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Journey with Summer

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Welcome! In my life I have taken many journeys and I have many more to come! On this blog you'll find a repository of all my trip reports from various vacations as well as race reports from a range of different running, triathlon and open water swim races, my cancer journey, my fitness journey, and other musings and thoughts as I navigate this journey of life! This post contains an index (and links to) all the travel and race reports on this blog. For other topics, you can search or click a tag from any entry to see all entries tagged with that topic. Enjoy and happy travels!

4-Night Western Caribbean Cruise from Galveston - Day 5 Disembarkation and Final Thoughts

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Disembarkation I woke up at 7 AM, showered, got everyone else up and we all finished getting ready and packing. We got ready somehow in record time and had some time to chill before breakfast. I feel like this was our least stressful disembarkation morning in memory. I think we're getting the hang of it. I think it helps to hang on to one regular suitcase to put everything we have left into. We used to try to stuff things into little bags and stuff and it was a mess. We just leave the suitcase outside the restaurant. It works fine.  We ate breakfast at Lumiere's and then tried to find a bathroom that didn't have a mile long line. We finished up, joined the line to disembark, which was growing shorter by the moment and went to find our other suitcase before proceeding to border control and out the door. Then we bypassed the insanely long line for people waiting for a parking lot shuttle and walked the one minute walk to our car in the express lot. Worth. Every. Penny.  Final

4-Night Western Caribbean Cruise from Galveston - Day 4 At Sea

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I actually really like sea days. When I was a new cruiser, I wasn't so sure about them, but now I find that they can bring a nice balance between activities and relaxation. I woke up at 7 AM before anyone else, put on my workout gear and headed for the gym. It was surprisingly not busy once again. I found a piece of real estate, of which there is quite a lot compared to the larger ships in Disney's fleet. The gym on "The Classics" is definitely the best with the best view.  After my workout I went up to Deck 9 to grab a snack since Roger was just beginning his run, having slept in a bit. Around 9 AM I went back to the room and showered then Roger returned and showered and then we went to breakfast at Cabana's.  After breakfast we returned to the room to regroup before setting out for Star Wars trivia. Emmaline went off to hang out with her friends. We didn't do too badly at Star Wars trivia (but not good either). Then it was time for another drawing class, thi

4-Night Western Caribbean Cruise from Galveston - Day 3 Progreso, Mexico

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If you've read any of my previous trip reports you know that we don't usually book ship sponsored tours. But the port situation in Progreso is a little unique and the main tour that we wanted was also offered as a DCL sponsored excursion at around the same price so we just decided to push the easy button and book the tour through DCL: Mayapan Ruins, Lazy River Tubing and Cave Swim.  Our meeting time was 8:30 in the Walt Disney Theatre so we woke up at 7 AM, had breakfast at Cabana's and arrived right at 8:30. We waited there for about 15 minutes where about three full rows of people arrived for our tour and I worried that we made a horrible mistake.  They took us off row by row and we loaded onto tour buses of about 40-45 people per bus. From there we drove for about an hour to  Cenotes Hacienda Mucuyché . On the way, one of our tour guides explained the region, the people, how the cenotes were formed, what was farmed at the haciendas in the area (a certain species of agave

4-Night Western Caribbean Cruise from Galveston - Day 2 At Sea

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At Sea I usually get up early and go to the gym or running on Deck 4. I must have been really tired because I slept all the way until 7:30 which is really unusual for me. I rolled out of bed, tossed on my workout costume and headed for the gym which was dead. Only about four other people were there. Weird. I did my workout there while Roger ran on Deck 4 and then went back to the room and showered. We got Emmaline up and went to breakfast at Lumiere’s.  After breakfast Emmaline went to meet up with her friends, Roger went to the room and I decided to go to drawing class. It said that it was going to be Mickey. Even though I have taken a Mickey drawing class before I figured it was always good to practice. I was happy to find that this was a slightly different version of Mickey and I was also a little disappointed to find that it wasn’t a live teacher doing the class, but instead a video. Womp womp. I get that they can’t always have members of the entertainment team that can draw really

