Sitting in Los Angeles LAX. We fly out back to Melbourne at 9.30 pm tonight Tuesday and will be home at 7.00 am Thursday. We cross the dateline somewhere in the middle of the flight.

I’ve had a couple of runs since Chicago including 21km this morning, an intended easy lap around the airport. I thought it would be about 10 km. Whoops! All of those roads and hotels look alike. Still a bit slow but I think that is a result of the respiratory infection I picked up. Interestingly several people on the London Marathon Facebook site also mentioned picking up respiratory complaints. 50,000 runners and several hundred thousand spectators in close proximity. Who would have thought? We left Chicago the Monday after the marathon and flew to Portland in Oregon.

Portland

Portland is an interesting city. It has a fair bit of urban decay just off its centre on the light rail path from the airport into town. There is also a large homeless population. It gives a first impression of a city in decline but speaking to locals reveals that there is a strong alternative ethos in Portland with many craft breweries and a strong foodie culture. There is also an interest in environment and much of surrounding Oregon state has great outdoors culture with many hiking and running trails, fishing and mountain biking.

San Jose

From Portland we flew into San Jose. During planning for this trip we were bound by a couple of points. The three marathons and the flight out of Los Angeles we are currently waiting on. With a bit of wriggle room we looked at a couple of meet ups and events that we wouldn’t be able to achieve in Australia. One of these is Ice Hockey. Ice hockey is a very minor sport in Australia. Not so in San Jose the home of the Sharks. Fortuitously we could be in town on the opening weekend of the NHL season and see the sharks play the Carolina Hurricanes. It was a big event with live music beforehand and during one of the breaks. The game itself was exciting but even to a couple of newbie’s such as ourselves it seemed that the Hurricanes were better organised and it was no surprise that they beat the Sharks 2-1.

San Jose itself is a smallish city just south of San Francisco and acts as a satellite for silicon valley and SanFran. The locals have a strong self identity and are very proud of their local teams. We also took the opportunity to catch up with some relations while in the area. I’ll come back to that below.

Los Angeles

No great trip comes without its challenges. We decided that to avoid flying over all of the countryside and not seeing anything we’d take train from San Jose to Los Angeles. This is scheduled as an 11 hour trip along the coast through Paso Robles and Santa Barbara. All went swimmingly for about 9 hours. A couple of volunteers gave talks about the history of the area and pointed out interesting landmarks. The sun sank into the Pacific ocean just north of SantaBarbara.

About an hour from disembarking the train stopped. There had been a trespasser strike. The upshot was that the train had hit someone on the tracks who shouldn’t have been there and the driver had to be replaced to be counselled after the trauma. There also needed to be an investigation before the train could move. Eventually we were offloaded onto a local service that stopped at every station across Los Angeles. We disembarked at Union station at 12.30 am to find that the shuttle to the airport where the hotel was didn’t run between 11.30 pm and 3.00 am. We took a taxi.

Only a day and a half in Los Angeles and we spent the first bit catching up on some sleep. Then we caught the bus to Santa Monica to indulge our inner Forrest Gump. In the footsteps of Forrest and Rob Pope we strode past the Bubba Gump shrimp restaurant and out to the end of the pier. We turned around and resisted the pull of running back across the country.

We did however get on the hop on, hop off bus and see the sights. We saw the Hollywood sign (could be bigger) and marvelled at the stars on the walk of fame. We seemed to do laps through Beverley Hills and saw the Viper room where River Phoenix died, the Whisky au go go and many expensive houses.

I went for a final run this morning and now we wait for the plane. We have achieved what we wanted to achieve and met many old and new friends along the way.

With Thanks

George Dyer.

This wouldn’t have happened without the urging of George. While we’ve been seeing more of the U.S George has run several more marathons. It was George’s suggestion that three marathons in three weeks is doable. I am happy with that but George has continued on and who knows how many he will have eventually done by the time he gets home.

Michael Brosilow

Michael was in my age group but has recently moved up to the 65+ category. He is a bit quicker than me and so I have been following his progress over a couple of years. We finally met in person in Berlin for a run and then in Chicago . It was great to finally meet in person and hopefully we can do so again in the future.

Roger Baumgartner

When we planned to be in Portland Roger offered to come down from Seattle. Again Roger is someone we’d never met in person having been in contact through a Mapmyrun training group that also includes Donna Moosh Caroll, Chris Pavey and Stephen France. Roger not only came down he took us for a drive out into the country for a hike to a couple of waterfalls and then treated us to a picnic of local fare. It was extremely generous and much appreciated. We hope we can reciprocate some time in the future

Huong Tong Khwaja

I hope I spelt that right Huong. Huong is family. Living out of San Francisco means we don’t get to see her and the rest of the family that often but is a delight to do so and catch up with their busy lives.

And finally Anne.

Can’t do what I do without her. Nuff said. There are some more images to go in here to flesh out the story but the iPad isn’t playing fair.

Where to from here?

Home. From the sound of it to a pretty sloshy, wet Melbourne. We’ll regroup, look at some options. I have a qualifier for the World Age Group again in Chicago next year but it would be expensive and probably mean missing Melbourne and my tenth running again. Boston 2024 ? Tokyo 2024. I have a qualifier for Boston but it would take some luck in the ballot for Tokyo. Kangaroo Island marathon, off the coast of South Australia? All options.