Triathlon

I did a sprint triathlon last year in Phoenix with one of my friends/coworkers and had a great time.  I decided I need to learn how to swim more efficiently before I do the next one because I was lightheaded for a good couple of miles into the bike!  I had a good time though and had always wanted to do one, so I'm glad I was able to do it.

Our First House

We absolutely LOVED buying our first house and are loving being in Southern Utah again. Now just can't wait to finish unpacking boxes and hanging pictures!

We realized there is a lot of stuff that we need now that we have a house.  We go to Home Depot almost every day to buy something... a lawn mower, hose, garage broom, washer, dryer, gardening spade, etc... and the list never ends. HA!  Oh, the joy of home ownership begins... :) 

Spartan

Brett and I had the opportunity to do a Spartan Super Race a couple weekends ago in Temecula, CA.  One of my friends at work had registered and was unable to go, so we transferred the registration to our names and got to do it.  This race was an 8 mile course with 20+ obstacles.  It was in the hills of Temecula (wine country), so the running in between the obstacles was anything but flat.  It was raining all weekend, which made the entire course all the more muddy.  We had so much fun, but were so beat up afterward. It was incredibly grueling!  We loved it so much though, that we recently volunteered at a Spartan race in Arizona to earn free future race entries.  So we will definitely be doing another one at some point this year!  Brett's full recount of the Temecula adventure is below.

Temecula, CA

A little sight seeing the day after in La Jolla, CA...

Phoenix, AZ

Brett's recount...

Saturday 26^th – We woke up early and ate a very fast breakfast at the hotel and headed out to our race.  By the way, it rained all day yesterday and was raining today and was expected to rain all day.  We made it to where we needed to go.  Parking was a half mile away, so really, instead of an 8 mile course it was 9.5 miles since we had to go register come back to our car and put everything away then go back to the starting line (then back to the car after the race).  Also, the course was never flat, we were always either going up a mountain or down.  It was very crowded, most of the race we were all a string of single file people going as fast as we could and if you needed to rest you’d step to the side while others pass by.  As mentioned the highlight of this race is that there are obstacles, the following are obstacles throughout the course:

·         A series of going over a 5 foot walls, then under 3 foot barriers

·         Monkey Bars (which were impossible in the rain)

·         Putting a rubber strap around your ankles and jumping over a series of straw bales (remember, it’s still very muddy everywhere)

·         A series of mud hills where you climb up a mud hill about 6 feet tall and in between each hill it’s filled with muddy water about waist high

·         A tractor tire pull in which you drag a tractor tire then pull it back with a rope that It’s attached to

·         Crawling under barb wire and occasionally up and down little hills about 2 feet tall as you’re going under the barb wire for a distance (of no exaggeration) for 100 yards

·         Carrying a heavy cement cylinder (the size of a 5 gallon bucket)

·         Going over a set of 6 foot walls

·         Filling a 5-gallon bucket full of sand and carrying it up a big hill, down the big hill and then lifting it up over a 4 foot wall and dumping it out

·         Traversing these walls with 2x4 hand holds and foot holes (also impossible with the wet conditions)

·         Dragging a cement block attached to a chain around a big trail

·         Carrying a sandbag up and down a hill

·         Flipping tractor tires down and back

·         More Muddy hills (like in bullet 4)

·         Climbing a set of 7 foot walls

·         Climbing a rope net up and down something about 20 feet tall

·         More crawling under barb wire, but not near as far as the first time

·         Climbing a steep pitched wall with a rope

·         Dashing across uneven posts that are loose in muddy ground (About 10 posts). Think Karate Kid

·         Jumping in the ice cold lake and swimming 30 yards

·         Pulling a huge cement block up about 50 feet using a pulley system and a very bungee rope

·         Climbing a rope up about 30 feet

·         Attempting to throw a javelin into a straw bale target

·         Jumping over burning logs about 3 feet tall

·         And finally, running through a person that hits you with a big padded stick thing like on American Gladiators.

