Our first stop was the rest stop in between Cle Elum and Ellensburg. We got a cache there. It was windy and cold so we hurried. Our next stop was in Ellensburg to get gas. From there we watched the wind farm off I-90. These are fairly new to the area. When I would go back and forth from Pullman almost four years ago these did not exist.
We got to Vantage and had to go to the horses. It's been seven years since I've been there and Derek never has. That really surprised me. We walked up the steep hill and to the horses. We found the cache up there as well. It was getting late so we walked down, without falling, and got back to the car.
We made it to Moses Lake and I was starving so we grabbed a quick hamburger and we were on our way to Spokane. We arrived to traffic just south of the Spokane Airport. They had all of the lanes blocked off except for one. Derek decided to go the other way around via 195. They were doing some construction up on the hill so we had to go around that as well. We got to his parents house around 10:15. I was exhausted. We entered the house and his mom and dad were there too greet us. I shook is dad's hand and his mom hugged me. I continued onto the family room and above the TV were some framed pictures of me and Derek from our pirate cache extravaganza. We were both shocked because we didn't know how they got the pictures. We eventually figured out they got them from the geocaching website. We spend a few minutes talking about geocaching and showing off our TB's and coins. It was getting late so we grabbed the stuff out of the car and got ready for bed. My eyes literally closed while I was logging my finds from today. A few minutes later I was out.
The next morning it was wonderful to sleep in. Derek's older sister Melanie came over with a bunch of her college friends. It was girls weekend. We sat and chatted for a while. They had to go get ready with their lunch, shopping and stuff. Then his other sister Joelle came over. We went with her to the convention center in downtown to get our Bloomsday registration stuff out of the way before tomorrow. We parked near the Perkin's restaurant and walked down the street to the convention center. There were so many people with plastic Bloomsday bags. We went up the escalator, through the hallway and into this huge room. We went to our corresponding age, gender and last name lines and picked up our stuff.
Joelle couldn't find the Corporate Cup area so we asked information to tell us where it was. We went through the area where our DTAG was activated (the strip you put on your shoe to be timed) and walked over to the other side of the building to the line Joelle needed to be in. There were so many stands with shoes and running apparel (and other random ones like Minute Rice and Safeway.) We got Joelle's stuff and stood in line for our bus passes. When we were through with that, we had Joelle activate her DTAG and we stood in line at the Safeway display because we saw Butch. He was giving out posters. We were probably in line for a good half hour until it was our turn to spin the prize wheel. Derek won a bag of Safeway chips, Joelle won a bag of groceries (chips, water, tea) and I won a Cougar shirt, which was the prize I wanted. We got our picture with Butch, something I should have done while at WSU but never had a chance.
We spent a good hour inside the convention center and decided we were done and headed out, while walking out we saw this girl who looked like she rolled in Doritos because she was so orange. We all saw her; it was pretty awful. We walked back to the car and headed back to Derek's parents house. When we got there, we found out Bob was geocaching and had a hard time finding one and Joelle was going to take us to him but we ran into him while he was coming back to the house. Derek and I jumped into Bob's car and Joelle went home. We found a few with Bob while we were out. We came back and wanted to get a few in Idaho so we can get an Idaho cache. Everyone including his mom, piled into Bob's car and we were on our way for at least one Idaho cache. We got a little turned around and it was cold and raining. We ended up at the Walmart and found five there and found one more across the street. We were running out of time so we had Joelle start the spaghetti, we had to stop by the store to pick up a few things on the way back. We got back to the house and dinner was in the atmosphere. A while later it was already and we were at the table scarfing it down. We were to have Derek's bday at Joelle's new house after we were done eating. We got our stuff together and drove over to Joelle and Brad's house just down the road. We had cake and ice cream and Derek opened his presents. We went home and got ready for Bloomsday. We set aside our clothes we wanted to wear, washed out our camelpaks, assembled our DTAGS on our shoes and logged our geocaches. It was nearing midnight and we needed to go to bed, tomorrow was going to be a long day.
We got up, put our clothes on, gathered our stuff, ate a small amount of breakfast, watched some of the Bloomsday coverage on the TV and talked to Bob and Connie, who were wearing past Bloomsday shirts, about Bloomsday and the clothes that were stripped off at the starting line. They worried that I wasn't wearing any sweats that morning because it was pretty chilly. Bob went and found some sweats that they got from the Goodwill just for Bloomsday. They insisted I wear them; so I did. We met up with Joelle at Ferris High School, one of the many satellites the Spokane Transit Bus System hit up that morning. We went early with Joelle, her race started an hour before ours did. We got to downtown and there were probably 10,000 people running around, a little over half were actual participants. Since we had an hour and a half to kill, we did some virtual caches in the downtown area. We had time to find three that morning. We ended with the carousel about fifteen minutes before we had to get in line. We found our line and inched our way to the front.
