Said
Ann:
Oh Jenny, I am so pleased to see you wrote this letter
that I won't even refute it! It tells me that we successfully completed
the job we set out to do when we started our road trip--i.e. corrupt
you and take away your innocence forever. It is clear you are "over
the edge" and are now "one of us". Welcome to the Breakfast
Club of triathletes. |
Said
Ruth:
The Hotel
We have a reservation.
Clerk: For how many hours?
That was the first hint of what was to come. But all was well; the
light bulbs were replaced, the smells dispersed, extra blankets provided
floor cushioning, the broken window was a blessing in deep disguise
as we transferred objects, bikes, and humans through it without having
to resort to inconvenient doors.
The Restaurant
We had a true Super-size experience and I got to watch a Heimlich manouver
performed on one of the clientele's age 90+ population. Clearly, it
was night out for the local retirement community to which I should
belong.
The Transportation
Okay, I won't say a word. Promise. He really was a very nice police
officer, younger than Ann's son, and he clearly recognized it was Mom
and he shouldn't be disrespectful. Whew.
The Social Aspect
heh heh heh. Yes, Marvin, we did the corrupting thing and Jenny will
never be the same. And I don't mean just all our potty talk although
that was impressive. It was our Oprah stuff. Let's play the Blame Game
and take turns being Dr.Phil. Any male who has crossed our watery paths,
especially, got to be part of the game.
The Race
Oh, yeah, that too. So what was that all about? Whose idea was that
anyway?
Swim: The water was crazy. The stroke was unrecognizable.
One arm one way, the other ?, the view zero; how did we ever get to
the end? and what reassuring words will I have to tell Jenny when she
says she came to her senses in spite of us and got the hell out of
that rinse cycle as fast as she could stroke backwards.
Bicycling: wow, 20 mph, am I great or what? passing left and
left (Ann was probably passing left and right and Martha just running
over anyone who got in her way, as is her wont). Then the turn-around.
I forgot wind goes in only one direction.
The Run: I pretended to do it. Everyone flew by me. I am pathetic.
What am I doing here? I'll go back to the restaurant and get the address
of that old people's asylum where I clearly belong. I am unworthy.
Listen to the applause and yelling and bells and whistles and really
screaming at the finish. All for me. Yay! She's still upright. Like
Leonard Cohen sings in Closing Time, she's a hunerd but she's wearing
somethin' tight |
Said
Martha:
I see that Ruth has already spun her tale of our weekend
adventures. I’ve not yet read her account, so here is my un-influenced
version. Enjoy the bad grammar. Three or was it four bottles of wine?
I can’t remember. All I remember is crawling out of the broken
hotel window at 5am because Ruth had lost her wallet and didn’t
have her credit card to pay for the room. It was a good thing that
the lights in the room didn’t work because it kept the police
from finding Ann who was impersonating an officer with her driving
skills. All that wine made the swim feel like we were battling 5 foot
swells. Next year we might have to sacrifice and keep it to one or
two bottles. Maybe if Ruth and Ann would have allowed Jenny and I to
eat on Saturday, the wine wouldn’t have affected us as much as
it did and we wouldn’t have been so silly and done that silly
thing that we did. Well, I’d write about it, but then there’d
be a paper trail and I might run for office some day and just can’t
afford that skeleton to get out. I didn’t mean to throw my water
bottle at that lady, but she wouldn’t get out of my way. At least
she was wearing a helmet. Maybe I’ll install a horn on my bike
for next year because I really needed that water to wash down the mouthfuls
of saltwater I swallowed. Ann appears to have raced the best of the
quartet. Not only did she easily win her age group again this year,
she did it with a 50% reduction in training. I know that Ann is a bit
disappointed that our trip was not more eventful. She tried really
hard even making us sweat through the last 25 miles of the trip to
see how far her SUV could go on gas fumes only. All in all we had a
wonderful time and I know you boys were wishing you could have been
a gal for this weekend. We laughed so hard and so much that we are
now slightly incontinent. I’m still chuckling. Enjoy your day |
Said
Jenny:
I was thinking about what I wrote to you the other day
about my triathlon
experience. I think what I wrote sort of glossed over how arm-twisting
these
women are. Theses ladies would not take no for an answer no matter
how much
I pleaded and begged not to do the race. They summed up all of their
judeo-catholic powers of guilt and made me feel I had no choice.Then
they bound and gagged me, threw me in the back of a van (which, unfortunately,
the cops didn't detect... but he knew something fishy was going on)
and hid me in a shady, off-the-main-road hotel. They avoided a lot
of attention in the lobby by sneaking in and out of the hotel window.
We left in the morning at 5 am under the cover of darkness. Then I
can't believe how three grown-up women would just carelessly toss an
innocent person into a stormy sea to be eaten by sharks and drown!
("Swim Jenny swim! Faster!") What I learned on my summer
vacation: the female power of manipulation! |