travels, races, and other musings

Travel and Disney Springs For our 25th anniversary, we knew we wanted to take a Disney cruise. (I mean, it seems like we pretty much always want to take a Disney cruise.) We've cruised multiple times over the years to celebrate our anniversary and we wanted to check out Disney's new private island area, Lookout Cay. We decided to make it a big trip and tack on a couple of days at Disney World at the end.  We were originally going to fly in the day before the cruise, which was our actual anniversary (January 9) and have a nice dinner before embarking the next morning, but the weather forecast was looking concerning with a chance of icy weather. So we changed our flights, booked an extra night at our hotel and left a day early. It was a little hectic getting out that day, but we made it and arrived late in the evening in Orlando on Wednesday night. We took a Lyft to the Polynesian and found our room, got ourselves sorted out and went to bed.  The next morning we were able to sle...

It was our last day so we had a fairly leisurely morning. I went to another workout with trainer extraordinaire, Tyrus who took us through a beach kettlebell workout. Once again, his programming was top notch and the workout was accessible for all levels but also challenging. I showered and we finished packing, checking out pretty much on the dot at 11 AM.  We drove to Cameo's parents house and dropped off baggage for safekeeping, picked up Jeff and we were off to the windward side of the island (east). Cameo stayed behind to spend some one on one time with her mom. Our first stop was to  Island Snow , President Obama's favorite shave ice and also inexplicably, a clothing shop. Emmaline had her final shave ice of the trip. I was saving myself for a coffee. After shave ice (and Jeff bought hat) we headed off to a recommended local coffee shop and had some really not great coffee that made me wish I'd had that last shave ice. Oh well, you win some you lose some and we helped ...

On Saturday I decided to try one of the workouts at Aulani. I had signed up online in advance but it really wasn't necessary. There was plenty of space. It was a beach bootcamp and we did some stuff up on the (shaded) grassy area and then we would run down and back up the beach. It was challenging but fun and the trainer was great. I was impressed.  We ate lunch at the resort and then met up with Jeff and Cameo to drive into Honolulu to go to Iolani Palace . I'm usually really good at researching stuff but their website wasn't clear to me that you needed to have a reserved time. However, it wasn't a huge deal because we were able to get a time slot about 30 minutes after we arrived. Unfortunately that meant that we didn't put enough money in the parking meter so I sort of ended up racing through the second part of the upper floor to get back in time to get the car.  It was a nice audio tour, however, and we all enjoyed our time there learning more about the rise and...

Roger and I started our day with another BODYPUMP class with my new instructor friend Katie at 24 Hour Fitness in Kapolei. There was another instructor there too and we all became fast friends. Katie asked where we were staying and I told her Aulani and she said she worked across the street at Monkeypod. By coincidence, we already had dinner reservations over there for that very evening. How funny! After class we returned to Aulani, showered and changed and went to pick up Jeff and Cameo at her parents house. It was nice to see her parents again. They are lovely people and we met them at Christmas a couple of years back. After Cameo's mom loaded us up with waters we started out for the North Shore, stopping first at Island X Hawaii for a little local shopping along the way. Emmaline got (another) shave ice while we picked up some local coffee, chocolate and other souvenirs.  After that, we got back in the car to see if we could find some turtles. We went to a beach where Cameo sai...

I wasn't sure how this day was going to shake out. I made a lot of these plans before Emmaline boarded the struggle bus but she said she would give it all a try, especially since she tried to take it easy the day before. We got up at 6 AM because we needed to leave by 7 AM to make sure we would arrive at Diamond Head for our reservation between 8:00-8:30 AM. They only take so many reservations in advance and I decided earlier would be better before it got too hot.  We left right on time, encountered minimal traffic on the way, and arrived right on time. It's a good thing we went early because it was already getting really hot out as we started the 1.6 mile round trip journey up, around, and back down Diamond Head. We were rewarded with fantastic views and even though I could tell it was getting a little hard at times, Emmaline did great. Unfortunately, someone else did not. A young woman (20s?) had fainted and was regaining consciousness when we got near the top. Someone was on...

Roger and I started the day with a visit to a nearby 24 Hour Fitness for a BODYPUMP class. It was a good class and the instructor was super nice. The parking lot of the gym was the same as the one we were at the previous night with the Milky Cereal Bar, Japanese restaurant, grocery store, and Budget car rental. So we went over to the Budget to see what could be done about our car situation. The lady there was super nice and helped us get a more suitable car, for which we were grateful. While we were gone, Emmaline met some characters. When we got back, we all went down to the pools and had some fun with the lazy river and slides. We also ate lunch at the Snack Shack next to the pool which was...fine. After that I went up to the room to grab our laundry and get that started since we were running low on clean clothes. While the laundry was going, I walked across the street to grab some coffee then went back to the pool, book in hand to enjoy my coffee and book. Roger and Emmaline took a ...

We woke up early, finished packing and got an Uber Long Beach airport. The Uber driver was uber chatty and we...were not. When we got to the airport there was a huge line of people trying to check bags and some people were cranky and it was a whole thing but we were plenty early so it was no problem except that we sort of wanted to get some food. After we got into the airport I raced to get into the long line at the coffee shop/bakery and ended up getting us some bagels just in the nick of time before we boarded.  The flight was pretty uneventful and we arrived on time, got our bags and went to get our rental car, which ended up being this giant Jeep thing and the lady was really rude when I went back and asked for what I had actually reserved. She said they didn't have anything else. So we took the giant Jeep thing.  Our first step was to Bogart's in Honolulu for some lunch. Emmaline and Roger had acai bowls and I had a quinoa bowl and everything was really good. I think, ul...