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From Here-to-There
So, how was your Marathon Weekend? Did you manage to find your way from hereto- there without too much fuss? The thing is, oldest son of ours ran the Marathon this past weekend. His partnerin- crime, while completely comfortable navigating the main roads of the County, wasn’t too sure about getting around on the backroads. It’s important to know which roads to take and how fast you need to drive to get from “viewing spot” to “viewing spot” along the course if the LOYL is running. A person’s gotta cheer their partner on. Am I right? Of course I am. This past Sunday, rather than direct traffic on Lake Street during the Marathon (which LOML and I did for years), I was the person who got a chance to be the Front Seat Driver for our Daughter-in-Law and Granddaughter so we could cheer The Kid along. It’s a good thing to know how to get from Bloomfield’s main drag to Marisett Road, then to the corner of Ridge Road and County Road 10 and from County Road 10 back to Picton without crossing the course route and disrupting runners. It was a fun morning for “us girls”. We met a lot of interesting people who were visiting the County and who didn’t know their way around, and a few people who’d been here before and still didn’t know their way around, and to chat with lots of local people who knew all about the daily here-to-there stuff.
In the early, early days of the County Marathon I covered it for Osprey Media while cycling on my Marin from here-to-there and back again. In those days the course was closed to anything but media, the saggin’ wagon, the police and emergency vehicles. If, on race day, a person needed to get anywhere from the race start in Wellington to the finish at the fairground in Picton, that person needed to know how to get around on the County’s backroads. Who would know better about that than a person who lives in the County? Well, the answer to that question would definitely be a person who lives in the County and has raised kids here. If your kid happened to attend school in The County chances are/were they’d need a ride to a friend’s house for a “party” and then a ride home afterwards. If you’re like me—and let’s face it, you might be—your school kid was never friends with someone who lived on a well lit Main Street anywhere in the County. Nope, your kid was besties with the kid who lived near Smuggler’s Cove or Soup Harbour or at the end of Hyuck’s Point Road or in Cressy. In the olden days, kids spent five years in high school, so LOML and I have nearly fifteen years of experience driving around the County, in the dark, on the backroads, chauffeuring kids around. There should be a bumper sticker for that—like the one the kids got for being amazing at school. The Amazing Kid Chauffeuring sticker.
Anyhoo, the County Marathon Road Trip 2024 was a great adventure. It sorta, kinda reminded me of those good old days of being a shuttle service for the kids. Were we obligated to drive from spot-to-spot to see him run? Nope. But we did. Did The Kid meet up with some old friends along the way and at the finish? It seems so. Two or three runners were people he knew from his school days in the County. Nothing wrong with that. The Kid finished with a good time in spite of a painful hamstring pull. The GrandKid got to see parts of the County she’d never seen before, hear some stories about being a kid in the County and see her dad put his entry fee where his Saucony’s are. My D.I.L. and I had some laughs, we shared few emotional moments as The Kid passed by and had a bit of a catch-up while waiting by the side of the road. I got to experience the marathon from the sidelines (a first for me) in a pep rally atmosphere, but mostly it was a great day with my family. And, now D.I.L. knows more about how to get from here-to-there while she’s here. I’ll never run a marathon, but if I did D.I.L. would know where to go to cheer me on as I whizzed by.
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