The La Quinta I mentioned in previous post....yeah, not a great place. The plug for the bathroom sink was broken and one towel!! None of this we discovered until the next morning when trying to shower before leaving out, grrr. If it had been a $30 room, it would have been understandable but this was over twice that.
Today was also the first annual Too Hot to Trot 5k at the Dallas GATS show for truckdrivers and other people involved in the trucking industry...it was quite nice. I finally got to meet Jeff Clark in person and several others that I have communicated with online.
Since we had Elsie with us, I'd emailed to ask if she could run with us, leashed of course. No problem, was just asked to start in the back of the pack so as not to trip anyone up. I had no problem with that because I didn't need to race this 5k.
First 1/3 of the 5k Elsie was great....right up until we passed a guy on a riding lawnmower....that scared her & I had to pick her up and carry her past it :-(. She never quite recovered from being scared of it.
Right at the 1/2 point I handed Elsie off to James then took off at a faster pace...I finished in 28:09, which I think is my 2nd slowest 5k time ever. The guy announcing the finishers called me out as 3rd place female finisher but I was actually 4th, lol.
Quite fun visiting with everybody, my only complaint was the lack of portapotties available before race start. We finally discovered some in a separate area thankfully.
Oh, James & I were interviewed for an industry mag...where I turned into a blithering idiot because of the video camera...what is it with cameras & phones that flusters me so much? Geez, I come across as relatively normal in person but throw those in & you'd swear it was a miracle I can manage to dress myself in the morning.
After the 5k and a shower it was time to fill up the rental vehicle with gas and head for Wichita Falls.....this is where we hit a huge snag. Fords now have a capless gas tank and the one on the Explorer was faulty....should be able to push in the nozzle & twist, simple, huh? Not this one...found the closest enterprise location where the agent inspected it and part of the system came off in his hand!!!! He then sends us to an Enterprise located at a Ford dealer, where everything gets inspected yet again...yep, it's broken. They ended up giving us a replacement rental but we had to wait for one to be brought in from yet another location.
Several hours killed with this :-(. Fortunately the expo would be open until 2200 so no rush there, our hurry was due to getting to the kennels to drop off Elsie....turns out we shouldn't have bothered, we found the place and it was geared for larger dogs. Turns out that it was mostly a guard dog training place, not leaving a 13 pound miniature schnauzer at a place like that.
The expo....omg!!! I didn't get to go thru everything but it was amazing, wow!! I splurged and bought the event jersey ($80), found some endurolytes, wondered around for a bit then headed back to the campsite to make sure my bike had survived the trip and get everything laid out.
The camping area was actually very nice, bathrooms were well stocked & clean...the showers were a bit of a different story. There was a tent set up with livestock style cold showers or you could use the shower inside of the bathrooms if you wanted a hot shower but people were leaving their trash behind instead of carrying it to the trashcans. I ended up going to the Flying J & showering (awesome customer service there by the way, very impressed with them).
The camping was quite nice, there was a nice breeze going (it IS Wichita Falls) but all I could think was this is gonna be killer tomorrow.....
2 comments:
Sounds like a crazy weekend! Congratulations on the run. Glad to hear that went well - other than lack of port-a-potties!
Yeah, the lack of porta potties was a serious oversight, lol!!
Post a Comment