exercise?

What is this?  An actual effort to try to regain some level of fitness?  Whoa!

Conrad's out of town again, this time until tomorrow.  I've been at Van's instead of at home for the most part, and that means getting different routes than the usual for morning walks.  It also means - and believe me, I do love time with Conrad and miss him - that I don't need to do walks at our usual modest pace together.  Instead, I've been trying to get in more mileage and mix in running.  Jeffing, I think, or something like it.  5.2 miles this morning, 5.67 yesterday when I (pooped and sweaty) got back to the house in time to take Olive out.

I had yesterday off work, in fact, and made even more of that by heading to the pool.  Not a long swim - I was wary of being away from the phone too long because of a delivery I was expecting.  But a swim nonetheless.

Shocking, right?  My step count these past two weeks has been vaguely admirable.  And I have been going to bed and conking out hard because I have been exerting myself.

Exercise, right?  Who'd have thunk it?

if I thought the swimming was bad...

... you can only guess how much a run hurt.

Or perhaps I should say "run".

Tuesday morning last week I got up early and sent Conrad off on a walk with a colleague with whom we'd walked the morning before.  For my part, I went off with another colleague, attempting a run for the first time in far too long.

To my credit, I made it the first whole mile a) without stopping and b) in under ten minutes.  Tiny little pat on the back for that one.  To Brett's credit, he happily switched to walking thereafter whenever I needed it.

All told, we did a little over 4 miles on foot and had a beautiful morning and lots of good conversation to enjoy.

But wow, do I want to be able to run better than that when next we are together for meetings in Chicago, in November.

outbound

A bit of breathing space for me, so let me do what I seem to do so much of and spend some posts in days ahead catching up on travel that is already days behind.  Wednesday now, and I got back on Monday night.  Heck, a week ago (however you look at it with the International Date Line) I was at a college in another country.

Catch up is what I will do, though, even as I head to the desert tomorrow (more on that to come).  And then again in April before a trip to Chicago.  So let me dial back to the most recent trip and get a series of posts up that share the experience.

Starting with the travel to Micronesia.

A grey, cold Friday in SoCal when I left. 

We're getting a lot of that weather this year - apparently Pasadena had just shy of 2 inches of rain yesterday.  A proper soaking, and nothing compared to what other parts of the state are enduring.  All in all, not a bad time to head out of California.  The seat was comfortable,

and Honolulu awaited.

First leg:  LAX --> HNL.

I arrived early afternoon, with plenty of time to get to the Ala Moana Center, whose stores and parking lot my "partial ocean view" (and, to be fair, I could see the ocean) overlooked. 

COVID weight means that I have outgrown belly-wise too many of my many aloha shirts, so it was shopping for me.  And a light lunch - musubi! 

I checked into the hotel after shopping,

and then later met colleagues for dinner, catching the early evening and even fireworks plus all the beach crowd at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

The next day we weren't rushed.  Our flight to Guam wasn't until mid-afternoon.  That meant a morning walk/run

around Waikiki,

6.5 miles in total. 

Plenty of time to repack as well.  It was a large and full plane

for the, oh, 8 hour flight ahead, and many many military streaming on board in the pre-boarding phase.  I felt ever so slightly guilty that I had a lovely pod seat and full meal up in Polaris class,

and thank you Conrad for throwing upgrades at the flight and hooray for them coming through.  I settled in and even dozed for a couple of hours.

Second leg, then:  HNL --> GUM.

We landed in Guam in darkness.  We left the next morning in darkness. 

I did see Guam from the airplane the next day in the morning light,

but otherwise, for all I know, Guam is always night time.  The hotel was fine enough - a Hilton on the beach.  It might have been nice to have more time there, but this was not a vacation, so ah well.  The room was fine for a short night of sleep. 

The toilet was kind of amazing, I admit. 

The cafe had some tempting treats that I didn't have but kind of wanted to.

I headed to the airport ahead of the team the next morning.  I was awake super early, so I got myself going and went to the lounge for a bit before meeting the others in the main part of the terminal. 

I found myself a last decaf latte (to be fair, I didn't have the time to check the one coffee shop I saw near the hotel in Kolonia). 

I boarded the flight (not upgraded), heading for Micronesia.

Third leg:  GUM --> TKK

The flight to Micronesia is part of the Island Hopper route that loops south from Guam, east across part of the Pacific, then back up to Honolulu.  Across the week, I managed the whole loop.  First up, though, the flight down to Chuuk, a province of the Federated States of Micronesia.

