Nautica NYC Triathlon Weekend

After a very looong delay, I finally got around to finish my summer reports. Well, to begin with, the whole summer @ USA was absolutely AWESOME! Sure, there were couple things we didn’t particularly enjoy (like moving to another pool at the beginning/end of pool season), but as a whole, I am really glad we decided to go. And quite frankly — I consider it to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life!

So let’s go back now… to New York City, where I spent whole 5 days just because of NYC Triathlon. The whole race weekend was totally amazing, the minute I got to NYC, everything was all about sports and triathlon. And I loved it! Even the expo, where it was kinda discouraging to see all of the athletes picking up race packets etc., and me just staring at them (unlike the year bofore). But what the heck, I got some free merchandise, met my cousin and off we were to get ready for Jamaica Underwear Run!

That’s Friday, and since the race day is on Sunday… I got the whole Saturday free. Well except having to attend „a volunteer briefing“ since I was volunteering on the race day :-). The briefing was quick and I was quite glad to see hundreds of other like-minded people, all of them volunteering for one reason — guaranteed entry for next year’s race… Well, probably not all of them, but every other person told me that they are doing this because of their plans to race NYC Tri in 2012.

For the volunteering, I chose „athlete recovery“ zone, which was in my opinion one of the best places to be (compared to transition zones etc., where nothing really interesting happened :-). I got to see all of the finishers right after they crossed he finish line, provided them with foods/drinks and made sure that they got medical assistance if needed.

The briefing was taking place in Central Park, which was awesome, because one of my cousin’s friends was having a b-day party on sheep meadow. It was probably my first birthday celebration in US, and definitely in Central Park :-). Lots of food, (alcoholic) drinks, people… Fun times, I had even experienced my first Piñata.

With the b-day party done, I spent the rest of the day just walking around and absorbing the NYC atmosphere, which is unique! The race day was next morning and since we had to get up quite early (4am — because of the transtion zone set-up), you would probably expect that we would hit the bed soon… Well, not the case as one of my close friends recently moved to NYC and proposed going out for a beer.

So we went – to Brooklyn :-). It wasn’t just one beer, as usually… And to make long story short, I got back just 2 hours prior to when the alarm clock went crazy. So I didn’t get much sleep, but what the heck. Carpe diem, there will be plenty of time to get all the sleep needed in the grave, as one of my friends likes to say.

Race Day

The race day was just phenomenal. It was very long indeed, the weather was atrocious… but all of the athletes were quite determined and even though the start got postponed for more than half an hour, it was ALL awesome! What could be more descriptive than the official race day video from organizers (if you focus on the guy with umbrella at 1:12, you might find him familiar :-).

I enjoyed working as a volunteer quite a bit! We had a great team, lotta fun and had a chance to see all of the athletes right after they crossed the finish line, congratulate them and even take their pictures and what not. Once the elites were done, age-groupers started coming and it reminded me of the times when I worked by the finish line of Prague International Marathon. Simply awesome, true story!

After the race was over, my cousin and I went for a walk in NYC, grabbed an awesome sushi meal… and just enjoyed ourselves after very tiring day. The next day in the morning I was about to leave for Baltimore very early, so nothing really interesting, except when I missed the connecting train and got late to work, which was sort of a tradition for anyone travelling to NYC :-).

Next post is coming tomorrow and it will be a small follow-up on our one of the last trips to Philly & Wash DC. Right after that, it’s Miami time, baby!!!

Ohiopyle Rafting, Black Eyed Peas gig

It’s incredible how fast the time goes. I don’t know why there wasn’t any blog-update sooner, but that’s just how it is :-)

What has happened from the last blog-post:

• Numerous heat-waves (having 40° in the shade is kinda normal for us now)
• Ohiopyle White Water Rafting
• Visit to Pittsburgh
• Black Eyed Peas gig
• Lots of BBQs, Pool Parties and also one B-Day celebration
• Lots of shopping, both online and offline :-)
• New (totally awesome) waterproof camera
• Finally got a working internet connection

I hope I didn’t forget anything. The days are just literally flying by and keeping track of what did or did not happen is somehow boring :-). We came down here to enjoy the summer, not to write a book about it…

Having said that, let me start with the white water adventure we took a week ago. It’s been the best day so far. A friend of our friend recommended it as a part of trip to Pittsburgh (most stunning night-city view I’ve ever seen) and we will thank be grateful to him, well, forever.

