the 116th One 4/28/24

If you read these please start from the first day or not whatever-it's your life.

Sometimes you run into things you're prepared for but there's nothing you can do about it when best laid plans fall apart. Every year the great city of st. Pete put on the St. Anthony's triathlon. It's swimming, biking and running. The greatest part (and I say that with as much sarcasm as I can convey) is the bike course blocks off two major roads leading to our chop. So when the guys are coming to the shop they have to stop at two different intersections to allow the bikes to cross. The intersections are manned by St. petes finest and they control the traffic flow. But there's still no easy way around it. I had guys waiting 30 minutes two blocks from our shop to cross the street. 

The last two years this happened we were not aware and were caught off guard the day of the race, so last year on my day off I got a call and had to roll outta bed and meet everyone up here to straighten it out. This year we knew about it. So yesterday I had a meeting with all the guys to prepare them so we could have some type of plan but it didn't matter. It was still chaos. They changed the course for the first time since who knows when. I left my house early only to discover the course now goes through my neighborhood (which is 4 miles from my work ) and what normally takes me 7-8 minutes to get to work took me 35 minutes today. 

But even though this was a huge inconvenience and all of our trucks were late to the original arrival times to the jobs (we called the clients and let them know and they were super cool) we all love the fact that this is a problem. We are right in the middle of an event that participants come from all over the world to compete in. It's one of the events that make St. Petersburg, FL one of the best cities in the World in which to love. So even though we had this great plan yesterday to deal with this traffic , the plan quickly fell apart but we recovered and got everything taken care of-THATS WHAT WE DO!!!!

The Artwork-I absolutely love this one! It's a mushroom guy from Super Mario. I don't know if it's from a movie or video game or what but he's cool. I remember I had to draw this guy's mushroom cap like ten times because it's hard to draw a perfect half circle. But his smile is amazing, there's a little shading on his cap, his arms are outstretched as if to say “I love you”! But most of all I like all the colors on this one. From the red on his cap, to the blue and yellow vest, brown shoes and two different colors in his mouth-the colors are great. 

Day twelve of the elliptical-I went from 28 minutes to 30 minutes last night. Even though it was tough I got through it but I ran into an unexpected problem last night. My left leg and knee started hurting and not in a good way. I ran through the pain but I'm not sure if ruining my ability to walk is worth this challenge. I'm going to do a lot of stretching tonight before I get on the elliptical. Other than that I love this running every night. It's a definite high that gives me this great feeling after I'm done.