Normally, I run a weekend recap on Mondays and move into 10 random things on Tuesdays. But my wife, Tiffany, wanted to write a guest blog for yesterday, so I ran that instead. Plus, my weekend was inadvertently extended a day, so I’m just going to go ahead and run my weekend recap today. I have a tiny bit of information about the Chase Community Giving contest we’ve been involved in, but for the most part, I’m going to cover that in-depth tomorrow.
Just in case this is your first time being here, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. Fighting autism is my cause and I’m trying to run 60 marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism. It’s a great charity headed by great parents and I’m proud to be a part of it.
So far, I’m through 33 of the 60 races. It seems like I’m reaching people and raising money and getting people involved, so it’s worth the pain I’m feeling in my lower back.
If you’ve been following along at all, you know we’ve been in this Chase Community Giving contest, with an opportunity to win $20,000. The voting ended last night and it went down to the wire, but unofficially, we did it! Results will be official sometime around noon Eastern today and I’ll update this blog with a confirmation.
This was an amazing contest, though. Everybody came out of the woodwork and pushed so hard to make this happen. It was incredible, and the net result is going to be that Train 4 Autism will gain an additional $20,000 at the end of the year. This is one of those “this is why I do this” moments for me. And for all of you, who pushed so hard, that should be a “this is why I did that” moment, too. Y’all are the ones who made it happen.
Awesome!
Real quick, two TV stations up in Missoula did pieces on me this weekend. Here’s one of them. I’ll get the other one posted as soon as I get the link.
Bound To Happen?
If you would have asked me at the beginning of the year whether or not I thought I would miss a flight, I would have probably guessed yes. With tight schedules and about 45 or so weekends flying somewhere, chances are it would happen once.
Well, that once came this weekend. I flew through Spokane to get to Missoula, Montana, and it’s about a three-hour drive. I ran tight on time after the race and when I got into the car, I plugged in the airport in Spokane to get an estimated arrival time. I had enough time to eat lunch, so I quickly did that. I only had 9 1/2 hours of sleep the prior two nights and I had just run a marathon, so I wanted to load up on Diet Pepsi at Taco Bell and get some caffeine into my system for the drive.
Lunch took about 15 minutes and I got rolling on the drive. The GPS system said I’d be in about 40 minutes before the flight, but as is always the case, I made up some time on the drive. Unfortunately, my fat fingers hit the wrong airport and I ended up at some commuter airport, easily costing myself about 20 minutes.
I got to the airport 35 minutes before my flight. The rental return guy was going in slow-mo and took a good 6 or 7 minutes to get me taken care of. I made a mad dash to get my boarding pass, but it was about 2:51 and my flight was at 3:05 and the woman at the counter told me I was too late. And with my luck, it was the last flight out for the day.
Southwest had an option to get me home for $382, but that was way too much. So, I got to spend Sunday night in Spokane. The bummer of it all is that Tiff went out to see one of her best friends in Arizona who just had a baby and left yesterday morning. So, I didn’t get to see her and I won’t see her until Wednesday night. We had to make some adjustments with our arrangements for the kids, because we were both out of town between yesterday morning at 5 a.m. and yesterday afternoon at 3:30 p.m.
Plus, I have to miss work on Friday to go to Iowa and I didn’t want to miss two days this week. I was able to work a little bit while traveling on Monday, but I couldn’t get a good, full day in.
In hindsight, I would have certainly hit the right button on the GPS and just driven through someplace and probably gotten to the airport more than hour before my flight. I probably would have been fine eating at Taco Bell and getting to the airport 55 minutes or so in advance — Spokane is a pretty easy airport to get through, nice and small.
US Airways was really nice about it and hooked me up at a hotel with a “distressed traveler” rate that was walking distance from the terminal. The hotel confirmed the rate and tried to overcharge me $30 when I got there, but I negotiated them down to “only” a $12 overcharge. The folks at US Airways were gone for the day since my flight was the last one of the day, so I was out of luck and stuck. I’ll be taking that up with the hotel’s corporate headquarters this week.
So I just stayed in the hotel, plowing away on my race report and my vote-getting campaign for Chase. At least the complimentary breakfast was good in the morning. I love those waffle machines that you pour the batter into. And I love me some four cups of coffee.
So yeah, it was bound to happen. I just wish it would have happened on a) a Saturday when b) there was another flight out that day and c) my wife wasn’t going out of town for three days before I could get in and d) it wasn’t causing me to miss a day of work in an already-short week.
Life. Gotta love it!
I Admit It, I’m A Dork
I went to Missoula, Mont. over the weekend, flying through Spokane, Wash. From there, I drove 200 miles, cutting through the top of Idaho. In case you haven’t noticed (60 marathons in a year, 163 consecutive days eating ice cream at this point), I like doing odd things. So, for a couple of weeks, I planned on running a mile in California before I left for the airport, then a mile in Washington, a mile in Idaho and a mile in Montana.
I did, because … why not?
Here they are:
– California
– Washington
– Idaho
– Montana
Not A Lot Of Excitement This Weekend
There’s really not a whole lot to report about from this weekend other than the missed flight. I got up, went to the airport, flew to Washington, drove to Missoula and had a TV reporter waiting for me at my motel when I got there (after I drove through Taco Bell). I got to my room after finishing the interview at about 9:30 p.m.
After running the race, I talked to a couple of friends in the finish area, did two interviews, went and visited a couple of friends at a bar for about 15 minutes before going back to my hotel to get cleaned up. Then it was the lunch/drive/missed flight. Life on the road isn’t too glamorous. EXCEPT when you drive from Spokane to Missoula.
I highly recommend the Missoula Marathon. It’s put on well, there were no logistical challenges and the course was absolutely beautiful. When you do it, do yourself a favor and fly through Spokane, not Missoula. That drive is absolutely amazing. Sure, I missed my flight because of it, but it was worth it. I took some pictures, but they don’t do that area justice. I want to go back next year just to bring my wife and show her the drive.
Anyways, here are some pics:
It’s nice out there.
It’s still nice out there.
Yep, it’s still nice.
Nice.
There were more tall trees lining those mountains than I could have imagined. There were some nice parts of the drive in Idaho where the water, but I guess I didn’t get any pictures. I guess you’ll just have to trust me when I say it was the nicest 200-mile drive I’ve ever taken.
By the way, speaking of my friends I talked to at the bar after the race, here’s a picture I took with Operation Jack supporter Chris Stores, a runner I’ve communicated with for several years.
One of these guys is me.
Pray For Me
I’m Mr. Mom until tomorrow night. I’m outnumbered, 3 to 1. We all do certain things well. I run marathons, my wife is Supermom. Actually, pray for my kids!
OK, That’s All For Today
I’ll be back here tomorrow with some thoughts about this Chase Community Giving contest. It’s done now, but still, to be in my shoes and experience what I experienced going through this was amazing and it deserves a blog. You guys are AWESOME. Period.