Six months have finally come to an end. We always knew this day would come. It is somewhat inevitable. If there is anything that is constant in life, it is knowing that time will keep marching on no matter what (some Physicists won’t agree with me, but those geeks can shut it!).
When we first boarded our flight to Australia and left a tearful Tina and Rhona (Andrea’s mum and aunt) to begin our trip six months ago, the end of our trip in Las Vegas seemed like such a long time away. But six months isn’t very long, just think back to what you were doing six months ago and you quickly realise that time goes by really fast. It won’t be long until we are saying it was six months ago that we got back to the UK! It means that you have to appreciate every hour of every day and not wish away any moment and I think that is what we have done. It has been the trip of a lifetime and neither of us would change anything. It has been great to spend so much time together and travel around seeing some beautiful parts of the world and meeting some great people. We both feel very blessed. We know that not everyone gets that chance. Travelling isn’t some divine right and we both know that we have been very lucky!
So we have tried to pick out some highlights from our six month stint. There have been so many great things it is really hard to pick them out. We have also tried to put them into some sort of order - we know it’s a bit cheesy - based on nothing more than what we enjoyed the most or what sticks out in our minds (very subjective we know). So before we catch our flight in around 4 hours we’ll do a final countdown of our top 10 trip highlights:
10, Falls Creek. Three weeks into our trip we stopped at this beautiful little mountain resort in New South Wales. The views were amazing, the walks breath-taking and the Viking Lodge totally deserted - always a bonus.
9, Death Valley. What an incredible national park that is. The desert is totally different to anything in the UK. Seeing Badwater and getting to run up and down sand dunes was awesome fun. A must-see to anyone in the area.
8, Penguin Parade. I initially wasn’t too bothered about going to this, but on a cold night on Australia’s south coast, we saw thousands of adorable penguins making the run up the beach to their burrows. There is something really cool about seeing nature at work without mans involvement. Andrea wanted to take one of the penguins back, but after warning her that they eat smelly fish I quickly put her off.
7, Sydney Olympic Park. This is definitely more one for the geeks. Being massive fans of the Olympics, anything with the word Olympic in it, definitely has the thumbs up from us. We were lucky enough to actually stay here twice and properly explore the park. Hopefully it won’t be our last experience of Olympic Parks!! Watch this space ;).
6, Flagstaff. Our second stay at altitude of the trip. We saw some beautiful scenery including the grand canyon and the red rocks of Sedona and met some fantastic people. You guys are always welcome to stay with us!! Please come visit.
5, Universal Studios. The Simpsons, Jurassic Park, Shrek, the Mummy. So many great rides. We had an absolute blast for two days. Thankfully the queues weren’t that long either!!
4, Broken Hill. Only a week into our trip we visited this oasis in the middle of the outback. No towns or villages for 150miles before we arrived, it is literally in the middle of nowhere, but somehow people survive and they even have McDonalds and the internet! There were some amazing views and great wildlife, more kangaroos than you could shake a stick at!!
3, Blue Mountains. This is what we needed just three days into our trip. A few wobbles at the beginning of the trip were quickly dispelled with the incredible views of the blue mountain rainforest. Top that off with getting within a meter of one of the worlds most deadly snakes, it really was an incredible place.
2, KiwiRun. Words cannot describe how much fun we had on the North island of New Zealand. Fantastic places, great food and even better people. Steve, Richard, Craig, Hayden, Charlotte, Nick and Sierra we thank you all for putting so much effort into two fantastic weeks.
1, Andrea winning the New Zealand 10000m Championships. Neither of us wanted to put a running moment as our top highlight of the trip. It didn’t seem quite right as you can literally run anywhere, what is so special about a race in New Zealand? However on that night in New Zealand something changed for both of us, not only was the race a 2minute PB over the distance of 10000m on the track, but we both felt that Andrea finally ran a race which did justice to her current ability. A sort of realisation dawned on us that there are greater possibilities than we had initially thought. After working together on Andrea’s running for around 15months this was a big highlight for us. Hopefully just the start, but as I have said before it is important to appreciate what has passed. There are no certainties in running (and in life!) and this may be as good as it gets. Fortunately we have been lucky enough to enjoy this fantastic but brief moment and it is something that we will remember for a long long time.
