Traveling Gandalf
Just a quick post from the Land of the Long White Cloud…
Traveling with Gandalf
New Zealand van rental companies know how to get one’s attention, don’t they?
tmso 
Travel Blog
For those of you who may know, I am in New Zealand at the moment (normally in California). I have started a travel blog here. Follow along if you would like.
Cheers!
tmso
The Aliens are Coming!
Awww, shoot. The New Zealand Herald does not have the same content online as they do in their print version. That’s a bummer. Yesterday, while reading the paper, I noticed a little story titled Involve UN in case we find hostile aliens… It was a cute little story about how astronomers, though they are no where closer to First Contact, are getting a little worried that any aliens we may encounter in our search for extraterrestrial life may not be all that friendly. The article made me think about just how science fictiony our lives have become. The technology we currently have is amazing and our economy is shrinking the world at an alarming rate, but are we really there yet? Stay tuned…
tmso
Springboard Running
Hello World!
I am currently in lovely Orewa, New Zealand. My husband and I escaped the snows of Truckee to enjoy the southern summer. So glad we did. I didn’t realize how much I missed New Zealand. This is our third trip out here. As this country is where my honey-bunny was born and raised, that seems rather stingy. We need to win the lottery so that we can visit every year!
Orewa Beach
But, that’s not what I want to blog about…I want to talk about the wonderful thing I discovered yesterday on Orewa Beach.
You know all that talk about barefoot running? You know, how we were meant to run without shoes? How barefoot running will save you from injury? Panacea for all of us that have not been blessed with a naturally athletic body? etc etc?
Well, forget all that. After 15 minutes of running on a hard, sandy beach: think ‘lite-footed’; think ’springboard’; think ‘toes’.
I’ve always wondered where people got off talking about ‘running lite’. I’ve never done anything ‘lite’. I’m a heavy, dense person and when I run, I look and feel like a heavy, dense person running. My feet hit the ground hard. You can hear me a mile away. Not because of all the huffing and puffing. Oh no, you hear that about a half mile away. What you hear first is my feet hitting the ground with all the force of an airborne 140lb, 5ft frame. Ug. It’s like moving a mountain.
But not with barefoot running! After a few strides on the balls of my feet, I actually felt lite! Not only that, I was springing from step to step. I felt powerful! (cue celestial music from above) And then I felt my toes…pure bliss. My toes dug into the sand as if they have been waiting all their lives to do that. They stretched, dug, clawed, and pushed. They moved and spread about like they were meant to. They functioned way better out of a shoe that they ever have in shoes.
After the brief beach run, it was very hard to convince myself to put my shoes back on for the one mile run on pavement back to the place we are staying. I tried and quickly stopped to take them off again. The bottom of my feet are suffering a little as they are not up to running on pavement just yet. And I’ve just about crippled myself as my calf muscles are not quite up to the task of barefoot running, but I’ll tell you this – I’m sold on barefoot running.
My Mangled Toes
This is the current state of my cycling-bashed toes. We’ll see what two months of barefoot running will do to them…hmm…maybe straighten them out? I can only hope…
Barefoot running on Orewa Beach
Hey! I did it. Don’t have much time to blog about this but it felt soooo good to run barefoot in the sand that I had to post about it. I’ll write more later, but let me tell you this: take off your shoes, your toes will love you for it.
Cheers from NZ,
tmso
