Remember last week when I wrote about having one of those days where you thought you could run forever. Well, that’s at one end of the running spectrum and this week was at the other end. The way things have been going, that sounds about right.

I’ve been whining about this lower left ankle thing (yes, that is the proper medical description…like when I crashed the mountain bike on the Iceman and told the ER Doc I had “munged up” my shoulder). I felt it on every step. It doesn’t hurt like an ankle sprain…it just aches all the time. It didn’t used to bother me when I ran, just all the rest of the time. Now it bothers me while I run too.

That alone wouldn’t have stopped me. It was the blister on my left arch that brought an end to this morning’s 135 minute run at 95 minutes. We’ll go out and do an easy ride later and, afterwards, I will probably run the last 40 minutes ala Roch and Paul’s triahlon training schedule. As I took off my socks and was looking at my blister, I found a spot where one of my toes was all bloody (yes, it stained my sock). I had clipped my toenails down and thought there was no way one nail would dig into the toe next to it, but I was wrong. I guess I’ll have to resort to taping my toes. Oh No!! I’ve become a Jean clone.

It’s been an interesting year down here. We’ve gone through at least 30 different model homes and I’m not sure why. We can’t afford any of them. Jean says she likes to look at them to get decorating ideas and to see different floor plans we might like, but when we look at what we can afford, nothing is quite good enough.

Tuesday we looked at place in a mobile home park where there are 8 Hastings families. We picked out 6 to look at and could only get into 5. The other people weren’t home and the guy showing us the places didn’t have their key. The one we thought we would like we didn’t. They had a Golden Retriever and it smelled like he was bathed right before the Y2K scare. The odor permeated the trailer (Whoops!! Mobile home). It was in an area of the park we liked which was away from the noise of the highway and busy side street.

If I hadn’t bought the cottage at Crooked Lake, we could get anything we wanted down here. But then when we were in Michigan for 6 months each year I would have to stay in town trying to sleep in a house on the busiest street in Hastings that isn’t a state highway and spend my waking moments in a 60 degree house with two televisions that get 4 channels each and a hot tub that doesn’t work. So I’m stymied (not to be confused with Stymie, one of the “Our Gang” kids…you youngsters don’t know what I’m talking about) as to what to do.

We’ve met several people down here that like to bike, so we have plenty of group rides we can do. We went out to San Antonio (Florida…not Texas) Wednesday and did a 40 mile ride with three other people. It was on County roads and was like riding the back roads in Barry County (if you pretended the oranges on the trees were apples and the palmetto fields were corn fields). We may meet up with a group tomorrow from Tampa that will ride about 40 miles on the Suncoast Trail from Starkey Park to Anderson Snow Park.

Friday we drove 2 1/2 hours to the Sebring/Lake Placid area where we hopped in a car with friends and drove around all day looking at places there, then drove 2 1/2 hours back to Hudson. Someone please come down and babysit Jean so I don’t have to look at any more model homes. She even dragged me through the flea market yesterday afternoon. What a treat!!

Sayonarra,

Just (In a Bad Mood But At Least I Know Why) Jack