My boys, who you may have heard are gigantic Austin FC fans, were invited to be in the Austin FC Starting XI for the last match of the season against none other than defending champion LAFC.
For those who don’t know, this means they come out to the field before the game with the players for the national anthem. Needless to say they could barely contain their excitement – just like their parents!
As if a global pandemic wasn’t bad enough, February decided to bring us a record-breaking insane polar vortex.
I don’t even know what records were broken. But it was bad enough to bring the Texas electrical grid to its knees, break countless tree branches, and make pipes explode everywhere. We aren’t ready for it.
All temperatures in Celsius, of course.
How did we fare? Not too terrible: Schools were obviously cancelled for a bit over a week. We live in a very hilly neighborhood, and have a very steep driveway, so for a week our cars were stuck as everything was covered in ice. We had running water for the first half of it, but then lost water pressure. A leak in the roof became very apparent as the snow accumulated and started to melt. We lost power intermittently, but never for more than maybe 8 hours which means temperatures never dropped enough inside the house to force me to use the emergency wood for the fireplace.
But it was from from all bad: I enjoyed long walks around the white neighborhood using my makeshift snow shoes and we all had a blast sledding down our neighborhood park using an inflatable raft!
Another year, another Cap10k. I trained hard, and I kicked ass. Well, I kicked my own 2013, 2016, and 2017 ass. But I couldn’t kick my 2014 and 2015 ass:
I trained really hard using the RunKeeper app’s subscription only training programs which asked me to run an insane amount of miles. I ran more miles in the last few months than I had ever run in a similar time period before. And yet… it wasn’t enough to beat my own record which I thought I could and was a little disappointing.
The weather was perfect. I slept well the night before. What could have possibly slowed me down? Possible factors:
I’m old
I skipped my traditional pre-race porta-potty visit
A week of Passover food binging and run skipping the week before the event
Alas, it was not to be.
But here are the positives:
A great result
140th place in my category
Had the race been a month later, I would have been 108th in my category!
I won the famous Cap10K Kirsch Challenge. Take that, Fin!
Will I run again? My legs, at the moment, say no. Ask me again in a few days.
Two weeks ago we headed to Barton Hills Farms at the suggestion and accompanied by the Aguilars. I was skeptical: what the hell do you do in a farm in the middle of nowhere?
Turns out there’s much to do. Besides photo ops with pumpkins, which people seem to really like, they have lots of games and activities including Ilan’s favorite: little trains you can ride.
This post is a bit late: they’re closed since November 5th. Make a note for next year.
Due to recent life circumstances I didn’t plan to go see today’s total eclipse. I did manage to borrow sun filter, check it out and snap some iPhone photos.
Lame.
Parking lot eclipse viewing party
12:43 PM eclipse iPhone photo. Austin, TX
12:52 PM eclipse iPhone photo. This one through a window, through clouds. Taken by colleague Usama H. #nofilter Austin, TX
