Ken's Thoughts...

Sat, 31 Jan 2004

My trip to the Florida Keys
Since I've got Bloggorhea today, I figured I'd go ahead and write about my trip to Key West.

About 20 people from Gainesville headed down to Key West last weekend to run the Half Shell - Half Marathon in Key West. It's a pretty serious race you know, it starts and finishes at the Half-Shell bar.

Because I knew Ad was sick, I wanted to get down to Miami on Thursday evening so that I could spend some time at his place Friday. Sandy, Drake, and I piled up into the car and headed down to Miami on Thursday after work. We made pretty good time and arrived at Geordan's house around midnight. Drake and I had a nightcap of Jameson's, then went to bed.

We got up the next morning and headed out for breakfast. While at breakfast, Brian called me to tell me they had to go to a doctors appointment at 10:45. So, we hoofed it over to Ad's place to visit. We were there for about an hour, but then they had to go to the doctors, so we headed down to the keys.

Since Drake had never been to Miami before, I decided to take him through some of the more scenic parts of the city. We took Sunset out to Le June Road, at which point we hopped on Old Cutler. We followed Old Cutler down through Saga Bay to Goulds, and eventually popped out on US 1 around S.W. 230th Street.

I had wanted to visit the Knaus Berry Farm, but I was not sure of their address. However, luck was in my court and I saw a sign from US 1 pointing the way (248th street). We headed to the farm for some yummy strawberries, whole grain bread, and sweet rolls. Oh yeah, and a signature raspberry shake (yumm!).

After the trip to Knaus, we continued south to Florida City. A quick stop for gas and water, and we were headed into the keys.

It's been four or five years since I had been to the keys, and I had forgotten how pretty the area by the biscayne national park is. The glades were teaming with life, the sky was blue and clear, and the temperature was in the mid-70's. A truly better day could not be found.

When we made it to Holiday Isle we stopped at the World Famous Tiki Bar for one of their rum runners. Well, we really had two (one for Drake, one for me). Just as I remembered, they turned my face and extremities numb..

Continuing south, we stopped for lunch and pictures in Marathon. After lunch we finished the trek to Key West.

We spent the weekend in the Seascape Inn which is half a block south of Duval Street on Olivia. It's a nice B&B, but a bit pricey. What the heck though, we were on holiday.

Drake and I stretched our legs by going for a quick two mile run. We ran to the Southernmost point, then headed to Mallory Square. I think the actual total is 2.6 miles and we did it in 21 minutes, not too shabby. After the run it was time for debauchery of the highest order.

We picked up Sandy, Tim, and Rebecca, then headed down to Mallory Square to catch the sunset. The freak show was in full force ("Helloooo Osciiir?"), but amusing. We grabbed a few beers as the sun set and just hung around for awhile.

After sunset we headed to dinner at Mangoes. We picked up Bill and Colleen and their two children, which brought our party up to 9. Mangoes was "OK" but it was probably the worse meal of the trip (Denny's excluded), and it wasn't cheap. If you're going to Key West anytime soon I'd say skip Mangoes and go to Blue Heaven instead..

After dinner it was time for the Duval Street Pub Crawl. We hit a few bars that I don't remember the names of, and some I do. We stopped at the Hogs Breath Saloon long enough to do a couple of shots of Jim Beam, before we finally wound up at Sloppy Joes. SJ's used to be the favored stomping grounds of Ernest Hemmingway, but I imagine the atomosphere has changed since his day.

There was a house band that was tearing up the place. We drank and danced well past 2:00 A.M. when Sandy started to pumpkin.

We headed back to the Seascape to drop Sandy off. On the way back we ran into some street musicians that weren't any good. Drake asked if he could join their band, and then proceed to give them guitar lessons; I have to admit I was pretty impressed with how good he was.

After dropping Sandy at the hotel, we had a comedy of errors trying to find Drake's place. Everyone kept telling us that the address for his hotel was "706 Truman, just like Leonardo's 706" but there was no Truman 706. It turned out his hotel was 709 Truman but we didn't find that out until Saturday...

