Last night was our TnT Cause for Celebration. It's been called many things over the years, but that name really suits it well. All the San Francisco teams (that's SF, East Bay, runners, walkers, tri, hikers, ironteam, cyclists) get together once in a season to, well, celebrate. There's usually a speaker from the L&L Society who tells us how incredibly much we've raised, what the Society is up to, what their long range visions are. And there's usually a speaker who's involved in the health or research side of the diseases; either someone from a blood bank, the stem cell organization, a researcher, or a medical person actively involved in treatment. Last night we had a nurse who is a coordinator for transplant patients in San Francisco. Very informative and touching.
For some reason very few participants show up at these things. I don't get it. My first season I went to absolutely everything that was available; my friends and I dove into the TnT experience head first and immersed ourselves in TnT culture for the season. Same for my second season. Last night they asked all alumni to stand up (and that included mentors and captains) and I swear it was 75% of the audience. Where the heck were all the newbies? I don't know if it was miscommunication or what, but the peeps didn't show up. Bad on them!
After the talk there was food and drink. Yeah, they give us wine and beer and shame on them for ruining the training diets for so many people! Heh heh. Just kidding. I actually managed to not have any booze and only lightly grazed the food. It helped that I had weighed in that morning and had lost a couple of pounds. It's working well and I don't want to screw with success (just yet). I was really hungry but for once willpower overcame bad judgment. That's new!
Today's Gratuitous Bear of the Day is Corny. He's my Cornish teddy, bought in Cornwall. Yeah, that Cornwall. The one in sou
thwest England. Back in the mid-80's my sis and I decided to go on a long vacation to England and Scotland. It was kind of a leap of faith for us; we hadn't traveled together and really didn't know if we'd get on each others' last nerve and commit sistercide. It turned into a fabulous vacation for us both. We rented a car and saw a lot of the countryside (and drove into a lot of hedges on the wrong side of the road), met a lot of locals by staying in B&B's, drank a lot of warm beer and had a great time. Somewhere in South Cornwall, I forget exactly where (Tintagel maybe?), there was a small village where we took a boat ride to see the cliffs and puffins. Afterward we wandered through local shops and I bought Corny. He was the sweetest little thing with a lovely face. Unfortunately I packed him in my luggage for the flight home and his face got a bit squished. He's still very cute though. My lesson learned from that was to always pack bears in carry-on luggage with their paws over their face!
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