We’ve had an eventful weekend to go along with our eventful weather map! Cincinnati has been inundated with rain this month – one of the rainiest Aprils in our fair city’s history, in fact. We’ve had at least 10″ this month with more expected nearly every day. The rivers are well above flood stage, highway 32 was closed this morning, water is halfway up some tree trunks along the banks of the river, and Cirque Du Soleil had to cancel a few performances this weekend while they attempted to suck inches of water out of their circus tents. We live on a hill, so the Rhyner Rapids that form in the valley of our property, at the base of our backyard, swell and recede often as we play peek-a-boo with the fire pit. And every time we have visitors in Cincinnati, without fail, the torrents of rain feel they are invited too. This weekend was, of course, no exception. Ted’s parents came to town for the Easter holidays and it rained solidly pretty much the whole time, just as it did the last time they came to visit and when my parents came to visit in November.
It’s been a busy week. Tuesday we watched the invited dress rehearsal of Our Town at CCM. Wednesday night was the grand Cirque Du Soleil night, Thursday night we put in two hours downstairs and finally finished organizing the basement. It’s so clean, wide-open and glorious! In celebration we set up my rotating disco ball, which casts a groovy glow of osculating color drops throughout the whole basement – it’s definite party material. Your jealousy is palpable.
Friday was our 6-month anniversary of married life. Ted’s parents arrived by mid-afternoon, bearing gifts of our favorite Wisconsin food – buckets of Chili John’s chili, Wisconsin bratwursts, fresh Wisconsin cheese curds, Hansen’s pizzas, and an Easter basket full of Seroogy’s chocolates. Our freezer is well stocked for the coming months for whenever we feel like binging on unhealthy crap! And upon their arrival, the rain clouds did not hold back. After we both finished with work for the day, they treated us to an absolutely delicious meal at Rock Bottom Brewery in the heart of downtown Cincinnati at Fountain Square. We dined on tender, cedar-seared plank salmon topped with sweetly-drizzled pecans, lemon rice, broccoli, home-baked crisps, and the most fantastic chocolate and caramel brownie topped with vanilla ice cream that one can possibly imagine.
After dinner we headed over to CCM where Ted’s parents had tickets to the Friday evening performance of Our Town. While they were at the show, Ted and I watched an episode of Modern Family in his office, then ventured out for a drizzly moonlight stroll around campus, through the Bearcats football stadium and across the field, into a parking garage maze, and finally to a sidewalk overlooking the baseball stadium where a very dismal and dreary game, delayed twice by lightning and attended by no more than 20 damp fans, was slowly progressing. We watched for a while and made it back to the building, crawling through the mud, before the end of Act 3.
In the morning we awoke early to the sounds of booming thunder, put on our running gear, and drove to the Evansdale/Sharonville suburb of Cincinnati to compete in our second 5k walk/run, this one benefiting the residents of the St. Joseph Home of Cincinnati. The course is known as the most challenging 5k route in Cincinnati and includes the slogan “incline to the finish line.” Now, let’s clear something up right now. Cincinnati is the San Francisco of Midwest. The roads curve and turn and snake uphill and downhill every few hundred feet. Some of the hills are extremely steep. I almost always drive in third gear. The only straight road in the whole city is the one we live on. We scored a lucky break from the rain for a few hours, just in time for the race. On the last race we did, we registered as walkers, but every now and then we ran for a while. On this race, however, it was made clear that walkers were not permitted to run at all. So, we sped walked and expected our overall times to be slower than our first race.
This walk was much less tedious and tiresome than the first and neither of us woke up sore this morning like we did the last time. I guess that’s a good sign! The first mile yesterday was great – it was all downhill! Our goal for the second mile was to maintain our pace. The second mile was on fairly level terrain and we actually beat our pace from the previous downhill mile by a good minute! At this point I’m thinking, “This is the most challenging 5k course in Cincinnati? Pssssh…piece of cake!” Then we turned the corner to start our final mile and I spied the mother of all hills and suddenly the phrase “incline to the finish line” became astonishingly clear as I gazed up that 400+ foot steep incline. It was pure hell. There were at least 5 baby hills on that 400-foot climb and they were all killers! Texas State’s massive on-campus hills don’t hold a candle to these beasts. I dropped my pace to a snail’s crawl and puffed and panted the whole way, fully expecting our timing to be shot to hell. Damn that hill. I all but drank the cold rainwater off the gravel as it flowed down the hills. This picture doesn’t even do it justice. Suffice it to say, it sucked.
But we crossed the finish line and clocked in at 40:32 (Ted) and 40:33 (Lara). That’s 8 seconds faster than the first race where we actually ran! Our overall pace improved by roughly 1 second per mile (averaging about 13:05 per mile). Not bad for speed walking, especially with the Hill from Hell. Ted’s dad walked the 5k with us and actually maintained his pace on those insane hills, which deserved a medal in and of itself!
Ted and I both finished first in our gender and age divisions for walkers, for which we received medals, which was really exciting!
Feeling great from the morning exercise, we enjoyed the rest of the day with Ted’s parents, visiting the Cincinnati History Museum, seeing an OmniMax film, chowing on our favorite pie at Hyde Park Pizzeria and ice cream at Graeter’s, and coloring Easter eggs while Ted and his dad spent some time outside at night using special color-changing LED stage lights to test light a tree…you know, like any other normal family. The rain poured on.
Our Easter eggs turned out lovely and we ate them, hard-boiled and scrambled, served with hot and cold Polish sausage and Wisconsin cheese curds, this morning after Easter Mass. Breakfast of champions!
In a welcome change of pace, work was actually exciting too as we may or may not have un-alarmed all the display cases and had an adventurous staff-only Easter egg hunt through the special exhibits hall of the museum like a bunch of hooligans. Picture 15 professionals between the ages of 23 and 70 tearing through the dimly-lit exhibit hall, plastic bags in hand, crawling the floors searching feverishly in, on, above, under, and around the precious artifacts’ display cases, hunting for any sighting of beloved plastic pastel eggs filled with candy, rings and bubbles. There are so many devilishly excellent hiding spots for eggs in a museum chock full of rare artifacts…you have no idea. Of the fifty hidden there were still ten missing by the time the museum opened and throughout the day we’ve been inconspicuously searching for them, hoping to spy them before the patrons do. Every now and then we’d hear a radio call throughout the day: “13 to 27…found one!” It was awesome. Though there’s one left that nobody has found yet. I spent a good 30 minutes at the end of the day looking for it, but to no avail. I would encourage all workplaces to implement this activity. I found two extra-well hidden ones! Time-and-a-half and a day-long egg hunt? Um, yes please. The rain continued outside.
Hope your Easter weekend was just as joyful, and maybe a little less soggy.
