Mm. In late June, I did 2.1K? That's according to me. Today I definitely did. All of these lapswim times are 60 minutes, incidentally. I looked at 2000 and 2002 distances, and they're about the same. I thought, this year, that I had slowed. Apparently not. Twenty-one hundred meters, O My Friends and Brothers and Future Biographers, I am quite relieved. I thought I was having a casual enough swim, pausing a couple of times my goggles or treading water while someone passed me, but I was concentrating on extending my body, on pulling through my torso, on using my abdominal strength, such as it is, to do whatever it is it does.
Also two 3.8-mile city rides.
Shyeah. 5280 and Westword, approximately, both said this place had the best burgers in Denver (apparently never having been to the Cherry Cricket). We went, nearly going to a new? or at least previously unobserved, Frenchie bistro or maybe Tamayo. Ted's patio faced east, so we stuck to the original plan. We were seated and handed menus and thereafter left to fend for ourselves. Eventually a waiter showed up and desultorily took our orders after reluctantly omitting his routine about bison's nutritional information. We live in Denver, we're aware.
Parenthetically, in Grand Teton last September way up in Cascade Canyon as we stopped to eat our lunch (which was not bison), somehow a passing hiker asked if we happened to know where he could buy bison meat. He was in Grand Teton and Grand Teton is in Wyoming: the only meat they don't sell there is human. I ducked my head, not to be sarcastic at him; RDC told him he could probably find it at any grocery store in Jackson or certainly the higher-end ones. The man asked how he, RDC, could be sure, since, tragically, we had neglected to conduct a thorough survey of foodstuffs available in the area. Because this is the west, I said. "I live in the west," he returned. He was wearing a Berkeley t-shirt. Geographically, he was right; culturally, he was way off. I ducked my head again until he went away.
So anyway. My lemonade was good. When an expeditor brought our food, RDC asked for another beer and I had to ask for my burger to be fixed: I had asked for cheddar, not just mushrooms. I had ordered it rare and expected a fresh burger, because you can't melt cheese on a hunk of meat without cooking it more. My cheesified burger arrived by expeditor again; RDC's beer never did and I offered him some lemonade; the waiter never checked to see if the temperature was okay (it wasn't: I am used to restaurants not taking "rare" seriously enough but gray is not seriously at all). The fries were dry.
The burgers, overcooked or not, were excellent. Reportedly they also have the best milkshake in town--which isn't much of a challenge or even a statement, here, malheureusement--but I could not fit one in.
We had a drink afterward in the Samba room, RDC some rum and mint and sugar cane thing and me lemon-spiked water. (I feel bad asking for water: charge me for it, but give me a sugarless, caffeineless, alcoholless drink.) On our way back to 16th Street, I tried to prop up the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory's bear. He's very large, the St. Bernard of bears, and he has a leash around his middle (certainly not "waist") since Denver disapproves of bears roaming its downtown. But it has a severe c-curve to its spine, like the only pool regular who uses a snorkel because of how much he'd have to bend his body to breathe directly, and I always try to prop him up. Through the window I spotted globs of raspberry and chocolate and I darted in to buy one. They were about to close and offered me both, since they wouldn't be good tomorrow. I accepted one, with many thanks, without lucre exchanging hands. (I should remember to go there every night at 8:59, possibly wearing disguises like Count Olaf so they don't clue in.)
A 2.1, torso-stretching swim, and only one glob of chocolate instead of two! And no milkshake! So I'm thin now.