Weekends away!

I must start by saying we have had just gorgeous weather for the past week or so...sandal weather. My feet are free, once again, for the season. It has been a bit of time since my last update and I'd like to say it's because I'm so overwhelmingly busy, but that can't be right...although I'm beginning to understand how other couples in our cohort have every weekend until 2009 booked, as we've spent the last month's weekends either out of town or 'busy.'

Our first weekend out of town was to Washington for a biking loop that took a group of nine of us by bike (and two in our super support vehicle) from north of Seattle to the northern part of the peninsula and back around by way of Whidbey Island (partially by ferries-3 to be exact). We spent a lovely and relaxing Cinco de Mayo sipping margaritas by the fire and soaking our sore muscles in the hot tub after our first day of riding. The Peninsula offered beautiful terrain, tainted perhaps only by the uphills, which had me staring at the asphalt, so as to not watch the peak of the hill not getting any closer. The second day we had some rain and more hills. By the time we were entering recognizable territory I was feeling emotionally and physically drained. So I stopped. I had clocked 86 miles over two days. Some of our group went on about 10 more miles, I however, had a beer. It's fun to watch the miles accumulate but my bike computer also keeps track of statistics besides distance which can be both helpful and damning; my average speed for the entire trip was 14.6 mph (no doubt severely skewed by the high speed of 37.8 mph -on our longest downhill and the 3.5 mph I achieved while walking my bike up two of the more severe hills). All in all it was both challenging and fun with the low points being (1) realizing I was always the furthest behind, (2) my right knee hurting through half of day 1 and all of day 2; and the high points being (1) hanging out with my friends (er...watching them streak by me), (2) riding 86 miles in one go.

This past weekend we popped out to Chicago to be at the wedding of two of our good friends from DC. It was a bit of a whirlwind tour with my memory being dominated by our time on public transportation (or trying to find it...it's underground you see...). Actually, we were feeling pretty happy about our use of public transportation this weekend. We walked out our front door and about a mile to the light rail and between two trains arrived at the airport in about 45 minutes. Upon arriving in Chicago we hopped the "ell" and made many attempts to arrive at the station we had predetermined to be the one closest to the hostel we were staying at, but by some awful design of rail construction work were forced to make other plans, forgoing the transfer between trains in favor of a taxi (and instead of stopping at the hostel first, going straight to the dual bachelor and bachelorette party in downtown). The hostel we stayed at was about a mile from the wedding spot which was on the periphery of the Lincoln Park Zoo (where we spent most of the following day). I won't go into great detail about how we spent our time (meerkats and marmosets, oh my), but I will note that we were pathetically "Pacific Northwesters" when we set out for a light breakfast and coffee the next day. We bypassed two major coffee chains looking for something local. Some 7 or 8 blocks past the second one I mentioned that there may not be as strong of coffee tradition here...but we did, eventually, find a nice local cafe, which also served coffee.