Having successfully navigated the Kafka bureaucracy of immigration and visas (despite having obtained our visas prior to arrival, the “avec visa” line was cordoned off and we all got funneled through the sans visa line), we walked out into the Madagascarian sunshine and boarded the chartered Marathon Tours bus. Here one of our Cortez USA […]
“So sit back and relax and enjoy the 14 hour 45 minute flight to Johannesburg.” So says the captain. And later the purser onboard South African Airways flight 204 from JFK. Jesus. Vishnu. Tom Cruise. That’s a long time to be up in the air. I’m several mini bottles of wine in and it’s only […]
The concluding lines from monologue “Say Anything” are stuck in my head. Lloyd: So when you hear the smoking sign go ‘ding’, you know everything’s going to be okay. But you know what? The “no smoking” sign always stays on now (and we’ll it should). At the same time, on this flight, the pilot has […]
Nothing like starting a trip with a gate agent saying, “are there two Kevins traveling or did you buy two tickets?” After explaining the clerical error snafu and Priceline’s insistence on my buying another ticket at an inflated price to resolve the matter so they would refund the first ticket, the agent told me both […]
Ok. Down to the final hours before we see if my exorbitant change fee/repurchased tickets actually get us to Madagascar. I’m slowly packing up, trying to minimize the clutter. Per running tradition, I’ve got my running gear and shoes in my carry-on so if the luggage gets re-routed to Timbuktu (which usually is a joke […]
Can I tell you a secret? And by secret, I mean “the secret” like in that best selling self-help book? I haven’t read it, nor do I really know anything about it other than its use as a running gag in Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring (2013). But I gather you verbalize and put your […]
I wouldn’t say hell has frozen over… but for the first time in, if not forever than at least a long time, I don’t have a running event this weekend. I had toyed with the idea of trying to squeeze in a race but I was worried about travel logistics to be home in time […]
Somewhere along the road I met a fellow Kevin runner. Kevin Brosi is the founder and president of the Marathon Globetrotters running club. We’ve chatted here and there, first at a Mainly Marathon series and then, gosh, I’ve lost track of where we last met up. But he asked me why I hadn’t joined the […]
I’m not so good with the making of the words and pronunciation of the sounds and the conveying of the meaning and the whatnot. I was recently reminded of this whilst running the Stockholm Marathon. The headline sponsor was ASICS, a Japanese athletic equipment company that I’m most familiar with due to their running gear. […]
The last of my stash. When I find a shoe that fits, I often buy a couple of extra pairs and leave them in my closet, ready to go when I need a new pair. This was the last of my Asics Gel Evolution 4 bronze shoes. After one run in them, I noticed a […]