Pictures

Not only did I finally post the last two sets of France pictures, but here is one from the 5K I ran with my flight the weekend after I got back:

We were missing a few people, but I was really happy with the turnout and all the families and kids that showed up to walk the course. My run time wasn't bad either for as little as I have been running lately: 26:56, which is better than a 9-min mile pace for 3.1 miles. We went to lunch afterwards and then had game night at Jose's house later... great day with awesome people! :)

So, back to France. Monday was the day of the shuttle launch, so after my shift ended at noon, I took off to sightsee before coming back for the launch around 8:30pm. Thanks to a Wikipedia article on "castles in France", I found one only 45 minutes north of Istres on the edge of the Alps, called Chateau des Baux. The drive there was gorgeous, and as I got closer and closer to the massive mountains, I was actually bouncing up and down in my seat. It was sooooo exciting to be off on my own with my trusty camera, to be free to explore every inch of the site and take in all the views as slowly as I wanted. My other team members were either working or didn't want to go. With the exception of the two trips I initiated, all they did on their off time was sit in their hotel rooms and watch movies. I will save going off on a tangent now, but that mindset is something I will never understand. The world is so big, and we only have one lifetime to experience it!

Chateau des Baux was an incredible site to explore because there were so many different parts of the castle, like rooms and stairwells and towers and tunnels - so exciting! And the view from the top was just breathtaking. I couldn't even begin to guess how far you can see, it felt like hundreds of miles, even with the haze. I took somewhere around 200 pictures that day, but only posted about a quarter of them (the best, of course!) here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=346357&id=701905001&l=fc040b2563

It was really cool to feel like a part of the shuttle launch that evening. We listened to radio chatter from all the different parts of the Istres TAL team out on the airfield making all of their preparations and checks to be ready for the shuttle in the case of a landing. We had NASA's video feed from Cape Canaveral on one of the laptops and it was really cool to hear the official countdown and the responses from the crews on our airfield. When it launched, we all held our breath as we heard Houston controllers announce the opening of the TAL window. We cheered the shuttle through the next few minutes, then cheered even louder when closing of the TAL window was annouced as it successfully entered orbit. Operations at Istres were officially over, so we cleaned up our equipment and headed back to the hotel before leaving the next day.

On Tuesday, my other three team members had flights out around 7:00 in the morning. My flight was at 8:20pm. I had to ride to the Marseille airport with them since neither of our rental cars were in my name, but there was no way I was sitting in an airport for 13 hours. I rented a car myself at the airport and took off for another castle on my list, the Chateau d'If, on an island off the coast of Marseille. Unfortunately, my Garmin took me straight through downtown Marseille traffic... and the car I rented was a stick shift, since it would have cost almost $200 more for an automatic. Obviously, I have gotten much better at the stick while driving Mini, but I am still really slow shifting from a stop to first, and I get nervous when other cars are behind me. Not to mention, I learned to drive stick on the other side of the car AND the other side of the street! There were a lot of tense moments and whispered prayers between the airport and finally finding a parking garage near the harbor, but I made it without causing an accident or hitting a pedestrian... a major miracle, in my opinion.

After parking the car and breathing a huge sigh of relief, I walked along the Old Harbor until I found the dock with boats headed out to the castle. I must say, I had a bad first impression of Marseille from Friday's visit, but the Old Harbor area was beautiful! Lots of traffic still, but gorgeous sailboats in the harbor, cafes with outdoor seating lining the square, old buildings and churches with beautiful architecture down every side street. There were people selling fish laid out on tables along the pier, looking like they had just been caught a few minutes ago. I glanced over at one vendor just as he whacked the head off a big fish with a huge knife... not my favorite image of the day, hehe. I bought my boat ticket, then wandered around the harbor taking pictures until it was time to board.

