Boston. Have I ever told you that? I fucking HATE driving in Boston. Normally I like driving, or at least I used to when I drove all the time and never drove through Boston, but if there's one thing that is SURE to make me cry and scream and throw a temper tantrum it's driving in Boston. Yesterday I had to drive through Boston twice. On top of that I drove more today than I have in the past year and a half combined, and then some. And I'm driving this Dodge sedan that drives like a nightmare and it doesn't accelerate but the brakes are too responsive.

Driving home I was so tired I thought that I was going to fall asleep at the wheel and it didn't help that I didn't have my sunglasses and I was squinting into the sun for 4 hours. And there was an accident RIGHT in downtown Hartford and only one lane was open and that took forever to get through. Then there was tons of traffic on the Mass Pike and it was practically stopped for awhile. Then I fucked up and got on 93 SOUTH of Boston instead of getting on NORTH of Boston and had to drive through the central artery which now is a big ugly tunnel since the Big Dig and you can't see where you are and for some reason I find it really hard to stay in my lane in tunnels and I freak out and feel like there's nowhere to escape. (Angry's company is responsible for the Big Dig finally being finished. Sorry Angry, no offense or anything).

So I'd already driven some 8 hours when I called Tessa and she asked me to come to her apartment. Her apartment is on the other side of Boston (in Allston) and the one time I tried to drive there I got on Storrow Drive (which everyone in Boston will agree is a fucking nightmare... who the hell puts exits on the left?!) and found myself on an off ramp before I knew what hit me and then I was in the middle of MIT driving back and forth and I could see that I was driving OVER Storrow Drive, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to get back on it. It took me more than an hour to find her and in the end I had to call her from a Hess Station and tell her to come pick my ass up because I was sick of this shit. So tonight I said I didn't want to drive over there. I was scared of Storrow Drive, and I couldn't parallel park and what if my mom needed the car in the morning. But then she made the valid argument that for her it was double the distance to come and pick me up, and really, Tessa's so nice that you can't FORCE her to do anything when you know you're being an ass hole. So I wrote down the directions, studied them, read them several more times, double checked them, memorized what lane to be in at all times, and went out. Coming in to Storrow Drive on the freeway I saw a sign that said "Something Something Something Storrow Drive, Seek Alternate Rout", but I just thought there was a lot of traffic or something and that I would get through eventually. It took me 45 minutes to go 2 fucking exits and everyone was cutting me off which really pissed me off because it took 5 minutes to go a cars-length and they were just sticking their nose in in front of me and I wanted to be an asshole and not let them in, but I had nowhere to GO to block them and they just kept coming from all sides. They were having a free concert on the Esplanade next to the Charles river and they'd had the bright fucking idea of using the right lane of Storrow Drive (ie the through lane) as parking and all these people were coming and going to see some one hit wonder from the 60s who probably now are so old that they crap their pants on stage. And then when I finally DID get to the Copley Square exit, the SECOND FUCKING EXIT, after 45 minutes in this bullshit they had ALL OF STORROW DRIVE blocked off and I HAD to get off and just like the last time I knew where I was, but neither Tessa nor my parents knew how to get me to Tessa's house from there and my dad managed to get me back to Storrow Drive, but it was heading back home and I was crying anyway, and after all that headache and bullshit I just went back home and there I was with my head about to EXPLODE from anger and frustration and sadness and confusion and fatigue and stress (not all from the car, but that didn't help) and the only thing I had to do is bang away on the keyboard and write. Not that writing is not fun, but there are other things I would like to be doing on my last weekend night in the states.

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.