Have Flight Benefits, Will Travel

I have been doing a bit of traveling lately.

On Thursday, June 14th, I flew to Topeka, KS for a couple of days. I have cousins who live there, and my main reason for going was to do a sprint triathlon.

On Friday morning, Brian and I drove around trying to locate a bike for me. I had one rented in Kansas City, but that was an hour from where Brian lives. One of Brian's friends ended up loaning me a really nice racing bike.

We then headed out to Clinton Lake in Lawrence. This is Alex, Brian & Sun's 5-year-old.

Tommy and I riding the tube.

We even got Eva (almost 2) out on the tube for a ride. She didn't cry, but I don't know if she liked it too much :).

Alex and Tommy both had no fear on the tube. They like to "fly." Brian gets the boat going as fast as possible (42 mph) and that gets enough air under the tube that it lifts off the water.

Early Saturday morning was the tri (400 swim, 13 mile bike ride and then a 5k (3.1 miles) run). This was my bike all set up in the transition area.

Finishing the swim. I actually won my age division in the swim.

Transitioning to the bike. This is where I lost a lot of ground, mainly because I did not prepare for the biking at all.

Finally, the run. My legs were jello after I got off the bike and the first mile of the run was awful. Miles 2 and 3 were actually a little better but I was still glad to see the finish line.

Finished! Brian finished in 1 hour, 25 minutes and I finished in 1 hour, 30 minutes.  Breakdown was as follows:

Swim - 7:32 (1:43 min/hundred)

Transition (swim to bike) - 3:39

Bike - 50:51 (15.3 mph)

Transition (bike to run) - 0:49

Run - 27:19 (8:49 min/mile)

Thanks to Jim and Sun for snapping all the action pics!

After the tri, we all relaxed a little back at Brian & Sun's. Sun picked a bucket of raspberries for me to take home - they have a raspberry bush in their backyard and the berries were SO GOOD!

Saturday afternoon we went back to the lake (Lake Shawnee) and did some more tubing as well as water skiing.

The kids played in the water for a little while too.

I left Topeka on Saturday night, so I could be back in Phoenix for Father's Day on Sunday.

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The next Saturday (June 23), Kellyn and I went to San Diego for the day so we could go to the beach. This worked out perfectly. We were on the 7:30am flight to San Diego, and there is good public transportation from the airport to both Mission and Pacific beaches. Thank goodness for our iPhones, we just used Google maps and put in where we wanted to go using public transportation. Told us the exact bus lines to use. We were at the beach by 10am, and hung out until about 5pm, when we headed back to the airport to catch our 7:15pm flight. We were back in PHX by 8:30.

So nice to take a nap on the beach.

One of my friends was going to be there, so we met up and played some beach volleyball.

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Last weekend (June 29 - July 1), Kellyn and I went to Denver to visit Kyle. I wanted to do some hiking, and Kyle has been doing "14ers" so that is what we did. A fourteener is a mountain in the Rockies that is 14,000 feet or higher. We hiked Mount Bierstadt, which is one of the 54 fourteeners. We started at about 11,500 feet, and climbed 2,600 feet to summit at 14,065 feet. This hike was about 7 miles round trip. 

Right when we started our hike, we saw 4 moose hanging out at the lake.

It was a gorgeous day.

This was about the last 400 feet and the steepest part of the mountain.

Made it! This is the summit marker at the top.

Group picture.

Taking a short break on the way down.

That was the top of the mountain in the background. The picture doesn't do a great job of showing how high it really was.

We finished the hike in just under 5 hours. Most of the hike was not terribly steep, but it was a constant uphill and the air was pretty thin.

After hiking, we drove back to Kyle's apartment, took showers and then went to a park near Kyle's and relaxed for a couple of hours.

On Saturday night, we went to downtown Denver to walk around for a while. Kellyn and I then flew out Sunday late morning.

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On July 4th, my parents usually have a big party at their house since you can see the AZ Country Club fireworks really well. They were planning to have their annual party, but found out that ACC was not having fireworks this year as they are in the middle of a remodel project. So...I said why don't we go somewhere!

We decided to go to San Francisco for the day. The flights were actually better to Oakland, so that is the airport we flew into. I used SA1 passes, so for this trip my parents did not have to pay anything (they usually have to pay about $30 per leg of a flight - still pretty cheap). We took the first flight out, and made it into the city via BART by about 10:30am.

We rode a cable car...

walked through Fisherman's Wharf...

and went to Pier 39.

This was a market at Pier 39. These cherries were really good!

We did a catamaran boat ride out around Alcatraz and then the Golden Gate Bridge. My parents had done this before and they really enjoyed it.

It was so cold on the boat. Thank goodness the boat had these thick coats you could use.

 After the boat we had a good lunch at Alioto's. By the time we finished lunch it was about 4pm, and we had about a 2 mile walk to BART and then a flight back to Phoenix at 7pm. It was fun to get away for the day!

This weekend (July 7) I stayed in Phoenix and it was actually nice to not be going anywhere. However, I am enjoying utilizing these benefits - might as well travel now when I can! On the docket...Albuquerque, NYC, Denver, Portland, Seattle (work trip), Madrid (work trip), Rome (with Kellyn) and then either Sydney, Iceland, Tokyo or South Africa (with Jenn - we are still deciding).