If a blog falls in the woods and doesn’t get updated, does anybody notice? Yeah, it’s Wednesday and I’m just now posting my weekend recap. I was planning to post it yesterday instead of on Memorial Day, but when you see what I did on Monday, you’ll understand why I’m a day late.

First things first, I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. Long story short, I’m trying to run 60 marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism. So far, so good. 27 down, 33 to go.

Well, except for this past weekend, when I ran what I consider to be my worst marathon ever. I’ve run slower twice in my 55 lifetime marathons. But this one was absolutely the worst. Read my recap here and see if you can sense how miserable the experience was.

Anyways, on with the weekend …

But First, A Jack Update
Jack continues to slowly progress. Last Thursday, Tiff took him to get his hair cut. We go to a place for kids, and normally sits in a fire engine chair designed to constrain children who are about 2. But he was willing to sit in the big-kid chair, which was awesome. And even awesomer than that (I know, not a word, but it’s my blog), he was willing to wear a smock. He’d never done that.

He’s doing little things spontaneously every here and there. On about Monday or so, Benjamin walked into a room that he was in and Jack waved and said “hi” to him. Things like that seem small, but they’re an indicator that he’s starting to come around. Last night when I put him to bed, he was going through a numbers book and saying the numbers. He was looking to me to hold up the number of fingers of the word he was saying. I did that for about 15 minutes. It’s a simple little numbers game for him, but we need to keep reinforcing that when he speaks, he gets the desired action he’s looking for. Someday it will all click.

Tomorrow, we have an appointment with a DAN doctor up in Los Angeles. It’s a doctor that comes very highly recommended from people who would know. We’ve been waiting months to get in, so we’re excited about this. DAN doctors focus on biomedical treatment for children with autism. We’re not discontinuing anything else we’re doing, but we’re going to add this to the equation. We had bad luck with a different DAN doctor in the past, so we’re happy to have a new one. We’re pretty convinced he needs this help.

Oh, and one last thing. Last year, the summer school program our school district offered was terrible for Jack. The staff was terrible and we pulled him after one day. I won’t get into a long explanation, but it was bad news. Well this year, the staff is going to be the same staff he’s had all year, so we’re excited that we’ll be able to put him in there. They’ve done a great job with him, plus he regresses a little in the summer without his school routine. We just found this out yesterday and we’re pretty excited about it.

OK, now on with the weekend. For reals.

Date Night!
I celebrated 11 years of marriage with my beautiful wife Tiffany on May 23 (the Sunday before last), but since we had a chaotic day, we took a rain check on babysitting and brought in Baja Fresh for dinner. But we cashed in our rain check last Friday night and used a gift card at PF Chang’s. It was a nice start to the weekend — nothing beats eating dinner without interruptions … for free! About 51 more weeks and we’ll get to do that again.

I’m Starting To Realize That All I Talk About Is Food
So the next thing I’m going to talk about is lunch on Saturday. It was with my ex-stepmom (or maybe I call her my second mom?) and her family. She was married to my dad from my fourth grade through eighth grade years. Her and my dad weren’t meant to be together, but they’re both great people and I’ll always love her and respect her for doing a great job raising me and my brother like her own during those critical years.

She lives in the Minneapolis area now, so when I get a chance to see her, I do. Rochester, Minn. is about 80 miles south of MSP airport, so I made sure to meet up with her. She has two children of her own, who are now 13 and almost 17. I got to eat with them and her husband and I had a great time. They’re wonderful kids, a reflection of the job she’s done. I’m going back up to Minneapolis in a couple of weeks to run Grandma’s in Duluth. Hopefully I have time to swing by on my way back to the airport.

More Hanging Out With Good People
I hung out with a real nice guy named Lonnie Butler on Saturday night in Rochester. We shared a hotel room to keep our costs down. Like me, he has an autistic son named Jack. Like me, he’s a former big-boy turned marathoner (he’s down to 210 from 300, I’m at 203 from 261). And like me, he had a rough go on Sunday.