I wish that we had been allowed off the plane on all the Hopper stops, but that wasn't to be.  So I saw Chuuk from the plane, and that meant the first glimpse of the province. 

The airport is on the island of Weno, so that is the island I saw most of.  There was the airport, and a hotel nearby. 

Lots of green on those low mountains (tall hills?).  And that was Chuuk for us!

Fourth leg:  TKK --> PNI

So, let's see.  I left LAX at about 9AM on Friday morning.  I left Honolulu at about 3PM on Saturday afternoon.  I left GUM at about 8AM on Monday morning.  I arrived on Pohnpei at about 1PM on the Monday afternoon.  I lost a day in there.

I was also sitting on the wrong side of the plane to see much as we landed.  So I caught a glimpse of the reef surrounding the island,

but it wasn't until we taxied that I began to see more of it.  The airport

was an experience:  the immigration guy was, well, difficult.  Thank goodness for one of my teammates having a lot of printed stuff with him.  Ugh.  Ah well.  And then I thought my bag had gone astray.  It was a relief to go to the airport lounge to be greeted by the folks from the college there.  Leis for each of us. 

Lunches for us to take back to the hotel.  Bags transported for us, a nice college shuttle to take us as well.

So, we made it.  I had a room that was nicely air-conditioned,

and a view that may have been parking lot, but had trees and a stream beyond that and plenty of birds in the trees. 

Getting there took many hours of flight over multiple days, and boy was I glad to arrive!

still here

Look, I know it's been a while. I've spent time recently thinking the blogging thing - why am I doing it, for whom? No, I'm not overcome with angst, but I did realize that the blog hasn't been as fulfilling as it used to be. And I'm not yet sure whether and how to continue. I'll think on it more. I have, however, been adding photos to Flickr. I've not forsaken social media.

But golly, much has gone on since last I posted:

Garden party at the home of Rick and Deann Bayless of Frontera Grill, a prize won in a silent auction. No, they weren't there.

A good bye dinner at Mercat a la Planxa for CG before she moved away. Excellent dinner, bittersweet having to have it.

I had a few days in Baltimore with my best friend, Todd. Conrad joined us for most of it, and among the highlights was a long-awaited dinner at Woodberry Kitchen. And I ran a marathon.

Conrad and I had concurrent conferences in Pittsburgh, a quite appealing city. The time there was marred only by the cold I was suffering post-marathon.

John and Bryan treated us to birthday dinners at Frontera Grill.

I spent a long weekend in Toronto with Allison, my Best Woman, and her husband, Sean. Much shopping ensued.

There's a lot more I could write, I know. I have baked and cooked. We've had other meals out (like Sunday night, at Yoshi's celebrating Rachel's birthday). It's been a lovely autumn all in all.

Many of those moments are no longer fresh in mind, though, and I think it best to not look back too very much, just move ahead. I'll return to the blog again, certainly, even if it's to close it down. I still don't know. For now, though, a glimpse of a busy and fulfilling autumn.

some people never change...

...and thank goodness for it!

Blogging a bit out of chronological order here, but I'm sure you'll all cut me some slack. I have a few photos still from yesterday, but I did want to get Ray's photos up before too long.

Ray is someone I've known for about 15 years from back home. Way back in about 1993 he took a fat young guy (me - and yes, I was fat, about 90 pounds heavier than I am right now) and somehow instilled in him an appreciation and enjoyment of activity. As if that were all he did, though. Ray is simply a very rare person, someone who takes each person on their merits and makes his judgment based on that. No generalizations based on the person's background or self-identification. It's a remarkable quality in a person, and I am glad to know him for it.

It's been too many years since last we saw each other. A few near misses when I've been in Salmon Arm and the area, but otherwise, it's been several years since last I saw him. I think it may have been 5 years since we managed a coffee in Kamloops on a snowy late December morning. 1 hour in the last ten years. Not enough.

Before Conrad, Mum, Roy, and I set out for Kelowna this morning, we stopped by Ray's new running gear store, Cool Running, in Salmon Arm. From the sounds of it, it's been a welcome business in the community, and I hope his success there endures. Meanwhile, he and I had a lot of running and swimming chit chat to catch up on as well as the Terrace gossip. Plus, he'd never met Conrad before, though others in his family and extended family had.

Dinner with Ray tomorrow night in Salmon Arm and more catching up on tap. How nice to do so on this all-too-short visit back west.