25K Birthday and the foster snake finds a new home...

I am now officially 30 and an old bat (according to Cynther). It was an amazing birthday! Drove up on Friday and had some sketchy weather/road conditions at the top of Monarch pass...sorry no photos too busy holding on for dear life. Then, rolled in otherwise through just blustery, rain, sleet, grapple and other Rocky Mountain spring weather wonderfulness. Woke up for the race Saturday morning and the sun was coming up and not a cloud in the sky. I had forgotten with the sunrise on the Front Range you get a deep red color that explodes from the mountains, beauty. Rolled up to the race and got there early for some good people watching. The race began and we rolled across the starting line at 8:05 am. I had imagined the beginning of a trail race to be somewhat of a difficult thing because of the limited width of the trail, but this started on a jeep/utility road and crowd spread quite quickly. For the first loop the ground was still crunchy and a bit snowy in spots. The views were spectacular: rolling hills of green, birds chirping and a slight breeze. For the second loop, the sun was OUT and it was a muddy ADVENTURE. Cynther helped me up the switchback hill for the second time, phew, because I had hit a bit of a "wall" if you will. We rolled in to the finish at 3:28 with the little man and Shamus waiting and his beard was like a beacon in the blowing grass. Met great folks (volunteers and runners) on the course and it was just a beautiful course in general! Other than the apple spice gel at the halfway point and the man snarfing a piece of pizza on his way back out for the 3rd loop of the 50K, no other tales to tell.

So, for the second part of the story Shamus thinks that I may be too nice and in this installment in January ended up with a 6 foot long Red-tailed Boa named 15 because of an acquaintance's son's incarceration...long story short. We called it the foster snake because we DID NOTwant to keep it. We already have a snake and don't have the space for a snake that big...i.e. the tortoise we have has spoken for any extra space we have as it will get 2 feet wide, ~80-100 lbs and live longer that Shamus and I. So, yesterday we got the call that he was going to Denver to a new home...yippee!!! I had him and all of his gear packed and helped load it all into the lady's car, lickety split! She was majorly freaking out though that the snake was going to get out of the cooler as she was driving and she would proceed to wreck the car. I assured her no that it wouldn't get out and even put a bungee cord around the top to appease her. So, our dear foster snake, 15, drove away. Cheers to a gorgeous snake getting a good home...now I promise that I won't say yes to any more pets...at least for a while.

Peace