Your clothes don’t have to match:

And you get to come home and warm up with the sunrise:

“So now she won’t call me back.”

“That’s ridiculous, but who cares.”

“I care.  It’s four days away.”

“I doubt she’s ignoring you.  And besides, she’s a great cook.  Let her do it all.”

“But then everyone’s going to do their own thing, and then we’ll end up with six kind of potatoes.”

“Okay.”

“Well what then?  An all-potato Thanksgiving.  What do you call that?”

“I call that Happy Thanksgiving to me!”

“Uggggghhhhh!”

So who wants a guest at their table this time next year?

We were in mile six of six. The sun was past setting and I was glad to be out with someone. Safety in numbers. We ran along, and for just a few moments that could have just as well been an hour, I listened to our feet hit the pavement. We were in a cadence, left right, left right. The sound was very settling. I heard our breath together, fighting through the cold air of the last mile. For a moment, I could have just closed my eyes and drifted off. It was so relaxing. That sounds like a really strange way to describe this, because we were running. It was hard work, no one wants to close their eyes and drift off during that. But for those few moments, I could have. That was how much peace surrounded that moment.

“We’re training for her first half marathon,” I seem to keep telling people. As if it is, yes, her first half marathon but it is taking two people to train for it. She is there, doing the work and me, I’m just there to answer questions. I’m the trouble shooter for a bad run, asking how much water she drank in the last three days, saying annoying things like “I can’t stretch for you, you have to do it yourself.” Her rolling her eyes and reminding me that there is no running law that says she can’t slap her coach. I’m not a coach, though. I’m just someone who wrote down numbers on a calendar three months ago and told her to follow it. I’m just the person that carries the water bottle along side and comes up with funny (only to me most of the time) jokes toward the end of a run. Or, if it’s like last night, I start reciting lyrics to early 90’s rap. You would not believe how inspirational Easy E can be.

What’s really surprised me about this whole process, though, is what it’s taught me. I’ve had to be positive at times when all I wanted to do was give up. I’ve had to bite my tongue at times when I’ve wanted to speak up. It’s a fine line between pushing and forcing when it comes to someone you love. But it’s nothing short of great when you see someone improving like she has. When you see a new distance reached, and the look on her face, stunned at the completion of ten miles. I hope she knows how that never goes away. It always feels good to cross a finish line. And I hope she knows that when all this training comes to an end, and we run that last run together, and she finishes her first half marathon, and two days later leaves to go home to her family, I’m really going to miss my running partner.

It would be really cool right now if I could put into words what it feels like to be the busiest person alive.  But, I cannot.  Mostly because that’s ignorant and selfish and JUST PLAIN WRONG.  There is at least one person as busy as me, and that’s probably you. 

And if it weren’t for the job and school and running and family and friends, I would have all kinds of time to sit here and tell you how I cooked this awesome Mexican casserole and how it was all kinds of wonderful and OMG, can you believe a casserole can be so good? but there’s just not time for that.  This is also probably a good time to repeat at how bad I am about getting back to emails.  I see them, I know they are there.  I do not reply promptly.  I am awful.   Okay, now that we got that out of the way, I would like to respond to one question in particular: how do you travel so much?

First, I’ll just say that travel is relative.  I drive an hour South of town and herd cattle all day and part of me calls that travel.  Then again, I haven’t been to Europe, in well, adulthood basically so in some ways, I don’t travel much at all.  It sort of makes me sad, but then I look at all I’ve seen over the last few years and think, well, maybe more Europe when I’m older, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, as Grandpa would say.  I’ll get there, and hopefully North, South, East and West, too.

In the meantime, I’ve had some pretty unforgettable travels and no matter how I try, I just can’t seem to stop.  Opportunity is opportunity, draw is draw.  I have learned to give in to both.

This giving in, however, doesn’t do much for a girl’s savings.  In fact, if I didn’t have all that automatic, behind-the-scenes stuff going on, I’d probably be trying to sell my liver on eBay right now, just for a bus ticket to Poughkeepsie.  Okay, maybe not.  It is cold in New York this time of year.  Instead, I have to find many a cheap way to go where I want to go without losing any internal organs.

This is why I have to tell you about this site:  FareCompare.com and, possibly more importantly, it’s blog written by Rick Seaney.  Right about now I think Rick Seaney is wondering who on Earth I am and what I think I know about travel.   Well, not as much as him but I know good stuff when I see it.  I’ve been using the site for a few months now, because not only do I like cheap things I like when someone says “hey, stupid, this is as good as it’s gonna get.  Buy now!”  And it’s right in my email box, like a message from beyond.  Or, you know, from the airlines.  Same thing.