It was a gorgeous day in Marseille, clear skies and sunny with just that pesky haze that seemed to hover over that part of the country. I picked a seat at the back corner of the top of the boat, and was rewarded with a beautiful view of the city laid out on the coastline as we pulled farther and farther away. The wind was blowing my hair, it smelled so fresh, and the water was a brilliant shade of teal. The area actually reminded me a lot of the views of Greece I have seen in movies. The buildings were not bright white, but the layout of the city across hills and the color of the water were very similar. I'll have to go to Greece sometime and compare. :)

The Chateau d'If is on a very small island and was used as a prison for most of its existence, kind of like the medieval French version of Alcatraz. It was this castle that inspired Alexandre Dumas to write "The Count of Monte Cristo" in 1844. The book has been made into a movie several times over, but supposedly most of the filming used a castle on an island near Malta that was somewhat bigger. Chateau d'If is a relatively small castle, but in extremely good condition with lots of signs about the history of the castle, who was held in which cell, etc. Also, the view from the roof was amazing - 360 degrees of open water, the Marseille coastline, and other islands. When the boat came back, its next stop was one of those islands, called the Ile de Frioul. I explored a good bit there as well, and have a video from the rocky coast of that island here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?v=app_2392950137&ref=profile&id=701905001#/video/video.php?v=362319605001

And, pictures from the whole day are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=346744&id=701905001&l=45bd4e1a34

Overall, France was an awesome adventure and I would definitely go back to that area. I also want to see Paris and how different it is. For now, though, I am thrilled to be back in England with the holiday season in full swing and so many good times with great people. Back to work tomorrow after the 4-day break!

Thanksgiving

I know, I know, I still have not posted pictures or a blog about the second half of the France trip... it's coming! Probably tomorrow while I am relaxing at home instead of feeling compelled to wake up at 4am to go shopping... can't say I am too disappointed that Black Friday doesn't really exist in England. I have many many great memories of Black Friday shopping with my mom (and in later years, sister), and it's funny to think that they start with KayBee toy stores and then turn to JC Penney or Best Buy as I got older. I even went early-bird shopping by myself the last two after-Thanksgivings in Shreveport... not as much fun, but the sense of accomplishment for scoring great deals was still there. This year, there is no pressure to take advantage of the deals, so I can sleep in. :) Plus, Amazon.com is having specials all week online, and I got a comforter set for less than half price yesterday from the comfort of my couch.

Which reminds me... I have TV and internet in my house now!!! It's very appropriate that this is Thanksgiving week, because I am so very thankful to be able to write a blog on my couch instead of at the library, gchat with my mom while baking cookies, and learn the wonders of DVR. I just feel more connected to the outside world, especially people back in the States now.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving today; I am looking very much forward to dinner this afternoon with my weather flight family. I am making sweet potato casserole (with marshmallows!), broccoli cheese casserole, and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. And yes, this means I need to get moving on those fairly soon. Tomorrow, I am hanging out with the OCF family and doing a "leftover" themed dinner, hehe. Can't wait to spend time with them again after missing two Fridays in a row. So basically, I am spending these two days with my favorite groups of people over here and couldn't be happier. No surprise that being thankful is coming so easily to me.

However, like I mentioned in my last blog, life is not always happy, and I was saddened to find out this morning that two families I know and love back in the States lost loved ones yesterday. They are not connected in any way, but both families now have to deal with grief and loss while it must seem that the world around them is caught up in a happy holiday season. At the same time, I know without a doubt that these are strong families who will lean on God, each other, and the support of so many friends and family who love them to get through these hard times. I will be praying for them as I know so many others will be.

God is Good.

Being busy causes a dual problem… not only do I not have time to blog, but when I finally do, I have wayyyy too much to write about. I still haven’t even posted pictures from my last two days in France when I took two amazing solo sightseeing adventures. I will hope to get to that this week and then maybe write more about them when I do.

For now, what’s really on my mind is how incredible God’s blessings have been in my life lately. I started thinking about this after successfully driving a stick shift car in Marseille city traffic without causing an accident or hitting any of the pedestrians who regularly step into traffic without looking. You think I’m joking, but I consider this a serious miracle. I also thought about it while sitting on the rocky shoreline of an island off the coast of Marseille, enjoying the solitude and sounds of crashing waves while marveling at the view across the water of the city spread out below the massive forms of the Alps in the distance. Who would have ever thought I would have opportunities like this? It was one of those moments I almost felt like pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

Then, this week, I found out that a tough situation in a friend’s life that I have been praying about took a major step in the right direction. I was so happy to hear about this that a random stranger in line ahead of me later that day asked what I was smiling so much about. I think it is even more exciting when God answers a prayer for a friend than it is when He blesses something in my own life.