But it was really nice to meet him. We’d chatted a fair amount over email and it was cool to finally meat him. I also got to meet his wife and his Jack, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

More Food Talk …
I had dinner Saturday night at a place I’d never heard of called Jimmy John’s. Apparently, it’s a sandwich shop chain in the Midwest and Lonnie gave it high marks. The thing about guys like me and Lonnie — we know good food when we eat it. I think I lived up to the California stereotype by ordering a turkey sandwich with avocado spread. But it was really good. He was right.

One Little Letter
I originally planned to run the Mad City Marathon in Madison, Wisc., on Sunday, but when I talked to Lonnie, and found out Rochester was his first marathon, I switched to run that one instead. The race I ran is called the Med City Marathon, so I went from Mad City to Med City. I had no idea why it was called Med City. Where do you get “Med City” from Rochester, Minn.?

When I stepped out the front door of my hotel, I found out:

More Food Talk …
After the race on Sunday, Lonnie and I went to Denny’s for all-you-can-eat pancakes. We’d been talking about this ever since I had 11 pancakes at IHOP after I ran the Country Music Marathon in Nashville on April 24. But those pancakes were a little smaller than the ones we ate on Sunday.

We each ordered and knocked back the first three fairly quickly. With the all-you-can-eat deal, they bring you two at a time on the subsequent plates. I finished my second plate quicker than Lonnie, but was starting to feel fairly full. I could tell Lonnie was probably feeling the same way. I ordered my third plate fairly quickly. I made my move to put the hammer down.

Pancakes No. 6 and 7 came out and I worked on those while Lonnie was finishing up his fifth. I really hoped he stopped there, because I felt pretty full. With a two-pancake lead, though, I knew I could wear him down if I could just stick it out.

When our waitress asked him if he wanted a third plate, he declined and I was relieved. I didn’t want to go to nine. We were done eating by about 1:30 p.m. Central time, and I was so full, I didn’t eat at all on the plane and when I got home at 7:30 p.m. Pacific time (eight hours later), all I had was a small serving of chicken and sausage to get some protein in my system. I was still full. Oh, I had some ice cream, too. Couldn’t skip that.

So after all the anticipation, I was able to pull out a victory. I went out fast, held on to my lead and came away with the W. It was a good win over a tough competitor!

We had a contest last week and I’ll announce the winner tomorrow. Too tired as I write this to take care of that. Which leads me to …

My Memorial Day Holiday
Just because it’s a holiday doesn’t mean the calendar doesn’t turn. My work revolves around a monthly cycle and yesterday was the 1st. So Monday I was busy. I’m always guilty of being overly ambitious on how quickly I can get things done. Maybe I’m just overly optimistic?

Anyways, I had a pretty crazy week last week and I knew I had a full day of code writing ahead of me on Monday. I got started at somewhere around 9 or 9:30 in the morning, and aside from taking maybe an hour or so for lunch and then dinner, I didn’t finish until about 3:45 in the morning … yesterday? I guess it was Tuesday at that point?

I woke up naturally at about 7:45, got Benjamin ready for school, worked at my kitchen table until about 1:30, took a nap for an hour, then I think I got back on the computer for an hour or two, but I don’t really remember. It was kind of a blur. But I took another nap from 3:30-5:30, and then a few hours passed by and I think Tuesday was over? I’ll sort it all out at some point.

But that’s why I didn’t have a blog yesterday. I didn’t really feel like writing it at 4 a.m.!

That’s All For Today
I think that was enough. My ice cream streak is at 122 now. Is tomorrow really Thursday already? Wow. Time for a nap.

I normally write a weekend recap on Mondays and 10 random things on Tuesdays, and that’s still going to be the case this week. But my weekend recap is about a million words and six pictures of randomness. So, if you like my random things blogs, you’re going to like my weekend recap today.

Real quick, I ran my 26th marathon of the year on Saturday in Fargo. I had a pretty nice run, going 3:10:00. If you want, you can read my race report here.

Also, a TV station up in Fargo did a nice piece on Operation Jack. But it’s not online yet. Hopefully I can get a link to it tomorrow.