So … 2 hours and 57 minutes later we finished the race.  We decided to stay together throughout the race so we had the same exact time.  I finished in the upper half of the males, so I’m above average (which I am very pleased with considering I didn’t train at all for this thing).  Tiffany finished in the top 10 percent of women, she is much more athletic than most of the women.

Tiffany’s favorite memories of me are when she caught me washing my hands off at a water station after the barb wire crawl.  Keep in mind I was covered from head to toe, front and back with mud and I’m trying to get my hands clean.  She also enjoyed that on the 6 foot walls my strategy was just to lunge over them and flip over the top inverted (like you would a bar).  It worked perfectly, so I don’t know why she thought it was so funny.

After the race we basically went straight to the car, drove to the hotel (stopping at Carls Jr on the way home), cleaned up, and spent the rest of the evening being VERY sore and not wanting to move.

Tokyo, Japan

The third and final segment of our October vacation was in Tokyo, Japan.  I just realized we never posted this portion so here it is written by Brett....

10-18-12 Thursday:  We arrived home from Kona at 7am.  Although we were dead tired we managed to unpack.  We’ve made the mistake of leaving wet clothes in our bags before.  One idea was to fly to Japan since we still had until Monday to go to work, but it was a small idea.  Tiffany quickly fell asleep after unpacking and showering.  I headed to a place with internet (the Residence Inn) to check on some things including Tokyo flight loads just in case.
The loads looked great.  It would require us to fly to LAX, then there’s a nonstop to HND (Haneda, Japan from LAX that left at 6:30p). 
               When I got back home Tiffany was still sound asleep. It was obvious she wasn’t getting up any time soon, so the Japan plans were quickly fading.  At about 12:45 she woke up and asked if we were going to go.  I said, “no, probably not because we’d have to leave in 10 minutes if we want to catch the flight.”  Surprisingly she got up and said “Ok, I’ll be ready in ten minutes” … We rushed and packed as fast as we could and were out the door.   We arrived at the airport about 35 minutes before departure.  TSA always takes their time and after we were through we rushed to the gate and made it there about 10 minutes before the door closed. 
                We didn’t eat anything in LAX because we knew we would get business class to Tokyo (the flight loads were that good, and really, we would not be going if it wasn’t a 100% chance we would get business class).  The time to board came quick and before we knew it we were sitting in style in business class preparing ourselves to be pampered for the next 11 hours.  We watched the Avengers, and some other movies I can’t remember.
                We arrived in HND at 10:30p.  The airport was surprisingly nice and comfortable, which was good, because our plan was to sleep in the airport.  Telling our plans to the Customs agents is difficult because they don’t understand why/who would fly to Tokyo, stay in the airport one night and fly home the next day.  The airport also had free wifi.  It was about as good as you can get for staying in an airport.  We slept well, probably because we were so tired.  We didn’t sleep long though, we didn’t want to waste any time.  We have never been to Tokyo before, so everything we were doing was a learning experience.  

10-19-12  Friday:  I’m calling this Friday the 19^th, but it’s not really accurate.  Crossing the international dateline messes everything up.  We left on Thursday the 18^th and arrived at 10p on the 19^th (essentially skipping my birthday).  So according to Tokyo time, this day I’m writing about is technically Saturday the 20^th.  But for journal purposes, I’m going to keep it on American dates.
               The trains started at 5am, and we were up and ready to go by then.  We bought our tickets, including a day pass on the subway.  It costs 400 yen to ride the train to the subway, and 800 yen for a day pass on the subway lines, and 400 yen to ride the train back to the airport.  The first stop was to see the Tsukiji fish market.   We were there before it got busy since it officially opens at 9a.  The market is HUGE.  Just imagine an area the size of a few football fields filled with boxes and boxes of fish and vegetables.  There are also carts and people carrying fish everywhere and you have to be careful not to get in their way!

 Fish heads!