Also, I have just been unbelievably blessed by the people I have had the privilege of getting to know and spend time with here. I think about it every time I look around the living room at OCF meetings and know what a real family that group is, with every role including mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers to learn from and just share life with. I have the same feeling when I spend time with my weather flight… I love all of them individually, but also as a group, when I see the bonds and relationships that hold the team together and make us all better than we are on our own.

Before I left for France, I had lunch with two friends from OCF. It was two days before I was supposed to leave, and my orders and travel arrangements were in chaos. I had woken up at 4am to do laundry on base before work, only to find the change machine in the laundromat broken and not enough quarters to do my laundry. So, as you might imagine, I was a little bit stressed and not really in the most joyous mood. After venting about all this to my friends, one of them told me that when things like this happen to him, he takes a minute to think about how blessed he is in the areas of life that really matter, most of all how incredible it is to be loved and saved by God. “The rest is just details, right?” I had to agree with him, and it definitely had me looking at the laundromat issue with a different perspective. I’ve thought back to this conversation several times in the last week and a half, because it just makes so much sense in light of everything else I have talked about in this entry. Life is never going to be perfect, and it’s not always going to be happy… but I do believe it is the most beautiful and exciting gift that God has given us, and I want to live it that way.

You know what's even more amazing? That God gives us that gift even though we don't deserve it. I'll make this personal and switch from "we" to "I". I have messed up a lot of things in life. I have made bad decisions, I have been selfish, and I have hurt people I care about. While I still struggle to forgive myself for some of these things, I know that God already has forgiven me, even though that is a hard thing to wrap my mind around. The gift of salvation, the gift of life, the gift of love... all of these given just by His grace, not by anything I have done or ever could do. Crazy, isn't it? But true. And I want to love the people in my life like that, unconditionally.

Salon-de-Provence

Thanks to the wonderful gift that is Google Maps, I picked a destination for Saturday's outing: Chateau de l'Empiri, a castle in a city called Salon-de-Provence about 30 minutes northeast of Istres. After Friday's incident, I was highly tempted to take off and explore by myself, but decided that the right thing to do was to ask if any of my teammates wanted to go with me. Two of the three did, so we set off mid-morning. When we got to the city, I immediately noticed the difference from Marseille (which by the way, I spelled wrong yesterday and have now corrected). There were beautiful trees lining the streets and sidewalks, and the buildings were lighter and cleaner, more intricate and uniquely designed, and set back from the street with gardens and parks on almost every block. We found a parking area without too much trouble, and as we began walking through the city streets, I found myself thinking that THIS was what I expected France to be like. Cafes with decorative outdoor seating, colorful shops with big front windows, bakeries with amazing smells drifting out, people walking around carrying baguettes (seriously), fountains surrounded by flowers... I was happy and we weren't even at the castle yet. :)

The Chateau de l'Empiri is a fairly small castle, built in the 10th century, lived in by various royalty, and now houses a military history museum. Unfortunately it was closed that afternoon, but the courtyard afforded some pretty amazing views in all directions, I especially liked the one looking out towards the mountains. Photo album link is at the the end, of course, but here is a picture of the castle from the courtyard, French flag flying from the tower:

Thanks to the bird's-eye-view, we were able to pick out several other impressive buildings in the city, and set off to find them up close. Just below the castle was a small 12th century church called Eglise Saint-Michel, which had very simplistic architecture but was beautiful in the sense that it blended so well with the surrounding buildings and had a fruit stand in front of it, like it was part of daily life in the city. There was a historical site marker next to it that explained how much of the church's congregation had moved to the Saint-Laurent Cathedral, which did not entirely surprise me when we found it later. Here's a picture:

Gorgeous, and while we were standing outside, the bells in the tower started ringing (you can see this in the picture if you look closely)! As we walked around the front, the doors were standing open and it appeared that a service had just ended, since there were people standing around in the parking lot chatting and only a few were left inside, taking pictures at the front of the church after what appeared to have been a baptism. Since apparently photography was allowed, we took a couple pictures of the impressive interior as well. We walked around the city for a while longer taking in the scenery, and though I could have spent all day exploring, the guys decided that there wasn't much else to see and it was time to go. Grrr... but rather than drag them around, I agreed to go back since I needed to take a nap before working a mid anyway.

