April 23, 2000 -- 10:39 PM EST

It's so nice to be home. Paul is in the music room and I can hear him playing Pink Floyd in a really swanky way. He's having fun. I am having fun listening to him fool around on his guitar.

We got home earlier than we thought we would from Sarasota. I had a really good time and it was really fun to see friends, catch up and talk.

We drove down Friday, talked tons, then Saturday morning we went to Myakka State Park to go trail riding. Being outdoors on Earth Day -- whee! It was pretty cool even though we had this big mix-up and ended up separated. I think Nancy wanted to kill us both because she was freaking out and worried.

We had come to a fork in the trail and she had suggested she and Paul, who are better bikers, go one way and I go the other way and we regroup at the top of the triangle. This was fine with me since they wanted to try the harder track and I can't keep up with that -- I'm too scared still to pedal while I am standing up with branches and things poking at me.

I misunderstood and didn't realize she meant this small triangle. I thought she meant the LARGE triangle, so what ended up happening was that they were waiting for me at the top of the small one while I was several miles ahead on the trail waiting for them at the top of the larger one!

I started worrying that they'd just finished the trail so I went on and started looping back towards the car to regroup.

Meanwhile, back at the apex of the smaller triangle,Paul (who knows how I think), didn't get excited at all and kept telling Nancy that I probably just finished the trail and would be heading back to the car so they ought to just ride the trail out and get back to the car whenever. Nancy, however, felt responsible for losing me and made him double back the way we came and they were scrambling all over trying to find me.

We all had heard sirens and while I just wondered what that was out by the lake, Nancy had been asking other bikers if they'd spotted me down by the power line road and they just told her that some woman in an orange shirt had been taken away with hypothermia. This is not a good thing to tell a med student, because med students as a whole are too hypochondriac-ish already, and then they start imagining all kinds of terrible thigns that can happen to a person. Of course, getting lost in the woods is no joke, but we were on marked trails. I just think Nancy's impatient-worry side took over.

She made Paul ride the trails we didn't go on in case I got lost while she waited in the parking lot in case I went there. Sensible, but she was too freaked to sit still! She waited for five minutes then hopped in her Jimmy and started driving all over the park trying to find us and stopping at the ranger stations and everything.

Nancy found me heading back to the car, slammed on her brakes, rolled down the window and started screaming at me:

"Cathy! Are you OK?! Where have you been?!"

She met me back at the lot since there was no space for my bike in her truck and then she jumped out and started hitting me.

"Argh! You will never make a good outdoorswoman. What's the matter with you? Why didn't you wait at the triangle?!"

"I DID!

"You didn't!"

Then we got out a trail map and discovered the big misunderstanding over the little triangle vs. the big triangle.

In the end we got it all sorted out and Nancy chewed us out for being too calm and we just grinned at her.

"You guys are certainly a pair!" She raved later at the restaurant while telling her date, Dave, what had happened that morning. How Paul wasn't at all flustered while she'd been freaking out that I'd gone missing and how I didn't mind sitting on the hood of the car calmly waiting for Paul to come back.

We ate at a Japanese restaurant and then went mini golfing. Dave left, and then we drove to Long Boat key to meet with our friends who came in from Wisconsin. It was late so we just went to Denny's for snacks and talked a long time.

Sunday (today) Nancy left to meet Dave in Tampa to go to Easter services, and we went to Lakeland to see our new niece and visit with family. Then we came back home and napped. I got up around 7 and went for a walking workout. Then I made Paul get up to watch X-Files with me.

The new orths are working out with my shoes and my foot is a lot happier. I'm going to return those new flats I wore last week that made me feel yucky. They fit and everything but they just don't walk well -- too little arch support.

I'm pooped! Happy, but pooped! Yay.

~Astrophe