Four Weeks With Carrot Top

challahs

A Mississippi Birth

Warning: The following post is rated R for obscene language. Read at your own risk.

This is a post about childbirth. Don't worry, I'll do my best not to over share, but this wouldn't be a very complete blog about life in Mississippi if we didn't tell you about our most significant interaction with medical professionals down here.

Our birth story starts pretty much like every other one. At some point on Saturday night I realized that my stomach pains were contractions and not a result of combining the taco tailgate, frozen yogurt, sweet potato fries, and a heart breaking Mississippi State loss. A few hours later, around 2am, I woke up Phil. A few hours after that, around 5am, my water broke and I made the executive decision that we were going to the hospital. My contractions weren't doing what the books said they would be doing, but I was in pain and decided to throw my plans for a natural childbirth out the window. While quietly saying "fffuuuuuucccckkkkk" with every contraction was comforting to me, it wasn't going to get me through hours and hours of this. I wanted an epidural.

We arrived at an empty emergency room and quite hospital, I got put in a delivery room around 6am, and was still exhaling "fuck" with every contraction. At which point the following conversation took place:

Nurse A: Oh my, I don’t know if I can do this.
Phil (dumbfound): What?
Nurse A (looking at me): You need to pick another word.
Phil (even more dumbfounded): She’s in labor!
Nurse A: I’m a Christian. I just…just…
Sarah: Are you kidding me?
Nurse B (with a whole lot of attitude): The next shift will be here soon.
Phil: You guys just need to stop talking!

Then they checked me.

Seriously. That really happened. The nurse told me to stop swearing and then said she needed to see what my cervix was doing. Let's just say that was not a pleasant few moments. She did learn that I was complete, the baby's head was down, and I was ready to push. Apparently we did not do a very good job of timing my contractions because we had no idea I was that far along. This meant I would be doing this without any pain meds, despite my moment of weakness. Chaos ensued as they ran around paging the (not very friendly) on-call doctor and setting up the delivery bed. Four contractions later Evelyn Miriam was born...into a room filled with her loving parents and three judging hypocrites. Granted, our knowledge of the New Testament is pretty limited, but we're pretty sure Jesus would be more offended by them passing judgment than by my cuss words.

At some point after the birth Nurse A came in and apologized. This was after she found out we are Jewish. Maybe she figured since our souls were already lost it didn't matter if I swore in her presence?

The rest of our time at Oktibbeh County Hospital was less eventful--although we were constantly amazed at the lack of professionalism and the little information imparted to new parents. For example, every nurse we interacted with kept talking about "tee-tee." What the fuck is "tee-tee?" It's urine. Apparently that's too un-Christian of a word to use in a hospital.

To the delivery nurses at OCH we say:


To all of you, we leave you with some pictures of Evvy's first week (courtesy of my dad):

Evvy--days 3-6

It's a girl!

Our first farm hand, Evelyn Miriam Otto, arrived Sunday, November 21st at 6:28am. She's adorable and has a huge shock of red hair. The details: 20 inches long, 7lb 6.7 oz, born 5 days before her due date, named for her maternal great-grandmothers Evelyn Brauner and Miriam Brown.

More details to come.

Evelyn Miriam Otto

Kids say the darndest things

By kids I mean my students, not Baby Otto.

I'm teaching a course called Comparative Family this semester and we're currently reading a book about how the spread of mass education in a small village in Nepal (Junigau) has changed marriage formation behaviors. My students just read a chapter on the various types of media available in Junigau and how those sources of information are changing people's conceptualizations of love.

Below are two quotes from the response paper one of my students wrote (all typos and things of that ilk are direct quotes and I feel it noteworthy that this student is older than I am). Enjoy.

"The men in Junigau were in some ways like the men in the U.S..I think that the man is just suppose to be head of the family, but women can do some things better. I think I would just let them stay the leader and I would just follow my husband for the most part. I think that it is good that we have found our place in society, but I think he should let our husband direct the show."

"The thing about Junigau women is that back then they had to love the man regardless of if they were satisfied with the size of his penis or not. In the United States, some women think the penis size matters. So if they get married before they test out the material, they might be in for a rough life, especially if love just fell upon them. They will probably have to deal with being treated poorly and just taking anything from their husband. My hat goes off to the women in Junigau and the U.S. who get married for love and love only."

When Hell (aka Starkville) Freezes Over

Ah, the weather. It's a thing of wonder, an ideal topic for small talk, and currently the bane of our existence.

