3 trips to the coast

Call it great planning or poor planning, depending on your feelings for the beach, I spent the last 3 weekends buying gas to and from the SC coast.  The first trip was a family vacation to the beach.

We built a big shark out of sand, dug holes and dipped our feet in the cold ocean.

So much personality for such small bodies.

Next up....a quick day trip to North Charleston to pick up "Ethel's Daughter" and bring her home.



She was in very good shape after a year in the salty air.

And then there was the Cooper River Bridge Run last weekend.  My brother and I tried this thing out for the first time.  We joined 45,000 people who all thought running 6.2 miles over an engineering wonder and into downtown Charleston would be a good idea.

At 6:50 am we felt like we were standing behind all 45,000 of them waiting in line for the shuttle to take us across the bridge to the starting line.  This was a good 30 minutes after we got in line and we still had about 2 blocks left to go.

The Weinermobile kept us company in line.  How can you not love this car?

Finally on the shuttle at 7:45 am.  Sunrise over the bridge through a dirty school bus window.

Made it to Corral C at 7:59 am.  The race was supposed to start at 8:00 am.  That's brother Daniel, one half of Team Facial Hair.  He ran like a boss.

 And the other half of Team Facial Hair.  The goatee survived the race but fell victim to the curious razor later the same day.

 After the start was delayed almost an hour, it took me 52 minutes 48 seconds to cross the finish line.  The post race festivities were in Marion Square.  It was here I devoured a bottle of water, a banana, a Krispy Kreme doughnut, a giant blueberry muffin and a second banana.  Who needs Gatorade when there are doughnuts?

 The logistics of this race make getting in and out of downtown a challenge.  Daniel and I recovered, refueled and started hiking our way north.  We got to walk on the sidewalk against the flow of the race and observe the thousands of people still streaming into town.  This was one of the last water stations on the route.  They had ran out of cups at this point and the awesome guy in blue was then spraying racers with a fire hose. 

That's a lot of travel for a hermit...and way too much human interaction.  I plan to stay home for a while now.