BRAG Day 3......

Today was one of those days I kept thinking to myself, "If I were at home, there's no way I would be on a bike." The first light raindrops fell just as I was walking out of the RV this morning. It started raining just a little bit, but not really enough to require a jacket. By the time we got to the first rest stop, though, it was raining steadily. Rest Stop #1 was in a building, and while we were there I looked out the window and could barely see the parking lot. It was POURING.

We couldn't wait all day, though, so we left in the steady rain. For some reason, it's worse to LEAVE in the rain than it is if it starts raining WHILE we're riding.

We rode in the rain most of the day. Sometimes it was just an annoying drizzle, and sometimes (especially downhill) it felt like needles stinging my face. I wasn't grumpy, though, remembering that no one held a gun to my head and forced me to be out there. In fact, I could quite easily have gotten in the RV and come to Roswell with Katydid, but I came here to ride my bike, so ride I did. In fact, Rozmo and I did the Hammerhead Route again today, which explains that little appendage near the top of today's route.

On the positive side, the rain has made temperatures much more pleasant than I remember them EVER being on BRAG. We have only had to run the air conditioner one night, and tonight it is cool enough that it won't be necessary.

To top off the evening, Katydid and I had dinner with my friend Amanda, one of my BFFs from high school. We went to a very nice restaurant in town, and Amanda came back and visited with us for a while.

Tomorrow's mileage is still to be decided. That's the nice thing about the layover day: there are four different route lengths from which to choose (29, 49, 61, or 101 miles), or we can just not ride at all. Yeah, like THAT'S gonna happen.

Sleep Deprived........

Why is it that when we get together with high school friends, we feel compelled to attempt to RETURN to the high school behaviors that nearly killed us the first time around?

Maybe it wasn't THAT bad. But staying up until midnight one night and 1:00 AM the next takes its toll. I got home this afternoon and had the choice of napping in the pool or riding my bike. Guess which one I chose?

I'm not particularly happy with this picture, but it was the best out of the three. I'm on the far right, and I don't think it looks at all like I've lost 35 pounds. What's a girl gotta do to take a decent photograph? Well, she might have started by taking the sunglasses off the top of her head.

Cheryl is on the far left. She and I were the babies of our class, both of us having skipped a grade in elementary school. She looks just like she did in high school, and I'm trying hard not to hate her guts for that. Her father was our superintendent, and she was forced to be a good girl. She probably would have been a good girl anyway. She and her husband (her high school sweetheart) just celebrated 30 years of marriage. When we were in Mrs. Marshall's math class together in 11th grade, Cheryl looked at a calendar and picked out the date she and Donny would get married after college. She missed it by one week. On the day of our trigonometry final, we found out just about an hour before the exam that Mrs. Marshall was going to allow us to use our notes. Cheryl had left her notebook at home. I told her to get in my car and we would go get it. (I was a pro.) Cheryl said, "My daddy will KILL me if I leave school!" I replied, "Your daddy will KILL you if you fail that exam, too." We made a mad trip to her house to get her notebook, and I don't think her teeth stopped chattering the whole time.

Susan is second from the left. She and I were on the drill team together in high school, and she drove her parents' car all the way to Jekyll Island for drill team camp one summer. Susan was always the one I wanted to be able to dress like. Never mind that she was tall and slender and I was ..... not. Susan and I left school without permission one time (detect a theme here?), and she pulled out in front of a car. The car swerved, went up on a bank, and turned over. I assured Susan that yes, she SHOULD stop and see if the other driver was okay (Susan's car wasn't hurt). Something was dripping from the trunk of the woman's car, and she ran up to me, hysterical. "Get my purse out of my car before it blows up!" she screamed. Pardon me, lady, but I don't particularly want to be IN your car when it blows up. (It was Pepsi.) We were only about a quarter mile from the school, and the driver was the daughter-in-law of one of our teachers. This nightmare just got worse and worse. By the time the officer finished the paperwork from the accident, school was out and there were legions of our classmates sitting on the bank watching the proceedings. Susan and I got suspended for two days - the week of the prom. And our spring concert. In the two days we were gone from school, the chorus director inserted a song into the program that we didn't know. (Who DOES that?) During the concert, Susan and I mouthed the words (or some words) and waited for the torture to be over.

