Boston Marathon, Part 1

During every marathon I run, I always tell myself that what I am doing is absurd and this has to be my last one. I'm 0-5 so far...like an average day at the plate for Dean Palmer back in 2001. These BM posts will hopefully cement the stupidity of running extreme distances voluntarily with other idiots into my memory before the pain wears off.


more teeny tiny photos

Sunday
The weather across the eastern seaboard Sunday was powerful nasty and made for some bumpy cake flying from DC to Boston. The pilates pissed in the face of the turbulent conditions and landed the bird on-time and without incident. I T'd it down from Logan to the Hynes convention center to pick up my race packet, then headed to Gov't Center to get my complimentary pasta dinner. After finishing two full plates of food I attempted to contact the craigslist dude I planned to stay with. Waited for about 1.5 hours outside of a closed CVS in the shitty weather, then another 0.5 hour inside the Omni hotel after my dumb ass realized that there are places in Boston that would let me wait inside their buildings. Depending on someone I knew only as "Juan" from craigslist for a place to stay was probably a bad move on my part. I felt kind of helpless, sort of like when you've gotten it in your head that you just have to score some coke and your only connection is through a guy your friend's friend knows, it's Saturday night, and your friend and friend's friend are both out somewhere and don't understand or care about how badly you need it to happen. My half hour of waiting ended when I went on hotels.com in the lobby and saw that miraculously there was a room left at the Omni--an "efficiency", for $199. I went to the front desk and asked if there were any rooms available.
"I'm sorry but we are fully committed for the night."
I then set my laptop on the front desk and turned it around to show her that her long winded "no" was not the correct answer. If only Mary and Joseph had a laptop they wouldn't have had to give birth to their kid in a fucking barn! Speaking of Mary and Joseph's kid, imagine how much some of the stem cell rich afterbirth from that pregnancy would go for on the open market these days... So the front desk woman's associate actually looked to see if anything was available.
"I'm sorry, but all we have is an efficiency with one double bed."
Sorry for what? That's exactly what I needed.
About an hour later, Juan got back to me, apologizing for forgetting to take his phone with him wherever he was and wished me luck. So basically I could have waited a little longer and had an air mattress kind of far away in Cambridge for $40, but I ended up in a nice little room with a fantastic bed in a hotel that was one block from the buses shuttling runners from downtown to Hopkinton where the race starts. Probably worth the extra cash.