Aug 15, 12:25 AM by Steve | Mammoth and Yosemite Pictures

Posted in Vacation & Pictures | Comments [2]

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Apr 14, 10:36 PM by Steve | The Day Before

Posted in Vacation & Triathlon

Not much going on today, Kim was mostly relaxing and doing final prep for her race. The only thing she had to do, really, was get her bike and gear checked in by 3pm. So I went for a ride in the morning. I took the advice of a local shop and headed to South Mountain. It was a reasonably good climb, pretty shallow grade for most of it but kicked up a bit at the very end. It was very popular and there were other cyclists strung out all over the road for me to pass. After the climb I headed toward downtown Phoenix and stopped for a drink at Starbucks (where else?) before heading back to Tempe. I had lunch at a little place on University that I had passed many times since we got here, and finally had a chance to try.

Back at the hotel we got ready and got her bike and gear to the check-in with plenty of time. We gawked at all of the bikes, spoke to some other athletes there, and she took lots of bike porn shots for me since I couldn’t go into the transition area. We had a few errands to run before heading to dinner and ended up getting stuck in some insane traffic. It took about an hour to go a mile, then we got rerouted and lost, but finally ended up at our destination, a California Pizza Kitchen in Phoenix. We are turning in early, and Kim...

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Apr 13, 11:27 PM by Kimberly | Will Race for Cookies

Posted in Vacation & Triathlon

So I actually got a decent night’s sleep and woke up close to 6am. I didn’t want to get up but Steve was rather insistent like I had asked him to be. He’s annoying like that. I had some of the wonderful waffles again and then we killed some time until the 8am swim practice. Steve went off riding somewhere, mumbling something about laps around the zoo.

I didn’t really have a plan when I started swimming; I just got in the water and went. After a while I realized I had gone pretty far and wasn’t going to have time to swim back before I had to meet Steve (and they close the practice), and I was really hungry, so I found some stairs out of the lake and walked back. I had gone pretty much the length of the course, probably just over a mile.

When I came back to the bag check area, Steve and Jake were there waiting. I changed, got my bike, bought some new sunglasses and we headed out almost exactly at 11am, but not before buying some more cookies for the road. We wanted the discount for buying a dozen, so we paid for all of them but only took 3 and said we would be back for the rest later.

The road was torn up pretty bad along the shoulder in some areas, but during the race the lane will be closed to traffic and it shouldn’t be as bad. When we got to the...

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Apr 12, 11:53 PM by Kimberly | Best Laid Plans

Posted in Vacation & Triathlon

Last night I continued suffering from severe itching caused by insect bites and had trouble falling asleep. I told Steve when he woke up for his 2am ‘feeding’ not to wake me at 6 and instead to bring me waffles at 8:30. Sure enough at 8:30 on the dot I heard a knock on the door and there he was with waffles and an assortment of condiments.

We had breakfast, got ready and then headed to Tempe Town Lake for the Gatorade swim practice. I couldn’t find a parking spot to save my life, but Steve had ridden to the downtown area and scouted one out for me. We walked together across some railroad tracks and eventually found the swim area.

Just when I finished putting on my wetsuit and getting ready, some guy came by and started putting up barriers with a sign that said the swim area was closed. It said that swimming in the lake outside of the practice times would be an automatic disqualification! I had read all of the materials for the event and nowhere did I see it say anything out swimming being limited to specific times!

We decided to just go ahead to registration and the expo area, but the line was huge and it took a long time. We spent a while at the expo area; I got to try a muscle message device caller Trigger Point which did wonders for my IT band, and swam in the Endless Pool demo. That was...

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Apr 11, 11:21 PM by Kimberly | Finally

Posted in Vacation & Triathlon | Comments [1]

After an almost 500 mile drive that took just over 7 hours, we have arrived at our hotel in Tempe Arizona. Steve an I took turns driving and we made 3 stops along the way; Whole Foods in Thousand Oaks, Starbucks in Indio, and a Mobil/Burger King in Quartzsite.

I had mapped out Starbucks locations along the route so that we could get our fix. In Quartzsite there was Burgrer King was in the mobile station and they had a poster for Chicken Fries in a SpongeBob box, so I just had to get it. There was some mixup and they ended up giving me regular chicken tenders and the chicken fries. I also got a SpongeBob deck of cards and a “truth or dare” electronic gizmo.

The plan is to get up at 6 in the morning tomorrow, have waffles at the hotel waffle bar, register, check out the expo, and figure out what to do next.