Amanda is second from the right, behind me. I wish the light were better in this picture. Amanda also looks just like she did in high school. She is a year older than I am, and she has a ten year old daughter. God bless her! She also has a son who is in college, and she and her husband have been married for a long time. I asked him last night exactly how long, and he told me, but sometime during the evening the number leaked out of my head. Amanda and I also went to church together, so between drill team, school, and church, we were together pretty much all the time. We left school in her car in the middle of the day once (tired of this theme yet?), and due to our pretty rotten luck, we met her mother in the road about five miles from school. Oops. Amanda's parents thought (rightfully so, I guess) that I was a bad influence. They were so trusting of THEIR daughter that their house was where we had all the parties. Out of all my friends, Amanda was the one who had the most dealings with my difficult mother. And she still has nice things to say about her. We both worked for my mother when she owned her own business, and I think Amanda lasted longer than I did. I think she was much better at keeping her mouth shut. I didn't get that gene.

I hope we don't wait another six years to get together again. Last time we gathered at Susan's condo near Charleston, and we had a marvelous weekend. There were four of us that time, too, and six months later one died suddenly and unexpectedly. When Susan and I first got to Amanda's house on Friday, I asked if we could please have a pact that none of us would die after this get-together.

I don't know what it is about high school friends. It doesn't matter how many years we go without seeing each other, we are able to pick right back up where we left off. No matter how close I am to a female adult friend, there is always some awkwardness involved when we travel together or spend the night away from home together. Not so with high school buddies. It's as if the intervening years never happened and we only graduated yesterday.

We pored over yearbooks and then looked classmates up on Facebook. We laughed and laughed and laughed, and I can't wait to get together with those girls again.

Girls' Weekend.........

I'm in the Atlanta area with two friends from high school. Another one joined us for dinner. Pictures tomorrow, I hope, dependent solely upon the number of margaritas consumed. I'm just sayin'. My laugh muscles hurt. Thank heavens for yearbooks and Facebook. And margaritas. We shopped, we had pedicures, we have eaten aplenty. One weekend is not enough time to catch up on 33 years. And two nights up past my bedtime is too many.

Eau de.........Rain?.......

You know how some scents, or sometimes situations, can take you back in time to a certain period of your life?

For example, I can still get a whiff of pine trees in the early summer, accompanied by the chirp of crickets and other night creatures, and I am instantly transported back to the YWCO camp I attended as a girl. I can see the cabins: Dew Drop, Edweda, Hilltop, Crow's Nest, Upper Lodge. I can hear the whack of tennis balls and the bell signaling that rest time was over and we could FINALLY go swimming.

Tonight when I left line dancing class, it was misting just a little bit. There was the very first chill in the air, and immediately I was back in college the semester Amanda and I took an ass-kicker of a P.E. class called Fitness for Life.

It should have been called Fitness If You Can Live Through It.

We took this killer course because it was worth 3 credit hours. We had to have a total of 5 credit hours in P.E., so this one knocked out a chunk. I already had 3 credit hours in P.E. (tennis, roller skating, and tap dance), so taking FFL meant I would have MORE than I needed. (I'm the only person I know who graduated with elective credits in both P.E. and foreign language. The two things that non-majors in those areas take only because they HAVE to.) But it would mean I didn't have to take another P.E. course, and I would be finished. Besides, I would have it with Amanda.

We had a choice between swimming, running, and racquetball. They emphasized that the course was not to TEACH any of those skills, so we chose swimming. I didn't know how to play racquetball (not then - later post), and I knew enough about running to know that I'd rather have my fingernails pulled out. So swimming it was.

I guess we had the idea we would splash around in the pool for a while and gossip about people we went to high school with, and then we would show up for tests and stuff.

They don't give 3 credit hours for that course just for nothing.

We were allowed to start off kind of slow, but we were expected to build up our stamina until we could swim a mile in 30 minutes.

That was 72 laps back and forth across Stegeman Pool. An Olympic-sized swimming pool.

The pool isn't there anymore. It was housed in Stegeman Hall, a dungeon-like building that I think was used by soldiers in World War II. This is NOT one of those times I'm exaggerating. I'm sure more than one student was poisoned by the build-up of chlorine in that musty old building. Now there is relatively new facility with a pool and work-out rooms and tons of equipment, a state-of-the art facility affectionately known as the Ramsey Center.

I want to go back to college just to use Ramsey.

Anyway, Amanda and I had our routine. We actually had to show up and swim (I think it was two nights a week), because we never knew when our instructor would drop in. The smart ones were the ones who chose running -- at least they could duck through the woods. He couldn't watch EVERY runner at the same time.