Only In Fargo
Yeah, that’s an earthmover by the baggage claim. I told the guy at the rental car counter that I needed to take a picture of it, because you don’t see things like that in California. He was surprised at my assumption and said they probably have them at smaller airports. Really?

Post-Race Burger Review
I was starving after the race on Saturday, but nothing appealed to me. I saw Arby’s, Subway, Burger King and McDonald’s and none of them looked good. I tweeted that I didn’t know what to have for lunch. I was about to have Taco Bell, but somebody recommended a place called Culver’s for a good burger. Good burgers are always so satisfying on race days, so I gave it a shot.

I thought it was OK, but it was no In-N-Out or Five Guys. I had a mushroom swiss burger and fries. I killed it in about 30 seconds. It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t great. One awesome thing was that they had Diet Mountain Dew on tap. I love that stuff. I got pretty wired. And then I wrote this blog.

Why I Raced On Saturday
Yesterday was my 11-year wedding anniversary with my wife, so I wanted to make sure I’d be home on Saturday night to spend yesterday with my best friend and my babies. I always gush about Tiff in here, but I won’t waste a whole lot of time doing that today. You all know happy she makes me and how lucky I am to have her. By the way, she made one heck of a homemade carrot cake for us as a surprise (that was the flavor of our wedding cake)! 🙂

What I will do is tell a little story about my wedding weekend. I was living in Kansas and we got married in California, so we had to do everything in one weekend, and that includes the bachelor party two nights before the wedding. I lost 40 pounds in the three months before the wedding so I would look good for the pictures (245 to 203!). Unfortunately, I, um, needed my friends to carry me in to my dad’s house at the end of the night. My eye accidentally got knocked into a doorknob during that process.

Can you guess where this one’s going? It was pretty swollen the next day, and it was black on the morning of my wedding. The makeup took care of the discoloration, but there was swelling. So much for those pictures … I looked like I was squinting in one of my eyes.

Moral of the story is obviously to not have your bachelor party two nights before the wedding. And if you do, make sure my friends Ben and Kevin don’t carry you in at the end of the night.

Video of the day:

I listened to this song on my iPod on my flight home and it made me think of my family. So I’m playing it today.

What I Didn’t Get My Wife For An Anniversary Present
This t-shirt I saw in a mall in Fargo:

I Made History!
I surpassed my previous record of 110 consecutive days eating ice cream or frozen yogurt when I got a peanut butter waffle cone while I was switching planes in Denver on Friday. Actually, I broke my record moments earlier when I took a sample of white chocolate mousse flavored frozen yogurt at TCBY. But I took a picture of my cone instead. How dumb would a picture of a sample cup look?

I’m at 112 days now and 215 out of the past 216. Speaking of ice cream, Team Maine emailed this picture to me on Saturday. What a beautiful t-shirt!

I always say there is no I in team, but there’s one in “win” and two in “championship”. I’m an ice cream champion.

Gas Theory
OK, so I had Taco Bell on Friday after I picked up my race packet. Wait, that’s not it. If you read last Wednesday’s blog, you know that the price I’m paying for gasoline lately closely correlates with the times I’m running. I paid $3.06 right before I ran a 3:06, the I paid $3.18 right before I ran a 3:19 and then I think 3:05 before a $3.08. Or something like that.

Well, here’s what was at the gas station next to my motel in Fargo:

So, by my math, that’s basically a 3:10. Because two hours and 70 minutes is three hours and 10 minutes. And as you know, my time on Saturday was 3:10:00. You know what would have been even radder? If I was one stinkin’ second faster, because $2.699 is the tiniest amount you can possibly be under $2.700 and 3:09:59 is the tiniest amount you can possibly be under 3:10. Yeah, I know radder isn’t really a word, but this is my blog and I make the rules here.

I’ve been told that gas in Rochester, where I’m going this weekend, is $2.599. Hmmmm …

That’s All For Today, Folks
Thanks for making me your time-waster of choice! See you back here tomorrow!

