Lake Time

One of the things I miss most about summers up north is lots of time on the lake.  I think Texas has something like one natural lake?  There are a few manmade ones, but it's just not the same.  Or maybe it's just that my crowd is different -- most my friends fall into the group of lawyers, runners, or Italians, and some overlap between categories, and I don't have a single local friend that I know of who spends a lot of time on a lake around here.  While every time I talk to my family, they seem to be out on some lake.  My folks live on a lake now, up at what used to be our lake cabin, and they spend happy hours in the evening on a pontoon boat.  My sibs aren't up there, but they spend many weekends on other lakes in boats skiing, tubing, just hanging out.  But that's just not so common among my friends here. 

I'm thinking of going out on a party boat with a whole bunch of running friends next weekend, but I'm still not committed.  It's a special day in our household, but hubby has to work.  So if I don't go on the party boat, I'll have a boring, solo day, and we'll go out to dinner, but if I go on the party boat, I'll have an awesome fun day, but I wouldn't be home in time for dinner.  Hmmm... Still torn.

But this weekend I ended up spending more time on the lake near our house than I maybe ever have before.  We live near a lake called White Rock.  It's pretty small, about nine miles if you run around it, and the only boats out there are sailboats, little canoes or kayaks, and occasionally a small fishing boat, though I have no idea who would want to eat fish from there -- maybe they just enjoy torturing them and throwing them back in the water?  But it's not at all like a lake up north, that might have a beach and be filled with motor boats and water skiiers and docks where you can pull up and stop at a bar/restaurant. 

Anyway, White Rock was big in my plans on Saturday, so I thought I'd write about it a little since I never have before. 

First, I got up Saturday morning to run.  That surprised me for two reasons.  First, I've had a tight left calf lately.  I took the day off from exercise on Friday, so it felt better, but it still would have been smarter probably to take the morning off, but I didn't want to miss out on the time with my buddies.  The guys I run with on Saturdays I only see that one day a week, so it's our only chance to catch up really.  Second, I went out on Friday night.  We went with a coworker of mine and his partner, and we had a pitcher of sangria and a bottle of wine for the 4 of us, and my coworker was driving home afterward so he didn't drink much, so I def had more than my fair share.  Hung over is usually not a good excuse to skip a run for me, but I actually didn't feel too bad Sat morning -- it was mostly just tired.  Since we stayed out late, when the alarm went off at 4:xx to meet my buds at 5:30 to start running, I was at less than 4 hours of sleep I think.  Oops! 

So either way, I went to meet my friends and we did a nice and easy loop around the lake.  About 15k, or 9.3 miles.  Calf felt fine the whole way. 

Then I drove home, made my fave breakfast sandwich, and then we were out the door again.  We rented a tandem kayak for the first time and spent a few hours rowing around the lake.  We started off going up the creek part of the lake a little (not part we run around), then we turned around and went down the coast near the east side of the lake.  We got to a point near a little sailing club where we could see the trail pretty well, so we stopped and waited.  The guys I ran with were doing 2 lake loops, 18 miles, so they had to run another loop when I was finished.  We got to yell at them and wave when they were at about 17.  That was a minute of funniness.  Then we decided to paddle down to the dam at the south end of the lake.  Actually, I decided and I paddled.  Hubby spent a lot of time trying to adjust his seat and telling me that the backrest was bothering him.  The dam was so far away, but we figured it would be a fun destination (you can see it below).

Along the way to the dam, we saw this cool dragon boat.  Apparently it was the maiden voyage, looked pretty cool. 

We got to the dam and he adjusted the seat, we could hear a nearby race announcing the results, so I got to hear two of my friends win age group awards!  Parked along the dam:

Then we paddled back.  It was a loooong way.  We made a deal that we'd both paddle hard for 10 minutes, then we'd just either not paddle or paddle easily for 3 minutes.  Kind of like the Galloway method (or Couch to 5k) of paddling!  Anyway, if you zoom in on this picture, you can kind of see how far back we had to go, the kayak return was right near the base of the bridges at the far end of the photo (and also, here's a shot of the water treatment plant as we rowed away):

We went near the dog park and paddled around, watching the dogs fetch sticks.  By then we were starving.  I kind of wished I'd packed some food -- we were both starving.  But there was a lot of water that dripped off the paddles when the other side went into the water, so things got pretty wet.  So any sandwiches would have probably gotten wet.  In the back of my mind (and I unfortunately voiced this as well), I kept thinking if only we were up north, there would be some cool little restaurant we could have pulled up to in our kayak to get something to eat...  Ah homesick...

The good news is, two of my brothers are getting married this year, one who just did in July, and one in October.  Well, the October bride is having her bachelorette party in a few weeks -- and it will be close enough for me to head over to Milwaukee for about a day on the back end and get some quality time with my nieces and nephew.  Lately I've been missing them like crazy!  But mid-September might not be lake weather up there!