Now I'm all caught up, hopefully I'll avoid falling behind again for a while.
Friday, January 31, 2014
1/28/2014-1/31/2014
My life is starting to slow down and get back to normal. I flew home Tuesday morning at 6am. So I am now back in Melbourne. I have not missed a workout since Monday which means at least 2 hours of ironman training every day this week. I have so done tons of laundry cleaning, studing and house work as well. My highlights were rock climbing Wednesday, catching up with Kat on Thursday evening, seeing Frozen Friday morning, and belated birthday dinner with friends Friday evening. Slightly productive, more just getting into a routine.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
1/23/2014-1/27/2014
Santos Tour Down Under and Adelaide
After getting back to Melbourne, I repacked
and had a quick turn around to South Australia for the weekend. I got into Adelaide at 10am which gave me
time to reassemble my bike and go to the bike expo before my host for the
weekend(Damien) got done with work. A cool new
bike for anyone who is looking is this year’s Trek TT(Speed concept 7 and Speed
concept 9) which minimizes wind resistance from both the front and the side. We
went out for dinner at the Unley bike festival and then went to bed early to be
ready for the ride in the morning.
Friday morning we started the Bupa
challenge at 6:30. The Bupa challenge is 154km and follows one of the stages of
the Tour Down Under.
We rode in the morning the pros did it in the afternoon. I
struggled a little bit. I think it was more from jet lag and less from lack of
fitness but I could be wrong. There was a guy along the route with a banner that said, "I love Madeleine's" so we stopped for a photo. (Forgive us for looking sloppy it was the top of a hill)
So I’m
going to start training harder next week.
At the finish we ate lunch and played in the ocean. A channel 9 news reporter saw us and took a
video of us standing in the water. After seeing the awards for the day we rode
another 50km to our accommodation for the night. I really struggled. There was a surprise
uphill and I was not having any of it. I think that it was mostly mental
fatigue, slowly and surely we made it to McLaren. Dinner in McLaren was
amazing. I don’t know if the food was really spectacular or if I was just that
hungry but I really enjoyed it. We stayed at a cute bed and breakfast with
amazing breakfast. I had cereal, yogurt, fruit salad, eggs, toast, and
tomatoes. After breakfast we headed out on our bikes to do a winery tour. The
bikes hurt a bit but it eased up after a few hours. We went to 3 wineries and
bought 7 bottles of wine. After the wineries we went into the main part of the
city to watch the Tour down under. We saw them twice once at a café and once on
a long uphill of the last loop.
Sunday we celebrated Australia day and were
a bit lazier. Breakfast, then the
farmer’s market before going to see the end of the tour down under. The last
stage was a 50 lap course so the riders passed by every few minutes. They
zoomed around the track looking relaxed. We got stuck on the wrong side and
just missed seeing the finish. To make up for our bad placement during the race
we found the best place possible for the awards. Lying on the grass on an
island in the middle of a pond we watched the presentation while eating
strawberries. Then Cadel Evans 5m away from us in slow motion with no helmet
on. It was incredible.
Monday was another early morning we had a
9am appointment in port Adelaide to Kayak with Dolphins in Mangroves. The
dolphins were beautiful but I of course liked the mangroves better.
I think
that I had replenished my energy after the bike ride because I was paddling
relatively lightly while my partner relaxed in the back seat and we were
beating everyone else by miles.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
1/3/2014-1/22/2014
So I was in the United States for 18 days and I was really
bad about blogging, mostly because I was doing so much driving.
I started by going to Homestead hot springs
with my sister Abbie and my friend Christie. It was a lovely relaxing weekend
at the spa, for me at least.
Then I went to Morgantown, WV to enjoy the
polar vortex. I really wanted to go snow
boarding for my birthday on the 7th but it was so cold that I only
managed about 3 hours before giving up.
I did have a fantastic ice cream cake from cold stone. It was sweet cream with cookie dough and a
fudge center, covered in chocolate. It
was nothing like I imagined but still delicious.
On the 8th I headed to Missouri to
visit my mom and grandparents where they live about an hour outside St.
Louis. It was an extremely long drive
but my plans weren’t organized enough to fly.
My sisters (Gillie and Rachel) were there until the 10th
along with Rachel’s boyfriend Seth. We had a nice couple days of playing Plague and watching My Little Pony. It
was great to see everyone.
On my way back from Missouri I stopped in
Cincinnati to visit my friend Jessi. We talked and ate pizza while she finished
making guitar straps to sell at a guitar show the next day. I joined her at the guitar show in Columbus
and helped her to sell straps. It was tons of fun. You can see her straps on
Etsy and at http://www.nowherebear.com
. The designs are premade but she does the rest of the sewing and leather-work
herself.
I headed back to WV for a running date with
Bethan who I hadn’t seen since high school.
