Galway Girl: Oh, the adventures...

How on earth do you sum up a 10 day vacation in a single blog post? If you are me, you don't. I just arrived home from the West Coast and feel like I have so much to write about: running, scenery, food, family...the list goes on. I am going to do a few shorter posts on my trip to break the story of the adventure up (it was one of the best adventures I have been on to date), because its crunch time back here at school, and well, some topics deserve a post of their own.
I will start with the Amtrak train ride. Travis and I booked our train tickets back in January and were very excited to take the Empire Builder route across the country. The route travels along the Mississippi River, through Glacier National Park, and twists n turns through the Columbia River Gorge. It takes you places that cars are not able to drive. As our trip approached, the reality of the 41 hour (each way) trip set in. 41 hours? Oh my. To make matters more interesting, I became very sick the week before break and was taking a whole collection of medicine. I could barely breathe and coughed until my lungs hurt. An hour before the train left, my Aunt Maribeth (whom we were staying with in Vancouver) called me. SURPRISE! She had upgraded us to a sleeper car for the ride out, she knew I was sick and wanted us to have a fun experience. We boarded the train with the help of Paul, our personal attendant, who showed us the way to our sleeper. Immediately, he asked if we wanted dinner. Next thing we knew, we were making our way to the dinning car and enjoying steak, bison meatloaf and wine. When the waitress asked if we wanted dessert, we jumped on the opportunity to indulge in chocolate peanut-butter pie and cheesecake. I am not someone who typically orders dessert at a restaurant, but heck, everything was included in our upgrade. We were living the high life. Just as we made it back to our car feeling stuffed from dinner, Paul brought us champagne. He made our beds for us (the seats turned into the bottom bunk and the top bunk came down from the ceiling) and placed Ghirardelli twilight dark chocolate on our pillows. We woke up somewhere in North Dakota where the local paper was delivered to our room. Prior to the trip, we figured we would be bored out of our minds. We were quickly learning that our days were busy living the first class lifestyle (not something either of us had done before or will probably do again for a LONG time, but we soaked it up while we could). Paul made us breakfast reservations and while we waiting, we had Mimosas. As we recovered from breakfast, an old man wearing suspenders that were covered in musical notes stopped by our room. Turns out, Ray Cartell was an 85 year old pianist who had taken the train from Oregon to Chicago and was on his way home. Every few hours, Ray would stop by and tell us a few jokes and check in. Later that day, he gave each of us a copy of one of his CDs. While we were playing a game of cribbage in our car, Paul stopped by and asked us if we wanted to participate in the afternoon event for first class passengers. Why, yes, of course we would like to partake in the wine and cheese tasting. We sampled four different wines, three cheeses, and were lucky enough to win our own bottle of wine. Travis and I had a wonderful dinner and dessert the second night and woke up in Spokane Washington the next morning. The final hours of the trip were breathtaking. We sat in the viewing car as the train chugged along the Columbia River. After 45 long hours (the train was running late) we arrived in Portland. Maribeth met us at the train station and drove us to her and Michael's home which is just across the river, in Vancouver Washington.

First Night at Dinner in the Dining Car

MMMM Steak on the train

Wine and Cheese Tasting

Mimosas and Cribbage

We got to step off the train in Havre Montana for a few minutes

View out the back of our train car

First night in Portland!

On Sunday morning, we woke up at 5AM to head over the river to Portland for the Shamrock Run. I signed up for the 8K (5 mile) distance and Travis the 15K (9.32 mile) distance. When we arrived at starting line at Natio Park, which is situated along the Columbia River, it was drizzling out. I was still recovering from my bacterial infection and a terrible cough and was not really in the mood to run. This quickly changed as over 31,000 runners gathered for the run, decked out in all sorts of St. Patty's day apparel. Irish music blasted through the park as I lined up among over 10,000 runners participating in the 8K. At the 1 mile mark, I looked down at my watched and saw 12 minutes. Now, as most of you know, I am not a runner by any means. I can win the swim in a triathlon and be in the bottom half in run portion. Despite this, I could have walked a 12 minute mile when I was 11 years old. This was not acceptable. I began to panic even though I felt like I was managing a good pace. I decided to pick two girls out who looked like decent runners and forced myself to stay with them the rest of the race. As we wound up and down the rainy Portland streets, a college aged man ran in front of me who was wearing green tights and carrying a boom box that was spray painted green and blasting music. A mile from the finish line, there were was green beer and brownies for anyone who wanted them...I had to pass them up, but only because I was running. I crossed the finish line in just over 43 minutes. Out of 4,086 women who ran the 8K, I came in 362. If I were healthy and had not spent 45 hours on the train, my goal would have been 45 minutes. I was happy. Maybe they should place the mile markers at the incorrect places more often... Travis finished the race 31th overall out of over 6,000 men despite a very bad case of tendinitis. We were in rough shape, but had a great time in the rain. After the race, all runners were given warm salmon chowder and a Widmer Brothers Beer. There is no better way to finish off a race....