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).

Disneyland!!!

Trying to get somewhat caught up on this blog...

For Mother's Day, Kellyn and I took my parents to Disneyland (counted as Father's Day as well). My parents had not been to Disney for many, many years, so we thought it would be fun. Plus, we all have flight benefits at this point so it was easy and quick to get over there.

 Captain EO was back. I vaguely remember it from the 80s.

 The new Buzz Lightyear Ride.

 Tressa Hudgens was in Fantasmic that night - here she is Alice.

 Space Mountain was the best ride! 

 Disney was fun, but I prefer the big coasters :)

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Last Sunday, we did a solar eclipse hike up Squaw Peak. We got started about 5:30pm, so were at the top by about 6. Fortunately, Dave made a viewing box so we could see the outline of the sun.

Taking pictures...

 This was a shot that I just clicked with my camera. I turned the ISO up to 1600 and put the F-stop as high as I could. I didn't want to take too many pictures with my camera, because I read that the sun could also hurt a camera (just like your eyes).

 Dave, Me, Tim

 iPhone picture

 On our way down, we ran into this guy who had a telescope and he was projecting the image onto a white piece of cardboard. This is what it looked like.

Tim kept singing the Bonnie Tyler song, hence the name of the title of this post :)

Peaches!

This morning my mom and I drove out to Queen Creek to go to the Peach Festival at Schnepf Farm. We arrived a little before 8am and it was already really busy at the farm. The peaches were nice and ripe. I probably ate at least 5, if not closer to 8, peaches this morning while we were picking. I also ended up with 8.5 pounds of peaches - looking forward to eating them and making some peach cobbler!

 I also picked a couple of these yellow zucchini squash - so big...and fresh!

 My produce from the morning. The carrots and beets were pre-picked - I bought those at the market.

After the farm we stopped by the Queen Creek Olive Mill and I bought some roasted garlic olive oil and some lemon olive oil. We then stopped at The Pork Shop which was up the street to pick up something for my dad. The family of one of my co-workers owns that place so he said to make sure to stop. His last name is Combs, and I didn't realize that everything out near this pork shop was all named Combs...Combs Road, Combs Middle School and even Combs Unified School District.

Great morning, and I love supporting the local farms. I can't wait to buy a house and have my own garden!

New Wheels

After moving back to Arizona from NYC, one of the things on my list to buy was a car. I kept my Jetta for about a year after moving to NYC, but sold that in February 2010. I really wanted a hard top convertible, and when I was here for the Chang's half in January I sat in a BMW 328i convertible and I loved it. I decided to look for a Certified Pre-Owned, and wanted a 2009 with about 30,000 miles. I was also very specific on colors - white, silver or gray exterior, with black interior. I also wanted a non-sport package - the sport package had the larger wheels and made the car look like it was sitting low to the ground. Given my specifications, I was having a lot of trouble finding a car in AZ. I decided to expand my search to other states (good thing for flight benefits!) and found a car that I liked in Southern California. I talked to the internet salesperson for about a week, and decided to fly out there a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday. 

When dad and I arrived at the dealership, I found what I thought was the car right away but this was in the window. I was immediately frustrated, because I had talked to the dealership the night before stating that I was flying out the next morning and I wanted to confirm that the car was still available. This was 5:30pm on Saturday night, and yes, it was still available. 

Once we found a salesperson, they did a lot of running back and forth, allowed me to take the car for a test drive and we started negotiating. I never heard anything more about this sold sign, but decided to not bring it up.

 It's mine!

 We stopped at Farrell's in Rancho Cucomonga for a late lunch, before driving the car back to AZ (no, we didn't drive all the way home with the top down).

Thanks to my dad for going over with me and helping me with some of the negotiations.

Warrior Dash 2012

Today I did my first mud run and it was a blast! We did the Warrior Dash held in Florence, AZ. It consisted of 3.28 miles, with a total of 13 obstacles throughout the course. The obstacles included running through a tire jungle, running on top of old cars, scaling walls, climbing through cargo nets, jumping over fire and crawling through a mud pit.

My group of friends who did this with me - Bobby, Jaime, Me, Steve and Dave.

Jaime and I nice and clean before the run.

Finished - my time was 36:41.70 and that put me at 101 (out of 1,314) in my age group and 1,059 (out of 6,632) overall. I could have gone faster...at one of the obstacles I had to wait in line at least 5 minutes, but everyone had to wait for that one so that makes the place order fair anyway.

Dave and I...Dave beat me by about 5 minutes.

Jaime, Bobby and I - not so clean anymore.

After we took this picture we went to the hose down area and tried to clean up before driving home. I ran my clothes through the wash twice tonight (including a 45 minute soak) and my socks are still brown. The rest of my clothes are back to normal though. My hair was also covered in mud...so gross but so fun at the same time!

We can't wait for the next one!

Pat's Run 2012

New York City and Central Park turned me into a runner. I am not extremely fast or a professional by any means, but it is a good workout and it is fun to do running events. A couple of months ago I convinced Kellyn to do Pat's Run with me.

We were in Corral 7 out of 28. The first wave (i.e. Corral 1) went off at 7:05am, and then each wave was 30 seconds after that. It was probably in the 70s when we did the run, but it got hot when we turned east on Curry directly into the sun.

The finish line was on the 42nd yard line of Sun Devil Stadium (since Pat Tillman was #42). I had heard that in previous years people got backed up when they entered the stadium, but it seems that they have perfected the run so that you can continue running across the finish line. I finished in 35:49 (4.2 miles) which is a personal best! Kellyn even said she is ready for another race :)