Tea Time

We made our way up in the tea line, which was LONG due to the cold, and were three away from the oh so lovely warm liquid being served when we stopped moving. We waited another ten minutes still nothing. Some people will remember me talking about tambourine man back when I lived in NY and would do the five borough half marathons. Tambourine man was always to be seen there. He is a slight fellow with a long white beard and always wears a head band, but of course what gives him his name is the tambourine that he carries and taps on his thigh the whole time he runs. I had just been asking J-R about him and if he still sees him, when I looked over while waiting in the tea line and who is it, but tambourine man! Like a sign, I knew this was going to be a good race. He was dressed in his usual garb, was tapping the tambourine like a horse nudging the gate at a start to a race, and he had two American flags tucked into the head band he was wearing so they stuck up above his head. I nudged J-R, "look" I said and smiled. The tea line still had not moved so we went over to the coffee and discovered no line at all. I was set now, the warmth did a world of good, so we drank up, I took off my stockings and we prepared to go to the start. We were part of the second wave so we still needed to be corralled as they call it. J-R and I had different corral colors, but wanting to run together we had to sneak by again and we expertly slithered through to the starting area in the green group. As we waited in a sea of people I heard a horn go off. "Was that for our group" I question. "I think so." Was J-R's reply. We didn't move at all. I finally took off my pea coat and placed it along with the tide of other things making the starting line look like the east river it was so full of our discards. When we stepped across the starting mat it seemed uneventful, but nice to have J-R with me. "Here we go, let the roller coaster ride begin." I squealed. The run across the Verrazzano was COLD, windy, and beautiful all at the same time. You can look across and see the Manhattan skyline and ships in the forefront, including a tugboat spewing water for us. The amount of people is amazing and we moved like a Chinese dragon in a parade making our way into Brooklyn. Once we hit Brooklyn that is where the spectators began. My bottom was still numb from the cold, but after exiting the bridge the wind had died down which helped a lot. J-R and I chatted and talked about our pace which seemed right on target. It takes long-distance runners a bit to warm up and feel like they are in a groove, we felt our groove at about mile four.