Monday, Apr. 19, 2010
10:05 a.m.
<< [ Vegas - Saturday, Day 2 (Race Day) ] >>
The way it goes is a little more like this:
I slept fitfully, tossing and turning and stretching my knee. I rolled, slept, rolled again. Two in the morning, our last member walks in and crawls into bed between The Owner and me.
"Hey, ya'll." She says.
"Hey girlie."
We sleep.
Four in the morning, my alarm goes off, and I lie awake in the darkness for a bit. A run. I'm running today. I'm running thirteen miles today for the first time in my life.
I've laid out my clothes the night before, my junior high teeshirt, my boyfriend's sweatpants, my thrift store jacket, the shoes my run club bought for me with the timing chip strapped on, the wrist bands I picked up free from work, the socks my mom found. Even my hairband and bobby pins, I'd borrowed from friends. My whole outfit pieced together from people and places that mean the most to me.
I sat in the common area and watched my roommates scuttle around, mice in a maze. I had a banana and a smoothie, my typical pre-run food. 4:35 comes and goes, and The Owner is running around with her hair in a towel yelling that we should be down there by now. We are waiting on her.
4:45 and we are waiting in front of the hotel. Vegan Friend has already made the first run to The Flamingo with the deluxe suite girls. Me, Owner, Coworker Who Slept With Us, Menfolk 1 & 2 (Owner's unofficial harem), Manager Aries, Miss Aries, and Manager Libra are standing in front of the hotel at almost five in the morning. Manager Libra is carrying a Bloody Mary.
Good morning, Las Vegas!
We wait for Vegan friend to get back and watch drunks trickle (stumble) back in. We ask a pair of girls in their early twenties how far it is to the strip. Ten, fifteen minutes, they slur. We wait, and joke, uneasy.
Manager Libra takes a picture of a miniature sock monkey. "This is Cocoa OtherSeriousOwner'sLastName," she says. "I told Other Serious Owner that Cocoa was his son, and that Cocoa should be his stage name, and now I'm taking pictures to put together a scrapbook for Other Serious Owner."
My coworkers are more fabulous than I could ever be able to convey.
Vegan Friend is taking too long to come back. We wait as 4:50, 5:00, then 5:10 roll by, and The Owner is panicking.
"Vegan Friend has your cell phone, right?" I say. "You can call your phone from my phone."
She says, essentially, thanks but no thanks.
5:15 rolls up and so does Vegan Friend in a teeny tiny rented Ford Focus.
"Get in," she says, hurried. Feels like a taxi chase.
The eight of us, half of us weighing over 250 pounds, look at eachother in terror and confusion.
"Guess we're gonna have to clown car it."
Manager and Miss Aries sit in the front seat next to Vegan Friend. Menfolk 1 (The Owner's ex boyfriend) sits in the back, and Owner sits on his lap. I sit in the middle, and Other Coworker Who Slept With Us sits on my lap. Menfolk 2 (who has the hots for Owner) sat to my right. Manager Libra was left all alone, holding her Bloody Mary.
"I can get in the trunk."
We protest, try to squeeze so she can fit in the front. No use, and there's no way she's riding in the trunk, so we leave her behind to take a cab. I leave my phone and ID and money with her for after the race.
"Sorry!"
"We love you!"
"Shut up and go! You're gonna be late to your own race!"
The eight of us are squeezed into this tiny little Ford Focus, one driving, three navigating, the rest of us looking around for police. The Owner, who might be one of the best people I know, is condoning this, and I remember why I love her. She is willing to break rules for her purposes.
We sit in the car, try not to breathe, and hum the universal circus theme.
The Strip grows bigger and brighter in the meantime. Signs grow in the distance until they envelop us. We look, desperate, for The Flamingo and our shuttle. We find it at 5:29. Vegan Friend pulls into the driveway, illegally in the wrong direction, and we disembark and sprint to the bus. Everyone on the bus stares, judgmentally, like, "Who the fuck are these people? Why couldn't they be on time? Why don't any of them look like runners? Do they know that this is the bus to a half marathon?"
Yeah, we do. And it's fucking terrifying. I'm going to drag my borderline-obese ass thirteen miles on a fucked up knee.
The bus is half full, and we squeeze together. I sit next to Coworker Who Slept With Us and attempt to converse, but we are all too nervous to be able to communicate.
We drive through The Strip and the signs grow larger, then smaller, then disappear, and the mountains in the distance loom larger. We pass the Red Rock Casino and then it hits me that we're in the middle of nowhere. Las Vegas is an oasis in an ocean of desert. Looking around, you wouldn't know it was the sin capital of the world. Everything was just stone, cacti, earth.
Snow topped the mountains.
Our main highway disintegrated into roads, then bike paths, then dirt paths. The mountains rise around us, blood red. Before, I thought Red Rock Canyon was a misnomer, a hyperbole. It wasn't. Layers of red sand, stacked on top of eachother and solidified.
I see the runners before I see the group. Couples jogging in tandem, and I see four, five, six couples and then the busses. Three busses parked at the side of the road, our tiny dirt road, and a group of maybe a thousand people in technicolor. Technicolor ants.
To be continued.