I'm baaacck!

I'm tired and I have a bit of a cold, but it was a good trip. A trip where I got the stomach flu, and Mom had a cold. I did two hour-long walks, outside of pacing in airports, and I "ice skated" for the first time since I was a teenager. I put that in quotes because it was more like 'go forward on skates for 50 ft, grab the side of the rink' rather than any sort of real skating, and let me tell you, it was hard. But it was dead fun, and I spent the rest of the trip trying to figure out how I could get back to the rink.

My road rash is still there, but much less painful; my goth toe lost its nail.

It's always good to see my mom, and always nourishing to see the area where she lives, which just looks right on a cellular level. But the conservatism and homogeneity make it really hard to spend a lot of time there. Here's a weird example (that really has nothing to do with conservatism or homogeneity, but hey) that happened this trip:

Mom asked me what I wanted for Xmas, and I couldn't think of anything. (Sure, there's stuff I want, like technical fabric clothes, and home exercise equipment, but... ) Well, how about magazines, she asks, knowing magazines are cheap and something that I seem to never think I have enough of. Runner's World came immediately to mind, and do you think we could find a copy anywhere in her town? Well, um, we did find two copies--one at the library (yay, library!), and one at the Waldenbooks--but that was a copy from September.

At WalMart, we saw a copy of Running Times, which I immediately bought. I had never seen that outside of a sports store, so imagine my surprise (I only go to WalMart with my mom). While I do buy RT, I don't do it with the compulsive regularity of RW.

Even at the not-so-small regional airport two-and-a-half hours away -- no RW.

We landed in Chicago, and not only was it a balmy 55 degrees, immediately I saw African Americans, mixed-race couples, people who weren't Christian, gay men and lesbians. I immediately felt about 50 lbs lighter. People were smiling at me, and I am sure I was smiling back. And the first newsstand: the new Runner's World.

One thing that I had not expected was my mom's pride in my having done a marathon. I chatted with one of my favorite aunts, who congratulated me on doing Portland, and said, 'You've walked 26 miles, you know, Vicki, you can do anything, anything at all'. Wow. A quilting buddy who came by said something similarly complimentary.