Aug 16th

What a week, I think. I started off well with 9.5 mile run on Sunday in the heat 98 degrees or so. Monday was a nice 4 miler, kung fu practice, and then the gym for stretching and some abs and pushups with a little 3 miler afterwards. Tuesday was an 8 miler in the morning. The afternoon was kung fu and I tested for my green belt. It went well and I was able to start learning some new material. I was pretty trashed on Wednesday morning and didn't meet my running group for hills and speed work. Dammit, those ladies are gonna kill me. Wednesday was also a good friend of mine, Bill's birthday so no workout. I picked him up a litre of Glenlivet 12 year and went to the small get together. We drank a few Warstieners with the neighbor, H, who is like 92 and his wife Ms. Betty. With that said, there was no running on Thursday morning. I did however go pick up the kayaks for this kayak trip we took down the Guadalupe River from Gonzales to Victoria. Well that was the plan. Rick and his brother Bill came down from Ft. Worth on Thursday night for the trip. On the way to Gonzales in the morning, I was pulled over for doing 62 in a 50. Dammit man, I have been so lucky in the last 2 years, but my time was coming. I looked at the fee schedule and told the officer, "Damm, man these tickets are expensive, no wonder all you fellas have new cars." He was not amused. I guess I have to call the lawyer man, Mark Sideman and have him take care of it. Well, on to the river. We put in at Gonzales, Texas. For those of you who don't know, Gonzales is the Birthplace of Texas Independence. Come and Take it, is what the settlers told the Mexicans when they ask for their cannon back. And, as they say, the rest is history! Well, little did we know we would paddle those damm kayaks for 11 hours and still never reach the first bridge. The river was moving like a stagnant pond. All was fine and good till about 5 PM, and we became a little pissy. By 830 PM still no freakin bridge, we saw one person the whole day, and there was only one power line that crossed the river all day. It was fun if you like solitude, I guess. After about 4 hours, every bend in the river looked like the last and it was no longer really amusing anymore. I was getting pretty bored to say the least. We were singing songs, and mostly talkin crap to each other, like guys do when they are good friends. Breakin out the occasional movie quote, would bring laughter, "Hey, Rocco, take her to the zoo, I hear retards like the zoo", or "I see a red sash, I kill a man wearing it, the cowboys are finished around here". And of course we worked on our Sean Connery imitations. Well by 30 minutes before nightfall, we were like "fuck it" I guess we better start putting up the tent. We had a rain storm about to blow right up our asses, with lighting, thunder and all kinds of mayhem. We got the little pup tent up just in time. This thing is made for like two people, and 3 grown men crawl in there. Not cool. I was like, " I hope that rancher who owns this place doesn't show up, he is gonna be like, dammit, Brokeback Mountian up in here. hahah So it starts raining, and after 15 years of having this tent, I have used it like 3 times, I find out, hey its not water proof. Who Knew! The rain came down in torrents, for about and hour and a half. We had about 3/4 of an inch of water in the bottom of the tent and we were colder than a Popsicle. Once it stopped raining, we poured the water out of the tent and in the process, we got bit by hundreds of fire ants. Wow, great! All we could say, between laughing at our situation was, "Man, this fuckin sucks." We slept a little and got up about 6 am and packed our gear up and headed out about 7ish this morning. After about 2 more hours of rowing the kayak, we get to the bridge. Holy Mary, mother of Jesus! Wow, we were like, "I didn't think we would ever reach this freakin place." I called a buddy of mine to pick us up, and finally about 1230 this afternoon he shows up, with some Budweisers. That was a nice treat, being as how we didn't have any whiskey, scotch, or beer with us. So now that we are back home we have learned a few lessons, the main one being, if the river aint flowin, your gonna be rowin!