Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving and I have a lot to be thankful for. Sunday night I got a dreaded phone call from my daughter saying she was in a car accident but that she was okay. My wife and I quickly dressed and drove to the accident scene. She was driving in the left had lane of a divided four lane (HWY 60), going north and had dropped her cell phone. She reached down to get it and drifted to the left onto the warning strip. She got scared and over corrected the car, causing it to spin across the road and down a 120 foot bank, taking out one post of a speed limit sign in the process. Amazingly the car didn't roll. Everyone who saw it, from the State Troopers to the tow truck drive said that it should have rolled over. The only damage to the car was a little piece of plastic broken from her right rear quarter panel. She had no injuries other then being scared. I really hope that she has learned that a car is no toy and to take driving serious.

Also, today my son and I went for a short two mile run. About two days ago I caught him reading one of my running books. I asked him if he wanted to go run with me. He said that he didn't care. When he says that it means yes. While I was stationed in Guam he ran with me some. We did some 5Ks together which was a lot of fun. That was in 2003. Now he is 17 and has a lot of other things on his mind then running with his ole' man - or so I thought.

When he got up this morning I asked him if he was ready to go running. I expected him to say no, but to my surprise he said yes. The weather was cool with a sprinkle of ran but it didn't discourage him. We got dressed and drove down to the parking area of the Montour Trail at Mile 6. I told him that I would be running with him and to run a slow and easy pace. He had not run very much other then in the fall when he did conditioning for soccer. After we started I noticed that he was running at a rather quick pace. I doubted that he could keep it up for the whole two miles so I told him that it was better to start out slow and finish fast then it is to start out fast and finish slow. He replied yes when I asked him if he could continue the pace the whole way. We ended up hitting the one mile mark in 8:20. I figured that he would slow on the way back but he picked it up and we ended up finishing in 15:25, which would give the time for the last mile at 7:05. While we didn't set any records I was impressed because my son had not done any running. The next step is to get him to do some races with me. We'll see.