We always love heading up north across the border! What a fun weekend we had up in Vancouver that first weekend in May. Beautiful weather, a great hotel, fun to be had, and a good run for Mom in her half marathon. This was definitely the better part of the weekend than the fishing derby that I told you about earlier.
The morning of our trip we happened to remember that we had a dog and had not figured out what to do with her. Yes, I know what you are thinking. Your dog is with you all the time, how do you forget you have a dog that you need to make arrangements for. I don't know how it happens, it just does. So anyway, Mom called the Four Seasons where we were staying just on a whim to see if they allowed dogs. Jackpot! Not only do they allow dogs but this is what greeted us as we walked in the room. A dog bed, water dish with bottled water, food dish with three gigantic dog bones, and a little mat to set it all on. How cool! Our dog certainly was impressed. The only issue was that we were on the 17th floor so we always had to take her down the elevator and then over two blocks to go to the bathroom. No grass anywhere around.
Oh, did I say there was no grass anywhere around. Well that wasn't quite true, now was it. In fact, while Dad was out walking the dog to find the grass patch we were told about Mom looked out our window and saw grass on the roof of the building across the street. Yes, that's a building across the street with grass growing out of its roof! I thought it was pretty amazing!
After walking about a half mile to a little hole in the wall pasta place (that served great pasta for cheap prices I must say) we stopped into Tim's to get some doughnut holes. Who can't stop by Tim's when they are visiting our northern neighbors?
The next morning Mom got up at 5:15am. Can you believe it? 5:15am! Thank goodness she didn't wake me up because I probably would have been very out of it. She headed out on her own, rode the little subway system and followed the crowd to the start line. She made it right at 6:30am when she wanted to. It was a beautiful morning but a bit cold. In fact, a few miles into the run her feet still felt a bit numb like they had fallen asleep but really they were just cold.
We went to the 5 mile spot to cheer Mom on but somehow she got by us without us seeing her. No idea how we missed her and she missed us. Our puppy dog was freezing so we took her back to the hotel and then headed to the finish line to catch Mom at the end. Here she is (right in the middle there, just in case you can't see her for some reason) about a mile from the end. She had pretty much run out of gas by this time. She tried and tried and tried to make it under 2 hours. That is always her secret goal, but she knew it wasn't really attainable because she hadn't been able to train using timed runs. With her sprained shoulder and the stomach bug she had to miss a few weeks of training. Amazingly she made it in just 1 minute and 30 seconds past her goal. She was pretty frustrated to have pushed herself HARD during the whole run and to miss it by a minute and a half. Oh well, maybe the next one.
What a gorgeous day, gorgeous city, with a gorgeous view!!
Until next time . . .
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