mothering day in the Uk and seven miles along the thames

today was their version of mother's day here in oxford and the rest of the UK. no effect on us other than there were more cars than usual going up and down binsey lane and getting in the way of my run. it is a small street and two cars have to be careful if they are going in opposite directions at the same time. actually, one has to stop or else. add a runner and it gets tight. the roads were orginally built for horses and carts and many have to be shared. wonder how that would work back home? my own little observation is that generally speaking the usa is a much more aggressive culture.

still, i got my 7 miles in with 20 pickups of 30-60 seconds. continued working the right leg and trying to run on two legs. nothing like getting older and it seems to be affecting my running and golf. but what are the choices? i go on.

pretty day and it warmed up a lot as i was out. many runners also running up and down the river. the crews were out again and they are always fun to watch. the sky was really blue and then about 3 miles into it the wind just really picked up-really! - and was in my face the next 3 miles. oh well, easier to run in the wind than golf in it.

after another 150 attempts to find a golf swing- some really nice 8 irons, but not much else- can you say snap hook? block? pull? you get the idea. still digging it out of the dirt. getting closer to france by now going sideways. btw- they do have really fertile soil here-would be great to have this in my garden at home rather than the good virginia clay i dig through.

time for a funny story- years ago around 1967 in early february i took viet nam jungle training at ft a.p. hill in virginia. talk about clay. mostly we learned how to get off a truck and attack and how to keep our distance from each other as we advanced, but we did a lot of fox hole digging. and we always used fake bullets to shoot at each other and a referee would run around yelling who was dead. we never wounded anyone. you lived or died in training.

but when guys ran out of fake bullets they would throw clay at the other side. and it hurt. the bullets were fake and never actually hit you, but clay dirt in cold february, would leave a mark. and lots of real fights always broke out. a good argument was that if you really ran out of bullets while the enemy advanced you would do whatever you could to stop them. in actuality i never dug a foxhole in nam, but i filled my share of sandbags to get behind.

i digress. the run went ok and the river was green today and there were all kinds of people fishing along the channel. a pretty country morning just minutes away from the hub bub of a city with 145,000 people.

later in the day after golf and gail done working we took a 3 mile walk around king george park and up the thames from the south. a pretty way to end the active part of the day. the rest is house junk and i won't bore the fans anymore.

4 days to be home and 150 days to be there for good. be careful what you wish for comes to mind every time i typed the number of days left. still, i look forward to my two digit midget days coming up in 51 days.

and it is time for baseball almost. what happened to zito? even in spring training teams don't usual get over 20 runs. how good will the red sox be this year? go phillies!