Pre-Travel challenges

Tomorrow I am leaving for California to do my first triathlon of 2010, the California 70.3. At the moment, that is the last thing on my mind. In the past several years, I've traveled quite a bit for races. I'm used to it, I do it all the time, so it doesn't phase me or stress me out. I had my little plan set up for today to get everything done with nothing else to worry about. That is always when disaster strikes, isn't it?

It started simply enough. Last night I arrived home after dinner at a friend's house and saw some movement out of the corner of my eye in the kitchen. Oh, look. A mouse. Excellent. Mice don't seem to fear me, as I've made eye contact with them in the house on several occasions, though none recently. There has been an exterminator and a few six-month guarantees, none of which ever last six whole months. Fortunately, there are two mouse traps. Unfortunately, nothing to bait them with (unless they like Powerbars?) so I had to bother my broken-footed sister who was already upstairs in her pajamas at home but was nice enough to let me come over and borrow some peanut butter. Well, I guess take would be more accurate than borrow, as I don't intend to give it back (and I'm pretty sure she wouldn't want me to) Traps are set, so far no sign of any mice. At least the peanut butter is still there.

Ok, having mice in the house doesn't freak me out too much because so far they have never come into my bedroom... or at least as far as I'm aware. So I went to sleep as normal, only to wonder if the house might be overrun with rodents when I left for San Diego in 36 hours. This morning, after inspection of empty traps, I was off for my last swim before the race. No issues there, the pool was amazingly uncrowded for a Wednesday (last week there were no lanes) and I was back home with a few minutes to spare before checking in online for my flight tomorrow. Gotta get those A boarding passes on Southwest.

But wait, while hanging my swimsuit up to dry in the bathroom, I hear water dripping... only it's not coming from my suit. I look behind the toilet and see that there is water dripping from a little pipe back there. Ok, not coming out too bad, but it sure could accumulate while I'm gone. I out a towel down, thinking maybe it will stop in a minute. It doesn't. There's a valve there so I decide to try turning it. One way does nothing, the other way does equally nothing. I go to turn it a little further, but instead, the apparently-rotted through pipe simply breaks off completely and water proceeds to spray out in all directions in a sitcom-episode fashion. I didn't know pipes actually did that.

The only plumbing skills I possess are plunging an occasionally blocked toilet and being able to reattach the chain in the toilet back if the toilet keeps running. Neither of those things were going to help me in this situation. Step one, towels spread out all over the floor. No help there. I start to wonder if there is some finite amount of water that is going to run out eventually or if it is just going to keep coming and coming until I do something about it. Yeah, it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all.

Normally in this situation I'd call my father, but he is currently on vacation in St. Martin with my mother, and virtually unreachable. Instead, I called my uncle who lives next door who came over and thankfully shut the water off for me. Add that to my new list of plumbing skills and definitely my go-to defense should this situation happen again. Of course I am hoping it never will. Upon going to the water tank I see the water that has poured down through the ceiling into the basement through the insulation and flooded the floor. Immediately I am grateful that this was not the upstairs bathroom and this flood did not occur in the kitchen.

This is where it sincerely pays off to have a father who owns a construction company. I called them up and got a plumber and a guy to clean up the water right away, which is all taking place right now as I sit here and wait until I can finally get started on those last few pesky workouts I need to do before I can do laundry, shower (those last two provided there is water at some point today) and pack. This is certainly not an added stress I needed just before I left, but I guess it's a good thing that this leak occurred before I left or else the basement might literally have become a lake without someone here to shut off the water.

So yeah, I am not really thinking that much about the race at this exact moment. My training? Who knows? Who can ever tell this early in the season? Somehow I tend to pull things off better than I think I will, but at the moment it still just feels like I've been stealthily training in my basement and I'm only just now going to emerge into the light. I did get to ride in shorts once last weekend, and finally had a couple of decent run workouts to finish it all off. I was desperate for this little taper, too, so I have enjoyed it thus far... until this whole added part with mice running loose in the house and the possibility of getting to do bike AND swim workouts in my own basement. Hey, it would cut down on those gym membership fees.

Looking forward to a change of scenery!