4-Night Western Caribbean Cruise from Galveston - Day 1 Embarkation Day

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Embarkation We seem to like cruising in January. To be honest, it's nice to get away after all the craziness of the holidays. And our anniversary is in January so we get to celebrate with a little vacation. In fact, we've already booked for our anniversary for next year!  As for this one, we decided to push the easy button and sail out of Galveston once again. Even though the itineraries aren't usually super compelling, we decided to give Progreso a try since we'd never been there and we found some interesting looking excursions we thought we could do. And we haven't been on the Magic in over five years so it seemed like time.  We left the house around 8:30 in the morning. We had originally intended to leave earlier. You never know what the traffic will be like, especially through Houston. We made good time though, even with two stops for bathrooms, snacks and gas (so we wouldn’t have to get any on the way home). We arrived at the port at 12:30. Last time we paid to

Fitness Instructor Journey, Part 4: Unbreakable

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It's been one year since I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Not that this is something to celebrate, but it's going to be a hard day to forget for the rest of my life. As I've said previously, I'm not an "everything happens for a reason" person but I do find that sometimes the course of our lives can shift in unexpected ways when we face great challenges.  As I stood on the podium this morning to teach my BODYCOMBAT class, I couldn't help but reflect on the fact that if I had not faced the challenge of having cancer, I likely would not have ever become a BODYCOMBAT institutor. Taking that journey was far outside my comfort zone and not something I ever thought I would do.  When I started working for Fitness Connection 5 years ago, I took a BODYPUMP class for the first time and immediately fell in love with it. I loved the music and how it made me feel. I had a big goofy grin on my face the whole class. I also took a BODYCOMBAT class. I did not love it. I

10-Night France, Iceland, and Norway Cruise - Day 17 Copenhagen to Austin and Final Thoughts

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Copenhagen to Austin We woke up at 3:15 AM to be out the door by 3:45 AM to make it to the airport at least two hours early for our 7:25 AM flight. Yay. While I was finishing up the last of the packing, Roger said that we had an email from British Airways. Our flight was delayed by two hours. We all piled back into bed with our clothes on and set an alarm for two hours later.  We woke up (again) at 5:45 and hauled our stuff to the train station. There was a 6:27 train to the airport so that worked out really well. We were at the airport by 6:50 but the checkin wasn’t open and things were confusing because they had us stand in a line to “rebook” us and I kept telling them we didn’t need to rebook and I finally heard them letting other people check in for our flight and I asked why we couldn’t and she said, “well, we need to rebook you because you’ll miss your connection.” I explained that, no, we wouldn’t, as our connection wasn’t until 11:45 AM so then she finally let us check in and g

10-Night France, Iceland, and Norway Cruise - Day 16 Copenhagen, Denmark

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Copenhagen For our final morning in Copenhagen, I booked us a time slot for Rosenborg Castle. Timed entry is required for this castle, even with a Copenhagen card. It didn’t cost anything and I just had to show verification of our timed entry upon arrival and then our Copenhagen cards. I chose the first slot at 10 AM when they opened and it was absolutely the right call. We practically had the place to ourselves and by the time we were leaving, the place was starting to get really busy.  We spent about an hour at Rosenborg and we all agreed that we liked it better than Christianborg. So if you are ever in Copenhagen and you only have time for one castle, pick Rosenborg. It’s older and somewhat smaller, but still really impressive and beautiful in its own way. There’s also a vault in the basement with an impressive array of royal…stuff, including the crown jewels of Denmark. I have pretty mixed feelings these days about crown jewels (colonizers, yay…) but they were still interesting to

10-Night France, Iceland, and Norway Cruise - Day 15 Copenhagen, Denmark

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Copenhagen Nobody slept particularly well. The beds weren’t super comfortable and the room temperature wasn’t quite right. I always sleep well on the ship but this bed just didn’t feel right. It was like sleeping on a trampoline. Every time Roger moved, I felt every little tiny adjustment like a ripple across the bed. It was awful.  So we slept in a bit and got up around 8 AM and went down to breakfast which was included at the hotel. It was a decent breakfast, actually. Many things about the hotel were great, like how close it was to the central train station. We hopped on the metro and went to get tickets for the 10 AM canal boat tour. I had purchased the Copenhagen Card prior to the trip. With the card we paid around $300 for the three of us for three days to have unlimited public transportation and entrance into just about every museum, castle, and attraction you could imagine in and around Copenhagen. We probably saved close to $100 by using the Copenhagen card as opposed to buyi