I ended up eating my powerbar and taking my pants off in downtown. I wanted to throw them into the trees but they didn't stick, so they fell down and hit the kids in front of us in the head. We got closer and closer to the start. We took a few pictures near the start line and then the fifteen second count started up. BANG! We were off. At first you had to dodge and weave in and out of the foot traffic so it was hard going a normal pace. Just before we got out of down town, Derek had to take his sweat pants off. I waited for him as I shuffled down the road. He caught up and we continued on our way. The first mile went insanely fast. I really was surprised how fast it went.
We encountered our first hill. I ran most of it and decided when I got to the top I’d wait for Derek. I got to the top and looked for him. I had no idea how far ahead of him I got. I finally saw him and we ran most of that mile and the miles before Doomsday Hill together. We ran past the first check point and the first water station near the cemetery. We saw some weird costumes, people dressed up and one lady wearing some crazy spandex.
We reached mile marker two, I honestly couldn’t believe how fast the miles were going. Maybe there was more to watch while you ran so the miles didn’t seem as long? Maybe the hype? Or the fact that it was Bloomsday?
We ran past mike marker 3, 4, the Spokane Community College and down the hill to the bridge.
We saw the famous Nuns. We could see Doomsday Hill ahead of us. I took off just to see how far I could get before I had to stop. I got more than halfway up the hill until I had to walk. I walked briskly and had Derek catch up to me. I had no idea how far behind he was. About five minutes later, I spotted him in the crowd behind me. We found mile marker 5 and took pictures with it to commemorate that we indeed survived Doomsday Hill. To our right was the Doomsday vulture. When I heard about it I thought it was a stuffed animal or a guy in a vulture suit. No, it was a guy in a huge vulture suit. It was to pick up and eat the dead bodies that didn’t make it up the hill. It was one of the many traditions of Bloomsday.
Once we got completely up the hill it leveled out making the race a little easier. We ran through the neighborhood for a little over a mile. We saw mile marker 6 and lots of people who had finished the race already.
We saw what color the shirts were. I was really hoping for a color other than pink and purple. It was a light yellow color. It reminded us of an Easter yellow or a pastel yellow. Thank God it wasn’t purple!
We reached mile marker 7 and we picked up our pace and so did everyone else.
It got a bit more crowded as we turned the corner. I saw the finish line on the Monroe Street Bridge. Yes! The end is near! My feet and calves were burning and I was starving.
During the entire race there were several people performing. Banjos being played, a choir at the church, several bands, people clapping, cheerleaders, radios, Bloomsday parties, several mascots and a bunch of radio stations. It was the place to be in Spokane.
I sped up as the finish line got closer and closer. I crossed and it was a great feeling that I finished a 7 mile race with little preparation. Overall I had a blast.
This is the route we took:
We met up with Joelle, took some pictures for our virtual and earthcaches near the Spokane River.
We rode the bus back up to Ferris High School. We said bye to Joelle and walked to the car in the other parking lot. There it was, someone had dropped a ten dollar bill in the parking lot! That’s the second time we’ve found money in the parking lot, this time more.
We decided we wanted slurpies from 7-11. We stopped by the closest 7-11 and each got a slurpie. His mom called us a few minutes later to tell us to stop by the store and pick up some extra stuff for the bbq. We paid for everything with the money we found in the parking lot.
We made it home about ten minutes later. We ate food, talked about the race and enjoyed sitting in chairs. I took a shower after lunch and started putting together my stuff to put in the car. Derek got his hair cut by his dad before he took a shower. We put our stuff in the car and his mom and dad wanted pictures of the three Bloomsday finishers in the back yard. We put the rest of our stuff in the car, said our goodbyes and off we went. We stopped by one of the travel bug hotels and Derek realized he had his mom’s camera so we stopped by the house again. From there we went to REI and I realized my debit card expired the previous day. He was nice and got me one as well. We got gas and we were on our way to our first rest stop. We got two from the Sprague Rest Stop. We got back onto the freeway and stopped briefly in Ritzville for a cache. We got back on the road and stopped at the rest stop in between Ritzville and Moses Lake. We grabbed the two that were there. We got back in the car and headed to Moses Lake. We got hungry so we stopped at the Moses Lake Taco Bell. We grabbed them to go and we were now on our way home. I was dropped off at home around 9:15 and I wasn’t sure when Derek got home, probably around 10.
The weekend was fun but it’s always planned out and crazy. Maybe next time I’m in Spokane it’s less of a hectic visit. I so wanna do Bloomsday next year. I wanna beat my time.
No comments:
Post a Comment