Lastly we have to thank everyone at home (and around the world) for reading the blog and being a part of the trip. Six months is a long time to not see your family and friends, it is always great to read the comments and it makes people seem not so far away (what a great tool blogger is!!). Thanks to you all and we look forward to seeing you over the coming weeks and months.
Over and out.
Chrissy & Andrea
Wednesday 28 April 2010
Tuesday 27 April 2010
Vegas
Sin city!
It’s been a fun few days and certainly very eye-opening. Neither myself or Andrea have ever been to a place like it, perhaps because there isn’t anywhere in the world like it! Our hotel is the Riviera, at the north end of the strip. It is one of the best places we have stayed in on our trip - its great to have our last few days here. The hotel has lots of amenities including many restaurants and shops, a pool area (where fat people get a tan), a wedding chapel (with an Elvis impersonator - of course!!) and a huge casino (which is busy whether it’s 6am or 6pm) taking up most of the ground floor.
The strip is an interesting place, we haven’t walked that far down it as its 3miles long, although we have explored some of the casinos around us. There is Circus Circus, which has free circus acts playing most of the day, Treasure Island, which has a few pirate themed shows in the evening involving scantily clad women and men with their shirts off (sex sells), and also Wynn, one of the newest and poshest casinos in town, which has some blackjack tables with a minimum buy-in of $500 per game! Mental!
Our end of the strip is more our scene. We have managed to find a place which sells really cheap drinks and also found some fun slot machines which allow for 3p bets. So far we are about $14 down (as expected - the odds are all in the house’s favour), but we don’t think that is too bad for two days of entertainment!
So far we have had a great time here. Tonight is our last night in Vegas before our flights back to the UK tomorrow. We’re still deciding how to celebrate the end of our trip - perhaps we will graduate from the slot machines to a blackjack table - or perhaps not, it‘s more expensive when you lose!
So this is the penultimate blog post from us, expect only one more before we see you all back in the UK !!
The view from our window
It’s been a fun few days and certainly very eye-opening. Neither myself or Andrea have ever been to a place like it, perhaps because there isn’t anywhere in the world like it! Our hotel is the Riviera, at the north end of the strip. It is one of the best places we have stayed in on our trip - its great to have our last few days here. The hotel has lots of amenities including many restaurants and shops, a pool area (where fat people get a tan), a wedding chapel (with an Elvis impersonator - of course!!) and a huge casino (which is busy whether it’s 6am or 6pm) taking up most of the ground floor.
The strip is an interesting place, we haven’t walked that far down it as its 3miles long, although we have explored some of the casinos around us. There is Circus Circus, which has free circus acts playing most of the day, Treasure Island, which has a few pirate themed shows in the evening involving scantily clad women and men with their shirts off (sex sells), and also Wynn, one of the newest and poshest casinos in town, which has some blackjack tables with a minimum buy-in of $500 per game! Mental!
Our end of the strip is more our scene. We have managed to find a place which sells really cheap drinks and also found some fun slot machines which allow for 3p bets. So far we are about $14 down (as expected - the odds are all in the house’s favour), but we don’t think that is too bad for two days of entertainment!
So far we have had a great time here. Tonight is our last night in Vegas before our flights back to the UK tomorrow. We’re still deciding how to celebrate the end of our trip - perhaps we will graduate from the slot machines to a blackjack table - or perhaps not, it‘s more expensive when you lose!
So this is the penultimate blog post from us, expect only one more before we see you all back in the UK !!
Saturday 24 April 2010
The Calm before the Storm
We have really enjoyed our stay in Flagstaff. It has been great to have some home comforts after a month of motels and microwave meals. There are only so many different ways you can cook noodles and rice!! We have met some great people and managed to explore the town in case Andrea gets a chance to come training here next year without me. Hopefully if things go well she will do.
