Thursday, May 28, 2009

Boating on Lake Austin

I think I learned to water ski when I was 12, before we started SCUBA diving my family did water skiing vacations most summers. My parents even got a membership at a private lake close to our house so we could ski any time all summer. My little brother and I both LOVED it. We used to ski for hours at a time and never wanted to stop. Ever since moving away, I have jumped at any chance to go skiing, but I hadn't been in almost 2 years. Jeff even made me throw out my old skis, granted they were in terrible condition, but I was still sad.

Jason (who works with Jeff) invited us out on his boat on Memorial Day, I was super excited! I went to Sun and Ski and checked out the skis, it took A LOT of self restraint to not come home with new water skis! Lake Austin was really crowded that day and it ended up that Jason couldn't put the boat in the water. He invited us again Thursday after work. Jeff had the day off and I got a phone call at work "which skis were you looking at?" Woohoo! I'm going to get to ski! Jeff picked me up from work and fought the traffic to get to Lake Austin. I love Austin, where else can you leave work during rush hour and still be on the water 30 minutes later!
We were only on the water a few minutes before I got in to ski. Jason's boat is really nice and easy to ski behind. I was having SO much fun! But I can't believe how out of shape I am! I skied for a few minutes a couple of times then decided I needed a break.
Jason and Jeff
After resting for a few minutes I got in and skied again. It was so much fun! I skied a little longer this time, but still got tired pretty fast.
I got back on the boat and we enjoyed the sunset.
We saw this heron in front of Sandra Bullock's old house.
Jason suggested the County Line for dinner, I didn't know you could get there on the water, how cool!
Jason at the County Line
They even had live music
leaving the County Line

Jeff and I both had so much fun! Hopefully we'll get to go again soon.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Memorial Weekend part 2

Sunday morning Del and I got up early for a bike ride. The weather forecast wasn't looking great and Jason had already decided to cancel his Shoal Creek group ride, so we decided to ride the Shoal Creek loop since we would never be more than about 2.5 miles from my house if it started to storm. The sky looked ominous at first, but it ended up being a beautiful morning to ride. We rode 4 loops of the "Shoal Creek Veloway" and with riding to and from my house it totaled a little over 17 miles. Del didn't want to ride any more than that since he was racing Monday.

Then we went to the Palmer Center and Auditorium Shores for his packet pick-up and bike check-in. We checked out everything at the expo, including the cool new Rocket Science tri suits and the Blue bikes. They had 2 bikes set up on trainers, one for tall people and one for short people. Del and I got on them, but the tall bike was way too short for him and the short bike was way too tall for me! I couldn't pedal at all and almost couldn't get off!
Del at bike check-in

We had Homeslice pizza for lunch. Del really enjoyed it and said he was going to stop on his way out of town on Tuesday and get some pizza for the drive to Houston, too bad they're closed on Tuesdays. We waited a couple of hours for the pizza to digest then ran about 5 miles on the Town Lake Trail. Del really enjoyed running on Town Lake too, he even stopped a couple of times to take pictures!
Pre-race dinner was at Kerby Lane
Race morning I got up fairly early and headed down to Auditorium Shores to cheer on all my friends racing.
I got there just in time to see Del's swim wave get in the water.
The first wave of girls taking off.
Del getting out of the water. He said he didn't like going up the stairs after gettng out of the water.
Annette was biking with a relay so I talked with her while I was trying to get to my bike spectating point (all my normal ways to get around Auditorium Shores were blocked off). I didn't get to see Annette bike since the relays started quite a bit later, but she had a great ride and her team did really well.
View of transition from the 1st Street bridge
View of the swimmers from the 1st Street bridge
My bike spectating point was at the triangle in the road between Ceasar Chavez and 1st Street. The bike course was 4 loops and from where I was I could see everyone 3 time on each loop, that gave me lots of opportunities to see and cheer for everyone!
I'm not sure how many times I saw Del on the course, but it was a lot!
I also saw Coach Jen lots of times on the bike course. Kevin Saunders from KGS bikes was at the triangle island taking pictures of all the cyclists too. So I talked with him for awhile and he took this picture.
After a couple of loops, Del knew exactly where to look for me and gave me lots of fun poses for the camera, too bad I wasn't very good at catching them!
I also saw Peggy, Kendra, and Chris on the bike course, but I didn't get the camera ready in time to get pictures. After Del finished biking I headed over to Jack & Adam's to watch the run, but again all my routes were blocked, so it took forever to get over there and I missed Del on his first run loop.
On my way to Jack & Adam's I saw Coach Jen, she looked fast and strong even though it was getting HOT! I finally got to Jack & Adam's and volunteered at the water station there for awhile. No pictures- but I got to see almost everyone I know who was racing, Del, Jen, Chris, Kendra, Peggy, Paulette, Kelli and I'm sure I'm missing one or two! It was definitely hot out by then and lots of people looked like they were not enjoying the run, but I have to say all my friends looked great out there even with the heat!
Del post-race
Auditorium Shores was insanely crowded when I got back from Jack & Adam's! I found a couple of my Tri Zones friends and congratulated them, but it was tough. I was calling Del trying to figure out how in the world I would find him when he walked up right behind me!

