On the first day of my summer vacation...

I swam 2K in the seventh ring of hell today. The first 1K wasn't bad as I had the entire pool to myself. Then the summer camp showed up. It was like I was living the lost chapter of Dante's Inferno. The kids were having a contest to see who could scream the loudest...loads of fun in the indoor pool. I also did some weights when I was finished the swim. The weight room at the Y here is a complete crap hole. On the brighter side I did pick up a bike rack for my truck. Now I look like I actually know what I'm doing.

There is a great biking trail that starts about 5 miles from my dad's house and travels 30 miles into downtown Philadelphia. It travels through Valley Forge National Park and it was pretty cool to see all the old shacks that housed dozens of troops...it reminded me of Apopka. I made it about 10 miles down the trail only to find that it was flooded out. The flooding of the Delaware River (commomly referred to as the Smell-aware River) was really bad as they had almost 15 inches of rain here in the past 4 days. It was kind of freaky seeing all the houses along the trail under water. I felt bad for a while until I remembered that I was on vacation, so I stopped caring. I would up riding about 22 miles total. I was going to run tonight but I got lazy and decided to take Dad on in a game of Trivial Pursuit. We are about evenly matched, but I let him win tonight.

Apparently it has been raining here for the past 6 days. I forgot that rain in the north east never stops like it does in Florida. Anyway I got in a quick swim at the Y right by my dad's house. The Y itself is pretty dumpy, but they had 6 different pools which was kind of nice. The pool was quite possibly the coldest pool that I have ever swam in. The temperature was 71...that's right, the indoor pool was wetsuit legal. I never quite got used to the water and wound up only doing 1.2K. The showers in the mens locker room were some kind of cruel joke. They all stemmed from a pillar in the middle of the room so when you were showering you had to look at everyone else who was showering as well. I hope I don't catch gay.

The drive up here can only be described as pure hell. Perhaps something similar to a barbed wire cathater. It usually takes me 16 hours to complete the 1000 mile trip door-to-door. This time, however, it took me 19 hours...that's a 52.634 mph pace. Apparently I timed it perfectly so I would:
1. Leave when I was exhausted from training, sleep deprivation, and the party at Tracy's (she denied me my much needed afternoon nap).
2. Hit every rainstorm on the East coast.
3. Hit rush hour in Washington (that's DC for the geographically impared).
The first sign that I left too early was the fact that I had to pull over for a quick nap before I was even out of Florida!!!!

On a completely random note, a man tried to sell me live bait in the McDonalds parking lot at 5:39 in the morning somewhere in central Georgia. By live bait I realy hope he was talking about night crawlers and not the hooker he had ties up in the back of his van.