Since I went with my long rambling blog about United Airlines yesterday, I’m doing my weekend recap today. The best part of this was that I was able to write it on my flight back Sunday after I wrote yesterday’s blog, so that freed me up last night! But there are other good parts about this blog. So please read it!

I always start my blog out with a quick intro. I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. I’m trying to run 60 marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism. So far, I’m accomplish all three of those goals. I’ve raised money. I’ve raised awareness. And I’m through 25 of the 60 marathons.

If you run enough marathons, some will be pretty blah and some will be pretty memorable. Cleveland, which I ran on Sunday is going to end up ranking amongst the top 5 for the year, and I know I can say that even though it’s only May. When you combine the Operation Jack people involved and the way I ran, it really stands out. It was a great day.

Worst Way To Start A Weekend
After work on Friday night, I went to the “Fun Fest” at Benjamin’s school. It’s the school’s annual fundraiser, a carnival that’s attended by pretty much everybody in the school. All of his friends are there, a lot of parents we know are there. This is the fifth year in a row we’ve gone and he has a blast every time. Ava kind of had a good time (she’s too young for a lot of the stuff), but she still had fun with me. Jack was home with my mother-in-law for his therapy session.

I hung out with Tiff and we watched Ben climb the rock wall (he got WAY higher than he did last year, almost to the top!) and then we all had fun watching a demonstration from the tae-kwon-do studio Ben goes to.

So why was this the worst way to start the weekend? Because we always go and stay until it ends at 8 p.m. But my flight was at 8:04 p.m., so I had to leave early to get to the airport. It was a total bummer walking away and leaving them behind, knowing this is the kind of thing I’m missing by doing Operation Jack. I was homesick before I even left. Next year will be better.

Worst Way To Continue A Weekend
In case you didn’t read about my episode with United Airlines, it was pretty sweet of them to lose my carry-on. How do they lose a carry-on? Kind of reminds me of the movie Friday … “How do you get fired on your day off?” … they lose your carry-on when they unnecessarily force you to check it.

Nothing like taking a red-eye flight and then spending the next day aimlessly wandering around Cleveland trying to track down a carry-on suitcase. I kept telling myself it would make my blog easy to write. And sure enough, yesterday’s blog was a breeze to put together. But I could really do without that convenience!

It’s Tuesday, and the sky is still blue, and United Airlines is still lousy.

Continental Airlines, Holla!
Not only do they do it the old-fashioned way and have us board from the back of the plane first (instead of with the “zones” the other airlines give us, which I suspect has a lot to do with how much you pay for your ticket), they feed you for free! We got enchiladas on our flight home!

Shirt Of The Weekend
So I’m getting on the subway Saturday night, and a dude is getting off. He’s wearing a bright green shirt with white lettering and a white four-leaf clover. The shirt says, “Everybody Loves An Italian Boy.”

Not Irish … Italian. Go figure.

I Met People!
As is frequently the case, I got to meet quite a few people who are very supportive of Operation Jack over the weekend. I was a total zombie and forgot to take a picture with Cyndi Kolonick at the expo on Saturday, but I met her and her daughter. She’s been good to talk to, and it’s always fun to put a face to a name.

I also got to meet Erin Fortin and her brother Will. Erin’s been really supportive since last summer and it was great to meet her. Will was pretty cool, too. Erin is a grad student at the University of Colorado, going after a Ph.D in some kind of chemistry something-or-another. Will is in school up in Wyoming chasing a Ph.D in geophysics or something like that. I spent 6 1/2 years getting a journalism degree and almost didn’t graduate because I nearly failed a one-hour freshman geology lab class in my seventh fall. They got a chuckle out of that. Science, not my thing.

Sunday morning before the race, I met Kim Bouldin, who was running her first marathon. Through Twitter, I come in contact with all sorts of people who have common interests with me. There are a lot of runners and a lot of people in the autism world. Kim is a runner (actually, Kim is now a marathoner!) and she lives gluten-free and is pretty active in that community, which overlaps with the autism community. We’ve talked a fair amount over the past several months, so it was nice to meet her in person. She’s super-friendly.

