Catching Up

There's been so much going on, but I just haven't had time to sit down and write about it. The most notable event occurred last weekend in DeWitt, Iowa. I drove down for a friends wedding on Saturday after working at Avis in the morning. Aaron Soenksen married his college sweetheart Shannon Meyer at the Grace Lutheran church at 3pm. Aaron was also my flight instructor throughout my commercial flight training. We have kept in touch and even attended a couple of minor leage baseball games together. The service was beautiful and the music and vocalists were enchanting. My favorite part was releasing of butterflies after the service before moving on to the reception. The butterflies were flown in overnight and when they opened the boxes that they were in, they woke up and flew away. It was very cool. Most of the other people that I knew from school were in the wedding party, so I was assigned a table with a few "randoms". I met a few familes that were members of the country club and another gentleman who was a pilot in the second world war. Dinner consisted of salad and a pasta buffet. Afterward there was dacing for those who stuck around. I stayed for most of the night, but had to drive back to Dubuque since I had not made any plans to stay at a hotel or with anyone.
Sunday through Tuesday it was back to the grind. I put in a good amount of hours. Tuesday I worked for my boss at Mesaba in the morning after working the night before so that he could go home to see family. He was supposed to fly out, but ran late and missed the flight. So I drove him to Moline, IL to catch another flight. Later that day, we ran out of paper for printing contracts on at Avis and we had a car with inoperative air conditioning. So my Avis boss and I drove down to Moline again to get paper and drop off the car to be repaired. Needless to say, I didn't need directions the second time around.
Wednesday, I the day off entirely. I woke up around 11:30 and did a few chores around the house. Laundry needed to be done badly and I needed to enter some receipts in my ledger. I was about to leave the house when I saw that a new roommate was moving in with the girls up stairs. They had to get a kitchen table, a tv, and a sofa up stairs. So I offered to help them. We got the table up no problem because the legs were easily removable. Fortunately, I was still working on putting the table back together and I didn't have to help with the TV. It fit through the doors fine, but it was a heavy TV and took a lot of grunt work. The sofa was an entirely different story. It didn't fit up the front stairs because the door frame was too narrow. The back stairway and doors were wider, but we had to get the couch around 3 - 90 degree corners. We put a small hole in the wall forcing it up the stiars, but we got it! Afterward I headed over to a friend's parents' house to swim. Following that we went to the new Tony Roma's in town. I had the grilled norwegian salmon with rice and fresh broccoli. We had to cut out early though to make it to the movie on time becase the waitress was so slow. We saw the proposal with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. It was very funny. And that was my day off!
Today before work I got measured for a tux for the wedding that I will be in on August 8th. Sadly, this means that I won't be able to attend the Koopsen reunion this fall. Will try to make up for it some weekend tho. Kalamazoo is a fairly easy destination to get to and with relatives close by it would be an easy mid week or weekend getaway.
All for now. Time to go clean some cars!

Galloping down Granview

If you are familiar with the annual Klopmen Classic race in Pella, you know that runners often joke about actually having to wear wooden shoes to compete in the race. I don't want to spoil the surprise for those of you who haven't run, but you don't have to wear wooden shoes. Thankfully the same is true for Dubuque's annual race, the Grandview Gallop. Runners don't actually have to gallop. But can you imagine what it'd be like if they did?

There are essentially two ways to get into a swimming pool when the water is cold. Some prefer to wade in the shallow end and work their way up to the knee, then the waist, then the armpits. Others jump right in the deep end and and make a big splash. I liken my recent training regiment to the later method. I tested the water with with my tippy toe on Wednesday with a 35 min jog and dove in head first on Saturday with my first race of the season.

It was 55° and misty Saturday morning at 8:00am as the gun went off. Perfect weather for a road race. 750 plus runners came out to partake in the 4th annual Granview Gallop. The course lies on the beautifully landscaped boulevard of South Grandview Ave. in Dubuque, which is relatively flat believe it or not. The race beings and ends at Murphy Park. Runners head north on Grandview and double back when they get to third street. It gives everyone a chance to see who's beating them as well as who they're beating which may or may not offer some added motivation.
I kept pace with one of my cross country and track teammates. She has been doing quite a bit of training for her upcoming cross country season. I on the other hand have not, so it really felt like she was dragging me along the whole way. We crossed the one mile mark at 7:30 and the two mile at 14:55. My legs were feeling like jello as we crossed the three mile mark and I don't even remember checking my watch. I did the best I could to pound out the last mile. It should have been easy because I knew the course, but everything is more challenging when you're out of shape. My partner took off with between 800 and 1200 meters to go. I managed to pass a few more runners, but I couldn't catch up with her. I crossed the finish line in under 29 minutes. Our automatic timing chips recorded our official time. This was the first time I had seen a disposable chip. It is a flexible plastic piece that loops around the shoelace. They are programed with the same number as the bib and when you cross over the reader it records your time. After our cool down we went to the results station. They had two micro computers that printed out a ticket with each runners stats. All I had to do was type in my bib number. My legs were extremely sore yesterday, but today I don't feel a thing.
For lunch yesterday, I made my first attempt ever at potato salad. The only potato salad I truly like is my mom's, so I borrowed her recipe. Mine turned out ok, but only because I didn't have all the necessary ingredients. I didn't feel like going back out to the store and mom said they weren't essential. I beg to differ. When you're trying to recreate a masterpiece that reminds you of home, every detail is important.
Tomorrow I have to head up to Minneapolis on the morning flight for a day of recurrent training. We spend 8 hours in a class room and then have to wait 4-5 hours to catch the last flight home. I will probably spend the evening watching planes or looking for crew members that frequent Dubuque, just to say hi. Today we've got a full flight and people are beginning to check in, so I better look busy.

Looks like full race results are available for a limited time. http://www.thonline.com/grandviewgallop/