Sara's Solo Adventures

I might be here on the McLarty Farm all by myself, but I found plenty of adventure this weekend to get me through the quiet times.
On Friday, I drove to a downtown DeLand restaurant for the 'January News Journal Sports Person of the Month' lunch/awards presentation. It was a very nice and low-key affair (who says there's no such thing as a Free Lunch?:). I was given a proclamation from the mayor and met some community leaders on the voting committee.
After I dropped my Grandma off at home, I headed over to Port Orange for a quick swim practice with the DBS team. Unfortunately, I had to leave practice a bit early to start my drive to Gainesville for the 7pm Swim/Dive dual meet against the University of Virgina.
Dustin was swimming the 200 butterfly and the 400 IM and I was excited to see the Gator team swim! I was on my way up I-95 to SR-40 when I ran into some MAJOR traffic...at one point it took me 35 minutes to move 100 meters on the exit ramp! I finally gave up since the traffic stretched up the road. My only other option was to turn around and take the normal route from DeLand. But that put me an entire hour behind schedule! I was so thankful that the meet had the 1650 free in the schedule...so when I finally screeched into a parking spot, ran into the O'Connell Center and into the bleachers, Dustin's first event was 2 heats away!
He swam a 1:50 in the fly and a 3:56 in the IM...both are season best times. In the dual meet against IRCC the next day, he swam the 200 back in 1:50.
After the conclusion of the Friday night meet at 10pm (who decided to start a meet at 7pm anyways...) I picked him up some dinner and then we built and sat around a backyard bonfire. MARSHMALLOWS AND S'MORES! Yummy!
After a short night of sleep on the futon, I was on the road at 7:30am heading South toward St. Petersburg. I pulled into the parking lot of Beth's apartment complex around 10am and immediately got a complete tour of her cool 2-story apartment.
We decided that my high-hopes for actually doing my training was not going to happen...so we headed down to the street-market to shop for fresh vegetables and fruit for a stir-fry dinner. Everything in Downtown St. Pete is within walking distance of Beth and Robert's apartment...it's really perfect.
With our dinner ingredients, we walked back to the apartment to get them in the refrigerator. Back outside, we walked around to choose a location for lunch...settled on a Mexican style restaurant. We ate and then walked some more to find a coffee shop for some warm drinks. With full stomachs we continued walking to the local salon for a hair cut (just a trim for me because I'm letting the mop on top of my head grow out this winter:). With freshly styled hair, we walked some more back to the movie theater and agreed to watch "Freedom Writers" with Hillary Swank (very good movie, I would give it a thumbs-up). After the movie we had one last walk back to the apartment where we cooked an amazing stir-fry for dinner!
No surprises, we both fell asleep pretty fast after eating!
On Sunday morning, we had a light breakfast and finally headed out for some exercise. Beth got a sweet road bike for Christmas and we rode around St. Pete in the beautiful sunshine for over an hour. Nothing finishes a fun ride better than a coffee-stop (hot cocoa in my case) at a local cafe. Back at the apartment, I packed up, thanked my host/BFF for a great weekend and headed back across the Sunshine State to get back to my chores on the Farm.
Everything and everyone was waiting for me...Buddy the horse was happy, the cats were meowing, Angel was chirping, the phone was ringing, the mail was stacked up! Another week awaits...wish me luck:)