Friday, June 4, 2010 – We are on our way!

It’s finally time to leave!  All our status updates on facebook this week talked about how excited we were to get to race weekend and how we wanted the week to go by faster.  Finally!  We boarded our plan and headed to beautiful San Diego (SD).  Here is one thing that I need to share because it’s flippin hilarious.  Since we traveled as a group, we were given paper tickets.  When is the last time you saw these bad boys?  I believe my words were something along the lines of, “Moses delivered me my tickets on tablets today.” I just had to share…I guess it was funnier the first time.

Back to the plane:  It was neat because the crew on our plan talked about us over the speaker and let the plane know how much money we raised as a chapter.  We are pretty loud and obnoxious, so we made some noise.  We also had a group from Kentucky on our flight.  It was cool to see people from other teams in our airport on their way to SD.  We (captains – Jennifer, Cathy, and me) decided to do a little something for our team for race weekend.  We had some Fairy Tale brownies, which I have never had before…..holy crap they were good!  Since I am the queen of quick, easy, cute, and cheap good luck gifts in mass quantities, I whipped up a little brag book for our team from us.  Pretty fitting that I chose something to hold pictures since I am pretty infamous for my little orange camera that goes everywhere and takes a ton of pics.  We gave everyone their goodies on the plane and we were on our way!

We arrived and picked up our bags and headed to the bus that would be our transportation for the weekend.  We hopped on and less than 5 minutes later; we were at our home for the weekend.  We are at a marina, which makes for a cool view from our 8^th floor balcony!

We got settled in and headed to the Expo at the Convention Center via our friendly TNT Shuttle Bus.  We got there and got the important stuff done first…..race packets.  Look at us checking in!

Once we took care of that small important business item, we headed into the main part of the expo.  I usually buy a bunch of stuff but they really didn’t have anything exciting, which was disappointing.  They didn’t make the beanie bears that the other two races have had and I have on my desk at work, so I was pretty bummed.  I got my pin for my hat and was on my merry way.  The best part were the fitting rooms.  Anyone who has completed a race knows why this is funny:

Funny, since I prepared to blow a wad of cash on souvenirs.  We started walking around and hit up all the free stuff.  My walking buddies were a little overwhelmed as this is their first race.  At one point, I narrowed down the important stops:  TNT booth, PF Chang’s booth, and the MDG booth.  We hit those up and then just started to walk around.  Here are some more pics from teh Expo:

Before we knew it, it was almost 5pm, which is when we were supposed to be back for a group run.  While it’s not mandatory, we should have gone but after walking around so much at the expo, we had done our own version of the 20 minute “run” which we don’t do anyway.  So, we hopped on the next bus in the hopes of avoiding our team since we didn’t make the run.  Lo and behold, they finished their run right at the bus stop as we pulled up.  BUSTED!  Awkward.  Oh well, it’s all good!  We headed upstairs to figure out dinner.  After a mad texting war between my team and my friend who lives here, Carrie, we managed to figure out dinner:  Panera Bread.  If anyone knows me, I love Panara and pray for a day that they will set up shop in Az….which will never happen. 

We gathered in the lobby and headed to the front of the hotel to see about getting a cab to Panera, which was only about 3 miles from our hotel.  We were set up with a van driven by a crazy guy who proceeded to bash anyone who would need 4 hours to finish a half marathon.  Okay shuttle driver man, let’s see you get off your seat and do something.  Weirdo.  We arrived at our yummy destination and he proceeded to charge us $4 a person (7 people). 

We were walking towards Panera when everyone but me saw my friends who live here:

Very cool!  It’s always great to see these guys as they are a fun couple to hang with.  I grew up twirling with Carrie and, even thought it was a short visit, I am glad we had a chance to catch up.  My team headed to get ice cream and the grocery store while we were yapping forever and then they were ready to head back to the hotel. After hearing our story about the shuttle guy and finding out he totally ripped us off, Robert so graciously volunteered to make two trips back to the hotel and take us back so we didn’t have to call the driver back.  While he made his first trip, I headed to get my Gatorade and water with Carrie, Mary, and Sarah.  This trip to Von’s produced the necessary race day items as well as a cooler to hoard ice in for after the race.  Sorry Mary, I am only thinking of my shins…..not the world this weekend.

Robert came back and picked us up and we headed back to the hotel.  I am sure they weren’t prepared for our giggle fest.  Once the Three Walking Muskateers get going, someone is bound to pee their pants.  Thanks guys, you rock!

I headed up to the room and thought I was going to head down to the lobby to take advantage of the only area with free wireless internet access.  It turns out; I was more pooped than I thought, so I headed to bed.  Day One is over and it’s on to Day Two!