After hovering in the mid-80s for several weeks, barely dipping down into the 50s at night, Mother Nature decided that life on the farm was too simple and that what we needed was a sudden, massive cold spell. From a high of around 85 on Tuesday to a low of 28 on Friday. Seriously. We went from summer like conditions to a freeze in about 48 hours. And then found out the freezing conditions would continue for 3 nights.

So, while Thursday morning Phil and I woke up and were discussing our plans to head to Talladega (no, not for NASCAR-we were going to support some friends of ours who were running this 100 mile trail race*), by that evening we were trying to figure out how many rows of crops we were going to lose.

Friday morning we woke up early and started what ended up being a two day process of crop protection: I started mowing to create grass clippings for mulch (note: it's hard to start a lawn mower 37 weeks pregnant. The massive belly makes that pulling motion almost impossible); Phil started making stakes, hoops, and pins for the row covers. The day wore on, the wind picked up. Phil mulched around all the plants, hoping to insulate them, but we were faced with a dilemma: hope our freshman, makeshift efforts at crop preservation would work and leave everything in the ground or, do a massive harvest and try to sell at least something from this crop. Sell it was. We let folks know we had some fresh, chemical free, heirloom, delicious vegetables if they wanted to buy. Thanks to the internet we had several buyers lined up in a matter of minutes.

While the prospect of a little business made things less gloomy, we were still racing the clock. I had to abandon my mulching efforts for a work thing but made it home with about an hour before sunset. We frantically pinned down row covers, "stitching" them together with wire to cover as much as possible. As the last light faded we covered the lettuce and took a long, sad look at the snow peas that were going to remain uncovered.

Then we waited till morning.

Phil went out at first light to assess the damage. It wasn't pretty. After struggling with a frozen hose for 30 minutes he was finally able to get some water on the plants we'd left exposed (this supposedly helps them thaw with less damage). Everything that we'd covered seemed to have survived with minimal damage, but the other rows were looking grim. This sparked an early morning trip to the farmer's co-op and Lowes in search of more row covers. We came up empty handed but bought some burlap as a substitute. Then, it was back to the farm to repair some wind damage to the existing covers and repeat the activities from Friday.

In the end, we survived our first freeze and so did most of our plants. We're not sure if the radicchio, red mustard, and snow peas will be smashingly good, but our gallant efforts saved the kale, green mustard, lettuces, turnips, beets and other secret goodies. Stay tuned.

Sorry. No pictures. Too cold.

*Congrats to KD, Icarus, Snuffy, Morph, and Wackus for your efforts. We were with you in spirit and think you're badasses for braving the trails in these temperatures.

I am the walrus...

This seemed like a fitting title for a post on John Lennon's 70th birthday. I can only hope that the next time I feel this way it's because I've been doing whatever he was doing when he wrote it.

My apologies for being a bad blogger. To be honest, life just didn't seem momentous enough to post about. Summer passed us by in hot and humid haze. Then the school year started, and we were still in that hot and humid haze. We think Fall may finally be here, but it's still going to be over 90 this weekend.

Farm update: the summer planting yielded a seemingly endless supply of purple hull peas, Mississippi silver peas, okra, basil, and lemon grass. The cucumber plants could almost keep up with my demand, but since I would like to eat 4-5 a day it's fair to say we had a lot cucumbers. We also had a few tomato plants that produced--enough to remind us how delicious fresh, heirloom tomatoes are, but nothing to the point where we felt buried under produce. Two of the melon varieties Phil planted produced melons, but we only had a few that were actually tasty. The weather was not good weather for tomatoes or melons--too many days of no rain and then deluges.

The weather was also not good for enjoying farm work. It was over 100 and very humid for most of the summer. Phil is still learning how to stay hydrated and avoid leg cramps. There were many days when he'd be writhing in pain on the kitchen floor as all of his leg muscles seized up. He's tried s-caps, Gatorade, and pickle juice, just to name a few--anyone have any other suggestions?

Even while working through the cramps, and the need for multiple wardrobe changes throughout the day, Phil managed to till several plots to get them ready for fall planting. We currently have radishes, lettuces, broccoli, kale, beets, collards, and cabbage growing. We had carrots and a bunch of other things, but lost them to a grasshopper invasion (we've now marked the front door with lamb's blood so hopefully the angel of death won't take Baby Otto if it's a boy--FYI, that's a Jewish joke).

