him - 20jul13 - girl farts and rotting shoes

Story making fun of casey

so. it's true. before, i wasn't certain. now, i am. the earth has shifted. atlas has shrugged. the heavens have realigned.

a few weeks back, case and i were headed out to do something sweaty (i no longer remember exactly what it was). to that end, we were wearing our workout clothes and workout shoes and workout faces. now, i don't know if any of you have ever smelled a pair shoes that have ‘gone bad’, but it is a unique and unpleasant odor. i currently own a pair of gore-tex tennies that fit this bill...the gore-tex doesn't let them breathe as well as mesh shoes, causing the trapped water/sweat to sour and mildew over time...they're gross.

anyhow, we'd just gotten in the car and i had backed out of the apartment and started towards our destination (whatever it was). after hitting the road, i caught a whif of something awful. i couldn’t quite place it at first. thought it might be my shoes or maybe something had died in the car. a few more seconds passed…i smelled my pits, tried to smell my shoes (had trouble with that one since i was driving) and just couldn’t figure it out. still, i didn’t put it past me…sometimes, guys stink for unknown reasons.so, at this point, i was confused. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

then, casey giggled. 

then, i knew. girls do fart. and it stinks (like rotting shoes??)! damn.

we both laughed for several minutes…mostly at my reaction to her deception, though some of it was me laughing at her embarrassment. honestly, it was pretty damn funny. hilarious, even. whatevs. we kept on towards wherever it was we were going and casey thought the whole ordeal was over.

several weeks later (about the time i got the idea to write this little gem), casey learned that it wasn’t over. i told her i planned to write about this little event. at first, she was both upset and embarrassed…i’m sure she was thinking things like: ’how dare i tell the world that sweet little casey farts and it doesn't smell like roses!!!’ or ‘that’s private and you can’t put it in the blog!!’ or something like that. this was in the afternoon. a few hours later, as we were going to sleep, i brought it up again. we talked about it for maybe a minute before she started to giggle. then laugh. then belly laugh. then cry. for maybe six or seven minutes. it was hilarious. nothing much funnier than a person laughing so hard they cry. 

anyhow, she said she was laughing so hard because of my initial reaction to the smell…sniffing around trying to figure out what it was and not being able to do so. i like to think that she was laughing at herself for letting the world’s oldest secret out of the bag. whichever, I took that as implied consent (i mean, seriously, i'm not gonna post something that lands me on the couch for a week) and here we are.

Different perspectives

casey and i ran the Waugoshonce Trail Half-Marathon in Mackinaw City, MI on 13JUL13. casey has comp(l)eted in numerous races, from a 5K run up to a full Ironman (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and a 26.2 mile run). this was my first race. ever. well, other than ‘The Color Run’ a few weeks back (the ‘5K’ was actually 2.5 miles). so, this was the first real race.

  

she beat the hell out of me...almost 20 minutes. she placed 3^rd out of about 100 in the women’s

division (2:01) and i placed 39^th out of 78 in the men’s (2:20). she considered this a ‘short, training run’ and a good ‘measure of where she stands’. not knowing the terrain or what to expect, i just wanted to finish in less than three hours and get my t-shirt and not crap my pants (it was harder than i thought).

i actually did a lot better than i anticipated, but it was still awful. i made it about 8 miles before things went to shit. didn’t eat or drink enough (chalk that one up to dumbness and lack of experience). didn’t train enough (or at all, really; spent the 4 out of 5 nights prior to the race drunk off my ass with my bro-in-law, ryan). after mile 8 (the point where i bonked, the trail became hilly and generally uphill, and it got hotter), i walked quite a bit and generally felt pretty sorry for myself. my feet stopped working correctly and i couldn’t run through the damn forest without tripping over the roots and ferns and small leaves. so, i walked some more. eventually, i got my shit together and finished the race…actually managed to pass a few people on the way in (the last 1.5 miles or so was on a level, paved trail). made me feel a little better.

casey was waiting for me about ½ a mile from the finish…pretty sure she’d just finished repainting  her toenails…must've scuffed them a bit on the run. she paced me and this guy dave (we’d run the last 1.5 miles together) to the finish and then helped catch me as i fell across the line…it was pretty damn hot. at least i was done.

long, rambling story short, this was tough for me and it was a training run for casey. kinda depressing, but at least the only way i can move is up :)

Update on life and stuff

Past

returned from 8 days or so in northern michigan a few days back; needed a little vacation from my vacation. my family has been going to the same spot for about a long damn time…my great-grandfather and his family was from that area (East Jordan, MI). it was gorgeous and the weather was nice, but much hotter than we were used to. relaxed the whole time: several boat rides, went sailing, water skied, ate some super tasty food (i brought fresh salmon from home)!

Current

finished painting the inside of my house last night. finally! hopefully finish up most of the packing today and build out the back of the truck tomorrow. take everything to storage on thursday or friday and then leave on saturday! canadia, here we come!

