On paper, it looked fine. To me, of course, reasonable has a different meaning than it does to most people, but still. Friday night, dinner with some friends. Saturday, cyclocross at Mansfield. Saturday night, Belgian beer festival. Sunday morning, NEOC club championships (orienteering). Sunday noon, MRC cyclocross, same town as the orienteering. Sunday afternoon, CSU meeting to hear Morgan Smyth talk.
OK, maybe that is a little busy.
Anyway, Ed decided that he wanted to make indian food for dinner Friday. We only have three burners right now, since one of them committed sepuku. Ed wanted to make seven dishes. Plus rice. Reality check? Whatever, it worked, it tasted good, we have enough indian leftovers for many, many, meals. But you don't get that much food produced without a sous chef, I was on my feet for a long while.
I had wanted to go to Portland for the Casco bay cyclocross race, but Portland is pretty far away to drive alone. I try to avoid driving alone, since its bad for the environment and I feel super guilty about being an environmentalist and driving and flying all over the place, so I at least make lots of efforts to carpool. Nobody was biting on a drive to Portland, so I figured Mansfield Hollow was the next best bet - it was far, but not as far as Portland, I love the course, there was free food, and Colin agreed to carpool. Naturally, I didn't take into account the fact that his race wouldn't end until 3pm, and the beer fest started at 6. This sounds doable until you realize that Mansfield Center is 90 minutes from Boston, its 45 minutes on the T from my house to the beer fest, I had to drop Colin off first, and traffic on I-90 was stopped at one point on the way home.
Poor Colin had no idea what he was getting into when he agreed to carpool.
Late arrangements were made, I would leave my car at Colin's house overnight, he would drive it to my house in the morning since he was going to MRC too, even though he'd have to be there 6 hours early. Thanks, you're a trooper.
I get a call Sunday morning. "Alex, its Colin. I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is I'll be on time, the bad news is I crashed your car". Um, what? I gather some idiot in a 15-passenger van tried to go the wrong way around a rotary, and a little blue honda was in the way as this was happening. Colin followed the van out of the rotary, to a gas station, got out of the car and the van gunned it. At least he got the plate number, we're working things out and insurance will cover the damage, but boy does that suck. And the car works. The current theory is that it was a college student driving a van for Head of the Charles, who was still drunk from the night before and realized that if the cops came they'd have a DUI. So they ran off. I hope we get them.
So anyway, we turn around 10 minutes from my house because I've forgotten my compass and my sportident for the orienteering. Proceed to get to the meet 25 minutes later than planned, I ran brown, and got really pissed that the map didn't line up with the terrain and the waist-high blueberries were marked as runnable forest. I also got sopping wet. Colin had been hanging out at the race heckling, luckily the race site was 3 minutes from the orienteering site. He came back and got me, I ran over to registration, got a number, managed to get dressed and on my bike in time for a cyclocross race.
End Colin's involvement in my weekend. I bet he breathed a huge sigh of relief as I drove off.
Drove up to Lincoln, avoiding the Patriot's game traffic, got to get inspired by Morgan, and at this point (after a dinner of leftover indian food) I'm almost at a manageable level of stress. Ahhh.
Why is tomorrow Monday? I need a weekend to recover from the weekend...
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