One Fine Sign

The California Ironman 70.3 was Robert's first Half-Iron race, so I wanted to support him with some form of banner. But I've never had so much trouble creating a sign.

I came up with an idea for the sign pretty quickly; there is a huge honkin' dam along our regular bike route on the San Gabriel River Trail. It's about 4 miles from the parking lot, and on the way back you can see it from a mile away if not more. Robert and I call it "the Emerald City", because when you see it in the distance you know that your journey is almost over. When we catch a glimpse of it, we start to sing the song from "Wicked" about visiting the Emerald City (hey, after 50 or 60 miles YOU come up with something better to do). We'll sing "One fine day... in the Em-er-ald City..." (more on that later.)

I figured I'd find a picture of the dam online, print it out as a big poster and put the words "One Fine Day... For Robert!" on it. Well, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a picture of this thing. The dam is gi-normous, but apparently no one along the river trail stops to take pictures. So then I just decided I would go with a general Emerald City theme. I bought some green sparkly fabric for the background and some special glitter felt for the letters. Because let's face it, if you're starting out with a Broadway theme you might as well go all out.

There are a few problems with sparkles and glitter. For one thing, it doesn't shine very well when it's dark. Like during an early-dawn race start. Or if it's cloudy. Or if there are any shadows on it whatsoever. So the sign never had the big flashy look I was going for. But the bigger problem is that glitter...gets...everywhere. I started on the sign Monday, and Tuesday I went in to work, had to meet some people for work and they just stared at me. One of them finally asked, "are you wearing... glitter under your eyes?" It's a tough question to answer.

Another problem with the sign: when you use Elmer's glue to fasten felt to fabric, the glue will seep through the fabric and you will wind up glueing the sign to your living room carpet.

Driving down Friday, I was about 5 miles from Oceanside and I decided I would get psyched up for the weekend and put in the Wicked CD. The song started up, "One short day... in the Em-er-ald City..." What? One SHORT day? How did I get that wrong?! I started freaking out. I was wondering if I could find a craft store to pick up some more felt to fix the sign. But I would be sharing a room with Steve and I didn't want to get him caught up in all of my stress the night before his race. So I let it be.

Fortunately, as it turns out Robert also remembered the song as "One Fine Day..." So to HIM, the sign made perfect sense. It may not have been the sign I originally wanted, but all-in-all it turned out OK.