24-hour operations began at 8pm last night, with a weather balloon launch every 12 hours and observations every hour. The other observer, Scott, worked 8pm to midnight and then I took over from midnight to noon. It was just a little bit creepy being all by myself in the middle of the night in a warehouse on a deserted French air base, but it actually wasn't bad at all. As an observer, my only function is to take a weather observation once an hour. Taking an ob takes 15 minutes at the absolute most, so there is obviously a lot of downtime to fill. The warehouse has wifi, so I brought my laptop and blared music while surfing Facebook and catching up with friends and family on G-chat. Not too bad, huh? :) All I had to do was set my phone alarm to remind me to take an ob at the required times. Also, one of the team members brought a case of DVDs, so I was set for 12 hours.

The original plan was to sightsee more after my shift, but I had to compromise and push that off until tomorrow when I will have more successfully adjusted my sleep schedule - I was ready to crash after not sleeping a whole lot yesterday afternoon. Launch is tomorrow at 8:28pm local, so that gives me a good 8-hour block after shift to go explore, take a nap, and come back for launch. Assuming everything goes well (which is the current forecast), we will then be done with ops and I can sleep like a normal person tomorrow night. My flight back is Tuesday evening, so I may even get another chance to see something that day. France is nice, but I will be ready to come back to England... I miss it and my house and my weather flight. Almost time to head to work, so here's the photo album link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=341572&id=701905001&l=babccbdc9c

Marseille

The first thing I have to tell you is a funny story about my French usage. I went running this morning with Dan, our team leader, and when I got back I went to the front desk to ask for some bottled water. They had several brands of water including the sparkling type, so instead of using the word for "water", I specifically asked if I could have an "Evian". I have a cold right now so my voice sounds funny, and when the word came out, it sounded more like "avion"... which is unfortunately the word for "airplane". Oops. So the lady gave me a confused look and repeated "Avion?" Embarrased, I just pointed to the bottle of water, and she realized that I was in fact not requesting an airplane. Oh well, I tried.

So then our team went over to Istres Air Base to check out our equipment and learn how to use it. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this facility looks like something from another decade. Old computers, old equipment, in the middle of nowhere. Makes me curious about how normal weather ops are carried out for aircraft that use the base regularly. The US does not have any assets or personnel here, but it is an active base for the French Air Force (and yes, I realize I am leaving that wide open for jokes about the French military). I didn't ask yet if I was allowed to take pictures, but I will in the next couple days if I can. Point is, if the US Space Shuttle ever really did have to land here, I have a feeling there would be a LOT of shortfalls identified in facilities, communication, security, etc.

We begin round-the-clock operations at about 8pm local time tomorrow (Saturday), which is 48 hours prior to the scheduled shuttle launch. Weather at Cape Canaveral on Monday looks good for the moment, but there is precip forecasted on Tuesday, so I hope that system doesn't move in early or that the launch isn't delayed for other reasons, because then it would get pushed until at least Wed. Weather here also looks good for Monday, though it it supposed to be cloudy and rainy the next 2 days. I will be trading 12-hour shifts with the other observer, and we agreed on a schedule today. To allow both of us free time in the daylight and night time, he is going to work noon to midnight and I will work midnight to noon. So he will start taking obs tomorrow at 8pm, I'll take over at midnight, then on the last day he will work the last 8 hours from noon until launch. Good news is that the work center has wifi, so I can take my laptop over there to keep me entertained in the middle of the night, plus our weather balloon operator brought her external hard drive with a ton of movies on it. It hadn't really occurred to me that taking one ob an hour for 12 hours leaves a lot of time to be bored...

Wow, I hadn't thought this was going to be a long post, but I haven't even gotten to Marseille yet. From the base, we went to a French supermarket to buy food for our rooms, so we don't have to eat out all the time, and for while we are on shift. That was an adventure in itself... even with some knowledge of French, it was hard to find things and read labels and really know what you were buying. I had the same feeling I had in the train station in Germany... I'm really lucky to be living in England and experiencing the European culture without a language barrier. So after a more or less successful shopping trip, we took the stuff back to our hotel, ate lunch, and then left to sightsee in Marseille.

