Sanctuary

So, on Tuesday I ran away from my life and went to Geneva, Illinois. It's a smallish town between Aurora and Elgin in the most western of Chicago suburbs. It's also much less massive and concrete. More quaint. More local.

I stayed at the Herrington Inn on the Fox River. I went to their spa and received a sugar and cinnamon scrub and a back facial. I woke up toward the end of the back facial drooling. Nice. Comfortable. Safe. It's funny because when I left, I felt like I didn't want any one around me for 24 hours. I was dreading the spa part. But I thought it might help me relax. Funny how one kind of touch can make your whole body stiff as a board and miserable and another kind of touch can completely reset you, calm you, center you.

I ate at Fox Fire restaurant. I shopped at the local organic food store for breakfast and snacks. I went into some gift stores. I reacquainted myself with some friendly characters in a novel I hadn't looked at in a year. It was lovely.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up in my giant, warm bed to the pitter patter of rain on the river at 7 a.m. I looked at weather.com -- 37 degrees and raining. "Bah! I don't want to run in this crap."

I am ever so tired of it being rainy and cold. Then I looked out my window... at the Fox River Valley path...

and I saw some crazy bastard out running across that little bridge to the left and onto the path in the park.

So I sighed, got dressed and went out and ran 5 1/2 miles. I came back looking like a wet cat. And for the second time this week, a hotel employee told me that I'm crazy for running in this weather.

They're right. I am insane.