Overall, things appear to be going to plan. Lots of hiccups and learning. The land still isn't productive enough to yield enough excess for us to sell, but hopefully after a few more seasons of soil improvement it'll get there.

Baby Otto update: There are lots of hiccups there too, but I read that's normal. Basically, everything is normal. It's growing. I'm growing. There don't appear to be any issues of damaging pests or poor soil quality. We've been pleasantly overwhelmed by the generosity of our friends and family and find ourselves fully equipped to have a baby in the house, whenever he/she decides to join us (which should be sometime around Thanksgiving). I should clarify that we feel fully equipped in terms of stuff, not in terms of our ability to actually parent. But, like farming and teaching, we figure we'll just learn on the job.

Assistant professor update: So far this semester is going well. A few hiccups (a plagiarizing student and more frustration with the level of preparation most of these students have had) and a few very bright moments (realizing that some of the students in my class are incredibly bright and having engaging, interesting, and stimulating discussions in class).

General life in Mississippi update: We realized it gets hot down here. Hot in way you can't possible imagine. We love our house and land and have thoroughly enjoyed time on the screened in porch, bug and animal watching, and the quiet calm of weekends in the country. From what we can tell, all of our visitors have also found things down here relaxing and enjoyable. The Provence room is still available--although it will probably be closed for a few weeks this winter while we try to figure out this whole baby thing.

I leave you with some photos of our summer, a promise to return to more regular blogging, and one "Mississippi moment:" a judge in north Mississippi put a lawyer in jail for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance in the courtroom. Apparently, the Supreme Court doesn't have jurisdiction down here? Somewhat related--one of my students wrote in a paper that "she enjoyed saying the pledge of legion."

One more thing: someone recently commented that they hadn't realized most of the pictures on this blog were also links to full albums. If you feel picture deprived you might want to go back and see if you missed a link or two.

Ecological disaster porn

We celebrated our four year wedding anniversary by heading down to the Gulf Coast. What we saw can only be described as ecological disaster porn. It was beautiful, disgusting, and captivating all at the same time.

We started out in Orange Beach, Alabama--a place that would have been a lot like Cancun, Mexico if it weren't for the oil. The white sand beaches were gorgeous, but the miles of high-rise hotels and condos were not. After quickly checking into our ugly, high-rise hotel that was actually across the street from the beach and behind a strip mall we decided to go for a stroll along the water. It was the most depressing beach experience of my life. The only people were clean up workers or other people like us taking pictures of the disaster.

There were two types of clean up happening along this section of beach. The first went something like this. A boat would come close to shore pulling a long stretch of fabric or rope with pom poms attached (the oil clings to the fabric and pom poms). A dozen or so workers (wearing minimal protective gear) would rush into the water, grab hold of this fabric, and bring it to shore. They would then separate each section, put it in a plastic bag, duct tape the bag shut and throw it on a trailer to be dumped into a landfill down the road. Then they would wait for the boat to return with another strip. Pictures of this process can be seen here.

Mopping up oil

The second type of clean up involved smaller teams of workers digging and sifting in the sand. Team of 2-6 people were spread out along the shore line--probably one team every 20-100 feet. Each team was responsible for picking up the oil that they found in their little area. Some people were digging down into the sand to find oil that was below the surface. Others were sifting through top layers of sand. In either case, the workers were maybe working in a 4 foot area and were picking up quarter size drops of oil. Stop for a minute and think about how many gallons of oil have been and are being pumped into the gulf. Each team may pick up the equivalent of one gallon in an entire day. This is how we're dealing with things?

Sifting thru sand

Our walk along the beach was cut short by our growing depression over watching the clean up and also the headaches we were developing due to smell of the oil.

We explored a few other areas of the coast over the weekend. Gulf Shores, just a few miles down the road from Orange Beach, had warning signs about water quality, but no clean up crews on the beach and many more typical summer beach goers. The local state park had a nice nature walk where we saw a lot of big spiders, a large bird we can't identify, some very beautiful flora, and gorgeous dunes. Of course, after crossing the dunes all we saw were more clean up crews, but we did have an hour or so outside where we didn't want to cry. Finally, we took a ferry to Dauphin Island, a stopping point for migrating birds and the site of an old fort, and then took the long way home driving along the Alabama and Mississippi coasts looking at boom surrounded marshlands and bemoaning the combination of old hurricane damage and new oil damage. Pictures from these places can be seen here:

Around the gulf coast

Raising a barn, Mississippi style

Our farm needed a shed. Farm tools of all sorts were taking over our laundry room and the whiskey sippin' porch. This would not do.

