Training Log Archive: jjcoteIn the 7 days ending Nov 13, 2011: |
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Sunday Nov 13, 2011 #
Note
I think this deserves a wider audience than if I had posted it elsewhere...
A week ago, Nancy and I went to the WCOC sprint meet, and she said she had a coupon for a restaurant nearby where we could get dinner. Sounded completely plausible. Everybody else had left the meet site before we did, and when we walked into the dining room of the restaurant, I noticed that there were some orienteers at a table there. You often see this at an A-meet, though not so frequently at a local meet, I momentarily thought that this was a fine coincidence, and maybe we could sit with them. I'm so oblivious. I had no idea what was going on until they started singing -- my 50th birthday is coming up. We all had dinner together, and there was cake, and it was quite an excellent time. I never suspected that it was also a decoy.
So now a week later, I went to the UNO meet at Beaver Brook, and I needed to pick Stephen up at school after his rehearsal at 5:20. It would have been cool if he could have come to the meet as well, because the Ruutopolds were there, and he hasn't seen Tiivo in years. Likewise with Nicole, who was home from college on Saturday, and hasn't seen Aanika. But Stephen had the rehearsal and homework, and Nicole needed to get back up to Colby-Sawyer. So I picked Stephen up, and as is typical, he wasn't very conversational in the car, just busy sending text messages on his phone. When we got to his house, I was puzzled to see Nancy's car in the driveway. The reason I was picking Stephen up was that she was still at work, and when she got home we were going to get dinner. Stephen and I walked up to the back door, and I noticed that the blinds in the dining room were closed -- that was unusual, something was up. Sure enough, we walked in, with me expecting to see maybe a half-dozen people, and there were quite a few more than that -- and additional people kept coming around the corners, from the other rooms, and out of the woodwork. I stood there gasping in disbelief -- essentially all of my relatives were there, plus orienteers, college friends, hang glider pilots, and even my friend George whom I've known since second grade, all the way up from the Cape. I think we counted 36 people plus Nancy and myself. And the Ruutopolds were among them, so the kids did get to meet back up. My only regret was that there were so many good friends that I didn't have enough time to spend with everybody. As a capstone to the evening, my college friend Mike, who I was in a garage band with that played at parties at our dorm, had brought along instruments and his high-school age musician son, and we had a Holman Hack Band (Unplugged) reunion, playing two of the songs that we used to perform back in the day.
Thanks so much to everybody who was able to make it to either of these excellent parties, and especially to the lovely and devious Nancy, who put a huge amount of time and effort into making this happen. Made me feel a lot better about turning 50!
A week ago, Nancy and I went to the WCOC sprint meet, and she said she had a coupon for a restaurant nearby where we could get dinner. Sounded completely plausible. Everybody else had left the meet site before we did, and when we walked into the dining room of the restaurant, I noticed that there were some orienteers at a table there. You often see this at an A-meet, though not so frequently at a local meet, I momentarily thought that this was a fine coincidence, and maybe we could sit with them. I'm so oblivious. I had no idea what was going on until they started singing -- my 50th birthday is coming up. We all had dinner together, and there was cake, and it was quite an excellent time. I never suspected that it was also a decoy.
So now a week later, I went to the UNO meet at Beaver Brook, and I needed to pick Stephen up at school after his rehearsal at 5:20. It would have been cool if he could have come to the meet as well, because the Ruutopolds were there, and he hasn't seen Tiivo in years. Likewise with Nicole, who was home from college on Saturday, and hasn't seen Aanika. But Stephen had the rehearsal and homework, and Nicole needed to get back up to Colby-Sawyer. So I picked Stephen up, and as is typical, he wasn't very conversational in the car, just busy sending text messages on his phone. When we got to his house, I was puzzled to see Nancy's car in the driveway. The reason I was picking Stephen up was that she was still at work, and when she got home we were going to get dinner. Stephen and I walked up to the back door, and I noticed that the blinds in the dining room were closed -- that was unusual, something was up. Sure enough, we walked in, with me expecting to see maybe a half-dozen people, and there were quite a few more than that -- and additional people kept coming around the corners, from the other rooms, and out of the woodwork. I stood there gasping in disbelief -- essentially all of my relatives were there, plus orienteers, college friends, hang glider pilots, and even my friend George whom I've known since second grade, all the way up from the Cape. I think we counted 36 people plus Nancy and myself. And the Ruutopolds were among them, so the kids did get to meet back up. My only regret was that there were so many good friends that I didn't have enough time to spend with everybody. As a capstone to the evening, my college friend Mike, who I was in a garage band with that played at parties at our dorm, had brought along instruments and his high-school age musician son, and we had a Holman Hack Band (Unplugged) reunion, playing two of the songs that we used to perform back in the day.
Thanks so much to everybody who was able to make it to either of these excellent parties, and especially to the lovely and devious Nancy, who put a huge amount of time and effort into making this happen. Made me feel a lot better about turning 50!