Flat Jenny & Laurie's Adventure

From Laurie:

Jenny and I have something in common - neither of us can run. Jenny's inability to run is due to a very bratty disease. Mine is due to bratty genetics. A few years ago my doctor, who after several tests diagnosed me with osteoporosis (at 37 - awesome), told me a list of things I cannot ever do again. Included on the list was no skiing, no tackle football (For real - do I look like a football player?) and no running. I then went through a few of my favorite exercises and asked if I could do those. NO. I asked him what I COULD do and he said, "Walking is a great exercise." Please. Walking is for old ladies.

I was mad. My husband had just signed up for his first marathon and I was feeling sorry for myself. My exercise options seemed so lame. Was I going to have to sneak into the 65+ water aerobics classes? No thanks. As Scott was looking on a race website he noticed that you're allowed to walk marathons if you can do it under the time limit. Hummm. I could do that.

So then, because apparently I am very easily persuaded to do good things for my body when I am mad, I decided to show my bratty genes what I thought of them. I decided to be not just any old lady walker, but a freakishly fast one. Yeah, so there, porous bones. As it turns out, I'm pretty darn fast. Yes, I look a little silly (OK, let's be honest, you've seen the racewalkers on TV, they look CRAZY) but I'm having fun, I feel great after a long, long walk and now I have a flat friend to go along with me.

Enough background. Let's get on to the adventures!

Here's flat Jenny in my kitchen (giving my scary callused toes a massage) before she was carefully folded up and put into my backpack. Sadly, some of those toenails are actually that color in real life. At least I still have all my toenails! While inside the backpack Jenny enjoyed eating a banana, energy bar and gel. She was pretty thirsty after all that and went through three refills of the water bottle.

I was pretty nervous. I'd never done 18 miles before. The hospital is about seven miles from my house so I thought I should head in that direction. I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to be by a hospital because anyone going 18 miles was either sick in the head or just plain sick.

There were lots of fun things to see on the way to the hospital. About five miles in we passed the mall that burned down last fall. Here is a photo of it when it was still smoking. It's almost back to normal now - whew - except the DownEast Basics is not coming back.

One of my favorite things about California in the spring are the poppies. (Important note: this photo is not of a real poppy but part of a state flower embroidery project I found today. I think I feel a new project coming on!) California Poppies all over the place in my neighborhood! Flat Jenny and I felt a little more relaxed every time we walked past a big clump of them.

We did not feel quite as relaxed when we saw these jokers. Not only is my neighborhood filled with the state flower, but also these gigantic turkeys! Doesn't it seem like turkeys are something that just live on farms or in ye olden days or yore? I swear they are as big as a Kindergartner. They actually kind of freak me out. They way they move always remind me the scene in Jurassic Park when the velociraptors were walking around the kitchen. We also saw lizards, by the way. They do not scare me.

Somehow we made it to the hospital, past the hospital, into a neighborhood with bigger trees and fancier cars than on my block, back to the hospital, back past the poppies and freaky turkeys and back to my home sweet home. We did it, Flat Jenny, we did it! (Or as Dora would say, ¡Lo hicimos!)