We did Lower Yough rafting trip, which is medium difficulty (Class III & IV). In other terms, the drop per 1 mile is ± 25 feet. If you compare it to  Class V rapids (over 100-foot drop per 1 mile), it’s really childish :-). But since this was the very first experience with white water rafting for most of us, I think it was perfectly suited and we all just had the time of our lives. And we didn’t even mind it was pouring all day long, as it made the river a bit more wild. We all ended up in the freaking cold water anyway – not because of major rapids, but because of the very infantile game we played when we were pushing each other of the raft :-).

The whole trip took more than 7 hours (not to mention the 4-hour drive to Ohiopyle State Park) and we even had a picnic-style lunch in the middle of it, which finally convinced most of the guys that PBJ sandwich is a thing of delight :-).  And once we got back and took a warm shower, off we were to see Pittsburgh.

We managed to arrive at around 8pm, but that was OK since we were planning to see it at night and our only item on agenda was Pittsburgh Penguins Arena. We made it eventually, even though the way was a bit “jumpy” and included a lot of highway crossings :-). The other thing we did is called The Duquesne Incline, something like a Pittsburgh-version of Petřínská lanovka :-). Having done that, we got back to car and headed back to Baltimore, which was more than 5 hours away (mind you that it was 1am already). We arrived back and safe at 5am. Hell of a day with way to many things happening (“too much drama” would be a Columbian way of saying that :-).

Simply, one of the best days of my life so far.

The only thing left was the return of our car, which happened to be a 4-wheel drive Toyota Rav4. Renting a car was actually a funny story which included lot of hick-ups. But we were not responsible for any of those and since everything worked out really well, I think we can just skip that :-). So when we got back, we drove to the 24-hour parking lot, tried to clean coffee/ice-cream of the seats and then dropped a key into a drop-off key box. So that’s for my first-ever driving&renting-a-car experience in USA. Everything went well, we didn’t get charged any extras..

The trip mentioned above required quite a lot of planning, which in effect meant that we didn’t have a chance to go somewhere else during our days off. And the other thing is that the weather in Baltimore area in last couple of weeks was just crazy. Too much heat to do anything outside, so we were mostly chilling at the pool or in our air-conditioned apartment. I don’t remember a recent month that I was as lazy as I am now… But what the heck, we live only once!

Another thing worth mentioning is Black Eyed Peas concert, which was stunning. It was held in a place, where they actually started their career more than couple years ago – MerriWeather Post Pavilion. We got the cheapest tickets, so our viewing-spot wasn’t that fancy… But what the hack – we could still (sometimes) see the stage, Fergie… so everything was awesome!

Other than that, usual stuff… we did some BBQs, had a B-Day celebration for one of our team-members, went clubbing couple times — especially to our favorite — Padonia Station (well, that’s the only place in our “suburb”), where they have Thursday specials: Dollar Beer Night. The average spending is around 15$ / person, so you do the math :-D

Ouch, one more thing – we got a new underwater camera! It’s Panasonic Lumix TS3, outdoor waterproof camera… And it’s just awesome. If it wasn’t for some issues with the back-display, forcing us to return it and got a replacement… All would be perfect. But I’m sure it will work out and in the end, we will have splendid memories captures on both image and moving-image :-) And the best thing, it shots FullHD videos!

I was about to mention my trip to NYC, where I volunteered for Nautica NYC Triathlon that I competed in last year. However, that spot is gonna be quite lengthy, so I guess it will be better to separate it from my (i)regular reports!

Take it easy, ya’ll!

What’s planned? :-)

• Trip to Philadelphia and Washington DC
• One more visit to NYC
• Then some post-season work
• And then, FINALLY, awesome traveling in Florida !!!
• As usually, all the pictures are to be found on my Flickr account!

