Beautiful day in Western NY.  I've had breakfast and picked up my race packet for tomorrow.  I'm about a mile north of the race start and I think I'll just jog there for a warm-up rather than try to drive and find a place to park.  My hotel is on the race route and if the roads are closed I may not be able to drive back after the race anyway.  The race does 2 loops that are not exactly the same, but share a lot of the same roads.  The first loop passes my hotel at 5.5 miles.  I stop at the end of the first loop (thank goodness) but the marathon continues on and passes my hotel again at the 25 mile mark.  I imagine the road by my hotel will be closed for quite a while.

I hope I can handle a mile warm-up and cool-down. 

I was born in Buffalo but my family moved 20 miles north closer to Niagara Falls when I was 6.  I left for college at 18 and never really lived here again, so I don't know my way around that good.  I did a search for restaurants last night and was surprised to see that the Anchor Bar was 3 tenths of a mile away from my hotel.  That is the first place that served chicken wings as a snack at the bar (or at least they get the credit for being the first.)  And it is the reason for the name Buffalo Wings.  So I went there and fulfilled a dream of having wings there.  I can die a happy man now,  They were very good wings but I ate way too much yesterday,  I better be careful today or I'll be getting sick out on the course tomorrow.

Now I am off to see my brother and be the first of our family to call him grandpa in person.  My (now sad) older sister is now the only one of us without grandkids. 

Wow, rather slow in here today.  Happy middle of the Memorial Day weekend.

I snuck out yesterday so we could have a 4 day weekend in Maine, doing opening stuff.  Most of which yesterday involve me finding out that I had not done a good enough job draining the water last fall and dealing with the fallout.  I fixed the obvious leak, which led to finding the less obvious one on the next attempt.  I ended up cutting out the entire length of copper and we now have a nice leakfree section of PEK tubing that connects nicely with compression fittings and NOT solder.

went out for a little run this morning along the lake.  Garmin was not behaving--first it took forever to find satellites and then I got the low battery message.  after about a mile, it shut off.    i'll have to go back to check old runs, but about 2.5 miles at unknown pace.

Hope everyone else is having fun.

Arrgh, just typed out a long chatty note and lost it.  The home computer is ailing and jumps all over, trashing as it goes.

And, I was reiterating a lot of what I had thought I posted yesterday, which also didn't make it.

Please know I had lots to say to dave, so know I am and will be thinking of you.

sent individual shout outs to Nancy, Tammy,(and David), and Leslie (really hope she is having fun.)

Commiserated with tselbs about the temp change;

And with Kevin as to the repairs, also advised it was ok to put on the Sox game, but that was a while ago and it's not looking so sure right now.  I'm getting in touch with my inner Cub fan these days.....

tet, explained how my family called me Calamity Jane when I was little for all my mishaps

told you all way too much about my long run this am.  It was 21 miles, I'm happy and we treated ourselves to frozen yoghurt after grocery shopping so now I'm REALLY happy (the free taste samples are so good so good so good).

asked the fashionistas and Ribs what to do: planned on wearing red whie and blue at the 5K on Memorial day but the race bib, which I picked up today, is hot pink with black numbers.  Advice?

Ah, kevin, nevermind.

Look who made it to Buffalo:

Look who made it to Buffalo:

 

Barely!  Man, that's a long drive!  I guess I didn't realize the expo closed at 4:00...which wouldn't be so bad because they have a packet pickup on race morning...but to get your time slot for the pasta dinner, you have to be there by 4:00!  So...when we left the motel, this morning, just outside of Gary Indiana, our GPS said we would arrive at 3:32...well, to make a long story short, we made it to the expo with 5 minutes to spare.  I was stressed the whole way.

But, we did make it...by the way...did I ever mention that Ryan decided to come along and run the half...that's why it's "we" instead of "I".   Anyway...we met Dave at the pasta dinner and had fun visiting.  Dave is a very nice guy, and I guess I never realized he had done so many races in so many different places.

Dave also saw what a bonehead I can be.   I had received both his and IBUB's cell phone numbers and I somehow mixed them up.  So, when I thought I was texting IBUB to see if he could join us for dinner...Dave received it.  Then, after dinner, when I tried to call DW, I accidentally, dialed Dave again...but I thought I had accidentally called IBUB and when Dave called to see if I had called him I thought I was talking to IBUB. So...Dave thinks I'm a dope and IBUB thinks I'm a snob for not trying to contact him.  Did anybody follow that?  Now everybody knows I'm a dope.

Congratulations to David!  Great race!

Amy--I have lost a few posts after spending a lot of time on them as well.  You can never rewrite them the same as you did the first time, for some reason.

Okay--I gotta get my stuff ready for the morning and get to bed.  See ya!

By the way...I wish I had known it was going to be so cold out here...

Greetings from Billings, Montana. We arrived at 4pm Mtn time. I thought I would have time to get my last long run in, but it is too blasted hot here, plus there is no wind at all, what is up with that? Maybe tomorrow. We did spend an hour on the fitness machines though. I found a place online called Sam and Louie's New York Pizzeria that had good looking salads on the menu. The Cobb salad was absolutely wonderful and MrStarr had the grilled chicken salad. I think we got our quota of veggies. This morning the scale showed that I hit 25 pounds lost so I guess I will keep on the plan until the day before the race. I can tell the difference in altitude, with a gain of 1533 feet today. I feel kind of dizzy, so it is a good thing I didn't run outside.  G'night everyone and fleet feet to all the racers tomorrow.