InnerTeub

It’s been crickets around here because I have no concrete news to tell; lots of wheels in motion, lots of stuff going on, lots of ins and outs, a few what-have-yous, etc.

I’ve been traveling, a lot. Like, so much that I got to an airport and had no idea where I was going, and briefly wondered if I was at the right airport (Dulles? DCA? Dulles? DCA? Oh shit, BWI???!) and then a few days later woke up and literally had no idea where I was for a few off-putting seconds. Some travel for work, some for racing, some for brothers getting legally married in Vegas while wearing a Slash costume, so: the usual.

Speaking of racing: Yeah, I thought I wasn’t going to that anymore, too. But then my friends needed another runner for their relay team, and then my husband broke his foot and had to bail on them, and then I found myself in Kentucky, at 3am, running alongside a highway with a headlamp on. (As you do). Considering that I bailed on the Army 10 miler because I didn’t want to do the training and thus was, you know, untrained, you can guess how I fared after 20+ miles in 24 hours. (Well, actually: surprisingly I felt awesome, which I think is a combo of lower mileage intervals [all my legs were 6ish miles long, not a full 10) being generally stronger overall [Crossfit for the win!] and, um, bourbon)

More seriously, it was The Bourbon Chase, which is a 200 mile relay race through the Bourbon distilleries in Kentucky. We started at Jim Beam and wound our way through the state, and can I just tell you that Kentucky is beautiful? It is beautiful. I loved every town we went through, and as I sat in park at the finish party in Lexington, I thought: “I get why people live here. This is great.” If there was any way I could convince Mike to live in the South, I’d seriously consider Kentucky, and I’m not even kidding. (The fact that I slept for [generously] three hours the whole weekend and was delirious from running and dehydration should in no way cause you to be dismissive of my opinion of this.])

See? Really pretty.

I feel very lucky to get to do all this travel, but at the same time I’m super pissed that I’m missing Fall. I waited through the worst D.C. summer on record (100 degree days for 30+ days, y’all – I’m not exaggerating when I tell you it suuuuuucked) to leave right as it gets nice.  It doubly sucks because by the time I’m done running around the globe and settled in, it’ll be (spoiler!) December in Minnesota  which is decidedly Not Fall. I hate being cold, and the heat is bad for my heart, so you’d think I would try to maximize this most perfect season of awesome temps, but apparently that plan seemed too easy, so… next year, I guess?

Anyway, that’s what I’m up to. Or some of it, anyway. A friend of mine once told me that she thought I lived my life as if I got extra credit points for complexity, and man, that has never been more true than now. (If you have suggestions as to where I can redeem those points, please use the comments section accordingly.)

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It started a few months ago, when I needed to take a package to the post office for mailing. It was awkwardly shaped – a rolled up canvas, about 5 feet long and round, weighing about 30 pounds. Normally I’d like Mike handle this, but he was out of town, it needed to get shipped, and I found myself staring at it in my living room, contemplating how I was going to get it down two flights of stairs, into a car, out of a car, down a city block, and into a post office.

I eventually managed tipping it on it’s side, cleaned it up to chest height, and hoisted it onto my shoulder. Sure, it was awkward, but I was able to get it out and gone and was able to check off that highly annoying “To Do” off the list.

I noticed it again, a month or so later, when I was taking the hard top off a Jeep Wrangler. The hard top comes off in two pieces, split down the middle, and Mike was on one side lifting it off, and I unsnapped my side, lifted it over head, stepped out of the jeep, and put it on the group. Mike was midstep to come help me, and then stopped, going “Oh. You um, I guess you’ve got it”

I keep having these moments, moments where I notice a strength that I have, strength I’ve been building at the gym and on the road and in all the hours when I think I’d rather be sleeping but instead I get up and go, get up and do. I have a general sense that I’d be the same person if I didn’t do these things, that I’d live the same life, experience the same world, but every now and again these little moments flare up in my mind and I think that I’m giving myself such a nice gift, that I’m able to navigate this world so much more easily than I’d be able to otherwise. It’s the exact same me, just a little bit more so.

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