back in the bay area

getting ready for a quickie trip to san francisco to run the nike half was pretty easy.  knowing i was there for just over 24 hours, i was able to pack light, which is usually really difficult for me.  check out "flat me" for the race:

i had coordinated purchasing flights with my friend delovely details, but when we were checking in online the day before, i'd discovered that i managed to screw up my booking completely.  i was on the flight after her going up and the one before her coming back home.  d-oh!  except that as the hub was driving me to the airport, she texted me that her flight had been delayed.  she got delayed so much that she had just boarded her plane when i arrived at the gate.  although this meant that she wouldn't have long to wait for me after landing in san francisco.  silver lining, right?

in my rush to get everything ready that morning, i'd skipped lunch.  and of course, there was nothing near me except for a mile-long line at starbucks and this.

yuck.  i stopped at the newsstand and picked up some nuts and cheez-its to tide me over instead, and then in no time i was here:

it was a wonderfully short flight, and finding DD once i got off the plane was super easy.  and it looked like nike was watching, too:

we used my lyft app to call for a ride to our hotel, and our driver was curbside within minutes.  she was friendly and chatty, and it was a nice first experience with lyft.  there was a lot of activity at our hotel, but lilcee had left keys at the front desk for us to make it easy.  she'd gone off to pick up our race packets, and so we had a little time to get settled in the room and catch our breath for a bit.  pretty nice view, wouldn't you say?

after trading a few texts with lilcee, we headed back outside to make our way to the nike store and see what fun photo ops and race merchandise we could score.  first selfie of the trip:

hello, san francisco!

the nike store was, predictably, a madhouse.

it was so insanely noisy and crowded in there that it took us a little while to find each other.  luckily, we managed to snag a couple of fun shots.

and what i'd been dreading for months - the elevation chart for the course.  yikes.

there was a spot to check in, show that we had one of the nike apps downloaded on our phone, and receive this:

you could have a run analysis done if you were looking to buy some new shoes.

but we didn't need any of that, so we went back outside to see if we could find our names on the window.

out in union square, we joined the crowds for more fun photo ops.

by then, it was time to go back to the hotel and get ready for some dinner.  we called for another lyft to pick us up, and this time we got a ford flex that was pretty much like a mini party bus, complete with lights and a pounding sound system.

dinner was here:

we decided to order a bunch of different items and share them family-style.

so good - burrata starter, gnocchi, ravioli, pasta pasta pasta.  carb me up and top it off with some profiteroles - cream-filled balls of yum.

back at the hotel, we all got our stuff laid out for an early morning wake-up call.  this is the tank nike gave us for the race (although none of us opted to wear it):

my new socks had a message inside.

and my lucky charm, tucked in my bra for safekeeping.

we were all in bed by 10:30.  that 5:15 wake-up call was gonna hurt.