I feel very fortunate that I don’t have to travel very much for work, I don’t think I could ever do the consulting thing.  Sleeping in my bed every night ranks high on my list of likes.

Last week 4 of us from work traveled to Hilton Head, SC for a user conference for the payroll/HR system we use at work.  I cannot complain too much since the vendor only does this about every 18 months.  They tend to do it in warm climates too since they are, for the most part, all from Toronto, Canada.  Last conference was in San Diego and now this one in HH.

I’m not going to bore people with the details of a payroll/HR conference.  I will say that the Omni Hilton Head Resort is very nice and lounging around a fire pit is a nice way to spend an evening.

You can be damn sure that if I am on the east coast for work, I am going to take some time to fly up to New Hampshire to visit family.  I haven’t seen my mom in just over a year, since my dad’s funeral, and that situation needed to be remedied.

Paul picked my butt up in Manchester on Thursday night and I crashed at his place.  After dropping him off at work and hitting up Dunkin Donuts for some mediocre coffee and a donut (duh!) I headed over to hang with mom.  We went out for lunch, did some grocery shopping and just hung out and chatted for the day.  For dinner we ended up at Steve and Alison’s place while the German exchange student they are hosting cooked us all a traditional German meal.

My mom couldn’t help herself and started to fold laundry that was sitting around.  You can take her out, but a mom will always be a mom.

I ended up not getting my mom home until a little past 11pm and then finally made it back to Paul’s house by 11:30.  I was trying to keep somewhat of a west coast schedule and ended up reading in bed until a little past midnight, which put me at my normal bedtime.

Paul and I got to do an hour and a half mountain bike ride on Saturday morning.  I wish I could express sufficiently how nice it was to be able to do a nice mountain bike ride right from his driveway.  No driving to a trailhead!  That is one of the things I really miss the most being out here in the PDX metro area.  The closest real mountain biking for me is still almost 30 minutes away by car.  That pretty much gets me to Stub Stewart, Hagg Lake or Browns camp.

Paul wanted to pick up some of Henniker Brewing’s seasonal release.  While we were there he and Sebastian (one of the German exchange teachers) opted for a sample flight (or is it flite) of their beers.  Paul got to remember what it was like to have his teetotaler brother around so I could drive the 3 of us home afterwards.

To top off the final part of my weekend in NH I headed to the Halloweiner Hustle on Sunday with Paul, Shannon and friends.  I was supposed to run on Paul’s team but was having some calf issues just before I left Oregon.  I did not want to compromise my half marathon coming up and was focusing on trying to fix the calf issue.  Turns out it seems to be connected to a super tight right hamstring.  I hit the resort gym while in South Carolina and spent a good amount of time stretching the heck out of my calves, hamstrings and hip flexors.

I was supposed to go as the Iron Sheik.  Paul was obviously Hulk Hogan plus we had Rowdy Roddy Piper and The Ultimate Warrior.  They ended up 2nd overall for the all male teams.

In all honesty it is probably a good thing I didn’t run.  I don’t drink and I don’t eat red meat…..so my options were going to be an O’douls and a soy “hotdog”.  Yeah, not really appealing either.

I went straight from this event to the airport for what turned into quite the LONG journey back to Oregon.  A strong Nor’easter of a rain storm was moving into New England Sunday evening.  My flight was over an hour behind schedule landing in MHT.  Then when we landed in Chicago we sat on the tarmac for at least thirty minutes, thus missing my connecting flight back to PDX.  My options were to either spend the night in Chicago and fly out at 9:30 Monday morning……OR…….fly to San Francisco in 50 minutes, sit around for 8 hours, fly out of SFO at 7AM and be back into PDX @ 9:45AM.  This got me home the quickest and meant I got to keep “moving”.  I ended up spending almost 25 hours in airports, the air, or light rail.  I was very happy to get home.

I didn’t start to feel normal again until almost the middle of this past week.  I got in one run on Wednesday and didn’t have any calf issues.  It appears the stretching is working.  I was slow, but at least I could run.

Finally this past weekend I partook in the half marathon that I had been training for.  Needless to say, with the trip to SC, NH and the calf issue tossed in there, the previous 10 days of running were almost nonexistent.  It was not ideal prep but I was still willing to give it a go.  I ran a mediocre 1:57 for 4th in my age group and 27th overall.  It is now back to hiking, 5K and 10K runs for the winter before thinking about mountain bike racing in 2018.

Mia took Codi for a hike on the portion of the Klickitat Trail northeast of the finish line.  She did an excellent job of tiring him out.  I have to thank her for driving my butt home too.  I was fairly cooked by the time I crossed the finish line.  I did okay for the first 10 miles, but the last 3 were for sure painful.

That sums up the past two weeks in a nutshell.  It’s very nice being back at home after a week away.  I got to spend time with my mom!  I got to see family and as any twin will tell you, spending time with your duplicate is always a good thing.

So, that’s about it for now.

Thanks for reading,

-Pete