27 June 2014

Happy Friday!

Today was a busy day.

Sarah, Jami, and I were all on duty. That means one of us rotates out to patrol the parking lot. I volunteered for the 11:30 to 1:00 shift. I quickly learned that there is not much one can do to keep the parking lot flowing. Not that having someone out there is useless by any means. However, when combining people trying to park on grass, folks holding up the line while waiting three minutes or more for a car to back out, and constantly answering the frustrated motorists’ question: is there anywhere else to park?, the reality is the parking lot is always going to run as smoothly as TSA checkpoint during Thanksgiving at O’Hare.

The waitlist for outside seating exceeded one hour today. An awfu lot of people wanted to enjoy the sun. I understand their desire. I really enjoyed my parking lot duty because of the beautiful sun overhead.

After work, I went on my long run for the week. I planned on doing the “Around Mountain” loop. I was under the impression that it would only be 8.5 miles. When I was 1:15 into the run and still had two miles to go, I decided I should probably recheck the mileage when I returned to the dorm. As it turns out, the loop is 10.8 miles. Whoops.

My route was on the carriage roads. The backside of the loop consisted of a few miles of uphill. It was probably the longest uphill stretch I’ve ever ran (I never did much running in Montana). Fortunately, I had two breaks during the hard uphill. The first was when I ran over the Waterfall Bridge. At the base of the waterfall was a family extremely surprised and happy to see me run by. They managed to get my attention and I snapped a few family photos for them. The rest of my time I didn’t see any other people except for a biker speeding by.

My second break was when I saw a furry creature lumber onto the road. At first I had grave concerns it was a skunk. Upon further inspection, however, I determined it was a porcupine. I had never seen a porcupine before so that was pretty neat. I had to scare it off the road since it wasn’t in any too big of a hurry to move along. Ain’t nobody got time to wait for a porcupine.

When I finally crested the hill and looked to the west, I determined the run up was well worth it. The sun was sinking low in the sky, which it tends to do every night around 7:30 out here. The sea of sea water broke up the sea of trees as the distant hills kept watch over the blue-green Maine landscape. I’m looking forward to that view again in a few months as the chlorophyll leaves the leaves. I’m less excited about the run up the hill to get there, though.

I didn’t take my camera along today during my run so I have no exciting pictures for picture of the day. Instead, the picture of day is a shot from earlier this week when I climbed the South Bubble. Eagle Lake is in the foreground and mainland Maine is in the back. Enjoy!