What has happened from the last blog-post:

• Crazy weather (had more than 40° in the shade)
• Internet connection coming to our apartment, finally!
• We went to see Washington DC (and we will go there again :-)
• Flea-market rocked our world for just 12$
• Chipotle rocked our world even more :-D

It’s incredible how time goes fast. Tomorrow, it will be 4 weeks for us in United States. Now that I mentioned that, I realized that so far I haven’t kept my desired “blogpost ratio” (1 post per week), but don’t worry… I’ll make it up as soon as we get stable internet connection in our apartment. You see, so far, we were able to catch free WiFi which was awesome. But for some reason, it stopped working :-). So I am dependent on the connection at our swimming pool, which is kinda OK, but not very fast.

That’s for my apologies why my blog was dead for last 10 days or so. I can’t wait to get the connection installed – it will be fiber optics (kick-ass fast) from Verizon, with HD TV channels (that can be watched on PC!) included… which I love most because of the upcoming cycling events (le Tour de France, la Vuelta a España).

My parents kept emailing/texting us about what have we been up to… Well, a lot! :-) Even tough last couple of days were (as usually) incredibly busy, we managed to get some trips planned and went to Washington D.C. That’s probably the best thing we’ve done so far. We had a flawless plan for all the sightseeing places, but somehow, we did cover like 1/3 of it :-). There is just too many things to see!

We spent more than half a day in Natural History Museum. Even though we originally planned to stay there for 2 hours tops – obviously, we didn’t know that this much time will be required just for the breath-taking ocean life exhibition…

Do we regret it? Not at all, it was just awesome and one of the most interesting places I’ve been to in last couple of years. And as there is lot of places left that we “missed”, we got another reason to go and see DC again :-). Check out all of our pictures in the dedicated photo album on my Flickr account. Our trip to Washington D.C. was a whole-day “event”, we set off at 6:30 am and got back at 11pm. Man, we were tired like hell… probably because of the distance we walked – more than 10k.

Next time, I’ll bring a GPS tracker so that we can measure the distance more precisely and share the exact route we took. One more thing I’d like to mention about our trip: lunch at Chipotle. The best Mexican fast-food place. It’s a little bit pricier than Taco or McDonald, but still quite OK for us foreigners/students. And it’s freaking amazing :-)

So having the trip to DC behind us, we got few more plans. And a good thing is, that even though we live in quite remote suburb area (village Cockeysville), travelling to other places is not that bad. From the front door of our apartment, it took us – using public transport – just little over 2 hours to get to National Mall in DC . Travelling to Philadelphia and New York should be similar, so I hope to “cover” most of the cities on East cost during July/August. And then, in September, we will most likely do some kick-ass cruise to Hawaii or Caribbean :-)

I think this should be enough for our travelling. Apart from that, most of our time was spent at work (= pool), than relaxing and than sports (swimming, running, basketball and frisbee). Keeping up with the hours-per-week of sports I used to before I left Prague is quite difficult, but I reconciled myself to doing less. It’s just not possible because of weather conditions (40° in the shade is quite a standard here :-) and all the temptations that are at hand :-).

Carpe diem! Right now, it’s all about enjoying our stay here, and living/working with my brother is just incredible and I can’t wait for all the adventures that are awaiting us in upcoming weeks!

One of the last things I ‘d like to mention is flea-market we went to just 2 days ago. Our plan was to get a microwave and a coffee maker as we weren’t provided with these at our apartment. We didn’t really think that we could get them for reasonable prices, but boy, we made quite a deal :-). First, we got a coffee maker for 2$ (sic!) and then almost brand-new microwave for just 10$. I can’t imagine the same thing happening in Czech… But anyway, our kitchen is “ready” and our lives will be a little bit easier from now on :-).

That would be all for today. Got a long day ahead of me, so take it easy. Not sure when the next post will be published, probably in a week or so. We are planning to “do” Baltimore on Friday, when we are off of work (we will probably visit the aquarium in the morning and baseball game of Baltimore Orioles vs. Boston Red Sox later). And I can’t wait for the the next week, which will be about all about theme parks – on Monday we will go either to Six Flags or King’s Dominion. And the other one that we don’t visit this time, well, we will go there in July :-).

Love it here! Take care ya’ll!

Related and interesting links:

• My brother’s memo about our trip.
• Our pictures from Washington.
• Collection of all our pictures taken so far. More pictures coming soon!
• Noora – fellow lifeguard posting from NYC.