That evening we all went to The Grove and hung out on the patio and had dinner and some wine and enjoyed the last few hours of a great long Memorial weekend.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Memorial Weekend Part 1

Del came to Austin for the CapTex Triathlon this weekend. He came in early Friday and did some triathlon shopping, then he picked me up from work and we went to happy hour at the Draught House with Fred. I had one beer and Del had a Coke-we're such party animals! Del got new race wheels for his bike, so he wanted to ride a little to test them out. We rode the 1 mile loop around my house a couple of times, then I decided I was too hungry to bike anymore and Del practiced his flying dismount, he did pretty well, although once or twice I was a little worried he might fall!

We had decided to go to the Hula Hut for dinner when Jeff got off work at 9, but when we got there the wait was still over 2 hours! We forgot that it was graduation night a UT, oops! So we went to the Magnolia Cafe instead.
Del and Jeff at the Magnolia Cafe
Lori and Fred at the Magnolia Cafe
Jeff and Fred got "voodoo" burgers, and the cafe was decorated in voodoo art

Saturday morning I had an early Tri Zones swim.
When we got to Decker Lake it was pretty cold (for late May in Texas anyway) Sarah G. showed up in her pink fuzzy bathrobe and fashion guru Cindy made fun of her and suggested that polka dots were a much better fashion statement!
Sarah R. and Kristen at Decker Lake

I helped some of the beginners with their swim and I was amazed at how much faster and more comfortable they were in the water after just 3 weeks since the last open water swim I helped out at. When the beginners finished swimming, I started my swim, the loop was about 400m, I swam 3 loops at first with Carolyn and Tom, then Del came out to swim too, and we swam 2 more, then Stacy came out and I swam one more loop. they swam a couple more, but I decided 2400m was enough for the morning. I'm pretty sure that's the most I've swum since before Longhorn!
Del and I at Decker Lake

After all that swimming I was starving and Del and I decided to try Hula Hut again. This time the wait was only an hour and a half, which actually isn't that bad for Hula Hut. We had some chips and queso and people, boat and dog watched while we waited. The view at the Hula Hut is awesome! There were lots of boats out on Lake Austin and lots docking at Hula Hut too. We also saw a couple of labradors on boats, they looked like they were having so much fun! I told Del, Connor and Katie would Love that!

Big metal fish in the water at the Hula Hut
Bird flower planter made of tires, these are all over on the Hula Hut patio
Del really enjoyed his enchiladas
After the Hula Hut we decided we couldn't run for awhile, so we decided to go kayaking on Town Lake, it was really fun, it was Del's firt time to kayak. I didn't take the camera since I didn't have the underwater housing. We saw 2 swans and some turtles, there were a lot of people out on lake so there wasn't as much wildlife out as Jeff and I have sometimes seen. The last 20 minutes we were kayaking, there was lots of thunder and lightning and it started raining a little, we decided to wait to run on Sunday. By the time we were finished kayaking my shoulders were starting to get tired/sore, I'm sure they'll be sore in the morning from swimming and kayaking.
On the way home we stopped at Hey Cupcake

We got home and hung out with Connor and Katie, they love Del (and he loves them too!)

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Pedernales Camping Weekend

Friday after work, we went straight out to Pedernales Falls State Park. We knew it would be close to dark by the time we got to the primitive camping area since it's a 2.5 mile walk from the parking area. We got in, chose a spot and got the tent up just as it was getting dark.
Our tent and packs are orange because I rented them from the UT outdoor center. I wonder if the A&M outdoor center rents all maroon stuff?
We planned the camping trip as our 5 year anniversary trip. We weren't going to get each other gifts because the trip was really our gift to each other. I have been saying for at least a couple of years that I need a "fake" wedding ring to wear when I do stuff like swimming, bike riding, camping, triathlons and anything else where my real ring would be likely to get messed up or lost.
Jeff surprised me by getting me a sterling silver "fake wedding ring" for our anniversary. I wore it the rest of the weekend, since camping and hiking out there definitely qualifies as a time my real ring would be likely to get messed up or lost.

