It's Me, Sara Louise

{waiting for the runners}

(continuing on from this post…)

The mistral howled all through the night. Now, I’m well used to a howling mistral. My old house in the original LPV and the mistral used to go toe to toe quite a bit, but this Marseille mistral sounded particularly angry (we saw on the news later that it was the strongest mistral in like ten years or something). And when we woke up, it was still howling. (I just hoped for The Canadian and Honey Jr. that the wind would be at their back pushing them up the hills and they wouldn’t be running directly into it, because that would suck.)

When The Husband returned to the hotel after delivering The Canadian to Honey Jr at the race starting point, I said to him, “Sarah and I want to stop at Starbucks on the way to Cassis.” Then he said, “it’s not really on the way.” And so I said, “Sarah and I want to stop at Starbucks.”

He got the point.

Starbucks cups and bagels in hand, we made our way from Marseille to Cassis. It was early, the race hadn’t even started yet, but since we knew that Cassis would be an absolute nightmare what with about 15,000 runners descending upon it in a few hours, we thought it would best to go ahead and get there.

What would have been best would have been if we stayed in that nice warm hotel in Marseille and let The Canadian get a lift back with all of the other runners. Oh could’ve, would’ve, should’ve.

A little over 4km outside Cassis, we had to park the car and walk into the village. SAY WHAT NOW?! It was cold, the mistral was howling like it was growling, we needed to walk 4km (two and a half miles!!!), and I was dressed far from appropriate for a blustery walk. Well color me unhappy.

But knowing that unhappiness would not get me to Cassis any faster, I did my best to turn my frown upside down and told Sarah and The Husband that we should just think of it as a quirky adventure, and we’d all laugh about it later. Sure, that was fine and dandy until about halfway through the walk when my hands looked like they were frozen into red and white misshapened claws and I could no longer feel my face. It’s hard to be all sunshine and rainbows like Pollyanna when your toes feel like little ice cubes attached to your feet.

I was dangerously close to flinging myself onto the ground and throwing a mammoth toddler tantrum. I even considered bribing the farmer on a tractor that I saw to drive me into the village. But then we turned a corner out of the dark forest lined road and felt the sunshine on our faces. The seaside village was only a few more minutes away. We had made it.

After walking our own freezing cold mini-marathon (one that we didn’t sign up for), we made it into the village and met up with Honey’s Honey. There she was, fresh, warm, hair perfectly coiffed unlike my tornado ‘do, waiting for us at the bar. Honey’s Honey did not walk 4km in the freezing cold mistral to get into Cassis because Honey Jr had given her a ‘special car pass’ from his marathon sponsor that allowed her to drive into the village. SAY WHAT NOW?!

Some of my thoughts that were running through my head at this point… 1. When we were having drinks with Honey Jr the night before, why hadn’t he mentioned this ‘special car pass’? 2. If there is only one ‘special car pass’ per team, couldn’t we have followed Honey’s Honey to Cassis, parked our car way the F out in the middle of nowhere and then hopped in her car and drove the 4km into the village? 3. There is no way in H E double hockey sticks that we’re walking back to the car. 4. WHY WEREN’T WE TOLD ABOUT THE CAR PASS??? WHERE WAS MY CAR PASS???

C O L O R   M E   A N G R Y.

Only twenty minutes after we arrived, The Canadian did. He ran all the way from Marseille, and he almost beat us. We scooped him up, and had Honey’s Honey drive us back to our car. She was shocked at how far we had walked.