Ted and me before the race

I’m sitting in my warm house now with a pleasant runner’s high, back from this year’s half marathon. It turned out far better than I expected; better weather, I ran better than I expected – fastest one of my last three years, and my knees didn’t hurt.

Learning to run barefoot paid off! Running in my cross country racing flats worked perfectly.

Andrew and Audrey

Andrew’s last first day of school. Audrey has a few more. This year school starts early again. They get to take the red bus in the background when I work from home.

Armadillo burrow

This is the hole that the same armadillo keeps burrowing under our backyard palm trees every few months. This has been going on for two years now. I fill in the hole, and he burrows it out again a couple months later. Got any ideas how to stop him from burrowing here, short of calling a professional pest remover?

Cottonmouth by our front door

Andrew walked out the front door today and nearly stepped on this guy. At first we thought it was a water snake, but then he opened his mouth and showed us his two fangs. Then we thought it was a copperhead, but he escaped into the bushes and rattled. And we could see his tail rattling in there, too. But then he escaped entirely, and we couldn’t figure out where he went. So we’ll be checking out the window first whenever we go out our front door for the next few days!

[We originally concluded it was a rattlesnake, but someone left a comment on this photo on Flickr.com saying it was a cottonmouth. He was right. It's a cottonmouth. This picture on National Geographic looks exactly like what this snake did when he saw us.]

Greg and I waiting for the start

This morning my friend, Greg, and I did the “Enter the Food Chain 1k Swim” with about 75 others at Lake Cane (and one turtle that I almost bumped into half way across). Lots of fun. Everyone who completes their first lake crossing gets to sign Lucky’s wall and gets a patch and bumper sticker. And they complete the first leg toward the 100k Club. There’s even a Wikipedia article about the swim. Here’s a short video of the start.

Lucky is just a nice guy who opens his boat dock every morning for a group of swimmers. If that wasn’t enough, he provides a patch and bumper sticker to every new successful lake crosser. He’s a generous guy.

I grew up doing lake swims at the family lake in Wisconsin (which is about as far across, at its widest, as Lake Cane), but this had to be the funnest one. And since Greg and I are getting ready for a triathlon we threw in a bike ride and run when we got home. That’s what I call a good Saturday morning!

Ted, Ben, me

I did the IOA 5k again this year and beat my time from last year. That’s always a good thing. Campus Crusade for Christ fielded a team of about 400! We had the biggest team in Orlando, won the best t-shirt design award, and our race director, Lorraine Hardaway, won best race director award. 11,000 people participated in the event in downtown Orlando, so our large group didn’t even seem so large. Friends who walked said they crossed the starting line after I had already finished the race!

Running with coworkers beats a Christmas party.

OUC Half Marathon Finisher’s Medal

Last Tuesday, at the end of four months of training for a half marathon, I pulled my hamstring. It was on a track at the middle school a mile and half away from home at night in, what is for Florida, cold weather (55 F). My walk/hobble home was very cold, but even more disappointing was the realization that the training may have resulted in not being able to run the race. My real reason for doing this race was to stay in shape, so I had actually already accomplished my most important goal. But I still really wanted to run that race!

The pain went away by Wednesday night, but by Friday night I was still not sure what would happen if I tried running on it again, much less running hard.

This morning I found out; my leg worked. In fact, after six miles of running easy I realized it wasn’t going to blow out on me, so I ran the rest of the race hard. It was fun passing all those people who had passed me earlier in the race! Finished in 1:43. Good enough for me this year with enough padding to shoot for beating it next year.

My friend, Ted, beat me this year by almost a mile.

Night Launch of Endeavor

On my blurry camera phone the launching space shuttle, Endeavor, and the full moon looked pretty similar, but in real life it was a spectacular site. This is one of the benefits of living in Orlando for sure.

If you click this photo you can see two more photos of the shuttle launching (lower right corner of page, click “next photo”).

At the Osteen Diner

Lunch today was at Osteen Diner with my friend, Dave. We got there on our motorcycles on a very warm Florida November day. Lunch was good. Travel was better. Dave let me ride his Harley Davidson back home, a bike twice the size of mine. Fun.

But here’s my observation on EVERYONE who commented about my jery duty. No one wants to do it, and everyone seemed to have an angle for getting out of it. As I went through the process myself, though, it developed more into an act of God. That is, responding truthfully to each stage of questioning resulted in the outcome I now must live with (being seated on a jery). Had I put an angle on it, I may have found an excuse, but I couldn’t do it with a clear conscience.

So now my American Government class will become more than just book knowledge.