Future

we’ll be in Whitehorse, YT for a week or so. mt biking, hiking, trail running, and exploring the town. there’s a trail marathon on 4aug; i’m running the half and casey is running the full…hopefully i do better than the last one. after that, we’ll be in WI for about 10 days for her family reunion…should be a blast as we’ll be staying in cabins on a lake in northern WI…fishing and swimming and biking and stuff.

from there, we’re over to Bozeman for a  little acclimatization and prep before casey’s big 50mile race on 24AUG. crazynuts!!! prolly stick around there until the 26^th or so and then head to Sun Valley, ID for some world-class mt biking and trail running and hiking and camping…stay there for a couple of weeks before heading down to Colorado to meet up with old friends (both of us have lived in CO before) for a week or so. i haven’t been back there in several years, so i’m really looking forward to it. after that, we’ll spend a few days in Dallas with my family before heading out to Costa Rica on 1OCT!!!!!!!!!!!

i’m so excited to be moving to costa rica! It’s gonna be awesome! as an added bonus, the job casey procured will have her working for a whitewater rafting/kayaking/adventure company! talk about awesome contacts for the future!

anyhow, that’s really all i’ve got for the moment. time to get packing!

adios, suckas.

him - 9jul13 - casey breaks stuff (i actually wrote this yesterday)

blarg. stuck in the damn airport…ohare strikes again! perfect time to catch up and write my much overdue post! on to a funny story about casey. oh, and a random airport video.

story making fun of casey:

so, i’m bringing some of the yummy salmon that i caught with us to michigan. while we were waiting on the plane in anchorage, i plopped my happy ass down on the floor next to a couple of power outlets so that I could charge my phone whilst playing an engrossing, $.99 game. casey, being the friendly chica that she is, joined me after about 15 minutes, bringing with her the fish cooler and various other things (her backpack). after she had everything arranged, she decided, for some reason known only to puppies and small babies, to sit on the cooler. mid-sit, i said “No!” i knew that the cooler wouldn’t support more than a few pounds and i didn’t want her to squish it flat.

 i have to assume she heard me, but the odd thing was that she just hovered over the cooler (kinda in the standard, 'i'm not crappin in a toilet' defecation position) and stared at me. then, there was a quite audible ‘CRACK’ as she broke the cooler just a bit…only a tiny crevasse (stupid, cheap styrofoam!) (or maybe it was just an powerful SBDF that cracked it??). at this point, two separate chains of events and thoughts occurred:

me: what i thought was: “damn, she heard me and either didn’t care or didn’t believe me. then, because she didn’t believe me or care, she broke the cooler!” what i said was: “why didn’t you listen to me (apparently, i said it in a way not unlike a parent speaks to a wayward child while giving her the same kind of ‘look’)? needless to say (though i’ll say it anyhow), this didn’t go over well.

she (i got all this secondhand, from her…duh; it's not like i actually know what she is thinking): what I saw was actually a misinterpretation of the actual events. She actually did hear me and actually did try not squish cooler. what i took to be her air-pooping position was actually her trying to maintain and then regain her balance. when she cracked the cooler, she had just (only for a moment and only a little bit), lost her balance and put a tiny bit of pressure on the cooler…seriously, only a little. then, before she had time to explain, i went ahead and spoke to her like a little tyke. oops. not good on my part.

so, this funny little anecdote actually coincides quite nicely with the blog theme: two very different and not all that funny perspectives on one event. fortunately, it ended well. we went ahead and had makeup ‘relations’ right there on the airport floor…j/k, j/k!!!

update on life and stuff

past

the last few weeks have been pretty damn busy for me. spent the majority of my time painting the inside of my house and starting the packing/moving process. my mom was here for about a week and did me a huge solid in helping to paint the house - she spent about half of her vacation doing it! i’m not finished yet, but it’s looking quite nice!

casey participated in a relay marathon a few days ago with a couple of her friends, meghan and cammie…they each ran 8 miles of the Hatcher Pass road. casey, the psycho that she is, chose to run the hardest, steepest, hilliest portion of the route. i was going to pace on her my bicycle, but realized that the road was steep enough that i wouldn’t be able to keep up with her…i drove instead. super hard work for me...driving and all.

current

so, we’re on the way (actually here already) to northern michigan to spend a week at my grandparents cabin. it should be a pretty relaxing time…some time on the beach and on the water. time with the fam and some tasty vittles.  also, we’re running in a half-marathon up in mackinaw city on the 13^th. it’ll be a short training run for casey, but it’ll be about the longest i’ve ever run in one go. i just hope i don’t crap my pants.

a view of lake charlevoix and our sweet boat, the Jayhawk

future

we’ll be in michigan for about 8 days and then back to AK. we’ll spend the first few days back working on packing my house and finishing the painting. casey might go backpacking with some friends. we hope to catch several dozen pounds of salmon with which to stock my freezer! also, we’ll attempt to plan our roadtrip out a bit further than WI…the details, anyhow.

 rock on!