Go, you chicken fat, go away!

I had a restless night sleep.  But I got much more sleep than my wife who got less than 3.  We're headed up to Kingman today so I can bless my niece.  But we still had time to run Usery.  It was me, Vickie, Mike, and Glen today.  Nice to have the band back together again.  For Mike, it was his first time running since basically Ragnar.  Still he ran faster than me.  I didn't really push it today.  I wanted to make it to the top, and I did.  Mike passed me first.  Glen had given us a head start.  When he finally caught up to me his headlamp was so bright that it made my shadow look enormous.  The traffic wasn't quite as bad as last week.  Probaby because we started an hour earlier and it wasn't a holiday weekend.  A few cyclists passed me going uphill as I was going up, but no one passed my going down as I was going up until I hit the 1 mile to go mark to the top.  Then there were about three more after that.  I crossed the road at the top and texted my wife.  Strava shows that she still went up a little ways after I texted her.  Maybe she didn't receive the text right away or maybe she wanted to ge a little extra.  It didn't seem like Glen and Mike were too far ahead of me.  In fact, I was surprised at how close to Glen Mike was.  It made me wonder if Glen kept going a little ways after reaching the top before turning around.  I didn't ask.  My shoe was coming untied, but I didn't want to stop until I got to the top.  About a tenth of a mile from the top there is a place where cars pull off the side of the road.  I saw some people in the dark around the truck so I ran up to them to ask if I could use their tailgate to tie my shoe.  It was two 12-ish year old boys holding shot guns, a dog, and their dad.  They were happy to let me.  I was happy to not get shot.  The way down was almost worse than going up because we had a headwind on the way up that helped cool us down.  Ooh, I almost forgot.  We got a few sprinkles on the way up.  Just bareley.  Made me wonder if it was bugs or something.  But Glen and Vickie confirmed that it was rain.  Mike didn't feel it.  Anyway, on the way down I could see Vickie at about the 2.25 mile to go mark.  I didn't catch up to her until 1.5 to go.  I briefly stopped to take a selfie with her.  Then I ran about another half mile and texted Mike to say that he could come pick us up if he wanted.  But he didn't reply back until I was basically at the stop sign.  So I just finished up, and I knew Vickie wasn't too far behind so we waited.  She was so close to 6 that she ended up running a little extra 'til she reached it.  I'm proud of her.