CC,TX Part II

It's now Sunday evening and we've seen about all of Corpus Christi, TX and the surrounding towns. 

CC wasn't on our original trip plan but back before Christmas there was an email sent out to a running forum announceing a fatass run here. It's not what you might be thinking ! It is a loosly organized run that costs nothing to participate in BUT you get no support, t-shirt or recognition. It's an 'unofficial' event. Someone will put a course together and a bunch of folks will meet at a designated time and someone will say, "Go".
This was the brain child of a young lady who mostly bikes but has recently gotten into distance running. Her dream was to run the circumference of Corpus Christi Bay, a distance of 65.8 miles. As we left FL I emailed her and asked if it was still on and she welcomed me to come, so our route was diverted south to be here for the run.

 

Alissa did get these nifty stickers made for us. Sadly she injured herself and had the flu so she couldn't even participate

We all met at 5am Saturday morning under a huge bridge connecting Padre Island with the main land. The police agreed to escort us across the bridge since there is only a narrow emergency lane. It was dark !!

I'm behind the two orange girls.

I won't bore you with a long diatribe, by the time we got across the big bridge, (The JFK Bridge) we were pretty spread out. I had pulled up with a guy named John and we stuck together the whole way. We never saw any of the others again except one relay team that we would leap frog their van but the runners never passed us. 

 Mo took this shot of me, she supported me all the way, from 5am start to 10pm? finish. This was taken after we got off the ferry, she had gotten me a BLT from Sonic and it was so good I wolfed it down, just what I needed at 45 miles! Then she brought out a cherry limeaid, sweet, sour, cold and full of sugar. YUM ! John's wife and his son and daughters were also following him so between the two wives we were well taken care of !

Her we are as we ran down the road after dark, at first we didn't have flash lights, we had forgotten to get them from the car, so we were running using the lights from our red flashing lights. We could see ok, we thought. We met the girls and we got the lights and John's wife said she thought she just ran over a big snake as she turned into the pull off area. As John and I left sure enough there was a huge snake slowly crawling off the road, in the Emergency lane where we were running, He was hurt bad but was definitely dangerous, a big rattle snake! His rattles were broken off in the road and his mid section looked hurt, had we come up on him with out the lights.... well no telling what could have been! We still had 10 miles to go so off we trudged. By now both of us had tired legs and knees and had blisters on the bottoms of our feet so we were reduced to running for 6 minutes and walking for 2, it worked ok but our feet were so sore that it was hard to get going again. But we made it !!

Here we are, finished !  My wonderful wife had me an ice cold beer for my reward, how much better can it get ?

All in all I feel pretty good today, a bit sore but that will pass. About 5pm we got to talking about the snake and decided we'd go see if it might have died close to the road and sure enough it was just off the road in the weeds...DEAD  We pulled it out with a rod I had and snapped a few pics. It was a bit stiff so i couldn't get it straightened out but, well it was big!

 It's hard to see but that's 42" and not even straight! and without the rattles !

 At the widest point it was about 3", this serpent could hurt cha!

So tomorrow we leave here, on a more direct course to California for our start date in May. I'm sure there will be more adventures so check back and see where Our Tour is.