It’s all happening at the zoo

Today the itinerary had us going to the San Diego Zoo, which is my one of my very favorite zoos. I’ve been visiting it since I was a little kid and it’s the zoo I measure all others against. It had been a long time since I’d been back, easily 10 or 11 years, so I was pretty excited:

I think I take a picture of this flamingo/peacock combo every time. I’ve probably photographed these flamingos great-great-grandparents. (How long do flamingos live, anyway?)

We got there pretty soon after they opened, which was great because it wasn’t crowded yet and they were feeding some of the animals. We made a beeline for the big cats, before they fell asleep for the day. Almost all of them were stalking around in front of their habitats, looking exactly like our cats at home. One notable exception was the mountain lion, who was watching us haughtily from up on high:

And the leopards, who were too busy chasing each other around their enclosure:

It was pretty ridiculous to watch them in action. We also swung by the pandas before that exhibit got crazy crowded. Everyone was sleeping, which was still pretty cute:

Later on, we would stand in a crazy long line to see them eating, which was even cuter:

Next highlight was the hippo exhibit, which has a unique underwater viewing area. Last time I was there, the hippo had a baby, which was so much fun to watch. So, I was delighted that they had a new baby boy, who was about a year old. When we got there, he was lazily chasing the ducks around his pen, which got him all riled up and then he started playing with Mama Hippo:

They were so cute. He even did a barrel roll in the water, which was something I didn’t even know hippos could do. Eventually, they petered out and retreated to take a nap on the other side of the pen, so we moved on. We managed to see most of the zoo before lunch, certainly all of our favorite parts. Such as the muddy polar bear:

And the lovey, sleepy tiger “cubs”:

I made T take a picture of me next to the extinct giant cat (apparently, this was a life-sized statue.)

After a little break for lunch, we hit the last few sections of the zoo we’d missed. For some reason, we had a hard time finding the Orangutan trail:

Apparently, it’s at the nexus of the universe… But we asked a nice zoo employee and he helped us out. (Hint, you have to go through the aviary… ) There were a bunch of youngsters playing down below, but I thought these two were so adorable just surveying all of the hub-bub.

Both of us were tired of walking around, so we took advantage of the bus tour that came with our zoo ticket and spent a very pleasant 45 minutes looking at animals from the comfort of a double-decker bus. (Very similar to tourists in NYC… ) We got a chance to see the baby koala actually awake (which is really rare, they sleep 22 hours a day.) and a few other fun things we would have missed. Then we hit up the Skyfari for an arial view of the zoo:

I was too scared to hang my camera over the side for a picture, so that will have to do… Then we re-visited a few of our favorite exhibits, just to make sure nothing good was happening. (This is where we got to see to eating pandas.) Then a last zoo snack for the boy:

We were pretty tired, but both agreed that we’d planned our day pretty perfectly. And even the cloudy weather had really worked in our favor, as it was the perfect walking around temperature. We’d been planning to go out for a drink after dinner, but were too tired for that to be appealing, so we opted to grab a bottle of wine and some chocolate at Trader Joes and have a drink on our balcony. It was very pleasant, sitting out there, looking out at the water and chatting. Despite my overall disappointment in our hotel choice, that was one area where it was a very excellent selection.

Soaking in the local culture

The day before a big race is always a little surreal. You’ve been planning for the race for a long time and it’s always been off in the distance. Then, suddenly, it’s tomorrow. TOMORROW! We kicked off our day with a trip to the Waffle House because a.) I’d never been to one, b.) J loved them and c.) because we could. I’d heard much about Waffle House and it did not disappoint.

Then we headed over to check out the race expo at the senior center. Just because. I’m very happy we did, because otherwise we would have missed seeing this fantastic sign:

Please note, we are at the SENIOR CENTER. The expo itself was pretty tiny, but fun. M & I scored some rad running shirts that seem like they are custom made for us:

(In case you can’t read it, it says “I run so I don’t kill people.”) So true…

We love us some kitsch, so we then went to check out a local tourist attraction called Goldmine Ghost Town (or something like that.) It was packed full of people, some of which were obviously there for the marathon. The walk from the parking lot was probably better than the actual ghost town. It had this handsome guy:

And this sign should have told us the kind of folks this place attracts:

The actual ghost town was sort of sad. It was like one of those shopping malls that’s going out of business or a ghetto carnival. That happened to be Wild Ol’ West themed. We wandered through and took a couple of pictures:

But we all agreed it was sad and left. Then it was off to Walmart, always a good time. I was tempted by the giant barrel of cheese balls (only $5.98!) but didn’t figure I could bring it home on the plane:

When we were unloading our stuff back at the hotel, M pointed out how many beverages we had in our little hotel mini-fridge:

(For those of you playing along at home, there are 12 different containers of beverage in there… ) But it’s important to hydrate, especially here.

