Wednesday I did the Peachtree. I did want I wanted to do… beat my last year’s time… but it was close. A lot closer than I thought it would be since I trained more and it was cooler but, hey, I guess that’s what turning 40 means.
One problem was I started out a little too fast. The first 3 miles I averaged 7:30 per mile. Then the hill killed me and, at 5 miles, I ended up 30 seconds behind where I needed to be to beat my last time and had to kill myself to get 48:03 which was 5 seconds better than last year.
After the friends we were meeting all showed up, we went to Susie’s where I showered up then we went to a cookout at her parents’ house. Good ribs and an awesome backyard!
We stayed there for a while and Kerry decided she wanted to see the fireworks at Centennial Park. I was practically falling asleep and hated that idea but we ended up at her brother’s place near Emory to hang out until it was time to go to downtown.
Mike, my brother-in-law, just graduated from Emory and he lives right next to the college so the street was one of those social areas where everybody knows each other and kind of walks back and forth between houses… especially on a party day like the 4th.
Anyway, I was looking for a Coke to wake up but the only thing in the fridge was beer so I had to “suffer” with that. Liam was playing with one of their dozen or so game consoles and Kerry and Erin were out on the lawn watching some “kids” fool around on skateboards. Some friends of Mike’s came by and somehow I ended up at a house across the street playing beer-pong.
Kerry says she played it a few times in college but I’ve never heard of it. They had a large flat table setup on a typical college beer can-strewn and ripped-up screened-in porch. Basically, you arrange 10 plastic cups of beer at both ends of the table then each team of two takes turns tossing a ping-pong ball aiming for one of the cups.
And, of course, you drink.
Carl and I ended up winning two or three games handily but Kate and her roommate just barely won the last game before I bowed out. I have to admit it was a lot of fun reliving my drinking game days but that ship has long since sailed in more ways than one.
We headed down to the madness that is the 4th of July fireworks show at Centennial Park, parked under in overpass in an area that looked like the suitcase of money/kidnap victim trade-off scene in a mob movie, and soon found ourselves sitting on the grass amongst a sea of families all snacking and awaiting the show.
At one point, Liam and I were in one of the long lines for the too few port-a-lets and a woman joined a guy in front of us complaining that some folks were getting crazy or causing trouble or something… she wasn’t making complete sense. She left and soon people started coughing all around me… it wasn’t bugging me but most were saying it was mace.
Liam really had to go so I talked a guy just about to go in to let him cut in and while I stood outside a loud bang went off and, over in the area from which it happened, I saw crowds of people running in all directions. People were saying it was a gun shot and were leaving the line area so I hurried Liam out of the john and headed back to Kerry and Mike. I guess it could have been a firecracker being the 4th and all but all the bits and pieces of conversation I heard were saying it was a shot and one person specified it was not a firecracker.
Since we were not that near where the problem was and things had seemed to calm down plus we were in a huge crowd and the fireworks were just about to start, we decided to stay. They were cool and all like always. And, just like the last time we were at Centennial for the 4th, there were a few stray fireworks blasting down into the crowd area so there was even more of that sort of unwanted excitement. Then, the long slow walk back to the car was like a tour through Buckhead 3am on a Sunday mornin’.
My head hit the pillow hard when we finally made it home after midnight. Going to work the next morning was not my idea of a freakin' holiday, ya know what I’m sayin’?!
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