Frolicking in the tulips

This is the current scene up in Skagit Valley:

I got a chance to go frolic in the tulips yesterday and it was well worth the drive. I went last year, on a busy sunny weekend day only to find that there were no tulips and just lots of stinky cars. Not so this year. We found this amazing field with vibrant rows of flowers, which we practically had to ourselves due to the fact that it was a Wednesday (god, I love my life).

My only question is this, these flowers are in full bloom, huge fields of them. They even have a Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. But, these flowers are clearly in the later stages of their life. Are they here just for our viewing pleasure? Do they not get harvested and sold? If so, why hasn't that happened yet? If not, do they just sit there until they die?

I think I need to read a book about the secret underworld of the flower business called Flower Confidential to get the answers I need!

What a weekend!

So this past weekend I did several things, went to Nashville, stayed in a hostel, ran a full marathon on a 90 degree day, saw Dave Matthews Band, flew home.

About Nashville: Nashville was cool, I mean, it was hot, but its a fun city. It was different than I expecting. I went to the honky tonks, sure but I thought it would be more country than it was. Was not expecting such a big downtown, or such a vibrant college scene or such beautiful amenities like Centennial Park. I thought it would feel a little more Southern that it did. I didn't even get a chance to eat any grits or collard greens or fried okra. I did have great pizza though!

About the hostel: It was fantastic. I have never really stayed in a hostel before so I had no idea what to expect, I just thought it would be a cheap place to lay my head each night but it was so much more than that. It was cleaner than I thought, the staff were great and the people I met were so much fun, for the most part. I stayed in an all girls room with two cute teenagers and one of their mom's. The teens were doing the half marathon and they were adorable, and had such a cool mom too. I met an Australian guy traveling for several months, a couple of too cool for school Danes, another Australian in Music City hoping to break into the music scene by singing in local competitions, two German girls on vacation from their banking jobs in New York, a few Americans just tooling around the country, and one American guy who came to Nashville to visit and ended up staying for three months and is now trying to develop his southern accent. It was great because it was an instant group of friends and travel buddies.

About the marathon: It was hot hot hot hot. There was a reader board at a bank near the start, it read 84 at 7:00am and it only got hotter from there. The problem was that there was almost no shade out on the course so there was just the pounding, unrelenting sun. Did not make for a pleasant day. I started out next to the 4 hour 15 minute pacer, yeah right. They passed me within the first mile, then the 4:30 group passed, then the 5:00 passed me. I knew within the first two miles that it was going to be a brutal day. I ended up walking the majority of the race. I had some serious doubts about mile 6 or 7 when I was already dying and nauseous. The half marathoners started out on the same course as the full and I had more than a few thoughts of just peeling off at mile 11 with them and calling it quits, but I stuck it out, mostly thanks to a Team in Training coach that helped me through. And I am really proud of myself for sticking with it. The half way mark took forever to come. I kept on thinking, I am not even half way yet. When the halfers went on their merry way the course became a lot lonelier, and a lot hotter. We did an out and back with no shade, no spectators, and just a lot of sun and heat, some of which was along the banks of a river that I just wanted to stop and swim in. At this point almost everyone was brought to a walk, even some fast looking, experienced marathoners, at least I was not alone in my suffering. When we finally finished that out and back we ran past the damn finish line, on our way to another out and back. I hate that! Why do races do that? I then saw my Team coach again and she remembered me and was proud that I stuck with it. At this point I was just trying to take it one mile at a time, figuring that I just wanted to survive this thing. All the while hearing ambulances coming and going, seeing people being pulled off the course and just feeling like it was a death march of sorts. The out and back was brutal because on the way out we saw the 25 mile marker but we knew we had several miles to go before getting back to that spot. Around the park we went and finally headed back to the finish. 5 hours and 46 minutes later I crossed that damn finish line. I felt great about my effort, despite the fact that it was my slowest marathon in years. I had my medal and my flip flops and was happy. At each aid station I had grabbed a chunk of ice to rub over myself, the result of which is a huge sunburn that hurts more than my tired legs.

About DMB: So, I managed to catch a free ride back to the hostel, took a cold shower, ate some easy mac and was then picked up by my friends going to the show. We hung out at a friend's house who was not going to the show and offered to drop us off and pick us back up from the show, awesome!!!! No more walking for me! They played in a football stadium on Vanderbilt campus and it was a great venue, so much energy, which reflected in the show. Jason Mraz opened and he walked out and I commented that he looked a bit tired. He played a rocking few songs and then gave a shout out to all the marathoners in the house, for which I yelled and screamed and held out my medal I was still wearing. He then told us that yes, in fact he ran his very first ever half marathon that morning. I could have run with Jason Mraz, if I had only known!!! DMB came on stage and I was so excited. They played a high energy show, with a few new songs I had never heard before and some old songs that they haven't played in about a dozen years. I love the feeling that you get when you would not prefer to be anywhere else in the world.

After the show I was ravenous, as were the people I was with. We got picked up and ordered some pizzas. Let me tell you, that pizza was he best pizza I have ever had. So we hung out for a bit, they dropped me back off at my hostel about 2:00 or so. There were people hanging out and my airport shuttle was coming to pick me up in mere hours. So I decided it would be better just to stay up rather than to try and get one hour of sleep. That is what I did, stayed up all night after running a hot marathon and going to a show. By the time I got on the plane I was virtually delirious, I passed out on the plane, don't even remember any of it.

