The "Holidays"

I drove from my usual base of operations in CA to Portland yesterday to spend Christmas with the middle of my three younger brothers. I've never been here before, and it was my first time doing the drive.

Google told me the drive should take 10 hours. I did it in 9. Partially due to the pace I kept. Mostly due to my making one and only one stop.

I grew up doing long drives. I know that time spent sitting in a McDonald's along the interstate is time added to your total travel time. So if you want the driving to stop, get moving.

And one of the keys to keeping mobile is managing one's hydration. Since I haven't mastered the art of peeing while driving, "gotta go" means gotta stop. So I moderate my fluid intake until I have about 1/4 of a tank of gas left, and then I pound the water. It works.

But I'm not such a hardened veteran that I'm beyond learning new things. On this trip I discovered that it's very difficult to feed one's self a meatball sub while driving 80 MPH without making a mess. Not good road food. I spread the paper in which it came across my entire lap. That worked. But I discovered, upon finishing, that I had no napkins. And sauce all over my hands. I also discovered that 90% of the melted cheese had stuck to the paper, and not my sandwich. Seems cheese sticks to paper betther than it sticks to marinara sauce. I can't be the first person to have discovered this.

I saw a double rainbow. I tried to take a picture of it, but I was driving and it was my camera phone.



Mt. Shasta looks cool. I want to play on it. But not in December.

On Friday before I left I did 90 minutes on the erg, plus and extra 750 to make sure I passed th 200,000m mark for the holiday challenge. It was one of my training goals, and I met it. I don't know whether or when I'll get some exercise here.

It feels odd to be apart from K at Christmas. But we'll be togehter in SF for New Year's.