The adventure-packed weekend

There are only two types of weekends that make me actually look forward to Monday:

1. When I'm totally (completely) bored all weekend - which never happens or
2. When I'm totally (completely) wiped out.

This weekend was a case of #2. Both mornings we were up around 6 am getting ready for Big Adventure.

Saturday we met up with my Aunt L and Uncle T, and our oldtime friend KA, for a trip out to Mount St. Helens - an active volcano about 3 hrs drive away. I'm pretty oblivious, so it didn't occur to me that when it blew its top off in 1980 it may have taken some of the surrounding terrain with it - it turns out it did. It's like the desert out there - things are only beginning to grow back. We were sort of shocked and horrified by the whole thing actually. Particularly when they described to us what happened that day in 1980. It makes a person want to stay close to their car (and indeed we could still see it venting through our binoculars).

Something that freaked us out nearly as much as the volcano itself was a display they had set up at the observatory - a white-faced mannequin with a video image projected onto it of a ranger talking. Freaky! It looked quite real. It was freaky because 1. the video projection was slightly off-center and 2. her eyes were wandering, and when they fell on you it looked like she was looking right at you - it made us all a little jumpy.



We had loads of fun hanging out with T&L and KA and stopping at all the gift shops and observatories that are there for us tourists to take advantage of. There are millions of them (it seems)! I can imagine that once the summer gets rolling it'll become quite a hopping scene.

On Sunday we got up early yet again for the Beat the Bridge 8K here in Seattle, where runners try to get over the Eastlake Bridge before they raise it and block people from getting through (at which point they throw a little party for ten minutes and then put it back down). To beat the bridge, you have to do 10 min/mile for the first two miles AND shove your way through a crowd of 8,000 people.

And guess what! We made it... with 10 seconds to spare. In fact, the countdown started right as we were running over the bridge (whoa!).

Afterwards, I nearly threw up. Then we had to walk for a mile, and jog very slowly for the next mile to recover from the huge effort it took to beat that dang bridge. We ended up averaging only about 11 min/mile but I consider that an improvement over the half-marathon so I was pretty excited.

To celebrate, we went out for breakfast with some of our fellow runners and then headed out to a animal shelter event to look at dogs. We found a few dogs we liked, but as we were hemming and hawing about it they got snatched up right under our very noses. Maybe next time...

Now, after a nice 3 hr nap I am feeling ready for something a little more relaxing... like some tea and a movie. Or maybe I'll skip the movie, it might be too much.