Latest running trip

Some of you may not know, but my Dad and I have a goal of running a race in every state. So, we take running trips once or twice a year and run multiple races in multiple states on the same weekend. This past weekend, we went to Michigan and Illinois. We ran a race in Kalamazoo, MI on Saturday and one in Chicago, IL on Sunday. We were pretty consistent...32:29 on Saturday and 32:30 on Sunday. Saturday was hilly and Sunday was rainy. In between, we managed to go to Indiana and see the Notre Dame campus, eat at some good restaurants (in the past, we have had TERRIBLE luck with restaurants), meet some Amish people (we ate at an Amish restaurant), visit Cereal City USA (Battle Creek, Michigan is the birthplace of Kellogg's and Post cereal companies), go to the top of the Hancock building in Chicago where you can see out over Lake Michigan, and visit Willowcreek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, where Lee Strobel spoke on "Cracking the Da Vinci Code." I strongly recommend his website (www.leestrobel.com), which has good material about this book/movie, but also has some great stuff on the case for Christianity (his testimony is very cool!).

Some of the less normal things we got to do:
-Ride in a cab on the cab driver's first day...I had to give him directions and he almost took 2 wrong turns (apparently when you are about to make a turn and the passengers are yelling "LEFT! LEFT!", it finally clicks that you are not supposed to turn right and you, instead, decide to tear across the intersection in front of 3 cars to make the turn) and almost got into 3 wrecks in a matter of 6 minutes (didn't seem to notice that we were careening into another lane where there was already a car!). I'm not so sure it wasn't his first day ever driving a car! My recommendation for everyone would be that, if you get in a cab and the driver tells you it's his first day, immediately get out of the cab!!!
-Meet someone who worked in my home town, which is not that big and definitely not close to Kalamazoo, Michigan!
-Learn the area code to Albequerque, NM (it's 505 in case you're wondering).
-Spend time in the Southwest Baggage Services office in Chicago Midway airport.
-Learn that, when you have someone paged at an airport, even when they try to respond, sometimes the folks manning the friendly skies are not helpful and tell them that there was not a page for them, when, in fact, there was!
-Meet a very nice couple from Albequerque, NM, who accidentally took my Dad's bag when we got off the National rental car shuttle. Fortunately, they left their bag and it had their phone number on it (cell phone!!), so we called and they met us to give us my Dad's bag after we had frantically been having them paged by Southwest. Then, we went back to Southwest Baggage Services to get their bag for them.

All in all, a very fun trip, but I was ready to be home after the luggage issue...it wore me out worrying about it.

Now, I have to plan our next trip, which will involve fuschia luggage with fluorescent orange flashers to make sure no one takes our luggage!