We had some good friends coming in for the weekend so Phil picked up a kit for a 10x10 shed that said it would take 2 men 2 hours to put together. It sounded like the perfect Saturday morning activity. Well, maybe if both men were Amish and had super-powered nail guns this thing could have been put together in 2 hours. In reality it took 6 people more like 15 hours. But, thanks to our wonderful friends we now have a gorgeous shed (named Le Seb Shack in honor of the man who really got things done, a clean laundry room, and an empty porch just waiting for a cool evening.

The shed

A lot of things are growing down here. Some of them can be seen here. Others I'm not really comfortable posting on the web--but rest assured, our farm hand is growing.

Farm Update

As we've said, farming this year is about two things: 1) improving the soil and 2) learning about the soil, weather, bugs, etc in this area. As such, Phil has a lot of little things going on, all with those two goals in mind. For example, he's growing a lot of green manure--plants like crimson clover, vetch, and a rye-type grain that will get tilled into the soil later and add important nutrients and materials. He also has a pumpkin patch. Pumpkins come with a lot of green stuff that can get tilled into the soil. Plus, we may even have some pumpkins to carve or sell. Then there's the lasagna gardening--raised beds of layers of straw, manure, and other stuff.

To learn about bugs and get a baseline for what will grow in the soil he's also planted a variety of plants like herbs, tomatoes, peppers, peas, beans, and okra. We don't think we'll get a lot to eat, but that's not the point of this year.

Right now it's a muddy mess out there (apparently when it rains in Mississippi it's always a torrential storm, never a pleasant sprinkling), but here are some pictures we've taken over the past few months.

Farm April and May 2010

Farm Hands

Phil decided he could use a couple of extra hands around the farm so we got ourselves a new recruit. Pretty sure this isn't the most economical or efficient way to get help, but child labor serves so many companies so well we thought we'd give it a shot. Who needs values and morals anyway?


Expected arrival date: 11/26/2010. Expected first day of work: unknown at this time.

No more chicken

I fear my previous post has left many of you thinking we live in a dangerous area. Rest assured, Oktibbeha County is a quiet, bucolic haven. We assume that the chicken was a gift from the neighborhood teenagers. Maybe the four I saw yesterday crammed onto a 4 wheeler coming back from fishin'? Or maybe the two I saw riding horses down the street?

I've been admiring the wildlife on the farm a lot lately. We had a barred owl perching on a fence post the other morning, a red tailed hawk patrols the skies above us regularly, I saw my first blue bird (gorgeous!), and yesterday I saw what I believe was a wolf spider carrying her bright blue egg sac.

This weekend I'm hoping to write a post about what's growing on the farm.

Chicken...

in the mailbox. That was our most recent interaction with our neighbors. No, not live chickens for us to raise but chewed up fried chicken spit into our mailbox. They also broke off the little red flag.

House. Done.

We have moved into our house!

It's still a work in progress but we are there and love it. The screened in porch is my favorite part so far. I love starting my day eating breakfast on the porch--watching the neighbor's horses in their fields and the hawks soaring overhead. The night sky is another nice part...as is the fabulous kitchen...and the huge shower...and the master closet...I guess we're enjoying the whole thing.

We are currently accepting reservations for the Provence Room (so named because the walls are a soothing shade of lavender). Please let us know your expected dates and we'll let you know the rate. We accept the following forms of payment (and are open to other suggestions): locally raised bacon, beer from the New Belgium Brewery, shiitaki mushroom logs, and willingness to be my running partner.

Sorry no pictures right now. We'll post some as soon as the boxes are unpacked and out of the way.

Looks like we're moving on to Plan B for the farm. What was Plan A, you ask?

Disclaimer: this is Sarah's interpretation and understanding of said farm plans. There are probably lots of errors. Deal with it. I'm no farmer and Phil seems to have lost the battle with technology and is no longer posting.

