A convention speech and run around Gray's Lake, Des Moines Iowa

Photo:  Gray’s lake run

Get up before alarm rings at 6.  This means it is really 4.  Flop back on bed.  Alarm rings at 6:15. 

Search around for hotel phone on night table.  Don’t find it.  Sigh.  It is on the other side of the bed.  Scramble across.  Hit “O”.  Ask for front desk.  It is front desk.  Can I get a late check out.  Yes. 

Thank heavens.  Don’t have to run now.  Would have been sleep-running.

Reset alarm for 8:30.  Which is 6:30. 

Repeat process.  Get up.  Dressed.  Down to the 2nd floor.  Check in.  Listen to presentation.  Am at the Iowa Association for Justice annual convention in Des Moines.  There’s a break.  Exchange greetings with a few familiar faces.  Meet with tech guy.  Give him thumb drive.   Get miked up.  Break ends.  Do presentation.  The ballroom is short but wide.  Feels as long as a football field.  Pace from one side to the other.   

There are too many slides.  Too many points to make.  Used a presentation that generally takes two hours.  Am cramming it all into one.  Feel like am vomiting way too much information.    When will I learn.  Next time will chop out half the slides. Or more.

Stride out of there.

Back up to room.  Throw on running gear.  Exit rear door of hotel.  Onto Locust street. As in the bug.  Wind hits with a solid whoosh.   Ponytail flies straight back.  Horizontally in sync with the road.

Run through deserted looking city.  All the buildings are linked together by sky walks.  Look up and can see people walking from one building into the other.  Like in a sci fi movie where if you breathe the outside air, your eyes pop out, your skin withers up and you die.  So you stay inside in tubes.

Past cool sculptures of unused park.  Turn left on 15th.  Over a bridge.  Reach Gray’s Lake.  Looks like it’s man made.  According to the van driver is naturally fed by the river.  But can see a concrete feeder tube.  Run around it twice. 

Wind doesn’t die down.  Sometimes catch it just right.  Then it sweeps me along.  A bit like Mary Poppins.

Back through deserted city streets.  Into hotel.  Up to room.  Do business.  Rush out.  Catch van back to airport.