Pushing through a 95MPH Headwind

I’m sitting here at 36,000 feet and cruising across over endless farmland with a solid 100+MPH headwind, working our way towards Seattle for a quick 48 hour set of meetings. I’ve traded a very wet (and warm) Washington DC, for a very wet (and cold) Washington State. But I enjoy the long flights as I get tons of stuff done. I queue up stuff for weeks to do on my flights. For example, I use the time between gate departure and 10,000 feet to read today’s newspaper and then go through any of the magazines that have been piling up. Today that included a new copy of Bicycling Magazine, Triathletes Life (magazine) and Skiing Magazine. We spent 75 minutes getting from the gate to the runway – so I had some time. And then after electronics are allowed, I try and sift through all of my e-mail and catch up on the dozens of ‘to-do’ items for work or things around the house/personal.

But Wednesday’s newspaper is my favorite day. Why? Because Wednesday contains the Food section. And I thoroughly enjoy food – and cooking. They had a really good article on Dim Sum places around the area, as well as a new variant of Fresh Mozzarella cheese (did I mention that’s like my favorite food ever?). But reading through all of the recipes sorta made me bummed out too. I love to cook, and I can cook pretty well too. I can do an elaborate eight course meal (with entrees like Roulade of Peking Duck Breast with Creamed Sweet White Corn and Morel Mushroom Sauce), and I can do my favorite home style foods like a good heavy Lasagna or fresh pasta. I have an awesome Lasagna recipe that I’ve perfected over the years, someday I’ll share it. It needs to get a bit colder before I break that out.

But what made me bummed while leafing through the Food section is that I don’t really have anyone to cook for anymore. Sure, I cook BBQ’s and stuff with friends and do other similar things – but it’s not the same. There’s something special about cooking for someone special, whether it be a simple dish or something more complex. And that I miss.

Cooking for yourself is also really difficult. I find I rarely do complex dishes anymore, nor do I do things that are indulgent in nature (i.e. Chocolate Volcano Cakes). I guess it’s hard to justify the time or calories for these sort of things. Plus, so much food goes to waste – I’m getting better with solo cooking and using a set of ingredients for a week’s worth of different meals but sometimes I tire of the ingredients.

At any rate – this week is turning up to be the mother of all taper’s with the marathon on Sunday. I’ve cut it back to just one workout a day, do you know how weird that feels? Way whacky. Yesterday I did the usual brisk 5.4 miles with the running group – but I did feel like crap for the last portion. Something just wasn’t clicking right. Of course I can blame the dude that non-verbally challenged me to the early hill section at sub-6’s for a 1/4 of a mile or so. Probably wasn’t exactly wise. Stupid is as stupid does.

Today I did an easy 1500 yard swim before heading to the airport. Tomorrow (Thursday) I’ll do a casual 4 mile run in Seattle. Friday I’ll swim again, maybe 1500 yards. And then Saturday I’ll run a couple easy miles mid-afternoon. No biking you say? Yeah, it just turned out that way. First time since April. My Thursday/Friday’s will be disasters time-wise, meetings/engagements from 7AM to 9-10PM. And then the redeye back to DC Friday night. At least I get frequent flier miles. Ugh.

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