Plan A went something like this:

• Start a 2000 sq ft "kitchen garden" this spring. This involved
  -putting in some amendments to the soil
  -tilling in composted cow manure
  -planting the seedlings Phil started in our spare room
  
  
• Improve the soil on 1 acre for future plantings. This involved
  -getting more horse manure from the neighbors than you could possibly imagine
  -composting horse manure
  -at some point this summer tilling composted horse manure into the soil
  -planting cover crops to help fix nitrogen and lower the acidity in the soil
  -till cover crops in and then plant veggies
  
  Now that the bulk of our house-building consumption is behind us, Phil had the green light to really get going on Plan A. Up until now he'd been limited to the first things on the above lists. It was a little late for spring planting down here, but such is life. Unfortunately, he quickly learned that Plan A was not going to work. At least partly because:
  
• tilling Mississippi clay is hard and doesn't really give you anything good to work with
• our water table appears to be about 5 inches above ground.
  
  So, on to Plan B, which looks something like this:
• kitchen garden
  -till as well as possible
  -plant things like okra which we've been told will grow just about anywhere down here
  
• build some raised beds in which to plant the other seedlings we have
• start lasagna farming, AKA sheet composting, on the acre we want to cultivate
  -this involves essentially raising the ground level up 2 feet...for every bit of land you want to cultivate
  -you layer manure, straw, newspaper, and other organic matter till you reach the desired height
  -once all those materials have composted then you plant right in them
  
  As you can imagine this is very labor intensive and was what Phil was hoping to avoid doing. If you ever feel the need to shove some horse manure, push a lawn mower, or collect leaves let us know. We'll supply the beer!
  

Beware the ides of March

There isn't really anything to beware of down here (or at least there isn't anything specific about March 15th to beware of), but I thought it made a good post title.

And now for your irregularly scheduled update of life in Mississippi:

Last weekend we volunteered with a local organization to clear and clean up a vacant lot that will be the new home of the Starkville Community Market. The Starkville Community Market is our version of a farmer's market and it's where Phil hopes to eventually sell what he grows. We figured it was a good investment in the karma bank to spend the morning digging, shoveling, hoeing, and carting dirt for them. This new structure is courtesy of Gulf States Manufacturers--a steel plant based in Starkville. The economic downturn has hit them hard but instead of laying off their workers they are converting an acre of their land into farm land and having their workers work the land and sell the produce at the community market. The company also decided they would help with the construction of a more permanent shelter for the community market, which is what we worked on (previously they just closed off a section of road just off Main St on Saturday mornings). Pretty nice, huh?

Spring has arrived and Phil's been trying to get the farm up and running:

farm mid march

The house is coming along. We close on March 31st!

house-movin' along

Again, why?

To follow up on yesterday's post...why it's good for us that we're straight.

Why Mississippi? Why?

When people ask us how we like it here we generally say something like "It's great. Everyone is really friendly and we like that. Of course, we're a straight, married white couple so that makes things easy."

The benefit of being white in Mississippi cannot be underestimated. This is a place where the Klan comes out to protest at football games. While that incident had the sort of happy ending where more people turned out to protest against the klan than turned out to support them, the fact that the klan is alive and well down here is still pretty disturbing.

Here's another example of why we respond that way. (Thanks to Sarah's colleague for the great post--we recommend reading the oped he links to).

Saturdays in Starkville

We've had some gorgeous weather on the weekends down here and have been enjoying the great outdoors of Mississippi in February.

Here are some photos from a short walk we took in the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge (not to be confused with the Noxubee Hills Trails where we run).

Noxubee Refuge Hike

Phil's been working on the farm, adding amendments to the soil and starting some seeds in our makeshift greenhouse. This weekend we worked on the piles of materials to be used in compost and for mulch later on. Nothing like raking and mowing on a beautiful Saturday to make you excited for farm life!

Early, early spring on the farm

Finally, with some help from our local paint lady we corrected some of our earlier mistakes with the house.

What's on your TV?

Often when we're watching TV we look at each other and say "wow, we really do live in Mississippi." That thought is often sparked by this:

The Poo is on; It's go time at the farm.

You are now looking at the biggest pile of Poo I've ever created in my life in one sitting... ha! Imagine that?

But seriously, this is a pile of animal poo, honest. It's horse manure with a bit 'o sheep (manure that is) mixed in, courtesy of new friends at Scruggs farm just down the street.

Here's the kicker: multiply that pile by 20. That's my goal for the one acre. Need more for composting and the other projects.

That's alotta poo, no?