One of the main purposes of coming up here was to suss out quite a few of the training options available to runners. It has been really good, there are quite a few people around to point us in the right direction and so we have been to different trails and routes every day. Supposedly we haven’t even scratched the surface. There are even some good trails which open up in the summer which some adventurous runners can go on and reach peaks of 10000ft altitude. Not for the faint hearted (more for the light headed)! It really is a great town for cyclists, runners and walkers alike. We love it here!
So in less than a week we are back in UK. The volcano ash seems to have cleared and hopefully we’ll get home without any problems - we really don’t want to spend more time than we have to in Los Angeles airport!
We have one more day here in Flagstaff before heading to our final destination of Las Vegas for three days. Time to win all of our money back!
So is it red or black? What do you reckon??
Andrea has a plan to take little Cody with her. I'd keep an eye on her Alicia!!
One of the main purposes of coming up here was to suss out quite a few of the training options available to runners. It has been really good, there are quite a few people around to point us in the right direction and so we have been to different trails and routes every day. Supposedly we haven’t even scratched the surface. There are even some good trails which open up in the summer which some adventurous runners can go on and reach peaks of 10000ft altitude. Not for the faint hearted (more for the light headed)! It really is a great town for cyclists, runners and walkers alike. We love it here!
So in less than a week we are back in UK. The volcano ash seems to have cleared and hopefully we’ll get home without any problems - we really don’t want to spend more time than we have to in Los Angeles airport!
We have one more day here in Flagstaff before heading to our final destination of Las Vegas for three days. Time to win all of our money back!
So is it red or black? What do you reckon??
Wednesday 21 April 2010
Grand Canyon
Today was our eagerly anticipated visit to the Grand Canyon. Less than two hours drive away from where we are staying in Flagstaff, we took the opportunity to visit one of the seven natural wonders of the world and we weren’t disappointed - despite me learning that the Grand Canyon is infact a completely different place to the Rocky Mountains - an illusion I have been entertaining for quite some time.
We arrived at the visitor centre and made our plans for the day, which included walking from one end of the ‘Rim Trail’ to the other (about 3 miles) along the South Rim, and then succumbing to being an American tourist and hopping on the free shuttle bus back to our parked car.
From the car park we couldn’t see a thing - nothing remotely canyon-esque, but this quite excited Chris who was predicting a big wow moment every time we emerged from behind a building or a tree. Despite the noisy construction work taking place directly behind us, the first glimpse we got of the canyon was pretty spectacular, and we spent some time taking photos of the painted picture like view into the canyon. Surprised a little by how high up we were, we also noticed that all perspective on distance was lost, and had it not been for information gleened from wikipedia earlier on in the week, we wouldn’t have know if it was a mile or three hundred miles across to the other side of the canyon (it is in fact around 16km average).
After waiting almost in line to get the typical photo with the canyon behind you, we carried on with our walk. We were a little disappointed that there were so many people getting in our way. One has this image of visiting somewhere like this and being the only people there, but everyone seemed to have the same idea as us. Fortunately most of the tourists evidently preferred the shuttle bus in both directions and once we neared the middle section of our walk, the crowds thinned out significantly and we were able to saunter along in peace.
It was a pleasant walk but neither of us felt we were really seeing a different view, and not having the proper equipment to take a hike into the canyon itself, we then headed back. No skywalk glass floor for us today after we learnt it is over 250 miles away from where we were and closer to Las Vegas. Never mind, I’m still recovering from the Jurassic Park ride t Universal Studios anyway.
Chris standing in front of a painting
Spectacular - it doesn't look real does it??
We arrived at the visitor centre and made our plans for the day, which included walking from one end of the ‘Rim Trail’ to the other (about 3 miles) along the South Rim, and then succumbing to being an American tourist and hopping on the free shuttle bus back to our parked car.
From the car park we couldn’t see a thing - nothing remotely canyon-esque, but this quite excited Chris who was predicting a big wow moment every time we emerged from behind a building or a tree. Despite the noisy construction work taking place directly behind us, the first glimpse we got of the canyon was pretty spectacular, and we spent some time taking photos of the painted picture like view into the canyon. Surprised a little by how high up we were, we also noticed that all perspective on distance was lost, and had it not been for information gleened from wikipedia earlier on in the week, we wouldn’t have know if it was a mile or three hundred miles across to the other side of the canyon (it is in fact around 16km average).
