Recovery week with style!

Boy I did that recovery week right. Monday was a complete rest day. Tuesday I did yoga in the afternoon, then tuesday night's swim workout got rained out after only 600 yards - so basically nothing. Then on Wednesday I flew to St Louis for a work trip, so the rest of the post is going to be about the trip!

View from the plane

Upgrade! View of the Arch from the plane! That's Illinois on the other side of the river.

We flew into St Louis, then rented a car and drove out to Jefferson City, the capital of Missouri. Now I love Jeff City, but not for why you might expect. It's a tiny little town, about the size of Anderson SC if that gives you any reference. It's in the dead center of the state so there is nothing there. It's a tiny little shithole of a place, and only in MO do they punish the corruption required to become an elected official by making you move to Jeff City.  Ha!!  Love it.

Seriously though, by 9 pm every restaurant in the city was either closed or had stopped serving food. We did meet up with some company folks and find an Irish Pub to knock down a few pints, then moved to a different bar for another round or two.  The fun thing about getting drunk with work people is that I can't totally make an ass out of myself. I have to be funny without being embarrassing? come on man. Ok that's not as much "fun" as it is "sucks", but you know I managed to pull it off.

Me in front of the MO State Capital Building

an incredibly good locally brewed IPA

Thursday we had to meet with the state officials to go over some laws that apply to my work stuff. I don't talk about work stuff on here, but I write code that deals with data, and they wanted to give us more information about data and explain some laws. it's really boring stuff.  All you need to know is that I'm really smart and it's smart-person-work. We had lunch at a fantastic greek buffet, then Keith and I headed back to St Louis.

Daytime selfie in front of the capital building

Back in the Lou, we drove towards the Arch

My hotel room had a view of the arch!

I was absolutely fascinated with the Arch - the Gateway to the West.  This structure is amazing when you see it in person. We didn't have time to explore, but apparently you can climb inside it all the way to the top, and there is some kind of gift shop at the base. I must research the history of the arch. could. not. stop. staring.

Keith (the co-worker I was traveling with) is a huge Cardinals fan, so we got tickets to the Thursday night game against the Padres. It was his first time in the new Busch stadium, and my first game in any Busch stadium. I love baseball, so I couldn't wait for this. And the game did not disappoint. We got to see a home run in the 2nd inning and the game ended up being a real nail biter. 

I was still slightly hungover from Wed night, so I didn't throw back as many beers as I could have. Keith tied it on pretty good again though.  ha! We hit a few bars in downtown before and after the game - they had a great setup right across the street from the stadium so a good time was had by all.

Walking up to the staduim

I found the Mets game! This was the bar across the street

Outside of center field

There are no bad seats in Busch Stadium, but we were high up

The Arch is 5 blocks away and you could still see it from the stadium!

Everyone was happy the Cards pulled out a win

Love it! Go Redbirds!

Friday ended up being an adventure as well. I woke up at 5:05 am, made it sitting on a plane by 7:20 am. Shortly after 11 am we got off of that plane, and it never moved an inch thanks to some mechanical problems. The company travel agent got us onto a different plane that stopped in Philly, so we grabbed a cheesesteak for lunch and made it back to Raleigh about 5 pm, instead of our intended 12 noon arrival time.  Oh well, I got to take 2 naps on the different planes, and actually flew into Philly next to John Anderson - one of the hosts of Wipeout. so that was pretty neat.

Saturday I got a couple of hours on the bike, and Sunday was a brick - 45 minute ride and 10 mile run.  Now I'm solidly into the taper and out of the build phase. I hope that was the right way to do a recovery week, it sure was fun!

One final note - last Tuesday would have been my grandfather's 91st birthday. He passed when he was 75 from lung cancer and that doesn't feel like it was 16 years ago. He was a huge Cardinals fan, so I had to bore Keith through most of the game with stories about him. I still miss him every day. It was a work trip where we were able to squeeze in a game, but the timing could not have been better.