I also spent a fair amount of time with Jenn and Jamie Fellrath and their kids Duncan and Moira. Jenn and Jamie were involved with Train 4 Autism before I started Operation Jack and I’ve been in fairly close contact with them for the better part of a year now. They’ve been super nice over email and they’re the same way in person. I felt bad, because we had lunch on Saturday and I was more-or-less falling asleep sitting straight up by the end of it (the joys of red-eye flights!), but they were a lot of fun to talk to. I’m not going to disrespect their privacy and talk too much about their kids, but Duncan and Moira were both wonderful. I really enjoyed the time I spent with them.

Who Wants To Race Me?
Operation Jack supporter Danielle Speckman ran the Sugarloaf Marathon on Sunday and we made a bet. I spotted her an hour. Her prior PR was a 4:40 I think, but she was probably going to realistically run anywhere between maybe even a sub-4, and about 4:30. As for me, well, I’m always all over the board. You never know. I can turn in a 3:06 or a 3:22 and neither would surprise me.

So here was our bet: I’m going to send her an Operation Jack t-shirt, period. If she won, then she would get the shirt for free. If she lost, then she had to make the $26.20 contribution required on the Sponsors page for the marathon level that the t-shirt requires.

She ran a huge PR and finished in 4:15. She’s pretty excited about it, and rightly so. But I had a good day and I won the virtual race by about seven minutes. Since it’s all for fun and all for charity, Danielle doesn’t mind that I beat her. Really, if you look at my recent times, it’s very reasonable she could have won.

Anyways, if any of you are racing and you want to virtually race me, let me know and I’ll do the same deal with you. I’ll set a reasonable spread based on how you run, and I’ll send you a shirt win-or-lose. But if you lose, you make a charitable contribution to a great cause. If you’re running a half-marathon, we can still do it. If you’re gunning for sub-2, maybe you spot me 1:10 for my full time. I’ll take it on a case-by-case basis. Let me know if you’re interested.

One more thing about Danielle … check out her legs!

I’m Keeping Promise To Sarah Loy
Sarah is an Operation Jack supporter out in Boston and she begged me to post another picture of myself from my larger days. I promised I would and I’m a man of my word.

One Good Thing About Air Travel
I ran a marathon in Cleveland Sunday morning, ate lunch there after the race (orange chicken and white rice … I was actually moderately healthy!) and was in California before sundown. I had chicken burritos for dinner in my own home and saw my kids before they went to sleep. That kind of stuff always trips me out.

That’s All For Today
Yesterday’s blog was long enough. I should only do that on special occasions. Enjoy your tacos today!

I’m going to give you fair warning: If you like United Airlines, you’re not going to want to read this blog. They’re terrible, and they did a number on me this weekend. I’m stuck with who I travel with, so I can’t say I won’t fly them again, but I will never fly them again unless I absolutely have to.

Let me start with a quick preface. I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic and to try to make a difference in his honor, I’m trying to run 60 full marathons this year to raise money and awareness for a great charity called Train 4 Autism. So far, everything is going fairly well.

On Sunday, I ran my 25th marathon of 2010 in Cleveland (you can read my recap here — it was a GREAT day!). Through all those races, I’ve flown a lot. I’ve flown nine times on Delta, seven on Southwest, four on Continental, four on United, three on US Airways, three on American, one on Frontier and one on Jet Blue. I’ve experienced a lot since January 1 and I know the differences between the airlines.

If you don’t fly a lot nowadays, it’s really become a pain with all the airlines charging for checked luggage. Everybody tries to carry on as much as possible and the overheads get full. There’s borderline pushing and shoving at boarding time. I carry on because I need to keep my running gear in my possession. I can’t run the risk of losing my gear. I made that mistake when I flew out to the Kansas City Marathon in 2008. If you’re ever traveling to a race, don’t check your running gear if you’re flying the day before a race.