               For lunch we stopped at a small place that had pot stickers for 200 yen.  We each got a plate while we developed our next plan of action.  It was just an appetizer, so we headed back in the direction of the market.  Near the market there is a big side market with a lot of shops and restaurants. We found one of the sushi restaurants that have the rotating plates so we stopped there.  Basically, each color/type of plate is a different price, and you grab what you want as it’s on a big rotating conveyor belt (and the chefs are in the middle of the conveyer belt constantly creating new sushi).  I ate 800 yen worth of sushi.  It was all so good, but my favorite was the seafood salad roll.  Tiffany doesn’t like sushi, but she did find one thing that was acceptable, it was a seared salmon roll.  It’s the same as the salmon, only the chef uses a blow torch and cooks it.

 Foot Masager in the Park

               After lunch, we rode the subway up north and stopped at a few parks.  There seemed to be a Buddhist Temple at every park.  Most of them had water, koi, turtles, old bridges, etc.  It’s a very tourist friendly city.  We actually had plenty of time to spare to see whatever we wanted.  When you’re up and going by 5am you can get more than you think accomplished. 

                            After walking through a few parks we headed back to the market area by the fish market.  Tiffany was getting hungry at this point so we were on the hunt for something non-fishy.  We passed a little restaurant that was serving beef stew over rice; the tricky part on this one was that they knew little to no English.  All I could do was point at the stew, then I pointed at the size of the bowl, and handed them 1000 yen (knowing it’d be enough, and hoping they would be honest and give me change back).  It was delicious and well worth the hassle of trying to get it.

               After lunch we went to the really big park next to the fish market.  It was a pretty cool park; they had lots of the typical Japanese pine trees.  We learned they don’t just look like that in Japan; the reason they look the way they do is because workers carefully trim them to grow the way they need to.  I actually took a short nap there it was so pleasant.  After my nap, we found the restroom and it had an American plug, so we charged our camera for 15 minutes.  After the charging, we headed along the river that runs along the park and much to our amusement we saw jumping fish as well as sting rays. 

              With still plenty of time left before out 12:30am flight back home we took the subway west to “times square.” There’s a giant mall there, but we didn’t shop for anything.  We did buy some cookies and candy at one corner store though.   After walking around in the area we found another rotating sushi restaurant, so that’s what we had for dinner.  Again, the seafood roll was my favorite.  At this place, in addition to what was already set out, there was a big menu of options if your sushi was not already out.  You could just point to what you wanted and the waiter would yell it Japanese to the chef.  When I pointed to the crab salad roll the waiter yelled it to the chef and the chef yelled back in broken English, “Crab?  Crab salad?” looking at us for approval.  He was so happy with himself knowing a word or two of English (which is a word or two more than we know of Japanese).

               With nothing more we wanted to see we headed back to the airport.  We were back at the airport by 8:30pm.  It was fine to be back that early, because as I mentioned before, free wifi and it’s nice.  We checked in on a kiosk and headed through security (because outside security was so crowded).  We were so early that we were the only ones in the security line.  It’s nice going in and out of Japan.  I wish international travel was always this easy.  I think we were the only ones in the international departure gates.  We had our choice of benches and by the this time, we were dead tired.  We both fell asleep until right before our flight.  We got business class no problem and there were still about a hundred coach seats open in coach.  We arrived in LAX (technically before we took off in Japan) at 6:30p on Saturday 20^th.

Snapshot of Phoenix Life

A few reasons we currently love living in Phoenix....

The variety of fruits and veges in our fruit basket has expanded greatly.  There are a lot of really great deals since we are so close to Mexico.  The fruits that use to be luxury are now the norm... mangos, kiwis, avacodos, oranges, etc...

Fishing in February 2012...

Lots of golfing...

Huboobs!

Skimboarding at the park when it has been flood irrigated...

Anniversary #4 - San Francisco

We went to San Francisco for our 4th Anniversary back in May as it is one our favorite places to go for short trips (we had also been craving sour dough bread!).  We took it easy and strolled the Pier, watched the spray painting artists, ate yummy food (sour dough bread pizza, sour dough bread bowl w/ clam chowder, falafels) and played some old arcade games.  The next morning we went for a 7 mile run around the bay in perfect weather as I was in training for Ragnar.  It was a nice relaxing trip.