One of Mr. Seaney’s latest posts, though, is what really made me want to share.  Because here’s my first tip:  be informed.   When you decide you want to bake cookies for the first time, do you not follow a recipe?  It’s going to be important that you use four teaspoons of salt rather than four cups (I speak from seventh grade experience, y’all).   I really think the same goes for travel, whether you have money to burn or not.  Know what you expect ahead of time, and then figure out how to get there.

A good example of this was my September trip to Mexico.  Now I’ll just remind everyone right here and now that my air travel for this trip was free.  Because I have a really nice friend who for whatever insane reason wanted me around.  The thing was, neither of us really had money for some kind of five-star elaborate stay.  So, once we picked our destination (read: once she gave in to my pleads for the beach before I had to threaten to steal her kitten and hold it hostage over a flushing toilet until the words “Playa del Carmen” came out of her mouth) we researched.  And we researched and we asked around and asked around some more.  Then, when we found where we wanted to stay, at a small family-owned hotel with immaculate internet reviews, we dialed up Mexico.  It was low season, and we were last-minute travelers.  Asking for a room cheaper than $67 per night seems pretty bold, right? Well it also seems smart.  And it was.   And do you know we paid  $47 per night for a twin bed “suite” with free coffee, free internet, daily maid service, turn down service*, and free breakfast?  ‘Cause we did.  Not to mention some of the most friendly, incredible people I’ve ever shared a pool and a six pack of Sol with.  My point here, other than to make good friends with your hosts, is that researching and asking is worth the risk. 

The travel/hospitality industry is a place where the worst answer could only be “no” and that’s not really likely.   The more informed you are about trends in the place you’d like to visit, the better off you’ll be.

While I could go on and on forever, I know for every “how do you travel so much” question I get there are a lot more people out there that have answers.   So what are your best travel tips?   Do you get up at 2:00 in the morning to search for airfare?   Do you scour the Internet for unknown hotels and hostels and coupons for 2 for 1 dinners?   And, just hypothetically, if a girl were to sell some kind of internal organ in exchange for air miles, about how many could she get?  

Let’s hear it.

_________

* 28 years and I still do not understand turn down service.

Here I was all set to write a bogus piece about Britain’s quest for a five-word slogan and then it was deleted. I think it’s been ten years since I blamed a computer for deleting something. But as I restarted, and logged in, and tried to remember what I’d written before the world went dark, I came to the conclusion that it was probably better that the bogus post was gone forever, anyway. It wasn’t what’s really on my mind, and I was just forcing some words where there should have been others. Or, at the most, no words at all.

I ended last week in a slump, and I haven’t felt much like talking about it since. If someone were going to put five words to my attitude over the last three days, it would probably be something like “Get in a good mood” (circa Say Anything, of course) because for reasons that are relatively not good, I have been a little down. It goes into that category of “Things That Happen In Life That Are Downers But Not Really a Big Deal Compared to the Rest of the Problems in the World.” Are you familiar with this category? It’s also known as A Bad Day. Enough with the defining, though. A procrastinator like me could go on with that forever, I think.

At the beginning of last week, I found out a person I’d cared about very much in the past and still remain friends with today is engaged. He and I, we were not right for each other. We both knew this, it wasn’t a secret. Learning the news of the engagement wasn’t that kind of hurt, the Why Not Me? hurt. It was just that dull, distant hurt you’d rather not deal with. It was the kind of hurt where you want to just take your heart out of your chest and hold it at arm’s length for a few minutes, until you get used to the idea. Because along with getting used to the idea comes rationale that you know is in you, somewhere. It’s just not the first reaction, because seeing someone you cared about like that move on is simple and not, all at once. And I just wanted to look away, which I couldn’t. It was too late, it was already in my head.

Something like this is just one of those things that made everything else seem a little more. Work was harder, getting excited about it was almost impossible. The five words that came to mind: “Go for a run, stupid.” This has long been my solution to getting my head out of a slump, and the aches and pains out of my heart. (Haven’t I told you about the time I wore out the belt on a treadmill after a break up?) Just make your heart beat faster, that feeling will go away. Sure, there are other ways to deal with it. Ben and Jerry, or nights out with friends, drinking. But before you know it, you’re three bars into “I Put a Spell on You” at a karaoke bar in the Mall of America and you realize wow, I do not feel better. Trust me on this one.

