Run, Forest, Run! - April 17, 2007

I have said many times that I REALLY don’t like to run. I mean, I like the idea of it, and the great technical fiber clothes, and the impressed look people get on their faces when I say, “Yeah, we ‘ran’ 15 miles last weekend.” But I don’t love it, and I walk as soon as my body says to walk.
But I can run when chased.

Last weekend our family went out to Lopez Island to visit my mothers-in-law and hear all about their trip to Italy. *Sigh*. I want to go to Italy. Anyway, Saturday I was supposed to run 3 miles and Amy said she would go with me. So we suited up, and got in the car to clock the mileage on the odometer (God knows I didn’t want to run any further than necessary!). The driveway at their house alone is ½ mile, so we just headed down the street toward their poor next door neighbor, Paul Allen. Turns out that from my moms’ front door to Paul Allen’s guarded gate is exactly 1.5 miles. We’ll just do a turnaround - perfect!

So Amy and I drove back to the house, grabbed our water bottles and went for it. We walked most of the driveway to warm up, and then broke into a slow but steady pace. Lopez Island has got to be one of the most beautiful places on this earth. We talked, and giggled and made fun of ourselves all the way down to the spit that heads up to THE GATE. There are cameras EVERYWHERE on that little piece of land (it’s only 300+ acres), and though we couldn’t see them (except for the big ones on the gate), we knew they were watching.
Amy is the MySpace queen, and never leaves home without a camera in her hand or her pocket so naturally, she started snapping pictures. She took some fun ones of us, then no sooner had she snapped the shutter on a view of Paul Allen’s indoor pool building, a white van came out of nowhere at top speed toward the gate.

Oops. I guess passing the ‘No Trespassing’ sign on the spit was a bad idea. So we turned around (it was time to anyway) and ran like pranksters who have been caught TP-ing the neighbors. When we looked behind us we saw the white van turn around and head back to wherever it came from like a schnauzer that has chased away the mail man.
Well, the good news is, we did the 3 miles in under 30 minutes - the bad news is that my 13 year old and I probably have our faces on the cover of Scary Stalkers of Microsoft Co-Founders Magazine.