Two beached whales in a sea of muscles

That describes how we felt in Lake Placid this weekend. The place was teeming with wiry muscle-laden people, mostly men in their 20’s, because they were training for an upcoming ironman competition. I looked it up; an ironman is a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike ride and a full marathon. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Or not. I have to say that the people we saw running looked as though they were in agony. The only reason I’d like to do something like that is to say I did and that obviously isn’t enough to motivate me to even think about training. Besides, just doing fairly heavy exercise nearly daily (back when I did it) was enough to make sure my muscles were continually sore and my joints were unhappy; I bet people training for any sort of triathlon are in continuous pain. But the athletes were good eye candy especially when juxtaposed over the beautiful scenery. Of course not everyone there met the eye candy criteria.

Our hotel room had a balcony overlooking Mirror Lake, a stunning view all day long. At night the water was very still making dramatic reflections on the water which was very nice for us when we sat out there drinking wine, chatting, and blowing bubbles. Yes, bubbles. We’re old but we’re still young at heart and I think that surprised the guys on the balcony next to us. But we seem to be too old to go out and party.

The weather was nearly perfect although if you change “dog” to “Anne” and “he” to “she” in this quote from Wet Dog! by Elise Broach and David Catrow you’ll have an idea how I felt at least part of the time “He was a good old dog and a hot old dog, as he lay in the noonday sun. As he dozed and he drowsed in the beating-down sun, with his long pink tongue hanging out.

“Well, that too-hot dog in the too-hot sun just had to cool off some how. So he heaved to his feet, and he sniffed the air, and he trotted off down the road…..Pat-a-pat, pat-a-pat, pat.”

That book was in my head throughout the weekend as the books I read to Sam tend to do, this more than usual because of the rhythmic nature of the narrative. And just perhaps a few quotes, accurate or not, will appear elsewhere in this post.

We tried the hotel-supplied paddle boats and found they were noisy and uncomfortable. Of course when we got back we found that the seats were adjustable so we could have eliminated at least one of those characteristics. The “white sand beach” was brought to Mirror Lake via dump truck but the lake was too cold (the “whooo-cool, too-cool water”) for swimming so we checked out the “heated indoor pool.” And they weren’t kidding, it was heated. Hot in fact. We jumped in the hot tub to cool off and I’m not even exaggerating! We decided to forgo the eating pleasures of the hotel restaurant Goldberries (aka Dingleberries) for some local restaurants. Breakfast was the key to the entire day.

Of course Lake Placid is the home of not one but TWO winter Olympics and we had to make sure that we partook in at least a bit of Olympic glory. We checked out all the skating rinks while discussing the Miracle on Ice. We tried the simulator that is supposed to give you an idea of how it feels to do things like the ski jump, a downhill race, the bobsled, etc. It was virtually (sorry, couldn't resist) impossible to replicate the experience because even though I've done none of those things, I've at least skied down a mountain and had that stomach-wrenching feel associated with the (limited) speed I attained. Despite the instruction "if you feel sick, close your eyes" there was never any point where I was even tempted to do so and I've been known to get dizzy on a swing. In other words, don't bother although it does amuse me that I'm disappointed that it didn't make me sick.

In honor of Kerry’s last trip to Lake Placid, we had to go play pirate adventure mini golf and have a “swashbuckling good time!” We labeled it “adventure-free” golf a few holes in; whatever happened to mini golf with moving obstacles and hidden holes? It wasn’t even shabby like all mini-golf places should be. The most exiting hole was in a fake cove and that was mainly because I could splash Kerry without getting a dirty look from the management. We decided that we could come up with much better holes than the boring undulating par-two greens offered here. First we decided the 18th hole had to be a putt off the plank. Then we challenged ourselves to develop a pirate mini golf course that would keep our interest although ironically we lost interest well before we came up with a full 18 holes. Some of our suggested holes included moving swords, skulls, pirates treasure, the ships wheel, nets, and now that I’m thinking about it, we probably should have had one where the rats on the ship steal your ball if you putt badly. Oh, and yes, we did putt badly, very badly. Kerry worked hard to make sure that we were equally awful golfers so we tied at 50 something each. Keep in mind that most holes were par 2 or 3 so yes, we were pitiful. But no matter, we still enjoyed the blue water…continuous flush fake waterfalls. The “blue cool ooh cool water”

All in all a nice little respite from the everyday routine. Sam and Ben survived nicely without me so maybe I should have stayed a few more days.

Of course I need to leave you with a little more Wet Dog so here you go.

“Wet dog smiled his sorry-dog smile and wagged his sorry-dog tail. Then he flapped his ears, and he sniffed the air, and he trotted off down the road...pat-a-pat, pat-a-pat, pat."