Born To Run in the USA

Look at that, you get 2 song titles cleverly mashed together into one this week!

On Thursday, I headed to NW Portland with some friends to participate in Fit Right Northwest's Urban Adventure Run.  For those of you new to the Portland scene, the city has a lot of first/last day events each month.  My friend Ariel found this one where you look at a map and run around NW Portland going to different points and collecting raffle tickets.  The more places you go to, the more tickets you get.  At the end of an hour, you take the tickets back to the start and put them in the two giant bins.  Then, in my case, you wait to not hear your ticket number called to not win a prize.  There are also a bunch of local food booths set up giving out free samples (which were all delicious) and even a 10 Barrel stand giving out free festive beverages to the 21+ crowd.

 
Along with my friends, I've only been to NW Portland a handful of times which made for an entertaining time running aimlessly around the streets trying to figure out where to go.  We eventually got our bearings and ended up making it to a fair amount of the checkpoints so good for us!  None of us won anything in the raffle but it was still a fun time on a perfect weather running day.  I'm hoping to do it again next month.

I Spy a New Belgium shirt!

We Workout

Friday brought forth (see what I did there) the most patriotic day of the year.  A lot of people were out of town/doing other things but I did get to tag along with my friend Samantha and some of her friends from Gonzaga.  We headed over to the potentially anxiety inducing, crowded, Waterfront area to watch the fireworks.  The show was decent but nothing too special.  Nothing says "Amuricah" quite like blowing things up.  The Waterfront was crowded but not as bad as I remember from the last time I saw the show there.  Taking the train back, on the other hand, was miserable. 

Taking pictures of fireworks never really works out

Random fun fact (at least I think this is true) of the day: John Adams thought Independence Day would be celebrated on July 2nd since that was the day the Continental Congress actually declared freedom from Britain.  After some edits, congress approved the final draft of the Deceleration of Independence on July 4th (although it wasn't signed until August 2nd).   Now you know.

That's all for now.  Bye.