Anyways, I absolutely dread flying United. They really, really did me wrong this time. I’m going to explain in just a minute, but first, I want to give you some background. They have a terrible rule with their carry-ons. They board by zone, and if you’re in boarding zone 4 and the flight is anywhere near full, they won’t let you carry on a rolling suitcase. A lot of duffel bags are actually bigger, but it’s those little wheels that must make all the difference. They’re afraid that the overheads will fill. Well, they need to take a lesson from Delta. On Delta, they don’t force anybody to check a bag until the overheads are actually full. What a concept!

My first two times flying United, they took my bag as part of their zone 4 policy. Both times, there was plenty of room in the overheads when the plane was closed. The first time, they lost my bag and I had to be the guy to figure out how to track it down. They were also late on their flight and I missed my connecting flight, so the agent re-routed me from Philadelphia to Dulles through Chicago instead of straight to Norfolk. Yeah, that makes sense.

The second time, they did the zone 4 thing and took my bag. I asked the woman who forced me to check it if I could be the very last person on the plane and stick it in the overhead if there was space. She told me no and put a tag on it. I brought it down and waited to be the last person on the plane anyways. Sure enough, there was plenty of space, and the flight attendants said I could bring it on. But the guy who sent my bag down the stairs wouldn’t walk down and get it for me. So they checked it, and I got to wait at the baggage claim for my mistreated bag (it’s a little torn up now) instead of going straight home to see my family.

I book as close to the back of the plane as possible on United so I don’t get stuck in zone 4. My third trip, home from Grand Junction last weekend, was uneventful. But this weekend took the cake.

I was in zone 2 on Friday night. I flew Continental, but in one of those co-op deals they do, my first flight, to San Francisco, was on United. My carry-on bag is built to the specifications that the airlines or the FAA has set. It fits perfectly inside those little cages. It doesn’t pass the eyeball test about 1/3 of the time, but I drop it in the cage without worry every time. Once, on Frontier, it didn’t fit, but the cage was bent, so that wasn’t really the bag’s fault.

Anyways, the woman taking my ticket on Friday told me my bag was too big and needed to be checked. I told her I get that every time, but it fits in the overheads and fits in the cage and I wanted to show her that. United doesn’t actually have a cage — they just have a plastic board with a template defining the allowable space. It was two feet from her, but she wouldn’t let me show her. We went back-and-forth a couple of times, but she refused to even consider it. I was pretty angry as she checked my bag to Cleveland.

When I got down to the plane, I asked the flight attendants if they could watch me put my bag in the overhead. It fits. Just like I know my name is Sam, I know my bag fits. But they said no, that once the decision is made at the gate, there’s nothing they can do about it. That’s funny — the crew when I was coming back from Dallas was going to let me bring it on. This time, the rules were different. The woman who was going to take the luggage down to get loaded on the plane said that once it’s tagged in the system, they can’t do anything about it because it affects the weights and measures of the plane.

OK, this is where I call B.S. I asked her if she was kidding. Seriously, a 25-pound bag? What if I still weighed 261 pounds instead of 200? What if it was a duffel bag and they had no record of me carrying it on? They had no clue what that bag weighed and if that bag affected the measures of the plane, I’m not sure I’m comfortable flying.

We got to San Francisco and had a three-hour layover. Yes, three hours. And when I got to Cleveland, sure enough, my bag wasn’t there. I wasn’t happy, to say the least. But now, it was a Continental problem, because that flight was on Continental.

Continental couldn’t track the bag in the database. They had no clue if it was in Orange County, San Francisco or Cleveland. But they told me that if they didn’t deliver it within 24 hours, I’d be eligible for an allowance for replacement clothing. The problem, of course, is that my race was in 23 hours. I’m on a pretty tight budget with five mouths to feed from one income in California. I didn’t really want to go on a shopping spree.

About an hour later, I called back and asked for status. They still didn’t know where the bag was. I explained to them my situation. I’m trying to raise $100,000 for charity this year under the pretense of running at least one marathon every weekend. I was wearing sandals, layup pants and a tech shirt. Not exactly marathon wear. I didn’t have 24 hours and I needed them to track my bag. I said that if they were going to stick to their 24-hour rule, I wanted somebody who understood that it wasn’t my swimsuit I was waiting for to confirm that decision.

