Seattle Poor John Lucky Me

The end of our African months took us to Seattle Washington. It should have been miserable in our lovely Economy Comfort seats, the first leg of which turned out to not be comfort economy after all, but while John was full of meeting time, I was looking forward to reconnecting with old college friends Marilyn and Phil. So, ok, Seattle is amazing because of a surround sound of mountains, so I will get those out of the way. Though there were only two hours of crystal clear day, and Marilyn had to loan me all her warm clothes, and we have had a lovely time. These are some of the first set of mountains that we continuously saw on Bainbridge Island. Fun on the Ferry.

More mountains

These are called "The Brothers".

Mt. Ranier was only brilliant for 2 hours--just when I was working on internet in the room, but this wasn't too bad.

More brilliant mountains from Bainbridge Island.

The draw for this trip was not Roxie, though her cuteness pretty much surpasses all the humans.

Apparently, there is this famous wall near the port is just full of bubble gum. You might think this is art, or you might think this is disgusting. I lean to the latter. We did agree to be close enough for this picture.

I pretended like I own Roxie...Great friends beautiful island

So seriously, Marilyn and Phil are terrific, but with Roxie....hard to underscore the power of dogs.

These were fun birds in the water.

Not sure if I like red headed woodpeckers better than pileated woodpeckers, but this one was intense. And on the east coast you don't see many.

I have never seen this flower. Hope Judy can tell me more. It is apparently called a skunk flower.

It is pretty cool to be back in the Lord of the Rings---even in Seattle

John and Phil are pretty awesome.

There is a lot to see in Seattle, but we have enjoyed the less traveled scenes, and these locks are great. During salmon running season, you can see lots of them, of course we are not at the right time of year, but there is so much else to see (though we are freezing)

The railroad drawbridge. Thinking of how that works.

This doesn't look like much, but it is an Anna humming bird, and I have never seen one, Hard to get the pics because they move really fast because of the cold, but this is the best I got.

Wow-the old buddies get together--Diego and John. Great to catch up. So we have another 48 hours to go. I pray that Marilyn hasn't gotten sick of me, and am enjoying this meltdown from Africa. Infinitely, I feel badly for John who as usual is working his way though every day.

Kilimanjaro Marathon 2012

The pathetic start of the 5K portion of the Kilimanjaro Marathon just happened to be my first race ever. I was so excited anyway in the crowd of people. No one really knew what was going on. People were going out ahead of the others, but then the singers would move them back. At the time of the start (45 minutes late) the singers and the person in charge of the start just gave up. Yousuf and I were good participants and started right behind the "banner" and did not cut corners.

The end for the 5K was sort of pathetic as well, but I comforted myself with a fast time 32 minutes (was it really 5K?) and the knowledge that I had run the last 1K straight uphill. I have been completely unable to repeat that time, but maybe the excitement of the moment helped.

My running buddy Yousuf. He was kind to me and clearly could have gone faster except that I couldn't. For the uphill last 1K, I said go go go. And he did. I credit myself with getting him to enter even with only having practiced for 3 days, and he was just fine! Thanks for keeping me going Yousuf. We waited for the 1/2 marathoners to come in and especially to see John, Charles and Jan. It is hard to express the excitement that we all felt.

While we waited the first wheelchair entry arrived.

Unbelievably the first full marathoner came in ahead of our boys!

Charles hardly looked winded coming through the big finish sign.

John was not too winded. He said that he had kept a steady pace and finished in 2hr. 5-6 minutes.

John explained that Zuli, a really nice guy from Tanga, had helped him the most. As with all things, the organization of both the 5 and 21K were a bit chagalabagala. There was no effort to have the runners placed ahead of the walkers and that made the start awkward at best. For me, it was a constant effort to find a hole through which to run in the beginning, and then even later when the faster runners suddenly stopped and started walking. I almost crashed into two groups when I was paying more attention to moving than to what was in front of me. Poor John said it took about 5 minutes just to get out of the college gate because of the walkers and then he had to zig zag for about 1 kilometer to get space to run. That meant that he was already using more energy than he needed. And he met the same situation particularly on the way up. People who had set off too fast and suddenly stopped or started walking. He even found a man unconscious by the side of the road and, worried that it was Charles, stopped to take his pulse and shake him a little to make sure he was ok. When he saw that it wasn't Charles and saw women coming with water, he moved on. So, his time probably would even have been better if things had been a bit more orderly.

Jan was just a few minutes ahead of John.

We were pretty proud of one another. (AHHH)

Friends together--Greg ran with his son Nikoli and Niko's friend Omar. Nikoli could have easily done the half as he is really fast, but you are not allowed to enter until your bones are stronger at age 16.

The MEPI team was a bit bigger than this, but hongera sana to all of them who ran. (especially my girls Harriet and Lucy) We headed home to get cleaned up and take a break. Harriet came over to drag Charles back to the stadium (not much dragging involved)

We all hope to participate next year.