Countdown to Triathlon – 130 Days, 18.5 weeks to Race Day (See Installment 85 of "The Journey", 220 mile bike ride, below)

We are so exhausted.  Friday night I came and stayed with Laurel and Danny; I stayed in the guest room. The next night the consensus was that I would sleep with Laurel and the baby so Danny could get some sleep.  Even though I have four children and this is the eleventh grandchild, one forgets exactly how it was with a new baby. I guess that is God's way of insuring that man continues to populate the world.  Last night we only got up twice.  What a blessing that was! What a beautiful, contented little guy he is.  Well not exactly little by new born standards, but little nonetheless. 

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY – "It's just a hill - get over it!"

The Journey - Installment Eighty-Five

        As the minivans sped off, there was a minute when we felt abandoned, but we “got over it.”  We had only gone a short while when we saw, over our left shoulders, a large body of water which contained many ships.  It was the “Mothball Fleet” – the old World War II naval ship depository.  also called the National Defense Reserve Fleet at Suisun Bay, Benicia, CA.  (see below) What surprised me was the number of vessels.  When I was girl and would travel to San Francisco with my parents, we would pass the "Mothball Fleet" and the bay was full of ships.  Now, I have to remember that the war was over in 1945 and in 1955 it had only been ten years.  I was eleven in 1955 so there were still a lot ships in the bay.

      






[Since the end of World War II Suisun Bay, located approx. 25 miles northeast of San Francisco, Calif., is home of a fleet of decommissioned, stricken, or inactive ships. These ships include US Navy warships, auxiliary vessels and merchant ships. Some of the ships are held in a reduced operation status meaning that they can be re-activated within a given time in order to make them available during national emergencies. The number of ships laid-up at Suisun Bay went from 324 in 1959 to less than 70 in 2009. Due to environmental problems with several of the ships, it's now planned to withdraw all ships from Suisun Bay by 2017. Ships are removed from the fleet on a regular basis but before they are towed to Texas for scrapping, they are taken to the BAE shipyard at Potrero Hill, South San Francisco, for clean up.]

 As we proceeded toward Napa, about 20 miles away, we had gone only a short distance when I saw a snake in the road and swerved, almost knocking Tom off his bike.  I apologized profusely, but that snake had really scared me.  As I came upon it there wasn't time to ascertain whether it was alive or not; a king snake or rattler.  I just saw "snake" and panicked.  Terri had been riding ahead and perhaps didn't see it. 

        With the snake incident behind us, we continued toward our goal of arriving at the hotel in Napa before dark overtook us.  We knew it would be difficult to achieve that goal, but I was confident.  We also had "an ace in the hole," Bob.  He was riding in his truck - never beside us as that would have dangerous on the narrow roads.  He would pass us and ride ahead and wait.

        About this time, we came to some very horrible hills.  Bob disappeared for a time and had driven ahead to see how far it was to Napa and how high and how many hills we would have to navigate.  He figured I would get discourage because there were four big ones coming up.  While he pulled over, unknown to me, he called our son in Hawaii and he called Richard, the CEO his bank and told our son Hollen to call me on the cell phone and tell me not to quit.  He told Richard to wait about five minutes and tell me the same thing.