travels, races, and other musings

Pre-Race I had really mixed feelings headed into this race. I was just coming off Marble Falls half a few weeks before and I honestly didn’t train overly much in the weeks between, so mentally, I felt uncertain about where I might be. However, in the workouts the week leading up to the race, I felt really strong so I thought maybe I could have a good race. I didn’t have any specific goals other than swim, bike and run splits faster than the same race the year before. Unfortunately, the weather was looking iffy and I couldn’t help but think about CapTexTri from 2007 which was completely rained out before it was even underway. Race morning dawned with light rain and I obsessively checked social media to find out what was going to happen, sort of hoping for an hour delay so I could get a little more sleep. But the rain seemed to clear and the race was on so I headed off to the race site. I got all my stuff set up and headed over to the swim entrance to wait for an hour and twenty minut

Supercalifragilistic Breakfast and Home Remember how I said I was a super planner? Somehow I didn’t properly calculate transportation times to our breakfast 1900 Park Fare at the Grand Floridian Resort. I gave us about 50 minutes, which would have been okay, I think, but when we got to the bus stop after dropping all our baggage with bell services at the resort, there was a HUGE line for the Magic Kingdom busses. We knew we wouldn’t make it on the next bus, or even the next after that and possibly not the next after that. I told Roger that I knew the monorail ran from Epcot and an Epcot bus was coming, so we should just go there. Well, unfortunately, that morning, the Epcot bus also stopped at Port Orleans French Quarter (a sort of sister resort to Port Orleans Riverside) and then by the time we got to Epcot, it was already getting really late. By the time we got to the Transportation and Ticketing Center, transferred to the monorail to the resorts and go to the restaurant, we were n

The Magic Kingdom I’m a planner and we had a solid plan for the morning at Magic Kingdom. We woke up and had breakfast at our resort. After breakfast, we went to grab a shuttle to the Magic Kingdom. The first one filled up but we made it aboard the second and we were through bag check and in the gate by 8:20 or so. We had good spots for the opening show which started at 8:40 and by 8:55 we were walking up Main Street. We followed the plan, hitting the following rides before lunch: Peter Pan’s Flight Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Tomorrowland Speedway The Barnstormer Dumbo Anna and Elsa meet Journey of the Little Mermaid Gaston meet Seven Dwarves Mine Train It’s a Small World Peter Pan was a walk on and Pooh almost was. I sat out on Tomorrowland Speedway (I rode with with her last time) and it had a 20 minute posted wait, but I’m pretty sure that they waited less than 15 minutes. Barnstormer was our test to see how Emmaline would handle a roller coaster. It didn’t

Disembarkation and Epcot The ship pulled into Port Canaveral around 6:15 AM and there was a LOT of vibration as it backed into port and it seemed to take a lot longer than our other dockings. I got up and showered and we finished packing everything before waking Emmaline up to go to breakfast. On the way down I picked up our photo CD. On the last day, you dine in the same dining room as the night before and you are attended by the same serving team. It was great to see Nue and the assistant server Agus one last time. We had a nice little breakfast before it was time to head to the main lobby to get off the ship. We headed off the ship and down to the lower level to pick up our luggage and then make our way through customs. The line was exceedingly long and it took us quite awhile to get through it. Before heading out of the secure area, I asked if we could head back up to the main terminal to use the penny press machine (we had forgotten on the way in). I was worried we wouldn’t be a

Castaway Cay We woke up to the ship docking at Castaway Cay. It was a beautiful sunny day and the water looked amazing. It was just absolutely gorgeous. I made a quick run up to Cabanas to grab a few pastries to tide us over so we could go meet princesses and then Roger headed off the ship to run the Castaway Cay 5k. Emmaline and I arrived 20 minutes early to the princess gathering and there was already a really big line. It was really cute though how the princesses made a grand entrance down the big staircase in the lobby. We met all the princesses in attendance (Tiana, Snow White, Ariel, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Belle) and were done with that around 9:20 at which time, we went up to Cabanas to have some more breakfast. We sat outside (I didn’t realize there was an outdoor seating area until the last day - bummer) and enjoyed the absolutely incredible view of the island. You can literally see the entire island from up there! It was amazing to see the sparkling blue water and the san

Nassau We awoke to the rumblings of the ship docking in Nassau. From a distance, it looks charming and the water is beautiful and blue. Many people don’t even get off the ship in Nassau, but we at least wanted to experience a new place so we got off. I was sort of ready to be off the ship for a bit anyway. We ate breakfast at Cabanas and headed out. I thought I would feel better off the ship, but once on land, the ground was rolling and tilting in my perception. We went through the visitors center and we were accosted by various people offering tours and water taxis (mostly to Atlantis). We continued on and were accosted by a man offering buggy tours. We were interested in one and we also wanted to go to the pirate museum so we haggled him down to $30 for the three of us and climbed aboard. Our driver was hard to understand (and hear) and the tour was hindered due to it being a national holiday in the Bahamas. We didn’t know before leaving, but the first Friday in June is Labor

Travel and Embarkation Day I'm not actually sure where I got the notion to take a Disney cruise, but somehow I got it in my brain that it would be great fun! So on Wednesday June 4, 2014, when Emmaline was about a month shy of 6 years old, we departed from Austin in the afternoon, arriving into Orlando in the late evening. We picked up some dinner in the airport food court before checking into a room at the Hyatt Hotel located inside the airport terminal. It was convenient, clean and comfortable. On Thursday, we woke up in the morning and got ready to go. I had packed a packing cube with just the items we would need for embarkation morning so we wouldn’t have to repack everything. We needed to be ready for our luggage to get picked up from the room by 8:30 AM. We finished just in time as they came to collect our luggage to take to the ship for us. We headed back to the same food court for breakfast and then made our way to the bus service from the airport to the terminal. The f

Pre-Race Roger and I drove to Marble Falls the day before the race, picked up my packet, attended a pre-race meeting, racked my bike and checked in to our hotel. I don’t ordinarily attend pre-race meetings, but since this one was going to have two separate transition areas, I wanted to make sure I understood all the logistics before the race. Race morning we headed over to T2 first where I dumped my run stuff, then Roger took me back over to the swim start/T1. I thought for a moment that I had left my bike computer in my bag at T2 and had a momentary freak out because I didn’t think there was going to be time to get back over there. However, everything ended up being okay as the night before I apparently had been worried that future me would forget it (and I did) and so I put it in another bag I knew was headed for T1/swim start. Whew. I did manage to leave my body glide, however. Thankfully I spotted Karen and asked her if I could use some of hers on my neck for my wetsuit (