As the most motivated explorer in the group, I looked up a few tourist attractions online and the others agreed on them. Marseille is just under an hour from Istres, and parts of the drive are really pretty as you pass a big lake on one side and then come out along the coast on the other. The landscape is mostly rocky hills, and lots and lots of houses and buildings in city-ish layouts. The contrast to England is as striking as it is from the air, and I must admit I prefer England's rural setting and small towns. The architecture here is not what I expected either - the buildings are all yellowish beige with orangeish tiled roofs. As ignorant as this may sound, picture an Olive Garden restaurant, and that's what they look like. The guy on the team from Vicenza (Army post in Italy) told me that this is a Mediterranean style, and that northern parts of France look more like English architecture.

When we got to Marseille, it definitely felt like a city. Tall buildings and apartment complexes line the streets, giving them the canyon-ish look. Lots of traffic, and no parking to be found anywhere. We found the first site we were looking for, the Palais Longchamps, but after circling the block three times and not finding a place to park, we ended up parking at a train station over half a mile away and then trying to find our way back to it walking through the city streets. Along the way, we did find a gorgeous church on one corner, pictured below.

Of course, I was up the steps and inside before anyone could stop me, where I was greeted by a sign in French requesting that visitors be silent while inside the sanctuary. I quickly stepped back outside to mention this to my teammates, as well as the fact that we probably weren't supposed to take pictures inside either. That is common in a lot of religious buildings in England, and considering the silence request, I assumed it was the same here. The inside looked a lot like an English church or cathedral, the layout in the shape of a cross with cavernous arched ceilings and massive stained glass windows. There were several displays along the side walls, but as all the placards were in French, I was the only one in the group who took any time to look at them. One of them stopped me in my tracks as I read it: a framed verse of Scripture in French, from the book of John about how Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and whoever believes in Him has eternal life. As I stood there in the darkened church, flickering candlelight reflected on the glass over this familiar verse in another language, it struck me as a beautiful example of how God trancends language and culture and geography. God is so much bigger than the American institutionalized church or any denomination, and so is His love for people and His power. Very cool thought, and I really wanted to record the moment for myself... I hadn't actually seen a sign forbidding photography, so I quickly looked around, didn't see anyone, pulled out my camera and snapped a quick shot with no flash. That picture is in my photo album linked at the end.

We left the church and finally found the original destination, the Palais du Longchamps, which houses the Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Natural History. Some more beautiful architecture and fountains, check out the photo album for those. From the top of the stairs, you have a great view across the city to another site I had looked up - the Notre Dame de Garde, a beautiful church perched on the highest point in Marseille. I was hoping to visit it after we were done looking around the Palais grounds, but when we got back to the car, the other three team members said they wanted to go back to the hotel. Seriously? It was just past 3pm, and we had only left the hotel at noon. I was irritated, but couldn't trump a 3-to-1 vote. This is one reason I enjoy exploring by myself so much... no one tells me when I have to leave. Plus, I have been lucky in the travel buddies I have had in the past - Greg in Germany and Cassie in Ely were very agreeable to my pace.

So I consoled myself by planning to go somewhere else tomorrow. I have the keys to one of our two rental cars, so I'm going exploring whether the others want to go with me or sit in their hotel rooms all day until we have to work tomorrow night. I have not decided where yet, I need to do a little more searching on Google maps. I just don't understand people who can sit still when there is so much to see in the world. I should probably end this marathon post now with the link to my photo album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=340666&id=701905001&l=85a94bdf20 Enjoy!

Made it!

Well, after two days of doubt about whether I would actually get here or not, I hopped on a flight out of London Stansted this afternoon and landed in Marseilles just before 8pm local time (one hour ahead of England). It was cloudy most of the way here so I couldn't see anything, but it cleared up for the last 20 minutes or so of the flight. The first thing I noticed was how much more France looks like the US from the air than it does England. Lots of lights everywhere, more developed, big lighted buildings and parking lots, bright neon signs, etc. I'm not sure I really expected that, since Germany was more like England in the feeling that you walked into a storybook instead of a modern city. Obviously, London is the exception in England, but I am almost as far as you can get from Paris here and it still looks like sprawling cities instead of cozy little towns.

