The Road Hits Back

Lots and lots rolling through my head at this point. Go ahead and make a joke.

But I'm going to stay on task for now, just stick to a trip recap. If I let loose with everything on my mind at the moment this entry would be startlingly disjointed.

***

Friday night I headed down to Katy after work. My mission: Provide moral, physical, emotional, and occasional food-based support to Whit as he ran... jeez, I think it's called the Chevron Aramco Houston Marathon. Maybe. Anyway, he was to run the half marathon. We ran it together some years back. I'm well enough to do it again, but registration filled up in a hurry.

***

I had some van trouble going down. It was an inauspicious start, and considering how badly last year's trip ended, I was worried. Turns out that a tank of cheap gas made the check engine light come on. It lasted about a day.

Still... it felt like an omen.

Read on.

***

I ran late, naturally, but still got there in time to see the McClendon family, who are some of my favorite folks in the world, and Larry Escher, a man with whom I've long meant to catch up.

***

Got up the next day and headed over to Whit's school.

First: Taiji class. We were making circles, and spirals, and alternating forms and applications. I want more.
Second: Kung Fu. It was open mat, and I hooked up with a local cop to train. It's amusing to see just how much stuff Krav Maga has nicked from traditional martial arts.
Third: Grappling/Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Now, my workouts these last few months have tailed off a bit, and I was certainly concerned about my stamina going into this. But I made it through about half of this class too before pulling back a bit, opting to watch more than to participate.

And see, sparring was still ahead of us.

I was concerned about this too, seeing as how I'd done nothing resembling sparring for months.

So we beat on each other for a couple rounds.

The good news: I breathed better, landed combinations, switched from righty to southpaw here and there, and used the Thai clinch well.

The bad news: I got my butt kicked. Okay okay... of course Whit punched and kicked better. And yeah, my clinch was good, though when you're only pretending to knee your opponent like I was (hey, I kinda like the guy, okay), he eventually WILL work out a way to escape the hold. In his case, he found it effective to pick me up and dump me on my head. What, two times? Three? All that landin' on my head made me forget. (By the way, I'm Batman.)

Still, good fun, and all things considered, I think I've made some progress.

***

After a fine dinner at Hasta la Pasta, the four of us went back to his house, where Whit prepared race gear while I mostly noodled with his guitars. It was a fine and mellow way to spend an evening.

***

The next morning we were up at one of those crazy hours you never really want to see. We hit the road, and...

The road hit back.

Yeah, the car blew a tire. @#$%

Okay okay, we'd left plenty early. We changed the tired, got in, and... that little puff of air in the donut we'd hoped would get us to a service station was insufficient. @#$%!

So we called the lovely Christina, who came and picked us up by the side of the freeway and hauled us into town. There, she dropped Whit off with a few minutes to spare (wow, just writing the word "spare" makes me cringe for some reason) and hauled me back to Katy with her so I could get the van.

It had been a bit dicey early that morning as the starting gun approached and we had no good plan for taking care of the car AND getting Whit to the race.

Whit made such good time (2:19:00 or so) that I actually got to the finish line after he'd finished. But we found each other in the convention center and headed out.

I've got to run next year.

I want to experience that excitement again. I'm in no way competitive, but I still enjoy the sounds of the crowd and the sense of personal achievement.

***

I headed home, singing out loud much of the way to Merle Haggard and Pugwash. It was a good drive, far better than last year's flirtation with Death.

***

We shot some good video the morning of the race, and I've got a rough edit made. As soon as it's done I'll send it to Whit. Perhaps he'll put it on Youtube or something.

***

Good night.