After giving up on finding his hotel, we managed to lock ourselves out of the Seascape. Sandy, as usual, had her cell phone off, so every effort we made to call her was a complete failure. We tried banging on the windows for the room, but she slept through it. Whoops, we made her dance too hard.

After much consideration, we decided to camp in her car until the morning when I could call the B&B owners and get let into the hotel. We finally crashed around 4:00am, but were back up by 7:15am when the rooseters woke us up.

Saturday I was pretty much a complete wreck. Having only had about 4 hours total of sleep, I was pretty exhausted. However, I persevered and we did some stuff. Drake took off to find his hotel (and he did), and he crashed until 12:30. Sandy had other plans for me, including a scooter rental and riding around the island.

Since we were there to run a race, I thought it might be nice to have a look at the course. We took the scooter and followed the course for most of the 13.1 miles. The course, and island, were scenic and we had fun on the scooter. After the rental we headed over to a crafts fair that was going on, but it wasn't very good. I have to admit I would have thought a crafts fair in Key West would have been better than it was..

Sandy finally agreed to let me catch a quick cat-nap, so I got in an hour of Zzzzz's. After that it was time to go to the half-shell bar and do packet pickup. While there we met up with most of the other Gainesville Running Crew and we made plans for dinner. We went to Blue Heaven, which was, well trying to avoid the pun, heavenly. The atmosphere is great, the food was fantastic, and the prices were reasonable.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to go to bed. We had to get up early in the morning for the race, so off to bed we went.

Sunday morning I woke up at 5am to get ready for the race. The start time was 7, and being anally punctual, I had to be at the starting line by 6:30am. We drove Rebecca and Colleen to the starting line, so they had to deal with my temporal management capabilities. Sorry guys.

Right before the race Iain and Drake finally showed up. They were both wearing 1:45 pace bands, which I thought was a little silly. Iain had never run a race, and in training he wasn't as fast as Drake. Although Drake can run a 1:45 pace, he'd been drinking pretty heavily for two days, and I didn't think it was likely he'd be able to pull it off. At any rate, I decided to ignore their pace bands and do my own run.

Two miles into the run, I was on the east side of the island and the sun was coming up. I had hit the pace I wanted to maintain (9:00) for the first two miles and was feeling good about it. I stopped and stretched out for a minute, figuring the minute I spent stretching at mile two would be worth five minutes worth of cramping at mile 8. Even with the stretching, my third mile was still run in 9:11, so I was still keeping my target pace.

Right after the third mile I saw a lady chasing her dog. The dog had gotten off leash and was "being cute" and playing the I'll put my leash on if you can catch me game.

About 30 seconds after I stopped paying attention to the dog I heard the dog screaming and I turned. Some lady driving an SUV had hit the dog and was dragging it under her front bumper. After about 20 feet, the dog slid under the car and she ran over it with her right rear tire.

I don't know what came over me, but I ran out to her car and made her stop. She was going to leave, and I just started cussing her out. When I say I was cussing her out, I mean I was really cussing her out. I'm still not sure if she deserved _ALL_ of the shit I gave her, but she definately deserved some of it because she was planning on splitting..

I screamed at her for about a minute or two, and finally another runner pulled me off her car. As I said, I was a bit wound up. But, when I was pulled off, she wound up turning around and at least stopping for the lady with the dog. I still feel for that poor woman who saw her dog get run over by some idiot that wasn't paying attention..

After the dog, I went back to the race. It was hard to focus on running, but I tried. I wound up meeting a guy from Rhode Island that had run the same race the year before. He told me that it was much cooler in 2003 because it had been overcast, and so he convinced about a dozen friends of his to come down and run it by promising it wouldn't be soo hot (hahahahaha).

The joke was on him I guess because the warm air felt like someone was blowing you with a hair dryer.

I continued making my target pace of around 9:00-9:10. At the six mile mark I saw Iain and Drake running together about 50 yards in front of me. The story of the Tortois and the Hare came to mind as I watched Drake take off.. Iain was starting to slow down and I passed him right after the half-way split. My split time was 1:01.23.

I asked Iain how he was doing, and he said fine but tired. I told him he was doing well, and continued past him. I kept hitting my marks and felt strong the whole way. At mile 8 I started passing several people that had previously passed me when I was holding back at the beginning. George, you'd be proud!

