And now for a local update

Wow, two posts in a day!  I'm on fire!

Just wanted to tell about some things happening around home.

David and I got to see Snow Patrol in a small LA venue.



I've seen them before and I was blown away, so I couldn't wait to take David.  Last time I saw them, they sold out a big venue in DC, so to see them play for a smaller crowd was AWESOME!  Some bands are just excellent live performers.  Some lead singers have the ability to hold the crowd in the palm of their hand.  These guys have a gift.



It helps that they just so obviously love what they are doing.



We may have been a bit on the older side among the attendees.  Do I care?  No, not really.



In other news, our home was recently deemed an ideal location for a random swarm of bees in search of a new place to build a hive.



We actually watched this happen.  If we hadn't been around to hear the buzzing of the swarm, we may not have ever realized it was there since they just all funneled into a hole in our outer wall.



Turns out, this was not their first offense.  We had a beekeeper come to relocate them.  He had to cut a hole in our outer wall to find and extract the hive - and he found remnants of a previous hive that hadn't really been cleaned up or sealed too well, which is probably why they came back.  They could smell the remnants!

This is HALF of what he found - and those little guys were only there for two days!

 

In any case, our home is once again bee-free.  Glad that was a short visit.

Other than that...look at the oranges our tree grew!!



And look at the chocolate strawberries David made me for Mother's Day!!



That is all.

Cinco de Mini

Cinco de Mayo was race day for us: we took a trip to Indy to run the Mini.  This is probably David's 15th time doing it?  It's my 2nd.  In any case, just getting to Indianapolis was an adventure for us.  We left early in the morning Friday to get to Indy in time to pick up our race packets (this includes our all-important race numbers, without which we would not be allowed to even enter the race course and would hence make our trip completely pointless).  Packet pickup goes until 9pm so we figured we were giving ourselves plenty of time.

But then.

We've all been there: you board the plane and it backs away from the gate and just sits there.  We watched the minutes tick away, and right about the time we decided we might just barely make our connection in Memphis if we were to leave right at that moment, the pilot announced that we're going back to the gate to check out some electrical something or other.  No big deal, we've got smartphones!! David took pictures of our packet info and IDs and emailed them to his sister so she can pick up our goodies for us if needed (she, fortunately enough, was also headed to Indy to run this thing).  We knew the next flight out of Memphis would get us to there too late, so I got on the phone with Delta and rebooked us to a different flight that would be leaving Los Angeles later, but would still get us there before packet pickup ended.  Problem solved, and we weren't even back to the gate yet.

But when we got back to the gate, they wouldn't let us get off the plane.

They let some folks deplane who were headed to Orlando, but they literally stood in front of the door and refused to let us get off.  They said this flight had to get going so there wasn't enough time (for us to walk past them off the plane?), and besides, there were no more seats available on any flights to Indy.  They were deaf to our explanations that there were no more seats available because we had just claimed the last two.

It was infuriating.  To add insult to injury, after we returned to our seats we sat there for another 15 minutes while they allowed everyone going to Miami to also get off the plane, and then they upgraded a few people to first class.

Sure enough, we missed our connection, and sure enough, we got to Indy too late to pick up our packets.  (Thank you Camille and Mike for doing that for us!)  While we were stuck in Memphis we called Delta and got half our skymiles back, thankyouverymuch.

Enough about that.

Race day was hot and humid.  My least favorite running conditions.  I was dripping after mile 2, and the sun wasn't even fully up yet.  But those Indy-ites are smart.  They had some little arches you could run through every couple miles that were spraying water.  I took full advantage of those, as well as every opportunity I could find to dump water on my head at the water stops.  I also had a killer running mix I that had put together to distract myself.

And that's how I had what I felt was my best half marathon yet.

Not that it was the fastest, I just felt the best...unless you count the last mile - the "victory mile," which completely destroyed me.  It's just a long straight stretch where you can see the finish line up ahead but it never seems to get any closer - and I couldn't stop running or I'd never start again.  And although I felt better than after any of my other races, I felt like I was going to black out from the moment I crossed the finish line.  I didn't even stop to get my picture taken with my gigantic medal, because I worried that if I stopped moving I would pass out.  I just inched along through the masses of people until I could sit on the ground and wait for everyone else to find me.  (David finished before me, but he was waiting for me at the finish line - I completely missed him because I was so focused on not losing consciousness.)

In any case, WE DID IT!  (in 1:59 and 2:04)

Doing our best to stay outside

I feel the need to count this as my first real summer in California. We were here for most of last summer, but we squandered it on the house hunt. This time around, we're serious about taking advantage of what So-Cal has to offer. And so far, it has been very good indeed.

 This month I turned 30. Whew. My 20s were good to me: I was a little sad to see them go. But I'm excited to see what the next 10 years have to offer. I had this vision of going abroad and being out of the country when I officially began decade #3...didn't happen.  Instead, David and I went boat diving around Anacapa in Channel Islands National Park (for those of you keeping track of our 2012 NP count, I think that's 7).

In short, when I turned 30 I went overseas, and then I went underseas. :)

This place was so incredibly beautiful. The sun was out, the temp was perfect, and the ocean water was oh-so freezing. But you can't beat the views down there.

Our first stop was on a side of the island where the sea lions like to hang out. Lots of 'em. As soon as people started jumping off the boat, all the sea lions swarmed into the water to play with us. They aren't shy, either. They'd swim right up to us and imitate what we do. It was pretty much unforgettable.

