It was a long trip home yesterday. We sat on the runway both in MSP and once we landed in LAX. All told, we finally exited the plane about 40 minutes later than scheduled. I was every bit knackered six ways to Sunday… and by the time I caught the rental car shuttle, it was already Monday morning at 1 AM.
On the plus side, I did see Stan Lee on my flight — excelsior!
I’m struggling today to get right with the world. Still fighting the last vestiges of a cold… complicated by the Delta flight apparently shuttling all kinds of sick people hacking, sniffling, sneezing, snoring, so I couldn’t rest. They should’ve done a NyQuil beverage service. Yeesh. I can only imagine what the Zika virus will do to the travelers to Brazil for the Olympics. This is pretty much THE textbook case for how infections spread. Craziness.
Despite that, I thought I’d post a few photos from this weekend’s criss-cross MidWest road trip. Some things already made it up — like the Fargo wood chipper — but a few others were worth uploading here. So without further ado:
Snapshots from the Fargo Marathon (May 21, 2016)
At the start line inside the FargoDome. I loved the nonplussed photobombing guy over my head.
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I’m never really sure how the day is going to go time wise. I aspire to keep it around 3:30 but one never knows — some days are faster, some days are slower. But it seems like at the moment it’s a good typical goal time for me.
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America. Or as they sing in Team America: World Police — “America. F@ck Yeah!”
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I’ve always loved old movie theaters… and the Fargo Theater is a great iconic one. I saw Iron Man 2 here when I first ran Fargo in 2010. They changed the marquee for the race to read, “You Are ALL Iron Men Too!”
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There’s something about places with our names in them, as if had things gone differently perhaps that would be us. I snapped this for my brother Steve because I thought it’d be fun to ponder what roads might have led him to open a liquor store in Fargo, ND.
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Snapshots from the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon (May 22, 2016):
Some of these I previously posted on Facebook, but they’re worth posting here.
Wandering around Lambeau Field before the start, I tried to snap a few atmosphere shots. So I grabbed a riddle, a Vince Lombardi and “J’Accuse!” Lambeau shot, as well as scenes of the fabled stadium itself.
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This is Amy Yanni who graciously agreed to pick up my packet for me as I wasn’t sure I could make it to the Expo in time after Fargo.
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The course itself was fairly standard neighborhood-y and bike trail, albeit not a lot of spectator support. Some, don’t get me wrong, but not a sense of individual neighborhoods coming together to make their mileage extra special — there was never really a sense that I was in a different neighborhood… except at mile 20 or so when we DEFINITELY hit a neighborhood on the other side of the tracks.
But here’s De Pere’s Water Tower… I mean, I’m a bit cynical as I’ve run in Cocoa Beach with their “award-winning” water tower. But still, a nice water tower.
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But the big draw of this race is the final stretch that takes you around Lambeau Field. I was a bit underwhelmed only because all three distances converged — so there were marathoners, half-marathoners, and 10Kers are merging and there were various speeds and abilities jockeying for footing and movement. I don’t know where all these people were on the course… it was a fairly sparse crowd for most of the race.
Still, it WAS awfully cool to be running in the stadium:
The minor incline back up to the finish line and the surprisingly crowded festivities were certainly made bearable due to the HUGE Oktoberfest Brat that was the finisher food.
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And who can complain too much when on the drive back to MSP for a flight I stopped at Marathon City, WI. As I said above, names sometimes have meaning well beyond what their original intended purpose might have been. And so we entertain ourselves as fortune, time, and opportunity allows.