Bustin' for Ruston

Time to move on - to the Rainier to Ruston Relay. I just came from Thursday-night-after-track coffee (being a slacker, I skipped the track and went straight to coffee) where we included a brief meeting for Saturday's event. We had one shift in plans - Jenny sprained her ankle last weekend and won't be able to run. Michelle graciously stepped in to pick up Jenny's legs. Our biggest challenge was finding a car to hold six of us - not an easy task. Wendy took care of us there - she is swapping cars with Sonya for the day and allowing us to use her six-passenger car. She isn't running on the team because she has classes on Saturday, but offered her car to us anyway - pretty nice!

I think we are all set for the day. This will be the third year in a row for Sonya and I, second for Margaret and Linda, first for Melissa and Michelle. The team name - Bustin' for Ruston - has stayed the same each year. Linda gets credit for coming up with it the first year, we've liked it so well we've stuck with it. The first year I ran legs 1 & 7, last year I ran legs 5 & 11 and this year I have 6 & 12. I think we're gonna have a blast!

I got about nine miles in this week - 4+ with Rick on Wednesday, 4+ with Barb this morning. I'm still feeling tenderness at the back of and on the inside of my calf. I need a relay and one more marathon out of it, then maybe I'll rest it during our trip to WS100.

Web came home for a visit last night - he's off traveling for the next couple months. He's going to be visiting friends in Oregon and California through mid-July. He's thinking he might like to try living in the Bay area or Portland for a while after that. At his age, it's all up in the air and the possibilities are wide open. Every time we talk to him he has a new plan...

And Riley's graduation announcements came today. As a homeschooler, he will not be receiving a high-school diploma - instead he has completed his AA at the age of 18 (as did Web). His plans are pretty fluid at the moment - he still considering local schools where he could live at home for another year or so. Fortunately, most of them are still accepting transfer students. He's a little undecided about his career path - engineering, mechanical design, making guitars and physical therapy are all on his radar. Again, the possibilities are wide open.

It's the end of an era at our house. Though we will never stop being parents, giving advice, lending support, loving them and worrying about them, our primary job of raising the boys is done. They are young men with plans, dreams, values and ideals of their own - influenced by us, but solidified through their own life experiences. It's time to watch them soar.

But not quite yet...there is the senior prom on Saturday night, a long, idyllic summer, and the good possibility of another year at home. Even so, it won't be quite the same...

Signing off from the sunny Puget Sound region, where the slackers go straight to coffee, the relay-teams are ready and the parents are soon to be on their own.