After mile 9 I was starting to feel a little tired. It was H-O-T, hot. I decided to walk through all of the water stops but do no other walking. I also decided to start dumping water on my head at every water stop. A nice gorilla gave me gatoraid at the 9.5 mile water stop, and I didn't even stop to ask why she would wear a gorilla suit in hot as hell weather..

I kept running strong, mile 10 was in 9:29, mile 11 in 9:03, mile 12 in 9:22, and the last 1.1 miles went by in 10:23. I finished the race feeling strong in 2:02.49 -- almost exactly the same time I ran in the 1999 MCM (2:02.19) with almost two identical split times.

After the race, everyone was concerned about Drake. He ran a 1:55, which is pretty damn incredible since the first half took him an hour. However, he wasn't doing so good -- his face was numb and he couldn't move his mouth. We eventually determined it was probably a mineral imbalance (Dr. Rios thought maybe a potassium imbalance), but we were a little worried. After all, it was hot and they had to call an ambulance for one other runner.

Overall, everyone did well. Rebecca ran a 1:45 and won her age group, Drake ran a 1:55 and scared everyone, Curtis ran a 1:55 and did well, I ran a 2:02 and was happy, Iain ran a 2:11 which was awesome considering he had never ran a race of any distance before, Colleen ran a 2:21, Thor and Jaime finished in 2:46, Janet Galvez also finished in 2:47, and Ginnie racewalked it in 2:56. Fantastic!

After the race we went to Colleen and Bills for Margaritas, and they were great! When the pitchers were gone we went for brunch and mmmmm the food was yummy. If you're headed to Key West, add Cafe Sole to your brunch menu.

When we were done with brunch, it was time to bid several of our friends farewell. Iain, Lynn, Drake, Thor, and Jaime headed back to Gainesville. The rest of us decided to go to the Hemmingway house and play with the kitties.

We did the tour, then went back to the hotel. I sat outside and read for an hour or so, re-reading For Whom The Bell Tolls. We finally decided to go to dinner and took off trying to find a place.

The first restaurant was full, so we moved on to Alice's Restaurant. Although you can't get everything you want at Alice's Restaurant, you can get quite a bit of delicious food there. Sandy and I each had the passion fruit salad, and we split a tuna roll and slice of key lime pie. As good as the food is at Alice's (and it is good), the place is a bit expensive so if you go to Alice's, take your visa.

After dinner, we went back and packed up for the long drive. Sandy and I left Key West at 6:30am and made it home by 3:00pm.

Posted at: 03:32 on 31/01/2004 [ /travel ] #

Boy do I have bloggorhea..
So I don't write much for a long time, then I get chatty. That's what happens when you have a wild night on the town planned in Gainesville..

Ad's sick. He was diagnosed with colon cancer about two weeks ago and had 2/3rd of his large intestine removed last week.

I got the chance to see him and Brian last Friday on my way to Key West and he looked like shit. He'd lost probably close to forty pounds and just looked bad.

Brian convinced him to come out to California, but as soon as he got there, he had to go back into the hospital. He spent a day and night in there, and was finally checked out. He's staying at Paul's house, and Paul, myself, and my mom have been in fairly regular email.

It doesn't sound very promising. I may go out there next month, and I'll definately be out there at the end of April.

I've been pretty surprised by my reaction over this, but in many respects he was more of a father to me than my biological dad -- living in someone's house for a dozen years while you're growing up will have that affect. Although I hadn't really seen that much of Ad after my mom moved out in 1989, I still managed to see him every year or so (whenever I was down in Miami).

The only good that has come of this is that I've been back in contact with Brian, Paul and Frank, who were like older brothers to me when I was a kid.

Posted at: 02:41 on 31/01/2004 [ /diary ] #

Another Friday night in the big city...
So it's Friday night and I'm sitting at home surfing the internet. Boy, ain't this an exciting way to spend a Friday..

Sandy took off for Temple, and I went and grabbed dinner with Philip, Susan, and their kids at La Fiesta. They're moving (la fiesta, not the Chases).