After waiting almost in line to get the typical photo with the canyon behind you, we carried on with our walk. We were a little disappointed that there were so many people getting in our way. One has this image of visiting somewhere like this and being the only people there, but everyone seemed to have the same idea as us. Fortunately most of the tourists evidently preferred the shuttle bus in both directions and once we neared the middle section of our walk, the crowds thinned out significantly and we were able to saunter along in peace.
It was a pleasant walk but neither of us felt we were really seeing a different view, and not having the proper equipment to take a hike into the canyon itself, we then headed back. No skywalk glass floor for us today after we learnt it is over 250 miles away from where we were and closer to Las Vegas. Never mind, I’m still recovering from the Jurassic Park ride t Universal Studios anyway.
Monday 19 April 2010
Flagstaff
We have been in Flagstaff now for almost two days. After an eight hour drive (that is nothing these days) east from Walnut we arrived in Flagstaff around 3pm. Flagstaff is really nice and is one of the prettiest places we have been to so far in the US. It is like living in a forest, there are tall trees and parks wherever you look and the town is serviced by hundreds of miles of trails - a reminder of the towns logging history - which weave in and out of the forest into parks and joining up with the residential parts of town. Oh yeah and it’s at 7000 feet altitude, making it the highest elevation place we have ever been to!!
That is the main reason why we are here. Flagstaff has become a haven for distance runners. Not only because of the altitude (which elite distance runners have been using for years to attain higher fitness levels) but because of the amazing network of trails around the town. We are only here for 8 days, not long enough to benefit from the stimulus of altitude, but long enough to work out the trails and best places to train for future trips. Plus we are staying in a house of runners so hopefully we’ll get some good advice!!
Yesterday we went to Sedona, which is a couple of thousand feet lower than Flagstaff and descends into the red rock canyons. We were blown away by some of the views and amazing rock formations, which line the drive. Sedona itself is a tourist haven and has many gift shops, which actually have some really cool stuff; lots of native American artefacts and artwork. Damn us having no luggage allowance left for our flights!!
Today we are going to check out downtown Flagstaff itself and maybe catch a movie (it’s a hard life), before checking out some of the other natural wonders in the area. A trip to Grand Canyon awaits!!
Aaaahhhh! Alicia's (our hosts) cute little pug.
A view of the red rocks from Sedona village
Walking some of the trails around Sedona
That is the main reason why we are here. Flagstaff has become a haven for distance runners. Not only because of the altitude (which elite distance runners have been using for years to attain higher fitness levels) but because of the amazing network of trails around the town. We are only here for 8 days, not long enough to benefit from the stimulus of altitude, but long enough to work out the trails and best places to train for future trips. Plus we are staying in a house of runners so hopefully we’ll get some good advice!!
Yesterday we went to Sedona, which is a couple of thousand feet lower than Flagstaff and descends into the red rock canyons. We were blown away by some of the views and amazing rock formations, which line the drive. Sedona itself is a tourist haven and has many gift shops, which actually have some really cool stuff; lots of native American artefacts and artwork. Damn us having no luggage allowance left for our flights!!
Today we are going to check out downtown Flagstaff itself and maybe catch a movie (it’s a hard life), before checking out some of the other natural wonders in the area. A trip to Grand Canyon awaits!!
Sunday 18 April 2010
Mt SAC Relays
At the end of last year Chris could be heard bragging that he hadn’t been to watch an athletics event all year. If he hadn’t already, our 2 days at Mt Sac Relays in Walnut more than made up for it.
The Mt Sac relays is basically an open athletics meeting. However it attracts some of the best athletes from across America aswell as many elite foreign athletes. Despite my withdrawal from the competition we decided to attend for the first two days to watch.
One of the main differences between this race and anything we get in the UK is the depth of the races. This means that rather than having a 5000m and a 10,000m for men and women, we sat through a total of six 10,000m races and eight 5000m races, each with around 30+ athletes in. It might sound comparable to watching some paint dry but for true athletics geeks like us it was great and we loved every minute. There were some great personal bests by some of the British athletes as well to boot.
