Summer Runnin...

Gosh, it took me a couple of days to get to this...but summer is, well it's summer, and family weddings, and other distractions happen...so my blogging this week suffered. I am writing this from a hotel room in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is where I've been since Thursday, with the family for a cousin's wedding. (That's me, Walter, Drama Girl and Turbo at the Presidio...the Golden Gate Bridge would be behind us if not for the fog...a beautiful day still).

Even with the travel, it's been a really nice running week. It started last Sunday.

I sometimes forget how incredibly lucky I am to live in one of the most beautiful, awesome, places in the world. On Sunday Betty, Elsie, Her sister Kim, and I ran on San Diego Mission Bay for a few miles. The best thing about running on the bay on a Sunday, summer, night, in addition to the cool bay breezes, and the view, and the flat, 1/4 mile marked path (which works for goal-oriented me) is that Sunday night is when the rental week starts for those who rent a vacation home for the week...so it was, at the very least, entertaining to be offered tequila shots for boob shots by men who were WAAAYYYY too old to be offering such things, as we ran by...Zoners...gotta love 'em (easy for me to say because I don't live at the beach). It made the 4 miles (or so) go by quickly.

OK...so that was Sunday evening, and now it's Saturday...and it would take far too long to thoroughly describe all of my running adventures and not bore my 12 sometimes readers to tears, suffice it to say that I have been in Northern Cal since Thursday at a family wedding (in Marin County), which is ALSO one of the most beautiful places in the world. I had been full of angst about attending the events surrounding this wedding, mostly because I was worried about having lengthy interactions with my mother-in-law, who doesn't like me much right now, and with whom I was going to have to spend considerable time on a shuttle-van going to and from the wedding because we were staying about 45 minutes from the wedding site.

However, my angst was for naught, and everything has worked out much better than expected, even though for a few moments on Thursday morning I thought we might miss our plane in San Diego. The wedding was lovely; the weekend thus far has been nice; The weather has been fabulous (I packed waaaayyyy too many clothes because you never know if San Francisco/Bay Area summer weather is going to be summer-like, thus making summer clothes a necessity, or winter-like, making sweaters and mittens a must...luckily, it's been the former).

On Friday morning, Walter ran with me (photo - left - Walter before our run together). This morning we hiked about five miles around Bon Tempe Lake (I think that's what it's called), a place I'd never been to, and which was so amazingly wonderful, that even drama boy didn't whine about walking five miles until we'd walked almost 1/2 of it, and even then he recovered.

I'm hoping to run again along a really nice bike bath in Corte Madera, along the Northern end of San Francisco Bay (OK...it's near San Quentin, and I'd have lots of political commentary if I did such a thing here, about the cost of homes here, and that San Quentin inmates have the same view for free...so to speak, but since I don't typically do that sort of blog-commentary here, I'll withhold)...anyway, my goal is to run there in the morning. And if things go as planned, I may also fit in a run on the Golden Gate Bridge on Monday morning before we leave (hooray!).

Other than that, I could go on an on about what dorky tourists we've been...or how Walter's family is both wonderful and ridiculous (as most families are) at the same time, but instead of lots of writing about the weekend...here's a photo essay (with captions!) that perhaps captures part of it.

Turbo at the bottom of Lombard (the crookedest) Street in SF...we are SUCH tourists. I don't know how people who live on this stretch of Lombard Street do it..with all these tourists in their front yard all day...on the other hand, I guess they knew what they were signing up for when they moved in????

Drama Girl, Walter, and Turbo at Presidio Park...the Golden Gate Bridge is behind them (I promise!)...same day, just a little further west, different weather. AWESOME FOG!

Turbo and cousin wrestling in the grass at a 4th of July "BBQ at the Beach." SF beach party sure looks different than a beach party in SD... Fun nonetheless.

Mandatory group family photo.

Walter attempting to stay out of his brother's family photo.

Is anything better than kids dancing at a wedding?

Oh, yeah...cake is better than dancing for some.

We clean up nice :-)

What does the family (cousins, uncles, aunts) do after the wedding? Pile into one small hotel room to eat pizza and watch a movie...cuz we NEVER do this at home!