The man from Continental (and they did a very good job with handling United’s mess for me) told me that if they didn’t have a solid indicator of when I’d get the bag by 3 p.m. Saturday, I’d have a green-light to shop. In hindsight, I probably should have just bought stuff anyways. But I was a zombie after taking a red-eye and I didn’t. At 3 p.m., they told me they absolutely had the bag in San Francisco and that it was going to be on a flight getting into Cleveland at 9:15. They knew the urgency of the situation and they were going to deliver the bag to my hotel.

So I took a nap, woke up and got some dinner. I was jogging on the sidewalk in my sandals, imagining running a marathon in them. I was thinking about running barefoot if that’s what it came down to, but I figured that would probably break bones in my feet, because I’m not trained for that. My backup plan became finding a 24-hour Wal-Mart, getting whatever shoes and clothing I could find and running the race in that.

I was super tired, so I talked to my wife and gave her the information and asked her to stay on top of it with Continental to make sure the bag made its way to my hotel. I saw on the computer that it was in Cleveland at 9:52, so I hopped into bed, set my alarm for 2:30 a.m. just in case I didn’t have my bag by then, and trusting my wife would get it squared away.

At 10:12, she called me and told me she had good news and bad news. They definitely had my bag in Cleveland. But I had to go to the airport to pick it up. They couldn’t guarantee it would be there by 8 a.m., which wasn’t good considering the race was at 7. So I ran to the subway (nothing quite like riding the subway in Cleveland on a Saturday night) and went to the airport. I ran through the terminal to get my bag and I was thrilled to have it in my possession!

I took the subway back and 40 minutes after I left my hotel, I was back. I was too wired to fall asleep, so sometime after 11:45, I finally fell asleep (I woke up for the race at 4:30 a.m.).

All of this could have been avoided if the woman would have let me measure my bag. But for whatever reason, she got a kick out of telling me no. I’ve never had her job, but if I was in her position and somebody told me their bag really did fit and they were adamant about it, I’m sure I’d let the person measure it right in front of my eyes to end it and move on to the next person. Maybe she’s the type who can’t let go of an argument and admit she’s wrong?

Whatever the case, she really did a number wrecking my trip. And of all the problems I’ve had traveling this year, United is the common denominator. Three times now.

But I’m not done. I’m going to do everything I can to make this right. The airlines, in general, don’t do a whole lot when it comes to service. You have no options and they know it and they treat you accordingly. But I’m still going to push. They need to do something to make this right. I really feel like they owe me for what they did.

What I really want to know more than anything is what happened to my bag. One of two things happened. Either it never made it on my plane or something happened and they couldn’t get it to the right spot (even with three hours) in San Francisco. That’s possible, since it had to go from United to Continental. If that’s the case, I want to know what I can do to help the situation in the future — who I can call when I’m switching planes or whatever. I’m not going to have this happen again.

But if didn’t make it on the plane out of Orange County? Then I’ll know the woman who took my bag on the jetway sabotaged me. There’s no other possible explanation for that one.

So, I’ll wait and see. You can be absolutely certain that I won’t fly United unless I absolutely have to. You can do what you want, but don’t say you weren’t warned.

Normally, I try to write something catchy at the top of my blog to lure you in to the rest of it. But sometimes, like today, I look and notice I didn’t do that the night before and I figured I’d take care of that later. Well, later is now, and I have about five minutes to post this and send it out, take out the trash and put my shoes on. Jack has to get to school So nothing catchy today. But if you want to read my blog, you can read out my luxurious hotel in Colorado, catch my review of a new Taco Bell product, view three new media clips and … I think there’s some more stuff in there. Oh, I ran a race, too.

I guess since it’s Monday morning, I’ll give a quick introduction in case you’ve never been here. Actually, I do that every morning, but if you’ve never been here, you wouldn’t know that!

