A flurry of activity

No doubt about it - it's pre-launch busy-ness time. But I must say, when I heard my sister-in-law talking tonight about the system conversion she is going through, with a launch date of June 1, I was oh-so-glad to be launching The Run to Petoskey rather than another system application. Three cheers for retirement!

Lots has been going on. It's rather entertaining to see the range of activities and issues swirling around in just the past couple of days:

• Household items ranging from dead car to busted pipe to remembering to pay the property taxes before we leave.
• Devon's graduation details ranging from which vehicle to drive to Knox, to changing our hotel reservations from 3 rooms to 2 (including dealing with a busy signal for 6 hours and finally calling Devon and asking him to walk over to the hotel to verify and modify the reservation).
• Run-related communications with folks along the route including: a gang of runners from work who want to run the first couple of miles with me, the editor of the Brush (Colorado) News-Tribune, the South Platte second grade teacher in Big Springs, Nebraska who just sent a book written by their second graders in response to our Creekside second graders' book, a former co-worker who lives near Red Wing, Minnesota who has offered us a place to stay when we pass through her neighborhood, a friend of my running buddy who has offered his front yard for our RV when we come through Mondovi, Wisconsin, a high school friend who called to say she wants to write a story about me. Mind boggling.
• Check-it-off-the-list activity - everything from buying the flags for the bicycles, to letting my relatives know the trip is on, to picking out which towels to put in the motorhome, to updating the gosh-darned lists
• actual running stuff: going over the taper plan details with Mark ("rest - everything" - Mark says I should be "oozing" energy by the time the run starts), to running with various running buddies one last time (and, I must confess, this taper seems to be working - I had the smoothest, most relaxed, but quickest, 11 mile run I've had in a very long time today)
• and actual non-running stuff (yes, there is a life outside of running): volunteering in the Creekside Library, volunteering at the Creekside fun run (ok - that is running-related, but I wasn't running - instead all the grades came out and cheered eachother on as they took their turn running around the field, wearing official race bibs, pouring water over their heads at the aid stations and picking up their goodie bags at the end - very fun stuff), and celebrating my brother's birthday this evening.

There are still lots of details to wrap up - but I do believe the checked-off items are starting to outnumber the waiting-to-be-checked-off items. And I'm almost to the point of saying as long as I've got my shoes and the maps, we're good to go; tough noogies on the rest of it, we'll just wing it.