The run helped, like I thought it would. The miles don’t lie; five miles takes what it takes no matter who’s engaged, no matter who’s not right. A mile is the same length it has always been, there’s no way around it. In this case, that’s a good thing, because five miles was what I needed to put everything back into place. And then I went home, rearranged the furniture, cleaned out a closet and painted the bathroom. Maybe next week my high school boyfriend will start having kids and I’ll run a 6:00 mile, or I’ll finally have the motivation to reseal all the windows.

I should be running out the door in ten minutes, to meet a friend and go to a hockey game.   I should be ready, but my hair is still wet, and I don’t know what shoes I’m going to wear yet.  I should be getting my butt in gear, but I have to write this first.

New runners are special people.  Sort of like newborns, not yet polluted by the realities of the world.   For them, almost any run can be great.  Any new speed or new distance is a celebration.   You’re elated by doing things you’d never imagined doing before.  It is a fantastic feeling, until the day it doesn’t happen.

And you, new runner, with all your determination and enthusiasm, I want you to know that IT’S OKAY.  It is okay to go out there, start feeling good, get two miles in and feel like crap.   It is okay to walk the hills, to stop and drink water and to rest.  It is okay to let people pass,  to feel less than 100% and to let the minutes slog by.   It is okay.   There will be days when you hate it, and that’s okay.  There will be days you do it for no other reason than to guiltlessly eat those six cookies sitting on your kitchen counter.   There will be days when you count every step, and feel every mile.   You will feel sick or dehydrated or just really, really mad.  You will wonder why you ever started.   It’s okay.

Don’t apologize.  Don’t apologize to you, to me, to anyone that had to wait for you at the finish.  There is no reason for it.  And those people, who we don’t know, they understand anyway.   You were out there, and you had a bad day.   You need to know that all of this is okay.  You need to know that this runner, the one hanging with you,  she understands.  She has been there, and she’ll be there with you, too.

Considering we’re getting frighteningly close to Winter and it’s been in the 70’s (F) here in Colorado this week, I’m sort of hesitant to call anything Fall right now.  I might jinx it and heck, if it’s 70 degrees, we’re going to go ahead and call it Late Summer.  I’m going to keep running around in my flip flops and getting a tan line when I go for my afternoon run and we’ll all just pretend everything is okay for a minute.   It will soon change, like next-week soon, but we’re not going to think about it right now.

It has been a particularly beautiful Fall, if you ask me.  Some say it’s because of the eight weeks of blizzards we had last Winter, providing the ample precipitation for healthy trees and all.   I’m going to say it’s because Colorado knows it almost ruined me forever last year and it’s desperately trying to woo me back into it’s charms.  

It’s working, pretty much anyway.  And you can tell if you’re in the car with me because I’m all ooohing and aaahhhing at all the scenery and pretty much driving you nuts because yes, dear, that is a tree.   Special.   That doesn’t bother me, though- I’ll take it for what it’s worth.  ALL it’s worth.  And, well, we all know by now how much I like my little tales from the road.

In fact, if you look over to that sidebar to the right (yes, even those of you using Internet Explorer should see that now.  Yay!  Yippee!  I can do something that works! (please let me know if it’s not for you)) then in the ‘Pages’ section you should see a link that says “My Windshield on the World.”  This page will have links to all the posts I’ve done like this, and hope to continue to do.

Anyway, delayed no more, Fall Windshields.

 This was taken up high (about 10,000 ft.) near the beginning of the season.

This was taken on I-25.  It’s really nothing evident of Fall but it’s a Jeep and the tire cover says ‘Life Is Good’ and what more do we really need?  (Also,  Jeep and the tire cover are very “Colorado-y” for those of you who may not realize how important it is for many Coloradans to express their “I am Mountain Man I Conquer Big Fourteener and Other Rugged Terrain” personalities by way of their vehicle.)

This shot is just coming into a neighborhood where the streets are tree-lined and people come out and talk over fences and pretty much do all the magical, enchanting things that are not so common in the world today.  (i.e. my own little Mayberry)

This, as we know by now, is just my obligatory rearview shot.

Sometimes it is perfectly okay to look back.

To those of you just beginning to enjoy the weather and those of you digging in your heels as hard as you can, like me, I hope you’ve taken some time to enjoy the season.

If not, here’s one more chance to stop, and take it all in.