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Oct 13, 12:06 AM by Steve | Pictures

Posted in Vacation & Pictures

All of these pictures were taken by the ship’s photographers. There was one photographer in particular that was our favorite by far, all of the black & white pictures were by her. We had a hard time narrowing them down so we bought a bunch, and got a CD of the original files (in color) as part of the deal.

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Oct 6, 09:59 PM by Steve | In Search of Cabo Wabo

Posted in Vacation

Unlike Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán, Cabo San Lucas does not have dock for ships this size and consequently we had to tender in. Our tour for the day “Sail and Snorkel”, met in the theater at 7:45 so we had to rush through breakfast to get there in time, were we ended up waiting for about 15 minutes. At some point when we saw others with towels we realized that we forgot ours so I ran back up to the room and back. When I got back Kim realized she forgot something else but I didn’t think that I would have time to go again so she decided that she could do without. About one minute later we got up and headed for the tender, so I definitely would not have been able to make it.

The tour overall was good, but the snorkeling itself was not great; I guess we were spoiled by Tahiti. We swam around for a while and saw some schools of fish but for the most part there wasn’t much to see and the water wasn’t very clear. The boat was a very nice catamaran and the sailing part was very nice. There was food and an open bar included, so that helped. We (mostly Kim) also talked for a while with two other nice couples that we met there.

After the tour we went into the town in search of Cabo Wabo. There was a stand near the dock selling it for allegedly the same...

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Oct 5, 09:59 PM by Steve | 28 Stars of David

Posted in Vacation

Originally we had thought that for Mazatlán we would do our own thing instead of a tour, but when we got up we realized that we had no idea what to do! We looked through the tour book and called the shore excursion desk to find out that there were still tickets available for the city highlights tour, which included shopping in the “golden zone” for not much more than a taxi would have cost. We didn’t have much time so I ran down and got the tickets and then we went to breakfast and hustled to get off the ship and to the bus in time.

The tour was nice; we first went to point with view of the lighthouse and the “two brothers”. At the first stop there were lots of merchants selling stuff, and we realized that they are a lot more common and aggressive than in Puerto Vallarta. Next we went to a cathedral, the church of the Immaculate Conception. There were 28 stars of David on the stained glass windows, representing the number of days in a month of the Jewish calendar to honor the family that had partially funded its construction. Afterwards we drove into the Golden zone for shopping and a show, then through the “rich” neighborhood, which is mostly comprise of Americans. Heading back we drove past monuments along the sea wall and stopped to watch divers. We actually got to see it twice because they went again while we were in...

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Oct 4, 09:59 PM by Steve | Parrot, Meet Fingers

Posted in Vacation

For Puerto Vallarta, we had “off-road mountain biking” scheduled for the first half of the day followed by self-exploration of the city. We got up early enough that we did not have to rush breakfast before meeting our bus at 9:00 on the dock by the ship. I knew we were in for something when we directed over to the most “ghetto” bus in the lot. After about a half hour drive we got to the start and picked out our bikes, which were all pretty run down. I picked out one and checked it out, but by the time that I realized that I couldn’t adjust the seat and the tires had very little air, the only bikes left were even worse. The seat was close enough and they assured me that they would have air for me so I took it anyway and we headed off.

At first it was a boring ride along a gravel road, but then we turned in and went up a hill to a small village of about 500 people. While there we went into a primary school and interacted with the children for a few minutes. They loved having their pictures taken and would rush over to see it and show their friends. After that the road got more interesting and it turned out to be a very good ride, although quite hot and humid. It wasn’t too bad when we were moving but any time that we stopped and didn’t have...

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Oct 3, 09:59 PM by Steve | Decoration

Posted in Vacation

For our second day at sea, we got up and went straight to the gym. Kim used the ellipticals again for half an hour while I did the weight machines; then I rode their exercise bikes for a little bit while Kim stretched yoga-style. After that, Kim went to the bridge lecture and I walked around the ship taking pictures. We tried to use the internet to check our mail and post updates, but the satellite link was down for service and would not be back up until 2pm, the same time as the art auction.

We were good at the art auction and did not buy anything, but at the end we saw some pieces by Alfred Gockel that we thought would make good companions to the Waugh that we already bought for our bedroom (one on each side of the window over the bed). His style is rather abstract (more so than Waugh) but similar lines and colors. Unfortunately Dr. Henry (the auctioneer) has a policy of not bringing art back out, even if it didn’t actually go up for auction. We will have to decide if we want it and then try to get him to bring it back out.

Tonight were the casual portraits, including black & white. We got ready and out to the atrium a little earlier today and had a much easier time getting to the photo stations. It also helped that many people didn’t care about the casual pictures and there were less...

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