CHOO onthis

A week back, my friend Becca - who I always manage to have a thought-provoking conversation with - mentioned the Inaugural Fall Foliage Half-Marathon in Rhinebeck - a small village in upstate New York. Despite not training, and being quite the slob for the weeks up until that point, I agreed with her that we should do the run anyways - even if we have to end up walking. So to prepare, I did everything I could do in the week leading up to the race… basically no running and all carbo-loading. The day of the race, we drove 2.5 miles to the village. The view was beautiful and I was glad I could appreciate it for the whole 3 minutes I wasn’t suffering. The foliage was great, and finishing was even greater but the best moments were the following:

• High-fives with Becca after each mile
• Getting schooled by 3 Koreans (2 dads, 1 mom) that were basically my parents’ age and were also just chit-chatting the entire time.
• Getting yelled at by a grandma (about 72 years old?) telling us to “save the walking for the hills!”
• Getting congratulated by the same grandma at the end of the race - “You guys finished!!!” *with an extremely surprised expression on her face*

We finished the race in 2 hours and 16 minutes. A time I am not that mad at…

After eating some mexican food, we started driving back to the city. On our way, we spotted a sign for some apple orchards and did a quick U-Turn to check it out. We ate some extremely delicious apple cider donuts and picked my current favorite - Jonagold apple. 

We rode a tractor to the Jonagold apple trees!

Desperately wanted to sit in that chair…

Loved everything about this view - pumpkin, weeping willows and water…

Climbed the ladder to find my perfect apple. I ate it this morning and it was delicious.