I ended up landing in Seattle and getting home around 1:00 and fell right asleep, slept for about 6 hours, went over to a friend's for a cupcake and a meeting about a relay we are running, then back home and fell asleep at about 9:00 and slept for 11 hours!

Talk about a weekend warrior!!

P.S. I just had cheesecake for breakfast, I love running!

One More Reason to Love Obama and My Life

I have always maintained that the worst part of getting laid off was the lack of health insurance. I of course was offered Cobra, but at an insane rate, something that any unemployed person would not be able to afford.

I got a mysterious package in the mail yesterday, looked like junk mail from some insurance company. But it was a notice from my Cobra company! Because of the newly enacted stimulus plan I now get the option to re-enroll at only 35% of the cost!

I now can break something without worry of paying through the nose! I might just go run some trails today, or next week after my next marathon!

Thank you Mr. Obama!

Not OK

I just found my first gray hair. Not OK!

Note to Self

Note to self: Do not run 20 miles, a half marathon and a stair climb and then 23 miles in the weeks preceding a 20 mile race.

Note to Self: Do not eat a ginormous plate of Mexican food the night before a 20 mile race.

Note to Self: When you have the chance to use the porto potty at the start of a race, use it, even if it means starting a little bit late.

Lessons learned this weekend. I just finished the Birch Bay International Road Race and it sucked! My legs just did not want to run, they were ok with walking and my gut felt like there was a brick in it. The first half was great, was steady, at a good comfortable pace and then I broke my stride going up a hill and it was all over. Never got my rhythm back, so many people passed me it was embarrassing. Oh well, lessons learned, still got my medal, still got to eat whatever I wanted.

So what!?

Farewell old friend

Last night was the series finale of ER, a show that I have watched religiously for the last 15 years. It was a sad night. The episode itself was sort of disappointing, I was really hoping for a really regular show, then a huge explosion where the whole building goes up, then fade to black. Oh well.

But, the thing that made the night was how we honored the show. You have to understand that a group of us has been watching ER together every single Thursday for so long now so this had to be a special evening. We decided to do food that all had body parts in the name.

Here was the menu (brilliant, I think!):

Bloody Mary shooters, served in test tube shot glasses

Heart salad featuring artichoke hearts, hearts of palm and hearts of romaine with a blood orange dressing

Kidney bean and veggie wiener chili

Elbow macaroni in a pea cream sauce

Beet salad (like you were beet and then had to go to the ER)

Seared halibut cheeks

Fingerling potatoes

Pirates Booty

For dessert:

A death by chocolate platter featuring chocolate ice cream cake and chocolate cookies

Thumb print cookies

Nuts

Navel orange slices

Garbage's final resting place

Just talkin' trash, that's all!

Apparently the Cedar Hills Landfill, King County's only landfill, is the envy of the nation, and a landfill that Wally the tourguide (not even joking) is fiercely proud of, calling it the Cadillac of landfills.

It was a grey, rainy day and we pulled up to the landfill, confused about where we had to go. Eventually we found our way, Wally was waiting for us in a van. He started telling us general facts about the landfill, how many acres, when it was built, how many people work there..... as we were driving up the hill of garbage to what they call the active face, the active dump sites.

Here is how it works. The trucks come in to the site, the majority from local transfer stations, they get weighed on the way in, they drive up to the active face and place their truck beds on these huge machines called tilters (see below, the big things tilting the trucks)

The garbage gets dumped out and the bulldozers come in and flatten it out. There is only a small section of this vast landfill that actually accepts garbage and let me tell you, it accepts a ton of garbage. Just in the ten minutes we were standing there about five trucks dumped their load, and the landfill accepts garbage 6:00am until 6:00pm, Wally estimated about 140 trucks a day, which is down from about 200 from a few years ago. The good news is that the amount of garbage is decreasing as recycling gets easier, but it is still mind-blowing.

One of the amazing things was the lack of birds you might expect, basing my only knowledge of landfills on pictures I have seen of swarming birds. We did however see magnificent bald eagles swooping and diving and a whole family of deer grazing on the grass. Ah, America, bald eagles and trash, I have never been more proud!

Everywhere we drove and walked was covered up garbage, which sinks due to decomposition about 1 foot year. Mind boggling really. The landfill fills sections at a time, in a crisscross pattern laying down pipelines every 30 feet or so to catch the leachate (toxic garbage juice) and methane gas that naturally occurs.

The leachate gets funnelled to one of two leachate ponds (not recommended for swimming). The leachate has so little oxygen that before sending it to the waste water treatment plant they have to stir it up. It was like a calming garden water feature.

The gasses that get collected are vacuumed out to a processing center (of which Wally is the Gas Lead, I want that title!). Essentially the gasses get sucked out of the landfill and are burned cleanly. However, in a new green twist there is a private company on site who is building a methane collection plant and the county is selling this methane to this company who is purifying it on site and sending it back out to the natural gas power grid.

Each and every truck that drives on the active face is considered contaminated and has to go through a recycled water carwash before being allowed to exit onto city streets. Our little van even went through, it was thrilling.

This landfill can only contain so much gargage. Wally thinks they will be able to accept gargabe until about 2016, maybe 2018. What then!? Well, probably like the City of Seattle does, ship it off to central Oregon.

As with the transfer station and the waste water treatment plant, tours of these facilities should be mandatory. It should be, you get a driver's liscence and you have to take one of these tours.

Thank you Wally for the amazing, eye opening tour. Now I have to watch the movie Wall-E.

Next is the recycling plant and then perhaps the Cedar Hills composting facility right next door to the landfill.