I’m a father of three and a marathon runner. My middle child, 6 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic. To try to make a difference in his honor, I’m attempting to run 60 marathons this year to help raise money and awareness for a charity called Train 4 Autism. So far, so good. 24 down, 36 to go. Actually, I might be running 61. I’ll probably talk more about that on Wednesday.

Speaking of 24 down, that 24th race was Saturday in Palisade, Colorado. I ran the Grand Valley Marathon on Saturday. It was a tough race with altitude, a monster of a hill and some pretty rough wind. I went 3:19, which is a slow time for me, but it wasn’t a PR course or a PR day. Well, unless it was your first race. Somehow, that was good enough for second place overall. Yeah, small field of about 100 in the marathon. If you want, you can read my race recap.

Media Coverage
I’ve had a few things done lately and I’ve been slow posting links. I’ll get caught up, but for now, here are three recent things that were kind of fun.

First, here’s a piece the local ABC station did on me on Saturday. On the left, right above that ugly side profile of me, there’s a link to the video they did. Actually, I just noticed that this will take you to the video.

A few weeks ago, a Charlottesville, Va. station included me in their coverage of their marathon there. I’m on about a minute into this one.

If you want to hear me ramble on and on, I was the subject of a podcast called RunRunLive for about a 30-minute interview. I come on at about 8:45 into it and it goes on for a little while. Tiff liked it. I kind of did too — it almost made me sound like I know what I’m talking about!

I’m going to be interviewed this morning for a sports radio station in Colorado. I’ll post a link to that tomorrow.

This Is How The Other Half Lives
I’ve been sleeping in fleabag motels. Dirty, gross stuff. Places that I refuse to walk around barefoot in, places that didn’t have hot water in the shower, places with old hardware on top of the shelves in the closet. But then again, I’m doing this as low budget as possible, so when you get a rental car and a motel room for less than $70, including taxes, what can you really expect?

Well, I stayed in Grand Junction, Colorado on Friday night, and Travelocity gave me a great combo deal to stay in a Courtyard By Marriott. It’s not like I’ve never stayed in a decent place, but staying in the places I’ve been staying in made this place seem like a Ritz Carlton. I was on cloud nine when I walked in. There was an actual lobby, the check-in folks were dressed nicely and helpful, I was able to get a 2 p.m. checkout, everything inside the room was nice and plush. And this room was the cheapest deal in town since I bought a package on Travelocity!

So, I guess for once, I operated on my tiny budget but got to enjoy what now seems like luxury. I even got to take an ice bath and there was hot water. It was awesome!

Fast Food Critique Of The Week
Normally I’m into burgers, but the only places in Grand Junction I saw where I was at were Wendy’s and Burger King, and I wasn’t in the mood for either of those after the race on Saturday. There was no Cracker Barrel within 50 miles, either, so I just hit up Taco Bell. Normally, I mix it up with bean burritos and chicken burritos. I still maintain that there’s nothing better that 99 cents can buy than one of those chicken burritos.

Anyways, they have something new they call a 7-layer Big Beefy Burrito or something like that. It was only 89 cents, but what a waste. It was something like two tortillas, nacho cheese, sour cream, ground beef and maybe some cheese. Not only is that terrible for you — it didn’t make a dent in filling me up. Bean burritos and chicken burritos aren’t incredibly healthy, but they’re way better and worth the extra dime.

Now you know.

Ice Cream Update
If I had a bottle of beer on the wall for every consecutive day now that I’ve had ice cream or frozen yogurt, I’d have 99 bottles of beer on the wall. 99 bottles of beer!

Saving The Best For Last
My race was on Saturday and I got home before Ben and Ava were even asleep. I planned it that way to make sure I could be home and dedicate the entire day to my family for Mother’s Day yesterday. Tiff deserves nothing less. So, that’s exactly what I did. One Facebook status update to say that I was dedicating my day to my family, and one tweet doing the same thing.

We had a great day. Me and my kids are pretty lucky.

That’s All For Today
Have a great Monday, everybody! I’ll see you back here tomorrow!