Six Hundred for Sixty Dolla

Hello everyone,

I believe my last blog was around Christmas time back in the mitten. Since then I got myself back to New Hampshire, Relocated to Santa Barbara, flew to Michigan for a weekend for the retirement party of Ron Warhurst – my coach at Michigan and the man who told me to come run for Timmy Broe, and have since returned to Santa Barbara. It has been a busy last few weeks!

We are all also very anxiously awaiting the beginning to our work with the Boys and Girls Club out here. We met with 4 Branch Directors and they were very excited to get things going. Just waiting for some paperwork to go through and clear and we’ll be ready to get started!

The most exciting thing for me so far has developed in the past few days – because I’ve started to jog a bit on the track!! I had come back from surgery on my left heel very quickly with the help of an alter-g treadmill and was feeling great a couple weeks ago, progressed to running outside a few times and started having some pain near the incision. The pain forced me to back off for a while and Tim and I decided that I’d wait until we got to California to get back to running where there is no ice and nice outdoor tracks to run on. Today I alternated 2 minutes jogging, 30 seconds walking, for 20 minutes. It’s not an 18 mile long run or 20 quarters on the track, but it’s a step in the right direction!

I didn’t get a chance to read David’s entire blog, but saw the picture he posted of the pool. I’ve been hopping in there and getting in some good aerobic work. I swam a mile today and aqua-ran for 30 minutes. It’s much easier to stay motivated when you can look forward to going to an outdoor pool with things to look at, instead of the walls of the Dartmouth pool.

The setup we have out here on the left coast is incredible, to say the least. We are on the ocean with blue skies every day, and have everything we need within a short drive up the beautiful 101 to the North in Santa Barbara and South in Ventura. To visualize how close our house is to the ocean, I purchased a 6-iron from Play-it-Again Sports and hit golf balls into the ocean from our back patio. I thought it would get expensive pretty fast until we took an unintended detour the other day on our way to get some coffee after a morning pool workout. We missed our exit, got off at the next one, and as we were back tracking I saw a huge banner on the side of a car that said “GOLF BALLS ->>.” I made Toni turn around and follow the signs to a warehouse. We walked in the door and I have never seen so many golf balls anywhere in my life. A Hispanic man came out of the back and was telling me about all of the deals they had in the baskets up front. “$20 per dozen here.” “$6 per dozen here.”  All the while I’m thinking, there is no way I’m spending that much money on something I’m intentionally going to lose. So I told him what I was using them for; that I was hitting them straight into the ocean and everything he had was way too expensive. He immediately says “follow me,” leads me to the back where he is keeping boxes stacked upon boxes upon boxes of golf balls. I would not be surprised if there were a million golf balls in this place. He points to a box and says “I give you six-hundred for sixty dollar.” I look in my wallet pull out a Hamilton, and ask for one hundred golf balls. He scoops out a range bucket full and asks if I want to bet $10 that there are exactly 100 balls in the bucket. I would normally take this bet with anyone, but I felt like he’d done this before. I respectfully declined the bet but asked that he prove it. He takes me to a wooden box, pours the bucket in, and the balls fall out into ten perfect rows of ten golf balls each. It was incredible. He boxed them up, tossed in 5-6 extra, and we were on our way to the coffee shop. Best purchase I’ve made in a long time, should keep me occupied for a week or so!

Stay Classy Santa Barbara, 

Lex