Cozumel Trip Friday

This was a fun day of diving, we saw 3 turtles on the first dive! That dive site was Catacolio.
Turtle 1 was pretty curious about us and let us get pretty close before he swam away.
Turtle 2 was pretty small and was really curious, I was at the back of our dive group and only a few of us saw this turtle, he swam really close to me.
This is what the colors on the reef really look like, the camera doesn't pick up all the color unless we're about 2 or 3 feet from the subject and we use the flash.

The first spotted drum of the trip, this one is intermediate. They are really tough to get pictures of because they dance around constantly.
Our second dive of the day was at San Fransisco Reef, it's Jeff's favorite site.
Baracuda

This green moray eel was sleeping on it's side under an overhang, it was huge.
Queen angelfish
These jacks were pretty big and swam right at me

Honeycomb cowfish
I'm pretty sure these black durgon (triggerfish) were doing some kind of mating dance

Reticulated Brittle stars are pretty tough to find since they usually stay buried in the sand, this one is all the way out in the first picture and burying itself in the second picture
squat shrimp live in anemonies, they're very tiny, about the size of your pinkie fingernail.
We also did an afternoon dive at Paradise Reef

Spotted eel
banded coral shrimp
splendid toadfish

Yellow headed jawfish, these guys live in holes in the sand and they're tough to photograph
Yellow stingrays can change color
brittle star on a sponge

Flamingo tongue snail
Christmas tree worms

Jeff's 30th Birthday

Our first dive site today was Palancar Bricks, there were a few bricks on the bottom, which is how the site got its name.
Jeff took pictures on this dive and saw this big grouper

I played with some damselfish that were very territorial, one of them almost bit my finger!


Whitespotted filefish


Our second dive of the day was at Chankanaab Reef

Sanddivers are sometimes tough to see because they blend in with the sand really well


Spiny lobster


I wanted to see if the camera would pick up the pink color of this coral

Trumpet fish

Scorpion fish also blend in with the coral really well

We did a third dive at Paradise Reef in the afternoon, we didn't take the camera, but we saw some cool stuff like a splendid toadfish, shrimp, an eel and a couple of stingrays.

Cozumel Trip- first day of diving

We did 2 dives our first day of diving, we didn't take the camera on the first dive at a site named Palancar Caves, there weren't really caves, but there were some cool swim throughs. Our second dive was at Villa Blanca, I took the camera and really just tried to get used to using it.



The camera takes really good pictures, but unless the flash goes off and you're only about 2 feet from the subject, it really doesn't pick up all the beautiful colors underwater. Many of our pictures look pretty blue like the one below, but the actual colors were more like the picture above.

This was the first turtle we saw on the trip, I was pretty excited to get a picture of it, even if it was swimming away from me! I had no idea how close we'd get to turtles later in the week.

Cozumel Trip

Jeff and I were really excited about going to Cozumel. Jeff also got to celebrate his 30th birthday in Cozumel! We got a new camera for the trip and Jeff wanted to get the underwater housing for it, I told him, no way, it was just too much money right before vacation. But I had ordered it for him for his birthday, that was a tough secret to keep! He opened it on the plane, and he was pretty impressed that I had kept it secret.

The underwater camera housing

We stayed at Vista del Mar, the same place we have stayed before and we dove with Aqua Safari, the same company we have dove with before.

Pool at the Vista del Mar, there's a cool tiled turtle on the bottom

The view from our balcony

The Vista del Mar has two pet turtles that live near the entrance to the hotel

The Aqua Safari pier

This is a sculpture near the town square of a coral reef with scuba divers

These people dressed like Mayans and did a show every night near the ferry pier

IronBabe Super Sprint Triathlon

Sunday May 11, was the IronBabe ladies only super sprint triathlon (200 yd swim, 8 mile bike, 2 mile run). Originally I was going to volunteer at this race, and when I told the race director, she said “Why don’t you want to race Heather? We’d be happy to have you as a volunteer, but you should think about racing” I said, if you’re going to twist my arm, then I’ll race! Didn’t take much twisting!

