Start time: 12/3/05, 8:00am
Location: W&OD Trail
Distance: 9 miles
Run:Walk ratio: 5:1
Average pace: 10:45min/mile
Oops… I completely forgot to post this back on Saturday. Went out for a run with some people from the old running group, finally. The run itself went well; I had to metro over because I wasn’t getting my loaner car until the afternoon but getting there was pretty easy, if perhaps a bit more of a prelude to the general “it’s cold out” weather.
Afterwards, five of us decided to go to get some breakfast. This is where things get a little amusing. Mark and I hadn’t driven over, so Chanty was going to give me a lift, and John would give Mark a lift. Ali was going to drop her car off at Meineke, which she said was “on the way there” and John & Mark would pick her up as well. Except Ali promptly took off in her car before anyone else was in theirs. Chanty and I got to the restaurant first and couldn’t help but note that we hadn’t seen a Meineke at all on the way there. John & Mark eventually made it there… without Ali. No idea where the Meineke was, and they drove additional distance down the road just to be sure.
We finally called information and got ahold of the Meineke in Falls Church and it was not really that near at all. More importantly, no sign of Ali there. About twenty minutes later, Ali made it there; she couldn’t find the Meineke and was walking around the parking lot looking for John’s car to see if he was there or was still on the road somewhere trying to find Meineke. Reunited, we all ate.
Then, Chanty said she’d give me a ride back to the East Falls Church metro, but I asked if anyone was going down 66 so they could drop me off in Vienna (where my parents are) so I could get my loaner car. John and Chanty both live in that direction, but Chanty wasn’t heading home initially so I said, “Let me grab my bag and then I can hitch a ride from John.” I ran over, got my bag, came back… no John. Turns out he thought I was still getting a ride from Chanty and left. *sigh* I managed to call Mark on his cell phone (now getting a ride back to the metro with Ali) and they turned around and came back to get me.
It seems we can run long distances at the drop of a hat, but simply getting from point A to B in a car? Totally out of our depth.
Not having a car sucks. It not only inconveniences us, but reminds us how dependent we are upon the things.
It’s frustrating because going completely carless for a week was in some ways a test run to see how well I could live my life without one. There were a lot of things that were possible but required some major tweaking/shifting in my life to still fit. A lot of other things, though, would have to be eliminated entirely and ultimately I just wasn’t ready for that.