Now, we’ve set our clothes and stuffed a ridiculous number of gels into fuel belts and soon it will be off to bed for the crazy early morning wake-up. It feels very surreal that I will get up tomorrow morning and run for a significant amount of time. I’m trying not to think about it. Whatever happens, I’m sure it will be an adventure and at least I get to spend some quality time in the sunshine.

Smackdown!

Tomorrow marks T’s first triathlon since 2006. He hasn’t really been able to train too much since school has kept him hopping this year, but naturally he wants to magically PR (which isn’t going to happen – his PR is crazy fast.) and kick ass. I’ve been trying to stress that he should use this race as a test to see where he is and to set goals for his “A race” at Grand Columbian in September. I suspect all of this is falling on deaf ears though because I start in the wave five minutes after him and a bit of a showdown is brewing.

T’s goal is to stay ahead of me the whole time. My goal is to catch him on the swim, hold him off on the bike for as long as I can and then pass him on the run. In reality, I don’t know that I can do any of those things, but it will be fun to try and help motivate me to go as fast as possible. I’ve never raced a sprint all out before and I’m looking forward to it (as much as you can look forward to something that hurts so much… )

Here’s the official pre-race smackdown photo:

And yes, that’s a Nuun sticker T is wearing. He’s a corporate shill:

M is also racing tomorrow (She starts a safe 30 minutes ahead of T, so she doesn’t have to mix it up with the likes of us.) I believe she is on track to beat last year’s time. She, of course, doesn’t believe that she can, so more so than usual I really want to be proven right. She was super psyched to race about 2-3 weeks ago and now isn’t feeling the love. Hopefully, we can figure out a way to get the timing down so that the “psyched to race” feeling can coincide with actual racing. But we still managed to have some laughs goofing around at the expo:

After packet pick up, we had some odds and ends to take care of. T had made pancakes for breakfast, with a big stack of extras for tomorrow morning:

Smokey Joe was very disappointed that he didn’t get any pancakes…

I gave Slim a good cleaning so he’d look good tomorrow morning. (Everyone knows clean bikes go faster!) Here he is posing in the driveway:

(Such a handsome devil!) So, a lot brewing for tomorrow. I’m hoping that everyone has a fun and a good race. Worst case scenario, there will be brunch! I, of course, will have a full report of the race day hi jinks, regardless of outcome.

Very bad dog

Today T met me for lunch with the dreaded sentence “Do you want to see what your dog did?” If he’s being referred to as “my” dog, it isn’t going to be good news and if there’s visible evidence, it’s going to be really bad. We walked over to the car to see what “my” dog (Wally) did:

Apparently, my idiot dog was barking at another dog and bashed the windshield with his empty but really hard head and did this to it. Nice, right?

Good thing he’s cute:

It’s just too bad that cute isn’t a currency…

T vs. the air mattress

Because of his amazing air mattress folding skills, T usually has the honor of putting away M and J’s awesome air mattress. As the photos below illustrate, it’s a highly scientific endeavor that requires careful precision and timing…

Do not attempt this at home. He is a trained professional…

Once that hilarity was done, we hit the road for a day of driving. First down to Portland, then down to Salem to pick up the dogs, then back up to Portland, followed by some grocery shopping because our house is completely devoid of food. At one point in the drive, we came across this charming spectacle:

And here’s a close-up, in case you aren’t quite disgusted enough:

I’m sure it’s probably bad that I posted his license plate number, but I’m sure I can somehow work his appallingly bad taste into my defense…

Another highlight from the trip home was courtesy of the McDonalds bathroom/Diet Coke stop:

What does that even mean? Is the ‘toity’ part bad? Or is it some sort of warning? It is awesome to imagine the advertising agency writers brainstorming this, though. That’s about it as far as amusements go, I was pretty beat. Special thanks to all of my Seattle friends for making the visit so much fun – you guys rock!