After two days and 15 hours of athletics action (including an 11 hour stint on Friday) we felt pretty exhausted. The Mt Sac relays do in fact go on for another day on the Saturday, however we are heading to altitude in Arizona for a stint of training. In less than two weeks we return to the UK and events like Mt Sac relays and the Stanford Invitational will seem like miles away. We wish all athletics meets could be as enthusiastic and entertaining as this one...
Beginning to get busy at the Mt San Antonio College Track
The Mt Sac relays is basically an open athletics meeting. However it attracts some of the best athletes from across America aswell as many elite foreign athletes. Despite my withdrawal from the competition we decided to attend for the first two days to watch.
One of the main differences between this race and anything we get in the UK is the depth of the races. This means that rather than having a 5000m and a 10,000m for men and women, we sat through a total of six 10,000m races and eight 5000m races, each with around 30+ athletes in. It might sound comparable to watching some paint dry but for true athletics geeks like us it was great and we loved every minute. There were some great personal bests by some of the British athletes as well to boot.
After two days and 15 hours of athletics action (including an 11 hour stint on Friday) we felt pretty exhausted. The Mt Sac relays do in fact go on for another day on the Saturday, however we are heading to altitude in Arizona for a stint of training. In less than two weeks we return to the UK and events like Mt Sac relays and the Stanford Invitational will seem like miles away. We wish all athletics meets could be as enthusiastic and entertaining as this one...
Thursday 15 April 2010
Palm Springs
The 150th blog post! I’m glad you're still here!!
We had heard that Palm Springs was meant to be a nice, so took our opportunity to visit as we are based less than an hour away. So far we have had mixed opinions on US towns and cities and were wondering whether a trip to “LA’s retirement village” would possibly change that. One interesting fact about Palm Springs is that it has over 100 golf courses to satisfy its 40,000 strong population. Crazy!
When we arrived we thought it would be a good idea to drive randomly around the town to get a feel for it and inevitably got lost. As we drove aimlessly around the town we both thought it looked pretty; palm tree lined boulevards and grass on some of the sidewalks (yes we know, some Americans do actually know what grass is!) We ended up stumbling upon, what we would consider, the most European style recreation area we have seen since coming to the US. It was really nice and on a gloriously hot day we had our lunch there and basked in the sunshine for a couple of hours. We then had a wander around downtown Palm Springs, stopping at a café, before heading back to Joshua Tree.
Tomorrow we are heading to Walnut California to watch the Mt Sac relays. I’m hoping that Andrea won’t get too depressed as she was hoping to do this event, but all it means is that she gets to race more over the summer in the UK! And after the success of this blog, I’m sure she’s going to have hundreds of adoring fans lining the sidelines for her, chanting her name, when she makes her return! ;)
We had heard that Palm Springs was meant to be a nice, so took our opportunity to visit as we are based less than an hour away. So far we have had mixed opinions on US towns and cities and were wondering whether a trip to “LA’s retirement village” would possibly change that. One interesting fact about Palm Springs is that it has over 100 golf courses to satisfy its 40,000 strong population. Crazy!
When we arrived we thought it would be a good idea to drive randomly around the town to get a feel for it and inevitably got lost. As we drove aimlessly around the town we both thought it looked pretty; palm tree lined boulevards and grass on some of the sidewalks (yes we know, some Americans do actually know what grass is!) We ended up stumbling upon, what we would consider, the most European style recreation area we have seen since coming to the US. It was really nice and on a gloriously hot day we had our lunch there and basked in the sunshine for a couple of hours. We then had a wander around downtown Palm Springs, stopping at a café, before heading back to Joshua Tree.
Tomorrow we are heading to Walnut California to watch the Mt Sac relays. I’m hoping that Andrea won’t get too depressed as she was hoping to do this event, but all it means is that she gets to race more over the summer in the UK! And after the success of this blog, I’m sure she’s going to have hundreds of adoring fans lining the sidelines for her, chanting her name, when she makes her return! ;)
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