1). The Funny Thing that Happened Today

I had to take my son over to where he wisely left his car last night because he had a couple of beers at a party. He got a ride home (good boy!). After I dropped him off and was on my way back I stopped at a stop sign and saw a woman coming up to my car looking sort of frantic. She was in a suit, holding a cup of Starbucks coffee (which was odd because I was in a residential neighborhood) and a tote bag. I rolled the window down and she said, “Excuse me – could you give me a ride to BART if it isn’t out of your way? You can drop me at the corner. I came out to catch a bus but I missed it and I’m already late.”

Whoa! I thought that was just so odd. Who asks strangers for a ride these days? On the other hand I am a small woman in an older Volvo Wagon so I guess I don’t exactly present as the trailside strangler. I said, “sure” and she got in. In that moment I remembered Wednesday in the Aadams family all “dressed up” for Halloween but wearing her regular clothes. When someone at school asked her what she was gong as she said, “I’m a serial killer. They look like everyone else.”

My passenger was very flustered and had a lot of stuff to deal with but I asked her to please put her seatbelt on and she did. She told me again about how late she was and then proceeded to give me step by step directions as though I had no idea where I was. Little Wednesday’s face kept floating through my head but as long as she didn’t pull a gun out of her purse we were okay.

The whole experience was very weird but I guess she really was just late and frantic and figured I was a safe bet. I dropped her off at the station and went on my way.

2). I have a new ambition for March.
I was reading the forums over at RaceAthlete and coach Mike Ricci told IronPol to improve his swimming by swimming every day in November. That reminded me of how important it is to spend a lot of time in the water if you want to get faster so I decided I’d adopt that plan, too. I won’t quite make it every day but I am going to try to swim no fewer than 5 days a week. My masters group has 5 workouts a day M – Th, 4 on Friday and 1 on Saturday. I’m not going to even attempt to swim Sunday because whereas IronPol must answer to God on Sunday, I must answer to my riding group, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. No time to swim. I will report my time improvement early in December. I know there will be one because swimming is entirely unnatural and there is no way to get faster other than to swim a lot. Working on technique makes a big difference but if you don’t swim a lot the big difference isn’t nearly as big.

3). I’m going to get back to my tales of Peru.
I didn’t even get us to my second day yet. Stay tuned.

4). Go IMFL racers.

Special Go, go, go to Nancy Toby and to Bold. We’re with you, people!!

ps – if you haven’t read Bold’s ‘Final Thoughts’ post go read it right now. The man has more grace and humility than Ghandi. Sersly. What an inspiration.