A Tale of Five Cities

(As composed on the plane from Boston to Milwaukee)

A tale of 5 cities. Portland--Boston--Milwaukee--Minneapolis--Rochester. Lots of travel today. Shuttle--train--T--airplane--airplane--light rail--shuttle. Starting at the beginning ...


Friday dawned bright and early for me AGAIN! ... I just can't seem to sleep in, no matter what the circumstances. I'd found out that the diner I'd planned to eat breakfast at on Wednesday was just a hop, skip and a jump from the grocery store I'd been at. So I planned to take a circuitous route from the hotel to the Miss Portland Diner, staying close to the water's edge

 and taking in the park on the east end of the city. My GPS had low batteries and I didn't bring my charger along so I knew I wouldn't get through the whole run knowing my accumulated miles. No problem. I just wore my regular watch as well ... two watches are better than one. Or none. :-)

I headed down the hill from the hotel and toward the wharf. It was a pretty quiet morning. I found that there was a running/bike path

at the far end of the wharf which would take me around the point and up toward the Interstate. Perfect! Just where I needed and wanted to end up. There were lots of people out exercising and enjoying the unseasonably warm temps and crystal clear skies. A beautiful morning to be out and about. When I'd gotten around the point, I was just a couple of blocks from a new, HUGE Whole Foods grocery store so I stopped to look around. No purchases. It was by far the biggest W.F. I'd seen outside the flagship store in Austin, TX (which is W.F. Mecca).

I left the store and headed toward the Diner, just a few blocks away. It's an old railroad car transformed into an eating establishment and is cuter than cute inside. There's additional seating on the back side of the railcar, but I wanted to eat up front where the place had so much character. There were no booths available so I took a spot on a stool at the counter. I ordered my ubiquitous bowl of oatmeal and once again it was ENORMOUS. And I couldn't finish it. Or at least didn't want to knowing I'd be overly full and still had a little running to do in order to get back to the hotel. It was a very satisfying meal.

I got to chatting with my server, Susie.

Turns out she's from St. Paul and moved to Maine when she got married. We talked BoMa and running, dilects (the lack, and addition of, the "r" sound as in "bah" instead of "bar" and "idear" instead of "idea"), Target, ME climate and flowers, cookies and cakes (their baked goods looked AMAZING and I told Susie as much. She asked if I wanted some cake to go, but there was no way I was going to take anything. I've GOT to be a good girl diet-wise. I feel like I ate my way through New England.) I asked her if I could take her photo for my blog and she said sure, and also "thank you for that"! We said our goodbyes (we really hit it off ... I could see Susie being my fast friend. :-) and I was out the door. One thing I noticed on the menu at the cafe was Grape Nut pie. I'd also seen Grape Nut pudding and Grape Nut ice cream on various menus. Interesting. Must be another regional thing like the Whoopie Pie.

She'd asked me if I'd been out to the Back Cove, a little inland body of water. I had on Wednesday, but only to look around and ask another runner how far it was around (she said 3 miles). It was only 9:30 AM at this point and I still had some time to kill so I decided to run around the cove, hoping that the oatmeal sitting in my belly wouldn't give me any kind of distress (it didn't, but I felt full and heavy). It turns out that it's 3.5 miles around the Cove. All good. No issues running actually. The right hip issue I had going on Monday after the marathon was history as of Tuesday and I'm actually feeling very good. Still a little tightness in my calves where I cramped but other than that, no issues at all. I have to say that this is the earliest I've ever run after a marathon and the best I've ever felt post-race. I think the hill training did my body some good.

I made my way back up the hills (Portland is really hilly) and back to the hotel to clean up before catching the shuttle to the train (BTW the train is called the Downeaster not the Noreaster as I reported earlier.) I had an uneventful ride back to Beantown, where a doublle rainbow appeared ...

caught the greenline to Government Center where I transfered to the blueline to the airport. I'm now sitting on a completely full plane, composing this post. And looking forward to being back amongst my running buddies this weekend. For sure.

'Twas a very good trip. Totally enjoyed myself. By myself. All good.

Talk at you later!