el otro lado

Gawds I'm scared to death. It has been FREEZING here (15C one morning) and I wore a down jacket all day today (I don't think it got over 25C and I even wore a turtleneck and knickers on the bike - if I'd had tights I would have had those on too. I FINALLY saw the dead coral snake today on the road. We have a LOT of road kill - snakes, raccoons, dogs, bats, birds - but the coral snake was an enigma to me. I kept missing it over and over. Today I decided if I had to go back to see it, I'd turn the damn bike around and do just that. Thankfully I didn't need to turn the bike around as the wind was WICKED today. It was so hard - we had wind both ways - and demoralizing. But since I'm injured (I tore my calf muscle REALLY WELL last week) I don't worry about anything but getting my butt in the saddle. Today I took it super easy and really did not push much at all.

But yeah, I'm scared. We're headed to el otro lado tomrrow and while it won't be snow we visit it may as well be. Most Mexicans go to the beach over vacaciones. We are instead headed for frozen California. I am scared to death I won't leave my sister's guesthouse the entire time we're gone, too afraid of the frigid, frozen freezingness of coldness.

Pic is from my last run - the one where I tore my calf muscle. Yet afreakingain.

Oh, and if you see a family without shoes (who needs shoes where we live - SERIOUSLY WE DON'T HAVE SHOES) but chanklas and a dog and shivering, huddled under a heater at either DFW or SFO, throw us a blankie, K? And I may as well apologise for our return - this is our stock up trip so we're heading out with empty suitcases and will bring them back full (although the last 2 years here have brought so many changes you can get so many more "things" than ever before, but you can't beat thriftstores for clothing 4 kids). Now I guess I'll see how all of you guys deal with training in the winter (ooh, I'm so SKEERED!)