We saw some more life on our other dives - purple sea urchins, black and blue polka-dotted starfish, ginormous lobsters - but the most memorable was that we saw some teeny little jellyfish, no bigger than the palm of my hand - first I've ever seen on a dive. They looked so delicate and harmless, just coasting along, light as a feather, in the surge.

Did I mention that our diving boat was also amazing? We were on the Spectre. Not only did they feed us amazingly well (breakfast burritos, tri tip with baked potatoes and salad for lunch, and brownie sundaes to finish off the day), but this boat has a HOT TUB on board. It was a perfect way to counter-balance our chilly dips into the Pacific.

In any case, it was wonderful.

We've spent a couple other weekends hiking around the area. One weekend we went to Charmlee Wilderness Park in Malibu. It was a nice escape from the city.

 

While we were there, we saw some people filming some kind of spoof on the Hunger Games - specifically, the part where the Games are just beginning and everyone runs to the center to claim some booty and create as many casualties as possible...only in this case, their weapons of choice were swimming noodles. Kind of fun to see. Which reminds me, has everyone seen THIS spoof trailer of Hunger Games?



Our other hike was to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. We had a very dry winter, which led to not-as-lush hiking as we had in mind. On normal years I'm told the entire reserve looks like this:

But for us things were looking more like this:

Ah well. It was a beautiful day and very peaceful - and we left just in time to avoid the tour bus crowds. AND I had the unexpected surprise of seeing Joshua trees close-up.  Love them.

:)

Southwest parks in 5 days.....Ready.....GO!

It is a blustery, rainy day in So Cal, and David has just been whisked off to Korea for the week. It's a perfect day to curl up in a blanket, drink hot chocolate, and tell the tale of our epic national park adventures of yesterweek. Please forgive me for posting a bajillion pictures in the telling of the tale. The Southwest is just a seriously beautiful place.

I feel a timeline will best capture the insanity...

DAY 1: Leave after work and drive straight to David's Aunt Jane's place in St. George. Thanks to ever-reliable LA traffic, we made it there by 1:30am. And thanks to Aunt Jane, we got to sleep in a bed instead of having to set up camp in Zion.

Of course, we couldn't resist taking a drive down the strip as we passed through Vegas...

DAY 2: Zion National Park. I should say now that I have never before been to any of the parks we visited on this trip. It's kind of an embarrassment, given how close I was to these places all though college. But I've done what I can to make it right.

We took a little jaunt through a portion of the Narrows, because we're crazy.

The Narrows is 16 miles of river. So you're basically walking down a river on slick bowling ball-sized rocks. Given the season, the river was quite fast. And quite cold. And also magical.


We probably only did 1/2 of a mile of the Narrows. After all, we had to save our energies for the race the next day...

DAY 3: Canyonlands half marathon in Moab. David has done this particular race 9 or 10 times. It was my first. Which is the only explanation I can come up with for why he totally rocked the race, while, I, running by his side, was completely destroyed by it. I also blame my sissy sea-level lungs.

That said, sometimes I took a moment to look around, because the view was actually pretty spectacular.


As I mentioned before, we're crazy. Which is why, before the day was over, we popped on over to Arches National Park and hiked up to Delicate Arch.


DAY 4: Get up to see sunrise at Mesa Arch in Canyonlands. On the way out, get sidetracked by Negative Nancy at the front desk who tells us it's useless to try because it's foggy, and besides, the power is out. (Still trying to figure out why we would care about having power for a sunrise.) Start driving toward Canyonlands, then turn around once the rain starts and the wind picks up. Sneak past the front desk, and back to bed.

DAY 4 (second attempt): Back to Canyonlands. It was still foggy, and once we got deeper into the park, it started snowing. Undeterred, we kept driving along anyway to see some killer lookout points. When we got there, we were tickled that we could see this much:

And by the time we left, we could see THIS much!!




Next stop: Monument Valley in Navajo Country. This trip was a constant race against the clock in reaching our next destination in time for sunset, or before it got cloudy, or whatever. We made it again for this one:


We had planned to camp in the valley that night, but it was so bitter cold (there was a snowstorm that followed us for most of the trip) that we wimped out and found a hotel nearby. Same thing happened the next night. Frankly, I feel great about the decision.

DAY 5: Canyons. The first set was of the Antelope variety, outside of Page. This is upper Antelope:




And this is Lower Antelope - you literally crawl down through a crack in the earth to get there.




After that it was a quick jaunt (and another hike) to Horseshoe Bend...

...and then we were on our way to the next destination. Remember all those summer trips to Lake Powell? Turns out, all these things are right outside of Bullfrog Marina!! We were going to take a picture standing next to a Bullfrog sign, but we had places to be. (Remember that sunset deadline!)

Next stop: The Grand Canyon!

Please note the little bits of snow you see here and there along the rim. I was literally wearing 8 layers, with handwarmers inside my gloves. And I was still freezing. I feel kind of ignorant for not knowing it snowed at the Grand Canyon. Apparently it's not that atypical.

The plus side: nobody likes to hang out at the Grand Canyon right after a snowstorm! Much of the time, we basically had the place to ourselves.

DAY 6: Get up to watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon. This time, we were not foiled by the clouds.





After that it was just a long drive back to home sweet home, all the while scheming about when we can hit up another national park. We may or may not already have the next trip scheduled. It seems we've got the bug.

:)