Twelve and Slow Spaghetti

Saturday the plan called for 10 miles. Most of the Cruisers were planning on running the Brea 8K on Sunday, so Saturday's plans were each on their own. I decided I would just stay close to home. I had pretty much decided to run over at the Dam Trail. I had also decided that since I was staying near home that I wasn't going to set the alarm and just get up whenever I woke up.

I was able to sleep in until 7:30 a.m. That was pretty nice. My wife was going to work to finish unpacking her office, so I hung out at home until almost 8:30. I drove over to the parking area off of Route 66. I picked up the trail at mile 35. The plan was to run south to mile 32.5, return to 35 then head on to the end of the paved part of the trail at 37.5 and back. At the 32.5 mile turnaround, Mother Nature was calling in a bad way. Fortunately at this point the trail is adjacent to the Recreational Area, equipped with flushable toilets and TP. Since I was now in the park I decided to run the roads in there. When I got to the back part of the lake I went onto the trails. I didn't know exactly where they would go. I knew that they connected back up with the trail somewhere. It was very enjoyable to run the trails, not thinking about mile markers and time but just to run. I rejoined the trail around mile 34 and proceeded with my original plan to go to the end and back. I ended up running for 1:44. My pace on the marked sections was 8:40 or so. I don't think I ran much slower on the trail. I estimated that I put in about 12 miles total. It was a nice run. There are definitely more offshoot trails to be explored. Its all down in the flood plane so its pretty flat. It can be a little rocky in places.

In the afternoon I took my youngest son to a paintball expo. He got himself some new lenses for his visor, a barrel squeegee, a head band and a t-shirt. He was looking for a circuit board for his gun, his got rained on and stopped working. Since he couldn't find one, the money got spent on other things. He did win a door prize, a t-shirt, but for the $9 entry fee for him and $13 for me and $7 parking fee, I could have bought him a t-shirt that he would actually wear.

Later that day we went to church. We've been going on Saturday night. The Sunday morning services are really crowded. We of course were going to the most popular service time. The pastor had asked for people to consider going Saturday, so we made the switch a couple of months ago. After church we made it a habit of going out to dinner as a family. We try to decide where we are going before we even leave for church, otherwise we spend way too much time afterwards trying to decide where to go. There is no lack of opinions in our family on where and what to eat on any given night.

This time around I had suggested The Old Spaghetti Factory. My wife and at least one son were in agreement. The other son wasn't too happy. OSF is about 10 miles from our house. His argument was that it was too far away. It also meant being away from his computer and World of Warcraft for longer than 5 minutes. This particular OSF is in an old school house that opened in 1909. It is decorated throughout with old school memorabilia and historical pictures. It is really pretty interesting.

We got to the restaurant about 7:00. They said it would be a 45 to 60 minute wait. Normally I would have probably not waited, but I hadn't had OSF in awhile so we stayed, much to the boys disappointment. Once we finally got seated our server was a little slow getting to us. His first words were "I'm sorry..." The kitchen must have been really backed up. Drinks took forever, the food took forever. Everytime the server came over he started his spiel with "I'm sorry". It was getting on my nerve. Then we heard the server at the table next to us say the same thing. It got so bad, that the boys both started cracking up everytime the server even came near our table. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It was pretty pathetic actually. One son had ordered meatballs and didn't get them until after he had finished his spaghetti. When they came they were raw inside. Gross. The server was of course "Sorry." At least we didn't pay for them. After a quick trip to the grocery store on the way we didn't get home until after 9:00. I guess it will be a while before we return to OSF.