Travel

Bon Voyage Denver, Bon Appétit Sonic, et Bienvenue Philadelphia

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I know what you’re all thinking – getting this blog update on a Wednesday afternoon. Chris is on NOT on vacation… and yet he blogs. What can this mean? How is this possible? DO I UNDERSTAND ANY PART OF THE WORLD I AM LIVING IN?
Fear not, readers. For it is true, I am not on vacation and yet I still blog. At least until I find a decent therapist in Philly anyway….
Sunday morning against a heavy swamp of nostalgia and chronophobia I piled in the car with my two best pals and my best friend and we set off on our three day road trip.

The events of which were pretty, well, uneventful. We suffered through Rob Lowes audiobook “Stories I only tell my friends”, which I THOUGHT was going to be amazing but… well…. the person that recommended it to me reads entertainment magazine on a regular basis so I should have known… YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. The dogs were quiet and obediently left souvenirs scattered across the midwestern united states. We stayed in Residence Inn’s, and gut bombed our way through Colorado, Kansas, Missouri,

Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and finally, Pennsylvania.
We arrived here Tuesday afternoon, mustered up what strength and mental power we had left (which was like, almost none. Seriously, we couldn’t even pent speakances at pat thoint) and made our inaugural mega trip to Target. Our temporary corporate housing is clean and modern, albeit a little dark and cold (perfect for playing Star Wars). The dogs are quickly adjusting, there is a dog park just for our building less than 20 feet from our front door, and all in all we’re all doing pretty well. Tim is already fully engaged in his new role, and I’m taking a few days to recover before I start going out to meetups to meet some new friends and find some things to do in the city. While we wait for our home in Denver to sell, we’re heading out Saturday and Sunday to look at potential new homes (vacation getaways for the rest of you!), just taking it one day at a time.
I’ll keep a running log of any goings on through this blog, and look forward to your witty comments (and text messages), while I embark on my new adventure and you all continue your own. Thanks for such an amazing last 10 years Colorado, and Philly – I hope you’re ready for me – God knows you all weren’t!!

Chris

Basketball, Closing Ceremonies & Departure Day

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The next day we had most of the morning to sleep in. Our only events of the day were the Men’s Basketball Finals and Closing Ceremonies.

We won Gold, which was awesome, but it wasn’t even a close game. I actually started feeling bad for Serbia near the end of it as we had double their score. It was a swift victory, and I was glad we weren’t playing against Brasil because people get really into their teams there. There was a fun break from basketball though when the Mascot came out to dance. He was doing Whip and Nae Nae before I got my camera out so sorry Stasia, but this is still pretty good too.

Afterwards, we took a bus directly to closing ceremonies. Traffic was horrendous, because you know everyone who was going to see events all over the city all week were now all headed to the same event at the same venue at the same time. I would guess the bus ride took about two hours. Also, did I mention the rain? It was raining very hard. Even after we arrived….

Everyone was soaked. The athletes, the performers, everyone in their seats (it was an open air stadium). I could have been pretty miserable but I had a raincoat and a poncho on top of it and just tried to enjoy it the best I could. Which was great, because Douglas and Randy finally spotted us on TV!!!

 

 

I went back to theNBC Closing Ceremonies Live Replay on NBC’s Website and around 2:30:00 I snagged those shots above. I look like I’m wearing a Hijab but whatever, it’s cool. We left soon after this, but what was awesome was that during the announcement of the 2020 Olympic in Japan Mario came out of the stage!

Nintendo almost NEVER does any agreements for anything so if they are involved in the Tokyo Olympics that is just going to be so awesome. The way home didn’t take near as long, and we were back to the hotel before we knew it!

Departure day was a LONG day. Our flight didn’t leave until late evening so we spent most of the day packing and getting ready in the hotel. By the time we got to the airport the place was swamped – everyone kept telling us that it was the busiest day in the airport’s history.

Getting through security wasn’t too horrible with NBC, and we actually boarded on time as well. But then we got stuck on the tarmac for almost 2 hours, and even though we sprinted as soon as we landed in Houston we missed our connection. Sticky, stinky, and exhausted, we finally got on a standby flight (middle seat coach!) and got home safe. It was a great adventure we both really enjoyed. Brasil is a beautiful country, although I don’t know that I would have done something like this without the group we had. We were chaperoned, carted around in busses, and we had a security detail following us almost everywhere we went. It truly was a safe, super awesome vacation.

Sugarloaf, Diving, and Athletics

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We’re catching up quick now…

Taking the cablecar up Sugarloaf Mountain

We finally got to go all the way up to Sugarloaf Mountain. (There are those SWEET LINKS again! You’re going to be so smart about Brasil!) We had to take a cablecar to the first peak, and then a second cablecar to the top.

View of a plane taking off from the airport seen from Sugarloaf

It was crazy steep all the way around, but a beautiful peak and lots of fun wildlife up there. You could even see all the way out to Christ Redeemer.

somebodys watching me

Marmosets!

There were some beautiful birds up top, and even some Marmosets that live up there!
It was a busy day though, and we had to make it to Olympic Men’s Diving before we went to Athletics later in the day.

DAVID THIS IS NO TIME TO SLEEP

Men’s Diving was probably one of the most fun events to watch, because we were in the running for gold and because there was some serious competition. Sets run pretty consistently so you don’t get very bored, and it’s overall a great experience unless someone can’t control their kid and they kick you in the head every-timeeverytime the crowd cheers.

Backwards

There were all different kinds of dives.

Just kidding

The judges looked comical in their rain covered booths.

Pointy

And then we had to be off to Athletics!

Usain Bolt

Athletics was like hanging out with your best friend in Elementary school that had ADD but his parents never remembered to give him his Ritalin. At one point, we had a relay race going on and in between laps on both sides there was javelin throwing and high jump going on. I was really hoping to see a High Jumper get stampeded or a Javelin thrower miss and accidentally hit someone on the track but apparently these people are fairly good at what they do so no such luck.

Then what

USA about to win gold

Because of everything going on it was hard to tell who was winning in any one events.

Winning

But we did win the Men’s 1500m!

Winning Silver

Lastly, the Women’s High Jump winner was bizarre. I think she practiced witchcraft before every jump. Here is her flaunting her spell power after winning Gold on a technicality.

She has a sweet costume though. I would totally dress like that for halloween.