I’m on vacation, bitches!

It’s been a long time since I took more than a long weekend for vacation that didn’t involve knocking me out and crutches, so this week I said screw it I’m taking some time for me.  Hubs is working out of town and the boy is hardly ever home anymore now that he has wheels and a debit card.  It was the perfect time for some real alone time, which for me never happens.  Like in 20 years, it’s never happened.

I had all these grandiose plans of things I could do like a really thorough spring cleaning, painting the hallway and living room because I’m tired of the color, or a lot of yard cleanup that needs to happen.

Who was I kidding?  This is me we’re talking about.  While my house is not cluttered or dirty (dusty does NOT count as dirty), it’s not a candidate for the white glove treatment either.  I am not June Cleaver, and no amount of free time is going to turn me into her.  It’s just not a priority for me, and I can think of 1.000 things that would be better uses of my time.

What did I do instead?

Ok, I cleaned a little.  But only my drawers and a little of the closet. Things were getting entirely out of hand in there and I needed to cull the herd of holey underwear.

I bought a bike.

I’ve been running, but my knees reminded me that while I’ve lost some weight, it’s not nearly enough for them to be happy with being the bearer of high-impact me.  I remembered that I weighed about 20 – 25 lbs less than I do now when I started running the last time, so I need to be patient and wait.

A friend let me borrow his wife’s bike and we went on a ride together to see what I thought, and I loved it.  My hooch didn’t love it, it was angry for days and normally I wouldn’t be ok with that.  But riding that bike was fun.  And it got me moving outside, which is really important to me.  I am a summer girl and the thought of spending my summer fitness time in the garage on my elliptical just about made me cry.  I need to be outside because I don’t know if you noticed, but that winter lasted forever.

So I researched and shopped and sat on bikes and I finally picked one I liked and I brought her home and called her George.  Well not George, she doesn’t really have a name yet except Bike.  Bike and I have had two rides now, and I can tell you we are officially an item.

I discovered the Runmeter app for iPhone, and Bike and I have used it to track our rides.  I didn’t know when I first used it that you can set it for different activities, so the results say “run” when they should have said “cycle.”  But you get the idea.  I am in love with this app!  No more need to covet a chunky Garmin wrist GPS for running, I can just use the app.  It stores all of your past runs/rides so you can compare notes on past rides.  I haven’t tried it, but you’re also supposed to be able to run the iPod at the same time this runs in the background.

Yesterday I took a drive up to Tahoe.  My original intent was to spend the day photographing the lake, but it was kind of cold and windy up there and I found I was just really enjoying the drive.  I never get to drive up there because it’s pretty twisty and hubs gets sick if he doesn’t drive.

It was a beautiful day, if you were inside a warm car.  I drove for hours and just listened to music and chilled.  I love a good drive.  I did discover that you can get from the top of Spooner Summit to the bottom in just about the time it takes for Iron Man to play if you aren’t afraid of going fast on the curves and you have to pee really, really bad.  Thankfully the highway patrol was busy with someone else when I blew past him.

I still have tomorrow by myself and then it’s a regular weekend.  This time has been good.  I really needed it and even though I haven’t done anything really exciting, I’ve done exactly what I wanted to do at the time.  That’s pretty awesome by itself.