We didn't have time to hike Friday night, but we got up Saturday morning and found a place to hike down the bluffs to the river. The primitive camping area is high above the river so it won't flood, in most places there are cliffs that go 80+ feet straight down to the valley, but in a few places you can hike down into the valley and over to the river.

Pedernales River, south of the falls. Looks pretty peaceful here.
Jeff by some maidenhair ferns growing on a cliff.
The river was pretty calm when we were there, but there was evidence everywhere of flooding and fast moving water. Jeff was impressed that these big bald cypress trees had been pushed over by water at some point.
We hiked back out to the car and drove over to the Pedernales Falls area, it was raining by this time and pretty much rained all day Saturday. Good thing we brought the underwater housing for the camera!
Jeff told me to put my arms up so it would look like I am holding the big rock behind me. It was also getting windy and a little cold, but we walked and climbed around on the rocks at the falls anyway, the rocks were really slick from the rain.
Jeff found a landmark everywhere we went so we could find our trails back, specific rocks, plants, piles of rocks, etc. This broken piece of prickly pear marked our trail to climb back up the cliffs where we got down to the river.
When I was cold and Jeff was tired of being in the rain, we went into Johnson City. We found this shop with beef jerky, candy, jams, and all kinds of other stuff. As soon as we walked in the lady at the counter told us to check out the tasting table- we weren't going to argue. Some guy came in a little later just to buy some jerky and she told him she wouldn't sell it to him until he had tasted it! Too funny!
We found a little cafe for lunch, the food was pretty good, but the best part was the cinammon ice cream for dessert. Jeff loves cinammon.
At this point, the rain had slowed to just a mist, so we hiked down to the swimmng area.
Jeff figured out how to work the timer on our camera
I waded in the water
and Jeff took pictures of the beautiful river
Around 5 we hiked back into the camping area. It was still early, so after we made sure the tent was reasonably dry, we hiked around for a couple of hours. We found some way better campsites than the one we chose. Some of them were right at the edge of the cliffs and far enough out that no one really goes there.
We found a geocache, it was the biggest one we've found, in a huge ammo box.
We sat on the edge of the cliffs, it was a LONG way down and we tried and tried to take pictures that show how far it really is, but it never worked.
The view from the cliffs was great.
Jeff even tried to throw rocks down to the valley and then take pictures to try to show how far down it was, but it didn't work.
The clouds looked pretty ominous and we decided we should get back near the campsite before it really started raining again.

We liked hanging out on the cliffs so much that we decided to have dinner on a cliff near the tent. Dinner was MREs that Jeff got at an Army surplus store. I was not too excited about them, I assumed everything in there would taste like cardboard or worse.
Jeff put the "chicken fajita" into the heating unit. While we waited for that to heat up, we ate some crackers that did taste like salty cardboard and peanut butter, which didn't taste like cardboard, but didn't taste like peanut butter either.
The warm chicken fajita stuff

The "cheese" for the fajitas was salty cheese whizish stuff. That's me squeezing cheese onto my tortilla.
First taste of MRE chicken fajita, I'm obviously not too excited about it, but it wasn't bad. After a couple of bites Jeff found the "fajita seasoning packet" and we added some of that, then it actually tasted kinda like fajitas, we decided the seasoning packet was the essence of that entire meal.
Jeff drinking MRE cappucino beverage.
After dinner we hiked around some more with our flashlights, we hiked up a mountain to a viewing platform, you could see forever from up there! While we were up there the sky started to clear a little and we could see a few stars come out. A few minutes later the sky was full of stars! We walked back to our dinner cliff to watch the stars a little more, but the clouds were already rolling back in, so the stars were diappearing fast. You could only see the stars for about 20 minutes, so we were lucky to see them. I'm pretty sure we walked and hiked at least 10 miles on Saturday, maybe more, so we slept pretty well considering we were camping.
We hiked out to the truck Sunday morning. and found a couple of geocaches on the way
We went back to Pedernales Falls to hike and climb on the rocks since it wasn't raining.
Some of the rocks are huge!
climbing up on top of a really big rock
made it! look at the cool cliffs!
and waterfalls! The waterfalls were so loud we couldn't hear each other talk at all.
It's amazing how much different the river looks here than down by the camping and swimming areas.
Pretty bald cypress trees

Jeff by some cool bald cypress trees
We found this little lizard
We had so much fun and can't wait to do it again! Jeff says he might want to go back for his birthday in June.