Trips Galore!

Today I felt a whole lot like the official travel agent of the Blankenheim household. First thing this morning, I booked our trip to San Diego for the San Diego Rock 'n' Roll marathon. Hotel - check, flight - check, rental car - check. We had talked about the pros and cons of driving versus flying and decided that it was well worth the extra money to take the flight so that I don't have to endure the 9+ hour road trip.

Speaking of running, I did pretty darned well this week. My total mileage for the week was 17 miles - 10 during the week at the gym and 7 yesterday outside on a trail near our house. I'm sore and tired, but a good sore and tired.

I decided that today would be a cross train day, so I headed to the pool for the first time since our wedding. It felt so good to get back in the water and I can't think of anything that feels better to stretch out those sore joints and muscles than a good swim.

Mike and I did a ton of researching and narrowing down of what we want to do while we're in Europe for sabbatical. I think the two of us could spend decades over there exploring! We've settled on a few key things that we want to do.

We've basically decided to do a great big clockwise circle through France. We're flying into Berne, Switzerland to go visit Interlaken. Specifically, we're there to see Jungfrau, one of the highest points in Europe. The whole valley is supposed to be absolutely amazing and they have a cool little train that takes you up to the top where they have this great observatory with amazing views:

We'll spend a few days exploring the valley area before we head into France... ready to tackle the Alpe d'Huez. This is one of the most fabled climbs in the Tour de France and is something we want to tackle while we're there. I might die, so it's a good thing we're going to see something pretty before we get there.

From there we plan to head down to Southern France to watch the Col du Tourmalet stage of the Tour de France. This is one of the big mountain stages and if we can battle past the motor homes that will probably be camped out for weeks before, we might get a good spot.

After a couple days in the South, we're going to head North to Normandy. This is one of the places that Kati and I did not make during our trip a couple years ago and I'm so super excited to go see it.

Finally, we're going to end our trip in Paris - we'll spend 4 or 5 days there and are hoping to camp out to get a good spot to see the finish of the Tour.

I can't wait!!!

San Francisco

What a fun weekend!

Friday was my lia sophia jewelry party. Lots of people showed up and Brigitte did an amazing job! I'm so excited - I'm getting lots of cool jewelry!

On Saturday Brigitte, Amber, Kristine and I headed out to San Francisco for the day. We purchased "hop on, hop off" trolley passes - they take you around the city and give you all of the historical details. It was a blast. We started at Pier 39 and went to Ghiradelli Square (yum), through some of the most beautiful houses, to Union Square, through Chinatown, and back to the pier. The kicker was we decided we were going to hop on, ride for the whole tour, then get back on and stop at the places we wanted to see. Apparently that's not the deal with the hop on hop off plan - you only get to go once. So we got a little sneaky and walked to Ghiradelli Square and hopped on there, with a different driver. He had no idea we had already been on the rest of the tour - just thought we had hopped off and were getting back on. Dang it, we got our $18 worth! Here's a pic of the walk to the trolley - we went past all of the little shops along the Bay and decided this pirate needed a little lovin':



After that, we spent a good deal of time at Union Square, looking at all of the things we can't afford. It was actually fun. We went to Macy's, Tiffany's, the Coach Store, and the H&M store. For some reason, I thought H&M would be expensive (after all, Madonna is their new spokesperson), but it was actually quite affordable. Brigitte got the cutest little wool skirt! We shopped for most of the day. At about 4:15pm (we had been there since about 10am) we realized that the trolley service might actually have a cut off time. Brigitte called, only to discover that the last trolley back from Union Square was at 4pm (although, I believe this to be a lie on the part of the trolley service - we saw one go by later as we trekked back). We decided to get our exercise and to walk back to the Pier. It's a LONG walk. We went through Chinatown along the way:



It's not all it's cracked up to be. I can't ever remember having been there before, but it was smelly and mostly junk. Along the way we went past one of the cutest cars I've seen in a while:



We made it back to the Pier and ate dinner at the Hard Rock cafe. After dinner we walked around the Pier, saw the sea lions and got some great shots of the sunset:




We then ended up in a hat store with the giggles. We didn't buy any of them, but we definitely left with sore tummies from laughing!








