Solid Effort

The weather has really turned plesant for mid-June in Baltimore. The end of last week was muggy and hot (not heat wave hot, but still near 90) so it was welcome relief when thunderstorms rolled through on Saturday night and dried out the air and lowered the temperature.

I met my parents in Frederick for a Keys game on Sunday evening for Father's Day and we had a great time thanks to the temperate weather. I had my fill of ballpark food (Italian sausage with peppers and onions, beer, chili cheese fries, soda and soft serve ice cream) and we enjoyed some good minor league baseball. I have to say that the Keys have pretty good food, too. I think it's better than what you can get at Camden Yards. Certainly it's better priced than here in Baltimore, but that's to be expected. I got a 24 oz Yeungling beer for $9.00, which is a great deal when you consider that a crappy 8 oz watered down beer at Camden Yards will set you back $6.50. And it's not that far away from Baltimore...it took me about 50 minutes to drive out there and back total and that's from downtown Baltimore to the stadium in Frederick. We sat 4 rows from the field (on the visitor's side since the Potomac Nationals were playing!) for $11.00 per ticket. Can't beat minor league baseball, in my opinion.

So, with the weather cooperating, I got out for a solid run this morning. I changed up my route to allow a stop at the top of Federal Hill park to use the water fountain up there (a clutch find!) and as a result, I keep coming up about .25-.40 miles short on my runs (my usual length is 5 miles). Tomorrow I intend to scrape another half mile out of my route to get to 5 miles. However the air was drier and it was about 60 degrees out, so it felt much less burdensome to run.

On another note, I have finalized my plans for vacation in August. I applied for my backcountry permit for Shenandoah National Park, so I will hopefully get the permit back in about two weeks. That saves me the time of having to get it when I actually go to the park in August. I've bought most of the gear I wanted and got some hot discounts on it as well. For example, I got a $120 tent and $150 pack for $99.95 and $119.00 respectively. Then I got free shipping AND found an online code to get an additional 10% off my order. So I ended up saving like 30% on my order total. Not bad. I also talked LL Bean into giving me free shipping on my sleeping bag and sleeping pad, saving me a cool $8.00. Most of my stuff should be arriving today, too, which is awesome. I'll be able to take my tent to my parents' house and practice putting it up and taking it down over July 4th. My next task is to find some comfortable hiking boots that won't cost me an arm and a leg. I may need to make a trip to REI to scout out a pair and then find them cheap online.

My goal is to run the rest of the week but take Friday off. The family is having brunch down in Alexandria on Sunday afternoon, so I may move my long run up to Saturday morning this week to uncrowd the schedule on Sunday. No need to cram a bunch of stuff into a weekend day, right? Right.