Now in our defense, Mird and I feel the lack of organizational and navigational skills may be genetic or something (which if proven true means it totally isn't our fault that we get lost so frequently and we suck at planning things). The way we figure it, we both lack these skills-- so that is 50% of our generation of the Smith Family which seems like a strong correlation. However, as far as I know, nobody has successfully isolated neither the organizational gene, nor the keen navigational one yet (and I am a biologist) so there is absolutely no proof to our claim. Anyhow, the point to all of this is that Mird and I did all the "planning" and it is somewhat of a huge miracle that this past weekend went off without a single hitch, but it totally did! Yes, everything went smashingly well and we had so much fun conquering state number 9!!! I guess our Fairy Godmother was watching out for us this time!
Speaking of Fairy Godmothers, the entire weekend really was quite Cinderella-ish! Magical that is. Not unlike Cinderella, we found ourselves transformed to the ball... only instead of Prince Charming's palace, we headed to Boston and instead of glass slippers, my fairy tale included death grip, torture chamber, fancy flip flops. Oh and of course we both threw in our best pair of trail shoes for a killer trail run. On. My. Birthday!
It is always extremely difficult to try to retell an adventure of this magnitude and do it justice; It's damn near impossible. I mean the story just never sounds as amazing as the adventure truly was. Despite this fact, I am going to try. Just remember, it was actually exponentially awesomer than this story lets on. So you should totally plan your very own crazy adventure soon. It is so good for your soul and if Mird and I can handle planning one, anybody can. And I do mean anyone!
Mird and Vern a couple event planners in the making!
Spectacle Island, Boston
This whole thing started because of Eddie. It's really his fault. I mean his name is in the title so you kinda knew he was somehow involved. If you don't see me often, you may be wondering "who is this Eddie guy? And what the hell happened to Jeff!?" Well, rest assured, Jeff and I are going strong, and the Eddie to which am referring is actually Ed Sheeran ( I referred to him as Eddie so it would Rhyme and also because it made me giggle out loud). Ever since I found myself on a late night, drive through the winding hills of Tennessee and I first heard the song "Thinking Out Loud" I have yearned to hear Ed in concert. If you have no idea who he is, shame on you and here is a picture for your reference. BTW...He is a British Pop Star known for his folk style, mellow tunes combined with occasional injections of rap style music. Much of his music sounds like love songs and his latest album has several culturally diverse songs too like "Barcelona" and "Galloway Girl". He really is pretty talented as musicians go. And his concert was out of this world AMAZING! Better than Taylor Swift.
Eddie
Right about now, you're probably wondering if you accidentally clicked the wrong blog link, or at the very least, you're wondering why in the world I am talking so much about Ed Sheeran on a running blog. I'll tell you why because with this 52 states challenge that we are working on we have to get creative in planning our adventures and we have to be very selective in the races we choose; Mird and I are both busy moms and time away from home is at a premium so wasting our time on some run of the mill 5K is simply not allowed. We go big or stay home (with our families). Therefore, we have declared a birthday tradition of running a cool race for each of our birthdays each year. This keeps us "on pace" to finish the 52 states by the time we are about 60. Well my desire to see Ed in concert led me to research where he was playing on my birthday this year. Boston! I shared this fact with Mird and I am not kidding you within five minutes she sent me a link to a super cool Boston Race on my birthday and more importantly on trails! And the rest as they say is history!
Now obviously Eddie is a ginger too just like Mird and this makes him much cooler than the average singer! And according to Mird, who knows all varieties of random ginger facts, he has the rarest combination of eye and hair color in the world (Red hair with Blue eyes). Anyhow, I am totally getting distracted so back to the fairy tale birthday weekend....
Once upon a time...
The End!
But wait...there's more...(Kara added this!)
Now the seed for the Boston trip was planted that day when Mird found the Island Run, but we still had a long way to go to end up in Boston on September 23rd in some fairytale story. We had to be economical both with time and money and we had to make sure it was still packed full of fun and adventure because otherwise why bother. We did a bunch of research and came up with a totally crazy, yet totally viable, option by which we would spend one singular night in Boston and accomplish seeing Ed in concert and the Island Run. During the course of the next few months I invited a few other people and our team grew to include not just Mird and I, but several other obviously awesome people.
Together we formed:
Team Boston Birthday Bashers:
Mark, Marissa, Courtney, Vern, Mird, Amy and Jen
I am not trying to sound dramatic, but the concert nearly killed me. Well my feet anyways. I wasn't kidding about the flip flops being torturous. They were nothing like Cinderella's glass slippers and if I had dropped one of them the last thing I would've wanted was someone bringing it back to me. Even if he was a handsome prince! Wearing them for three hours while dancing like an out- of-control Rockstar at the concert (oh wait I was an out of control Rockstar that night!) and then walking two miles in those shoes back to our hotel nearly kill me. I awoke the following morning with my mangled feet to head to the 5-mile trail run on Spectacle Island wondering how it would all go and if I would be able to finish. Well luckily it went just fine. I guess Fairy Godmother stepped in again because once I started running my feet felt fine and I even averaged an 8:30 pace and finished fifth in my age group. The trail was well maintained, hilly and totally kicked my butt.
After the run we partied our way back to Boston celebrating our success. Marissa won her age group and earned an impressive trophy and bragging rights. It is always fun to go to races with super fast people like her because it just makes you seem faster. Oh and when the song "You can find me in the club" came on the speakers the sisters pulled out our super secret, awesome dance moves and dazzled all the on lookers. I think it was similar to the dance scene in Cinderella, where everyone wondered from whence we had come and they were super jealous of our dancing talents and our running shoes.
As with all good fairytales, it ended all too soon and we found ourselves back on the plane to Detroit; but everyone really did live happily ever after!
State Number 9 Massachusetts
Spectacle Island 5 Mile Trail Run
Say "Zucchini Muffins!"
Until next time,Say "Zucchini Muffins!"
Vern Out
No comments:
Post a Comment