We showed up to swim, we left Stegeman with our hair wet because we had only so much time between swimming and the classroom portion of the course. It was winter, and remember this was night school, so it was dark and cold when we left the pool.

We had to hurry, because we usually went straight from the pool to Schlotsky's. They had the best sandwich in the world, and I use the singular form because that was all they had. One sandwich. Oh, I take that back ... you could get the regular size or the big one.

And after we finished eating, we smoked our cigarettes on the way back to class.

We were fit for life, all right.

High School Buddies.....

I absolutely love getting together with gal pals from high school.

Please pardon the helmet hair. I rode the Harley to Terry's parents' house, and since there is a rule against high school pals judging you, I didn't bother to do anything to it.

I think the double chins were caused by the motorcycle also.

If you don't know which one I am, please just pick the prettiest one out of the bunch and pretend that it is I.

I hate being grammatically correct.

I just misspelled "grammatically" the first time I typed it.

If you pick the prettiest one you will have picked the wrong person, but it will make me feel so much better about myself.

Amanda brought her sweet girl Emma along. She was so well-behaved. (Emma too.) The poor kid had to be bored to tears, listening to three old women gab about high school and college and men and children, but she never complained once.

Terry is visiting from Germany, where she now lives with her hubby. She will be depositing her youngest son at college in Connecticut before flying back to Germany. I tried to assure her that an empty nest is a GOOD thing, but I don't think she's buying it. Yet.

Terry and I have been friends (when we weren't fighting like cats and dogs) since we were six or seven years old. Her family lived in a house across the road and up a ways from the trailer park where my family lived. We were told ALWAYS to walk from her house to mine or my house to hers by crossing the road and walking on the bank, never the road. It wasn't that busy a road, but still.

One day we decided to be brave and rebellious and walk along the road anyway. We were at her driveway and had yet to cross the road when a car passed us, went up the road a little ways, then turned around and came back. It stopped on the side of the road right next to Terry's driveway, and on that side of the road. The man driving opened his door and exposed himself to us. I don't think I had ever seen one of those before, and I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to see his. I yelled, "Run!" to Terry and we scampered to her house. I could have been a track star if I could have based my entire career on that episode. We told her parents, the sheriff was called, and somewhere along the way we were threatened with death if we ever THOUGHT about walking along the road again.

Terry and I had a huge fight in the seventh grade because I thought she called me an elephant. By the time I realized she was talking about the elephant belt buckle (or some other ornament) on my clothes, I was too embarrassed to say so. The feud went on for a long time. Because I am such a gracious person, I can now readily admit that I was wrong and apologize for our feud. Thirty-seven years is long enough to carry THAT particular burden around.

Amanda didn't move to our county until eighth grade, and I don't really remember what made us start hanging around. We went to the same church, and I'm guessing we had some of the same classes. We did a lot of things together, some of which should not be mentioned in this blog. We were skipping school together one day and driving to the next town (probably to get something to eat) when we passed her mother on the road. Bad timing.

I always envied Amanda because her parents trusted her, and my mother just ASSUMED the worst about me. Amanda's parents were forever going out of town and leaving her home alone. Man, those were some fun parties. My mother, on the other hand, made me go spend the night with one of my sisters if she ever needed to go anywhere, including the night before I got married. Just kidding. I think. I guess that's the difference between being the oldest child (Amanda) and being the youngest of five (me). Especially if you have to follow two hell-raising brothers (me).

Amanda and I both worked for my mother, and she probably knows my mother better than any of my other high school friends. And yet she still chooses to be my friend. She was the one I wrote about in an earlier post who went way above and beyond the call of friendship on the day of my wedding. That still brings tears to my eyes when I think about it. Oddly enough, thinking about the ending of the marriage leaves me dry-eyed.

I was with Amanda once (EVERYONE could drive before I could) when she had an accident. We were trying to find a parking place so I could go in and pick up my brother's birthday cake. I take full responsibility for the accident.

We went through a couple of yearbooks that Terry had on hand. We laughed at what some people had written, and we just laughed at some people.

Terry and I were cheerleaders together in the eighth grade. Amanda and I were on the drill team together our junior and senior years. I played in the marching band my sophomore year, but I abandoned band for the drill team because I, too, wanted to march in those white patent leather knee-high boots. Plus pompoms weigh a lot less than a glockenspiel. And balloons - we did a balloon routine once, where we popped the balloons at the end of it.

I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Unless it was with MORE of our girlfriends and we had an old-fashioned spend-the-night party. Maybe next time Terry comes to visit we can swing that.