5-14-2011

Mushroom season is almost over since the big blond variety are starting to come up, and they're the last kind of the year. That means pretty soon, my blog won't just be pictures of mushrooms and knives in the woods. I fully intend to hike just as much, but I'll probably post more pictures of nature stuff like snakes (posing with my new worst enemy "stinging nettle") and pretty butterflies. Until then, enjoy the few pictures left of my happy mushroom hunting face and the prized collections we bring home.

Other than mushroom hunting, we do a lot of strange and outdoorsy/athletic stuff that is sometimes hard to explain. Most recently, the focus has been on a lot of training for running. The real explanation for all of this is that I'm crazy. I get weird ideas in my head and then I obsess about them non-stop until I drive Nicole crazy. A while ago, Nicole had the bad sense to mention that if you run in organized races, a lot of them give away a t-shirt at the end as a prize for finishing. I didn't care if it was ugly, or how badly it fit...I then and there made a resolution to obtain such a t-shirt. So entirely motivated by the vision of a race shirt (and Nicole not wanting me to be unprepared and die), we've been training like crazy in order for me to be able participate in some sort of race. So today, Nicole wore her race-day flower earrings, I wore my trashy bandanna that I say is just for running/mushroom hunting (that really I just like wearing and will find more excuses to wear as the summer progresses), and drove out in the rain to find out just how much damage grilled cheese has done to my heart. We're running a 5K race! Running with a giant camera is a very hard and stupid thing to do, so sorry for the cellphone pictures. This is my prepared to run until I die face. Nicole made me start up in front where the actually good people line up (picture above...note the "pace bicycle"), because she used to run in high school and she's still super competitive. Taking even cell phone pictures while running a race is another hard and stupid thing to do, so you can just imagine how awesome it was running though the woods in the dark, around a marsh, and past a pond down a path lit up by glowing milk gallons. You can kind of see how the path looked in this picture I took of the path leading to the pavilion after I crossed the finish line. That's right, I crossed the finish line! And I didn't even do it on a stretcher. Nicole did too and just looked really happy and classy about it. I didn't flash photo the friends we ran with right after they finished because that's rude and I'm not married to them, but my friend Steve picks flowers when he runs. Now everyone says that they run to get to the finish line, but really I think they're trying to get to the pavilion. It had four tables full of all the things you aren't supposed to eat while you're training for a race like cookies and pizza so you could pig out immediately after said race. That's also where they kept the prizes that I wanted to steal, but Nicole threatened me and made me behave. Regardless, the race was a great success (mainly because I didn't die) and I got the glowing t-shirt that I had obsessed so long about.