Oops. Never finished all my entries. Time to recap the whole Houston/triathlon experience for everyone. The whole weekend with the family went by in a flash. Tiffany and I hopped in the car with her dad and a bleary-eyed Wesley, her 8-yr old brother, at about 10:30pm. We got home and had some time to catch up and talk to her parents before bed. They put me up in Tiffany's old bedroom, complete with my own full bathroom! Fantastic.
In the morning we were off to breakfast with a friend of Tiffany's whose had us over for a party in Houston before and visited Tiffany last fall in Chicago, he works where she used to except in the dental clinic part of an HIV/AIDS adult clinic type place. She was the program director for the adult day care, if you didn't know. After breakfast we went over to the center to see her clients and volunteers and old co-workers she had been missing, and I got another glimpse of what it must have been like for her to work there. She must have been amazing! Well, I guess she still is :)
From there it was lunch with her mom, who just moved into a new apartment, and was walking around quite nicely. It was great to see her on her feet, and of course I got to see the scars and hear more stories about it. She made us a great lasagna-type casserole for lunch and even a blueberry pie to take with us! She loves Tiffany to death and it shows. She's coming to visit July 4th weekend for all who want to meet her up at the farm. Can't wait for the summer, especially after coming back from the south to the cold again, but as you can tell the weather is turning. Spring fever is almost here- that nervous itching yearn you feel to get the hell out of your office or anywhere indoors and do something in the sun. Its gonna make the last month of school tough to get through. That and being a little spent with my project.
After lunch we packed up the cars and the family and the bikes and the MAN-SIZED DOG they have (some kind of alpine something shepherd dog, see picture) and we were off to Galveston. Tiffany's little sister Karen, who's 15, drove in our car with her friend Christine. Once hitting Galveston we went to check in for the race and get things like our ankle chip (to track our time), our shirts, swim caps, energy goop in little tubes, and Pickle Juice. Yeah, the latest in sports drinks is full of salt to replenish your lost sodium, and it tastes exactly like it sounds. There was also a ton of merchandise for the serious racers- shoes, wetsuits, blah blah blah. Over it.
After that we went out for seafood. Sweet. I'm always up for fresh seafood 100 feet from the ocean. We got a platter of HUGE oysters and I had a plate of fried catfish, silver-dollar sized scallops, and big shrimp. Plus a loaf of bread, some soup, and fries, makes for me being disgustingly full. Got plenty of carbs for the morning race.
We all checked into the hotel, hauled our bikes up there (and the dog once again, Aisha) and went to bed after exploring the pool, hot tub, and computer room where Wesley played online games while I checked the email to see the glorious donations I had received in the last day before the race. We all hit bed too late to get up too early. Got up at 5:30, just in time to throw on my clothes and get out the door- I had fallen asleep wondering what I'd do if I forgot all my race gear, the night before. Ha. I wasn't nervous at all though, despite still being sick. Tiffany didn't look so hot in the morning though, while we had our continental breakfast before getting off to the race.
We got there just before 7, and set up our bikes and gear in the "transition area" where it looked like people were pretty serious about getting straight on the bike from the water. Crazy. Then it was time to stand around, get our swim caps on (not easy) and watch the age groups before us line up on the dock.
Race particulars are for next entry. It'll be picture-tastic.
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