Cherry blossoms, or lack thereof, pink mimosas and the nice side of New Yorkers

Wow, I am tired. And it's only Tuesday. Friends staying over is exhausting. Especially when it's someone you've known for 18 years but haven't seen in a couple! So much to catch up on, sleep becomes less of a priority. Then the timing was bad: I was already planning a trip to Washington for the annual Cherry Blossom 10 miler with David, also to visit Rachel. So I took an early morning bus on Saturday (it's a horrible idea if you might want to actually be awake most of that day); spent the afternoon walking around the city, checking out the International Spy Museum (it was pretty cool, except that I could hardly keep my eyes open); had a wonderful home-cooked dinner (thanks so much to Dave!); watched Return of the Jedi; slept very little,;ate an entire bagel with nutella and bananas 2 hours before a 10 mile race; ran the Cherry Blossom 10 miler (without any cherry blossoms, damn you early summer, which gave way to winter again); ate another wonderful home-cooked meal; drank pink grapefruit mimosas; then got on a bus back to New York. Exhausting. But a great weekend!

I mean look at this: on our way to the race, we saw these quite famous buildings - Good morning, Mr. President! I bet he's awake by at least 6am every day.





The race itself was hard. I felt the lack of sleep. I was achy, my legs felt very heavy the whole time, unlike 2 weeks ago at the NYC half: I felt so light then. But again, I am at a point in my running where even on a bad day, 10 miles are tolerable, even enjoyable at times. Around mile 9, on the side of the road, there was a man lying on the ground, a paramedic performing CPR on him. I looked over just for a second and then passed. I have no idea what happened to him - I can only assume that no news is good news, and that they brought him back - but I was thinking, as I was finishing that last mile of the race, how little separates life from death. A beating heart. One moment it is beating, the next, it stops. Every moment we have while it's beating should be appreciated fully. Even if everything hurts and those legs feel so heavy and that finish line is not getting any closer. In those moments especially, I feel so alive, I can feel every inch of my body.

On the bus ride home, I basically lost consciousness. I woke up somewhere in Jersey; David was pretty amazed that I had managed to sleep so deeply for more than 3 hours. We started talking, I just took my headphones off and god knows what I did with my iPod. Bottom line is, it stayed on the bus. I realized when I was getting on the subway, already 7 blocks from where the bus dropped us off, too late to do anything about it. I was too tired to care anyway. I tried looking up some number for the bus company when I got home, but since it was already midnight and a Sunday night, I decided that it could wait till the morning. When I woke up a few hours later to the alarm I accidentally left on from Saturday morning (yup, at 5:40) I got this email from a wonderful New Yorker:

Hi Julie:

i found your Ipod left on megabus this evening. How would you like to arrange this? would u like to pick up from me at my work place or you can prepare shipping label so i mail it to your address.

Some days, it seems that everybody in New York is self absorbed, only looking out for themselves. And then there are people like this nice lady I met today. A waitress at a small sushi restaurant in Midtown, clearly not wealthy, an immigrant like myself. But I was so touched by her kindness. It's nice to know there are people like that left in this city, in this world. Part of me wishes I find something valuable one of these days and get a chance to make someone's day by returning it. Pay it forward. It's still a great concept, always will be.