House update: good decisions and bad decisions

We've returned from a fabulous, and far too short, trip to Carrboro, NC to find our house looking like a place people might actually live in! Or rather, a place with a few rooms people might live in and a few rooms where people would go crazy looking at the terrible colors. Lesson #542 for building a house is that it is always best to get professional advice when picking wall paint. Here are a few pictures of the inside. You can't really tell what the colors are, but some are really quite nice.

House inside

Frostbite Half Marathon Race Reports

Sorry for the long lull in posts. Life down here is generally unremarkable so we just weren't making any remarks.

This weekend Sarah's cousin Jeff and his wife Jo came for a visit. Jo is planning on running a race in every state and we, and Starkville's Frostbite Half Marathon, were their Mississippi stop. The local race is in it's 25th year and has about 200 entrants now. For those of you who aren't runners, that's a tiny race. It also doesn't start until noon, which is weird. We think it's because Mississippians would think it was too cold to run in the morning in January: the forecast was for high 50s/60s. Brr. The race is a point-to-point starting in Pheba, MS (a town with a gas station, a couple of churches, and one stop sign) and running 13.1 miles on highway 389 to Starkville.

Overall it was an excellent weekend filled with surprisingly good food, plenty of drinking, lots of excellent conversation, and some good running. Below you'll find our separate race reports.

Sarah's race report:
I haven't run a road half marathon in over 3 years and have spent the winter focusing on running as long as possible with absolutely no speedwork (Uwharrie 20 is looming large on the horizon). This means I wasn't feeling very well prepared and wasn't at all sure what to expect with this race. But, the competitive part of me was still hoping for a PR (personal record)--my past few trail half marathons had been pretty fast and I thought the transition back to roads might leave me pleasantly surprised. As we boarded the buses to take us to the start I looked at the Mississippi flag flying nearby and shuddered--both because of what the flag looks like and because I realized that these gusting winds I was feeling were going to be blowing straight in our faces for the entire race. Bye-bye PR. I also realized the forecasted temparature did not take those gusting winds into account and I was definitely under dressed. Hello neon-yellow cotton long-sleeve race shirt! Yes, I was one of those people--the one you snicker at when you see her on the course wearing the shirt for that race. I had to do it folks. My t-shirt was not going to cut it. I had to toss my ego aside and don said neon-yellow race shirt. I felt sheepish all day, but it was a warm sheepish.

Sorry, I digress. We got off the buses, someone blew a horn, and we all started running. I dodged in and out of a few people, felt good and looked down at my watch: 7:22 pace! What? That lasted about 15 seconds. I hit the first mile marker at 7:52--still freaking fast for me, but much closer to a sustainable pace. The road at this point was lined with trees which sort of protected us a from the wind, but it was still a force to be reckoned with. The next three miles felt good--8:18 pace. I settled down at that point and made sure the college kid with the sweatband did not pass me. At this point the road started passing through open farm land and past small lakes. Pretty to look at, but not very good at blocking the wind. I spent the next three miles trying not to slow too much, but desperately wishing we were going to turn right. We didn't. We turned slightly to the left--straight into the wind. I now know what it's like to run in a wind tunnel. It was crazy! I felt like the road runner--my legs were moving so fast but I was not moving forward at all. I looked down at my watch: 9:40! ugh. I looked up and realized that it was 2 miles across open land and then it was a mile up hill! double ugh. Luckily for me I saw a guy all decked out in fancy running gear ahead of me. I didn't care how windy it was, I was not going to let some guy in fancy socks finish in front of me. So I ducked my head and slowly made my way through the 2 mile wind tunnel. The hill at mile 10 was a welcome change for me and I thanked the Carrboro forest as I passed several men and got closer and closer to the guy in the fancy socks. Mile 11 was mostly up hill and I just kept focused on those socks. I could see the final right turn ahead and I blew past fancy socks guy (only to hear that he had biked 74 miles from Tupelo to the start of the race that morning). Finally we turned right and had the wind at our backs! I sprinted to the finished and crossed the line in about 1:51. Not a PR, but nothing to turn my nose at.

The real surprise came at the post race ceremony
when I found out I won my age group!

Woo hoo! I'm a champion! My time was over 10 minutes slower than last year's 30-34 year old winner, but I am chalking that up to the wind and still basking in glory. Maybe next year it will be a PR for me.


Phil's race report (ghost written by Sarah): I'm an Ironman with plantar faciaitis. I don't need to train and I'll still kick ass. 'nuff said.

Here we are celebrating our fabulous weekend:

Frostbite Half Marathon