I’m having a bad day. Emotionally. Physically. Bio-rhythmically. Astrologically. Paranormally. Psychically. Entirely.
Nothing seems to be going right.
I was trying to troubleshoot a tech problem for my Mom back in Florida and I only seem to have made a “Dagwood attempting to fix the sink in Blondie” style mess of things.
My phone doesn’t want to connect, neither to the free data roaming cell carrier here in Budapest nor to the WiFi areas that are free nor the ones that I have a passcode for.
My laptop has decided it will do things like recognize my keystrokes on the keyboard or my finger taps on the touchscreen only now and again, without rhyme or reason, and more of a “hey, here’s a surprise… that action you just wanted done… 3/4 of it will be done… but I can’t tell you WHICH 3/4! Where’s the fun in that?”
And while I took in a free walking tour of the Budapest City Center, it lacked that ol’ razzle dazzle. There was some good information spread out throughout the time and I took some notes that I’ll incorporate into future posts as I try and revisit a few of those sites, but maybe it’s just that I’ve been traveling too long.
I’m feeling an age and sadness over loves lost, lost time, lost opportunities, and as I said earlier, my mind isn’t what it used to be… if it ever really was.
I miscalculated the conversions and thus withdrew far too much Hungarian forint currency. I’ll doubly lose on the exchange rate of the withdraw and the inevitable change back to US Dollars. Hungary was admitted to the EU in 2004 and there was a line item in their agreement that they had to switch to the Euro… but it didn’t say WHEN they had to do it. The Hungarians have been, well, slow to convert.
Rather than go into details above and beyond the ramble hither and yon, I’ll simply conclude today’s notations with a brief overview of my bib pickup for Sunday’s race. I thought I might as well clear my schedule of absolute “must-do”s so that I could hopefully focus on “must-see”s until then.
This morning I received an email from the race organizers. Within the message were three chilling reads:
First, as I guess it’s Hungarian custom, my surname is first and my given name is second. Still, with visions of Hannah Kellner dancing in my head, I’m a little worried… and on top of that, the tracking info for me also lists my birth year… as if I wasn’t already all too aware of my age. I’m as old as Star Wars (A New Hope). So there’s that, I guess.
Second, there’s apparently a ten-minute penalty for wearing your bib incorrectly. I’ve never seen an explicit penalty spelled out for that. For some reason, it all feels very “Amazing Race”-ian.
Third and final note — they want us there 2 hours before the start… though the corrals don’t open until 25 minutes before the 9:30 AM start. I’m ALWAYS early but this seems crazy excessive.
***
Arriving at the Ötvenhatosok tere, the few vendors they intended to have at the makeshift expo were either empty stalls awaiting arrivals or in the process of being setup. So no info on the Prague Marathon for me I guess. And the trampoline was only being put together. Nothing like potentially breaking one’s leg (or neck) on a trampoline right before the race. In the USA, I always used to laugh when the homeowner’s insurance brokers would ask me if I had a trampoline and when I finally asked why that was a question they said trampolines jack up insurance rates SUBSTANTIALLY. Or maybe I should say they BOUNCE the rates up substantially. ZING!
Long story short, I quickly grabbed my bib and confirmed the chip was working.
Before heading out, I took a few last minute photos.
The event shirt by the way isn’t purple. It’s white. White shirts are my least favorite as they tend to turn ugly far more quickly than any other colored running shirt. Swell. I’m just a barrel of positivity, huh? The day keeps rolling along.
I’m chipped, bibbed and I guess ready to come back to this place 2 hours before the start on Sunday. Sigh. It’s only a 45 minute walk from my airbnb. Like the rest of the day, everything is making me feel what I have long feared — dumb, foolish, and out of touch with the new normals.
I’m going to try and rally and get myself out of this funk… but then again, I DID take a selfie with this storefront‘s mascot:
