I’ve been travelling a lot to and from West Palm Beach, FL lately. My boss is down there and I’m working on a project that has a built in reason to be there as often as I can be. There are worse places, yes.

So with time to kill driving and flying I’ve been catching up on podcasts. After working my way through all the Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me episodes, I moved on to second tier (Science Friday, Computer Guys and Gals, and Dinner Party Download) and then third tier. One of the third tier, Splendid Table, is moving up in the ranks.

They had an eposide on cooking goat. There are a lot of good things, apparently, about goats mostly centered on the fact that they will eat almost anything, anywhere, and are sustainable. People all over the world have eaten goat for millenia and it’s apparently hitting the US green/foodie market big time. One of the places is Austin (Texas has a lot of arid land that is goat-friendly). Very young goat, Cabrito, is very sought-after.

So I decided when I got home I’d find some and give it a try.

It hasn’t been as easy as I thought. But that makes it interesting.

We are heading into summer, a time for doing lots of great things outside. One of them is croquet.

We have a small problem, though. The rules.

Apparently there are several sets of rules including the official rules and the Renfro rules. I know what the official rules are. I can look them up in one of several books we have, or in the rules that came along with our croquet set, or if there’s some chance they’ve changed I can be safe and look them up online and know I have the latest ones.

Not so with the Renfro rules.  They are how the Renfros played growing up and only Rachel and Donna seem to know them. And I swear they change. I’ve been surprised many times through the decades when someone else thinks they’re winning it turns out that they’re not, or that they did something improper.

I’ve tried different approaches. I’ve insisted that I am right. That was foolish. I’ve suggested that we consult the official rules and accept them whatever they say. That was naive. I’ve asked that the Renfro rules be disclosed before we start playing, reasoning that I don’t care what the rules are as long as I know what they are beforehand. That gets the most interesting results, and leads me to believe that the Renfros don’t actually know what they think the rules are either, since they can’t consistently explain them. It’s like pornography…they know the rules when they encounter the situation. Well, not exactly like pornography.

So as I get older and accumulate wisdom, I find the best approach is to be amused as the game evolves and to enjoy the weather and the company. Everyone else does. Alex, the only one in this picture with no Renfro blood, clearly understands this at an early age. He can be seen staying out of the discussion.

It’s an appealing concept. It’s also an appealing restaurant in Nellysford, VA.

I grew up in Orinda, CA in a house on the side of a steep hill with a gorgeous view to the west of the Berkeley Hills. (Our cousins from Minnesota thought they were mountains, which you’ll understand if you’ve ever been to Minnesota.)

Other than a few years in Houston, my parents always had a house with a view. When my dad retired and my parents moved to Kerrville, Tx, they built on the side of a steep hill with a gorgeous view to the west of the Texas hills. (Again, mountains to some people.)

There are lots of nice things about living in Old Town, Manassas but one of them is not the view. I long for a view of the mountains. When it gets to a critical level, we go to Wintergreen and rent one of the condos on the top of the mountain, right smack on the ridge. Rachel and I relax and do very little of any consequence during the day. That is, unless you consider walks, music, reading, talking and looking at the view to be of consequence.

Usually, we drive down into the valley one night and have dinner at the Basic Necessities. It is unpretentious and interesting and there’s someone playing acoustic guitar music. There are probably only 8 or so tables in the place. I’m not sure how they stay in business but I’m really glad they do.

Consider this essential.

(Stolen shamelessly from someone on Tumblr)

Crazy great company.

Crazy great view.

and I would actually go crazy after another week here. As Bilbo said, “I think I’m ready for another adventure.”

Too many things are a competition…me vs someone or me vs me. Cycling is like that a lot,  especially since I have a cateye (avg mph is the gold standard) and a heart rate monitor (how high can i drive my heart rate for how long). And I don’t like people to pass me. I usually get past them before it’s over.

Today was different. As I was riding into a stiff wind, and I’m getting over my Tough Mudder hamstring tear, I just geared down and decided to enjoy the ride. About 5 miles out I stopped to adjust the saddle which added a lot to the enjoyment of the rest of the ride. The weather had finally turned warm, it was sunny, and I just kept going. Before I knew it I was in Duck. I explored a couple of side roads and then walked out onto the pier.

Amazing…riding for sheer enjoyment?

i was a mess. thankfully they had a propane heater in the medical tent and i plopped down in front of it. i was soaked and cold. they were feeding bananas and warm salt water into me as fast as i could take it. i don’t want to see another banana for a long time.

Everest is a big skate park quarter pipe about 15 feet high, coated with a hard and slippery surface. like hard plastic. you can only run so far until you have to launch yourself at the people at the top who are there trying to help you up. you hope they grab your hands and that you figure some way to get yourself over the top. people were dropping like flies on this one, not making it over. the smaller people were letting the people on top just pull them up and over. the girl in front of me said she was scared and did i want to go ahead. SURE.

i get up slowly, they walk me to the side, and i sit on a hay bale. they start looking at my eyes, ask me my name (nailed it), ask me where i am (nailed it), and then ask me what the date was. now most days i have absolutely no idea of what day it is or what i did the previous day. but i nailed it. she was really impressed and i saw the first smile out of her. i told her i wanted to try to stand. after a few seconds i started to black out (or really white out…everything was fading to a snowy white) and sat down. they called the cart over. at that point, i saw i was only a few hundred yards from the finish line. it was up a steep hill. there two more obstacles…the funky monkey (monkey bars) and the electroshock therapy. so i asked to sit awhile and after about 5 min i got up, felt better, and then i asked dan if he would walk to the finish with me. david gives me some dried fruit and some water.

so far we’ve been running up and down (sometimes slippery) hills  and through the forest in between obstacles. the whole route is about 12 miles. since you have to stop and wait at the obstacles, the longest continuous run was about a mile. there were 22 obstacles.

there was a fun obstacle that involved climbing up, and then back down, a steep pile of hay bales probably 25 feet high. it was soft, not muddy, and didn’t smell bad. that was a change. 

there was a minor recurring theme of crawling through pipes underground. some had mud, some had (say it with me) icy cold muddy water, and one just had sharp rocks. a couple of the team members with a little claustrophobia didn’t do those but they cheered everyone else on. in fact all of the obstacles were optional, really. the race wasn’t timed. you just had to cross the finish line. if you couldn’t or didn’t want to do any particular one, you just passed it and went to the next one.

the next memorable one was pirates booty. that’s where you swim across a little pond, climb up 20 feet of cargo net, get over a big slippery log at the top and let yourself back down 20 feet. you had to hang on the nets waiting awhile for people above you to make progress. seriously, it freaks me out thinking about it and the potential to seriously damage yourself if not die if you slipped off the top and either landed on people below you on one side or landed on the hard ground, probably headfirst, on the other. but i didn’t.

 

so the day gets off to a bad start.

there are some problems with gmaps directions but we all sort it out and park in a big field. we meet up and get on one of the (long line of) yellow school buses waiting to take us on the 30 min drive to the drop point. from there we walk another half mile to the registration. it is a clear, sunny, morning in the low 50’s. it’s about 11am and our wave starts at noon.