My First non-Beckstead-saturated Labor Day weekend :(

In an attempt to overcome my deep sense of loss over my first-ever missed Beckstead reunion, I tried to have a very exciting Labor Day weekend. I scheduled myself so tightly that there would be no room for tears of mourning. However, I could not help comparing my experiences with what was going on at Cherry Hill and finding that my activities invariably fell short of what I've been so fortunate to have in Labor Day weekends past.



On Friday night, when I might have been setting up tents and laughing over the faux-camping experience of Cherry Hill, I was instead attending a Broadway in Chicago performance of "Wicked." I sat on the second row, next to an equally single (and very chatty) Puerto Rican man in town on business. We were close enough to look down into the orchestra pit, see the sweat on the actor's faces and get spit on in moments of great articulation. Did I get chills during every single song? Yes. Did my heart thrill as Elphaba and her broom rose into the sky and she belted out the final notes of "Defying Gravity"? Yes. But not like it does for the Brenchley's rendition of "Fried Ham". Not like it does when I hear Grandma yelling out Bingo numbers. No, it was not the same as the Beckstead reunion.

Saturday, I mosied downtown for a stroll in the park, which was hosting the annual jazz festival. I longed to be the chubby, blues-belting front-woman for Pistol Pete, but not as much as I longed to be floating around the Lazy River or playing Apples to Apples.

Sunday evening, Gary and I headed downtown to participate in the Nike Human Race, a 10K that set the new record for the largest running event in the world, with over 500,000 partipants in 25 host cities on 6 continents. Around mile 5, I was really craving Grandma's death-by-caramel-packing-peanuts concoction. Instead, I fueled with a PowerBar.
(As a non-reunion-related side note, I learned a lot of things on this run, number 1 being that I have gotten really slow since my "glory" days of cross-country in high school. It took Gary and I about an hour to finish, more than tripling the time it used to take me to race 5Ks :(. I also discovered that my swallowing reflex does not work while I am in motion, but I sure tried. Gary being Gary had to be a little flambouyant everywhere we went, like at the starting line when there was a silence after the "Rocky" song and he yelled, "ADRIENNE!" or, mid-race, jumping around the stages of the bands that were positioned throughout the course. Fall Out Boy played, which was pretty cool, and the t-shirts ROCKED! But I digress...)

Monday being Labor Day, Gary had the day off (and therefore, so did I.) Realizing that fact last week, I decided that I wanted to go skydiving on this day, as I've always wanted to go and there was really no reason to put it off. When I told Gary, he said something to the effect of, "Dude, I'm comin' with," so we got a sitter and took off for the afternoon to the very cute and Idaho-like town of Hinckley, Illinois for a little flying. We waited for a couple of hours for our slot, got hooked into our harnesses and went up in the plane. I jumped tandem with a guy named Phil who was kind of chubby and REALLY sweaty (especially since we were strapped together). He's been diving since '92 and his granddaughter was there watching. And I thought that was pretty much the coolest thing ever, for a grandpa to be a sky-diving instructor. Rock on, Phil. Three tandem pairs rode up in the plane with us and Phil and I jumped last. When we got high enough (14,500 feet, the highest commercial sky-diving altitude in the world) we threw open the door, crouched down in front of it, counted to 3, and jumped. And MAN did it take my breath away! Not just the gorgeous view, but it was seriously hard to breathe. Which makes sense, because we were falling at an average of 130 mph for almost a minute. I didn't really get butterflies ever, which really surprised me. I thought I'd be ready to puke! At a little over 5,000 feet (measured by my handy wrist-strap), I pulled the chute and it opened! Hooray! Then Phil gave me the handle things so I could steer us and make us do cool flips and such. We landed on our feet (Gary was jealous...he slid in on his bottom) and that was that. It was so fun! I think it would be really fun to get certified. Phil said I was a natural, the best tandem he'd done in a long time. And, yeah, he probably says that to everybody, but still. I felt kind of triumphant walking away :).

So that was my Labor Day weekend. It wasn't the reunion. But it was fun. I'll be home next week and I'M SO EXCITED!!!