We left the city at around 8:30pm and began the trek home. Somewhere near Vacaville, my "check tire pressure" light came on. I pulled off the freeway at the one exit that didn't have a gas station, so we had to hunt for one. I filled my tire and we got back on the road - only to hit a DUI checkpoint. Obviously, no issue, but we did see someone getting arrested. Boo for them! By the time I got home it was 10:30pm. What a long (but totally fun) day!

I slept in until 9:45am today - I think that's some sort of record for me! This week was just exhausting! I spent the rest of the day being sluggish and lazy. I blame the weather - it was chilly and overcast for most of the day. I managed to get in a good run this morning (definitely like running in 65 degrees vs the 90 degrees that I was running in last week!) and did pretty much nothing the rest of the day. It was great!

Land of the Cacti

Ok, sorry to all you "Zonies", but I officially do not like Arizona. Yesterday's trip was hellish. First things first, I got up at 4am. That sucks. A lot. No matter how much I pretend it's a vacation. Then I got a big old Starbucks mocha at the airport, drank it and then got on the plane. The coffee hit bottom about 20 minutes into our flight and my stomach decided that it did not like coffee at 5am. So I felt sick for the next two and a half hours.

We arrived at 8:30am and it was a balmy 92 degrees. Lovely. Our rental car was a black Kia with black leather interior. We were later told by the guys we went to lunch with that no one in Arizona does black leather seats. Shame on Hertz. Later in the afternoon we reached 113 scorching degrees.

The best part of the day was the plane ride home. If you recall a few weeks ago, we had an aborted flight to Arizona due to "electrical failure". Back to yesterday - we get on the plane at 8:30pm. We taxi out toward the runway when suddenly all of the engines shut down. The flight attendants are huddled in the back of the plane, standing on the seats and looking above the overhead compartments. The pilot comes on and says that we had smoke on the back of the plane and were going back to the gate to have it checked out. One hour (and a dozen mechanics) later they assure us that we can take off. I asked the flight attendant if she was sure and she told me that the pilot had "reved the engine too fast, causing it to smoke and the air conditioning sucked that smoke in". Nice. Who built the plane, Pontiac?! So we take off to the flight attendant saying "enjoy your flight". We made it, but it was definitely difficult to enjoy. Keep in mind that we're now in hour 20 of my day. We finally make it back home and by the time I'm in my bed it's after midnight. What a day! I had to go into the office for a while this morning but decided at 11:30am to work from home. Which meant working in front of the TV and taking a nap. I love my job!

Shuttles and Planes

So, today I get up at 4:00am in order to make a 6:40am flight to Phoenix for work. I'm at the airport on time, meet my coworkers, and get some coffee. First sign that things weren't going to go well... BAD coffee. The Starbucks lady at the airport pumped TONS of syrup into my white chocolate mocha... way too much. It ended up tasting goopy. Yuck. Then we get on the plane, taxi out, hear the engines rev to take off and...

stop. The pilot comes over the loudspeaker to tell us that we had "electrical problems" and that "an engine line light" was on. So we turned around and had to go back to the terminal where they were going to do repairs.

Two questions:
1. Did I really want to be flying on an airplane that was having engine problems?
2. Why did it take us getting all the way out to the runway to discover this light? I mean, in my car the "your car is broken lights" tend to come on right when your start the engine. Did they come on when the pilot turned the plane on and he just hoped it would go off (I do that sometimes with the car...)?

So we ended up being delayed so long that we missed our meetings in Arizona and just scrapped the flight. I'll end up going at the end of the month instead. But that made for a very long day and thankfully my boss sent me home early to nap.

Now that I think about it, my flight was very much like the NASA space shuttle... only they didn't ask me to hang underneath the plane while was flying to fix it. Thank God. I don't know too much about electrical systems. Besides, they don't say anything about parachutes in those nifty safety talks.

I'm definitely going to bed early tonight!