My mom suggested that I get a French phrase book to help brush the cobwebs off my four years of high school French, so I picked one up in the airport and started reading it on the plane. It really surprised me how much of it was familiar, and how much I could come up with on my own when I started thinking about various topics. I also could read (or at least get the general idea) of a lot of the signs and advertisements in the airport. By the time our four-person team got checked into the hotel and thought about dinner, it was almost 10pm... so guess where we ended up? McDonald's. Yeah... what is it with me and getting stuck at American restaurants on my first night in foreign countries? Popeye's my first night in England, McDonald's my first night in France... Germany was the exception, dinner in the German restaurant near Edelweiss that first night was the best food I had all week there. Okay, I digress, back to French. So anyway, we go to McDonalds, and none of the staff spoke English. My other team members resorted to pointing at pictures, but I was actually able to order in French and even succeeded in asking to switch my ranch sauce for mustard. So that was kind of cool. :)

I wish I had an interesting picture or two to post for you, but to be completely honest, I haven't really seen anything too exciting yet. The drive from Marseilles to Istres was all in the dark. The view from my hotel room is of a parking lot. The room is nice, I suppose I could take a picture of that. But tomorrow's plan is to go over to the base in the morning to make sure our equipment is all set up and that we all know how to use it, then spend the rest of the day exploring. We don't start 24-hour ops until Saturday afternoon. The other observer and I will be trading 12-hour shifts, and I'm kind of hoping he will let me volunteer for mids so I can explore during the day (with some sleep in there somewhere). Tomorrow morning, I am going running with our team leader, since I opened my big mouth and said I should go and he jumped in and wanted to go with me. So now I have to go. Haha. Serves me right.

That reminds me of one important thing I learned earlier today. After my last minute reservations were made this morning, our site commander called to make sure everything was set. While talking about return trip arrangements, he mentioned that 19 Nov is the latest they will push the launch before they will just scrub it until Dec so it doesn't run into the Thanksgiving holiday. I thought that was very nice to let everyone go back to their families, and I will get to run the 5K with my weather flight! So that was good news.

Okay, I need to get to bed since it is actually 11:30pm here though my computer thinks it is 10:30. Should have pictures after tomorrow!

France This Week!

Apologies again if you thought I disappeared... I'm working on getting internet in the house so I can post more at my convenience rather than the library's or cafe's. I leave for France on Thursday, and my hotel advertises free wifi, so hopefully I can continue my updates from there. I'm getting excited about the trip, though it worries me that the site team leader seemed fairly clueless when I talked to him last week. I don't like disorganization when it comes to travel arrangements and orders and important details. But assuming all of those issues get ironed out, the current plan is to leave here and arrive in Istres on Thursday, training with the weather team on Friday, begin 24-hour ops on Saturday, shuttle launches on Monday, come home on Tuesday.

Here is a basic overview of what I will be doing there: Istres Air Base is one of three Transoceanic Abort Landing (TAL) sites for the US Space Shuttle after it launches from Cape Canaveral, FL. If there is a problem during launch and the shuttle needs to land, it will land at one of these sites. The weather team provides 24-hour weather observations beginning 48 hours before a scheduled launch. For the shuttle to launch, weather must be "green" for landing at one or more TAL site. We'll be providing that info to the Kennedy Space Center. If the shuttle launch is delayed, we get stuck at the TAL site until it launches. Obviously, there are worse places to be "stuck" than the French Riviera... I just want to be back before the 21st to run a 5K with the weather flight, and then of course Thanksgiving. :)

So this week will basically be spent getting ready for that trip. The house is getting closer and closer to set up. I was fairly productive this weekend assembling two beds and getting rid of some more boxes. I tried to buy a TV but the BX was out of the one I wanted, so I have a rain check. House phone line will be activated tomorrow, and then I can get TV/internet/phone service. The Mini has had some trouble starting this past week, so it has an appointment tomorrow at a garage specializing in restoring classic Minis, which I'll take advantage of to get it thoroughly checked out and a few smaller "cosmetic" issues taken care of as well. I'm getting better at driving it, and it's so cute and yellow you just have to smile when you see it. :)

I also picked out my next two goal races this past week. Since I can't get into the London Marathon this coming April (if you would like to hear me gripe about this in detail, let me know, but for now I will refrain), I picked the Edinburgh Marathon in Scotland in May. It has a reputation for incredible scenery as well as a fast course, which will be a nice change from running up and down the mountains of Big Sur (but don't get me wrong, I will be doing Big Sur again when I'm back in the States in a few years). As a warm-up race, I picked the Dover Half Marathon in Feb, which I already know will be incredible scenery based on my previous visit. I'm really excited to finally have races and dates to plan for, so I will be setting specific training plans soon. For now, time for me to run to church, so that's all for now!