Labor Day

This has been a nice weekend, though not exactly what we had planned. The original plan was to go hiking and camping somewhere. I will confess, I was looking forward to that with a bit of trepidation. The last time I climbed a mountain in New Hampshire, I wound up feeling like I was going to throw up or pass out or fall down the rocks or all three. We went up a VERY. HARD. TRAIL. I think I just need to start out a little slower.

Then the next time we went hiking, I begged off of climbing up the whole mountain because after going up hardly any elevation for the first mile and a half, it suddenly became apparent that the main ascent was going to be just as steep as the last trip, even though I had explicitly told Jason I wanted something a bit more tame.

I guess my point is, I'm having a hard time catching the vision of climbing mountains. At least going up the very hard paths that leave me feeling sick. I know not everyone feels sick at the end of a hike like that, and I think if we could just maybe do an easier hike and I could work my way up to the harder hikes I might enjoy it more. However, the people I was going to go with this weekend wanted something more X-Treme, and I didn't want to ruin their weekend. At the same time, I wasn't really looking forward to looking like a wuss when, once again, I got sick trying to climb a mountain.

So I'm not going to lie. I wasn't completely devastated when the uncertainty of what Hurricane Earl would do to New England put the kibosh on this weekend's New Hampshire trip.

Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day. Earl came through on Friday night and rained away most of the heat and humidity and we woke up Saturday morning to bright blue sunny skies. I did Day 2 of Week 1 of C25K (very proud of myself for actually getting past Day 1 this time. Tomorrow I plan to do Day 3).

Then we went to the Indian buffet down the street and sat out in the sunshine enjoying our food. After that we headed over to Lincoln Woods, with a plan to walk around the 2.75 mile loop, then go for a swim in the pond. After our walk, we discovered that the area where you can actually swim in the pond is very small. Jason was bored just looking at the still pond. I kind of wanted to go to the lifeguards and ask if my many years of swim team gave me enough street cred to swim past the red buoys. We stood there for a minute, and decided to skip the pond and head to the beach.

We drove down to Narragansett Beach and jumped around in the huge waves Earl had left in his wake. Honestly, I've never been in waves quite that big. The current was super strong and kept pushing us down the beach. I decided to swim out where the waves were breaking and suddenly it got very calm. A little eerily so. We floated and wondered where the waves had gone, then suddenly there were two huge waves one right after the other. They crashed right on top of me and I didn't duck under quickly enough so I got spun around under the water as the first and then the second wave hit. I am a strong swimmer (see aforementioned years of swim team), but that shook me (and exhilarated me!) a bit. After that, I stayed a bit further in, where the waves reached me a few seconds after they crashed.

Being there reminded us that we really do have awesome beaches in Rhode Island and we need to take advantage of them more on those nice days when we're sitting around wondering what to do. The water stays warm (low 70s) until the end of September, so we will be going back.

So that was yesterday and I woke up pretty sore from my super active day. I forget how good it feels to get out and USE my muscles.

Today, on the other hand, has been dedicated to sloth. But sloth is good in its place. Tomorrow, I'll go for a jog, and then we're heading to the Newport Irish Festival for another active day.