Then I went to Washington/Baltimore for a
visit to Chrisite, Sherri, and Erica. I
think Connor was even bigger than he was last time I visited Christie earlier
this month. He grows so fast!
I stopped in State College to visit Heather
on my way over to Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh I had brunch with Sean, got food
poisoning, did some shopping & banking, curled up on Gillie’s sofa, and
then met my friends after their run. It was Kevin’s birthday so there was cake
and more friends than usual. I briefly
visited Monica before she had to go to bed. We made plans to meet up for lunch
but I had a persisting stomach ache and slept through it.
With my visit almost over I had a few days
back in WV to pack, ski and make cheesecake. I had a lovely lunch of cheesecake
and soup with Gillie and her housemate Rachel for my last full day in the
US.
On Monday I had one last ski and 1 last
burger at Burgatory before heading back to Australia.
The flight back was long and the flight
attendant in my area was rude. We ran into trouble in Sydney after a wasted 5
hours of sitting on the plane and hoping to get things fixed, they transferred us
to Qantas. Qantas is a very nice airline. ipad entertainment in every seat…..
And 31 hours after take off I made in to Melbourne.
It was so great to see my friends and
family. You’re all wonderful. Sorry for anyone I wasn’t able to catch up with.
Hopefully I will be able to next time. Now that I’m back in Oz I’ll be better.
Friday, January 3, 2014
1/2/2014
I was up at 5:30 and out the door by 6am:
partially because I was excited to be going home, partially because I was
uncertain about my transportation. I
took a bus to the train station, missed my stop and had to walk back to the
train station. I found that my train
wasn’t running and took the replacement shuttle on the other side of the
station….So much walking with heavy bags.
I got to the airport 4 hours before my
flight which gave me time to find alternative arrangements…My flight was
cancelled. Not the whole thing just the Newark to Pittsburgh portion. I wasn’t keen on spending the night in NJ so
I called and looked and developed plan B, C, and D.
My flight was about standard. We had in
seat monitors again so I watched Gatsby, Epic, Enough Said, and I love you
man…None of which I had seen before. I again booked well and had an empty seat
next to me unfortunately the girl from the isle seat took it so I still had a
person next to me. It was fine, she was
on birthright and was fun to talk to.
When I got into Newark the roads were
starting to get bad and there were no hotels available in the area so I got a
train to Washington DC. I was able to
stay the night with Christie and Doug because they are absolutely the best
ever.
1/1/2014
At the empty bar last night I had asked for
a breakfast recommendation for my last day in Tel Aviv. I was told to go to café Sonya, that it’s an
absolute gem. I looked it up on trip
advisor and walked the 4km there to find that I was in the warehouse district
nowhere near the café. Then I walked to
a bus station to realize that the second location was incorrect too. I finally
found in at about 12:30 by which time I was starving. The recommendation was a good one. It is a
small café with a garden patio. They gave me tea to start with then I got an
amazing Israeli breakfast and Chi tea.
It was delicious. After that I did a bit of shopping and walking. I went to visit Estella who had made me leave
a bag of things at her place in so that I would have to visit. I spent an hour showing her pictures,
discussing my trip, and discussing her week. She asked for my honest un-bias
opinion of whether Jordanians or Israelis were nicer and I told her that the
Jordanians were much kinder. She didn’t
appreciate that. Knowing that it was my last night in Israel I went in search
of Laffa. Yummy, yummy Laffa. Worth the mile I needed to walk to get it.
12/31/2013
I was going to do the tour of the old city
that I had missed yesterday but changed my mind and did the New City
again. I found it very difficult to
travel around the old city as a single woman.
I should have pretended to be married but I think my general curiosity
paired with the fact that I was a lone female is what gave me trouble. Anyway I
was exhausted by the old city and went to the New City instead. The New City is predominately Jewish. I went
to Mt. Hertzl, the Knesset and then the Museum of Art. The museum of art was
actually really good. I saw many of the originals that I had seen the replicas
of yesterday. They also had a fantastic
Escher exhibit and some really good modern art.
It’s not MONA but it is a good art Museum. I wish I had spent more time there. Much
better than the museum in Tel Aviv.
At 4pm I got a bus back to Tel Aviv. It was really busy so I had to wait for a few
buses. I got into my new place just
before 7pm. I met Nicholas my host. He was lovely. I recommend airB&B when you travel. My 2 experiences since Estella have been just
lovely. After meeting Nicholas I
showered quickly and met friend for drinks.
All of the bars were really crowed for New Years. We stayed out till
11:30pm before my friends left since they had to work in the morning. I walked along the beach and decided to get a
drink in a bar that was much less crowed than expected. At about 12:05 I went out to the beach with a
small group of random people and we had a count down. It was very low key. Tel Aviv refuses to do
fireworks claiming that New Years is a Christian holiday(though it totally
isn’t) Counting from 10-1 was enough for me so I headed home and was asleep at
around 1am. It was low key but fun.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)