This morning on my run, I decided to do a little tango with the pavement. I was an hour and seventeen minutes into an hour and twenty minute run and blamo! I tripped on some uneven sidewalk and managed to scrape my upper body to shreds.
Then I started to do a baby cry where I just moan for attention, but soon realized I was alone and no one was going to give me any sympathy. So I picked my muddied bloody bod off the ground and went home. The most ridiculous part of the whole ordeal was that my first thought was how thrilled I was that I didn’t skin my knees so I could do my run on Saturday. That’s addiction.
When I got home I sent Craig to CVS to buy out the band-aid section and lots of hydrogen peroxide. Being the nice Nebraskan that he is, he also bought me a stuffed animal duck so I would have a furry friend to appease me while he tortured me with disinfectant. I am not that fantastic with blood and grime. In fact, I almost lost my cookies just looking at my own elbow. And that’s why I love band-aids so much. Because underneath can be a world of road burn, but I can’t see a darn thing.
My bandaged elbows. Not going to help my arm wrestling career, but I should be fine for my run tomorrow.
It’s official. I’m obsessed with cross country skiing. I’m thinking of making a late bid for the US cross country team for the Vancouver Olympics. Sure sure, I may be a novice but I think I have a lot of heart. Plus if you just position those things straight downhill and tuck in your limbs, you can just fly towards the finish line! Trick is to have no common sense, so I am a shoo-in.
After two days of cross country skiing, or XC skiing as the cool kids say, it’s safe to say that I’m still terrible but a big fan of the sport. I cut my teeth at Grafton Ponds, where some really nice former Peace Corps folks rented me gear and assured me I would survive. At first I looked like a middle-aged speed walker with fiberglass strapped to my feet, but I slowly got the hang of it when some seven-year-old yelled “glide!” as I hobbled past them. Yes, glide, that’s the ticket! Soon I was soaring down hills and doing that awkward skating move like I was born with skis on. I was feeling really confident until some tweenage boy out of a Norman Rockwell painting sailed on past with his hands behind his back and no poles. Little brat. He killed my belief that I was a protégé simply waiting to be discovered by Pete Vordenberg (he’s the head coach for the USA cross country team of course).
Luckily, when my morale plummeted, all I had to do was take a look at Craig, the football star who had never been on skis before. When he fell, he did about three summersaults down the hill, crossed his skis, and nearly hit a tree. It did wonders for my self confidence!
Despite the fact that we suck, we both really love the sport and spent today gliding along in Woodstock, Vermont, which along with Grafton, is the prettiest town in these here parts, and perhaps on planet earth.
Cross country skis are like rockets! I was flying down hills at the speed of sound!
The town of Grafton in the snow. My obsession with this postcard town cannot be explained. I'm like a city kid who faints every time a stranger says hello to me. Why would they talk to me? I bet they're not even packing heat. It's amazing!
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