Race morning my alarm was set to go off at 4:30, at 4:11 I jumped out of bed thinking I was late! Then I realized the alarm was supposed to go off at 4:30 and I had to leave at 5, not 3:30 and 4! There was also thunder and lightening outside, not a good sign. This is the first race I’ve done that Jeff didn’t come with me. So I had my google directions printed out and took off, turns out the directions weren’t exactly right and I got a little lost and had to stop and ask for directions, I was pretty frustrated about it, but I ended up getting to the race site with plenty of time to get set up and check everything out.

By the time I got to the race site the rain had stopped and the lightening was obviously moving away, but the wind was really picking up! Lake Houston looked more like the ocean than a lake! They actually started a little late because the buoys kept blowing out of place! I dipped my feet in and decided it was about mid 70’s so I wasn’t going to bother with the wetsuit.

My wave was the second to start, it really did feel more like an ocean swim than the nice calm lake swim I was expecting! I found it funny that when the water went up my nose/down my throat, I expected it to be salty and make me gag. The toughest part of the swim was getting around the turn buoy. Even though it was rough, I felt fine, not sick like at San Jacinto a couple weeks ago. It was definitely an interesting swim, I was hoping to finish the swim in 5 minutes my time was 8:48, not that bad considering some of the faster times were over 6 minutes and there were a lot of 15-20 min swims on the results pages. A lot of people do this as their first tri, so I really felt bad for the girls who had never swum in open water before.

T1 was 2:23, I didn’t know what to expect on the bike course with all the wind. I was hoping to average 16 mph and finish in 30 min. The bike was fun. There were spots with a headwind and spots with a tailwind, but it was short so I could just go as fast as I could. My legs felt a little tired from the start, I’m sure because I did a 35 mile ride on Saturday. I did a sprint on the same course last year and I had forgotten how many turns there are on the bike course. I finished the bike in 30:39 (15.66 mph).

T2 was 2:03 and Dave Rainey the leader of the Zephyr rides was working in the transition area and saw me and started “heckling” me. “Come on Heather, MOVE IT! Let’s go!” and pointing at his watch, too funny! I started the run at a pretty fast pace and wasn’t sure I could keep it up so I slowed down a little. The turn around point was at 1 mile and there was a pen of buffalo right by the water station, I had forgotten about them from last year. I picked the pace back up after the turn around because I realized if I pushed it I still might finish in 1:05. I just kept it up to the finish and finished in 1:04:20! My run time was 20:24 for 10:12 min/mile, that’s the fastest I’ve ever run in a triathlon so I’m really happy about that!

Sorry no pictures this time, since my photographer, pit crew, and cheering section (Jeff) couldn't make it. But I'll post a link to the website with the official race pictures when they put them up.

The Chocolate Bar

Heatha (formerly of Heather and Roger from College Station) came to Texas for a quick visit the weekend of April 12. We were all very excited because it's been almost a year since she decided to move to Florida and be a private speech therapist for the son of Jimmy Buffet's business partner, yea seriously she gets free concert tickets for life! We knew she'd have lots of great stories, Heatha always has lots of great stories.

Heatha's plane didn't get in until 8pm and Jeff was working til 9 so Cherie and Cullen and I went to Barnaby's for dinner before the Chocolate Bar. Jeff and I love hanging out with them and we don't get to see them often enough since we live about as far apart as possible and still say we both live in the Houston area. We had a great time at Barnaby's then headed to the Chocoate Bar and pulled in just as Heatha was parking, perfect timing.

The Chocolate Bar is awesome, there is chocolate EVERYTHING you can imagine! I had chocolate ice cream with heath bar in it, and Heatha had a huge peice of some kind of chocolate cake. Heatha told us all about living in Florida, the rich and famous, and her drinking buddies. We laughed so much my stomach hurt the next day! She also told us all about her and Roger's divorce, which I know should be sad, but it was really just more entertaining, if you know Heatha you understand.

Cherie's birthday was Friday so we gave her her gift at the chocolate bar too. It was a good luck key chain from Brighton which she loved!

The Chocolate Bar closes at 11:00 and at about 11:30 we realized what time it was, we hadn't even noticed and there were still a few other people there so we didn't feel too bad. Heatha and Jeff hadn't had any "real food" so we went to Katz's so they could eat. We didn't get home until almost 3 am.

Heatha stayed with us that night and got up early to go to College Station and get her stuff out of storage and drive it back to Florida.

This was such a fun night! It really made me wish the whole grad school gang still lived close together and we could still hang out all the time.