Today Was A Day of Firsts

Today was the first day in our history in San Francisco that it called for rain. This was highly anticipated by Gerard and I, as we haven't seen rain since the day we drove out of Nashville. Outside the apartment, it looked the part, what with dreary skies and a light mist replacing the usual sun beating in through our windows. So I wore my dry wick tank and brought my trusty hat and Kota and I were off for our run. But instead, today was the first day the beach had bluer, clearer skies than our apartment. This really shouldn't be surprising, as it is well known that anytime I wear my trusty hat it doesn't rain (the only exception being the Cleveland Marathon...). Anyway, here we were with unexpectedly nice weather. Kota celebrated by marking this as the first day she voluntarily trotted through the water without pulling or darting away from it. She actually ran-swam deeper into the water while we were playing in it after our run. And today was the first day (because of the "rain") I didn't bring my camera to capture the moment. It was the first day I was nice (as opposed to bitchy) to a woman who's unleashed dog jumped on Kota. Partly because she was very apologetic, and partly because both dogs were playing nicely together. Today was the first day I ran the whole way without walking! This is especially surprising considering my weekday laziness of recent. And, it was the first day I drove to the beach and back without relying on Mark Jr at all. (Mark Jr's predecessor was my first electronic love, Mark, my original GPS who recently got laryngeal cancer and was subsequently rendered useless to me. The good people at Garmin decided Mark Jr. was a better option than chemo for Mark.... I promise I'll be more understanding if this happens to my non-electronic love). Anyway, my GPS-less trip is no more remarkable than it sounds. I'm just really bad with directions. 

Necessitating it's own paragraph was my first time running on the beach at the same time ROTC was training there. They were running a fair amount upland, whereas I was right on the waterline (I doubt either of those are real words, but you get the drift), but I was in the process of passing the massive lot of them. Until, that is, I noticed there chants were getting louder. At first I was all 'Yay- go America' until I realized their chants were getting louder because they had made a 90 degree turn and were now prepared for a direct collision with me. Luckily Kota and I made it out of their path of destruction unharmed. This was toward the beginning of my run, and I had noticed they also had a tent and cones set up nearby. On my way back toward the end of my run, I got to witness fun little relays they were doing- complete with doing wheelbarrows! (you know, like you did when you were kids and one person holds your feet up and you run forward on your hands), spinning around with your forehead on the cone (I thought this was only done on cheesy reality competitions), and carrying buckets of sand. It all looked pretty fun (except for the buckets of sand part) and for a second I wanted to hop in and join them, but I decided the beachtime fun wasn't worth the tradeoff of the whole Army-thing that comes with it. 

I had another rant I wanted to talk about, but this post is already pretty long, so I'm going to save it until next week and pretend like it was an original thought.