Can I move to New Zealand? Please?!

Back now for about 2 days from a tremendious trip to New Zealand for just under 2 weeks.  I took the trip with three friends one being my best friend from RPI.  The four of us all met up in Christchurch for the beginning of a road trip around the south island before we finished up in Auckland on the north island.

Our adventures took us to waterfalls, penguins, large spherical rocks on a beach, caving, skiing, hiking up mountains, glaciers and volcanos and sea kayaking with sea lions.  It was just fantastic, we also managed to meet some kiwis on the trip while in the cities of Queenstown, Wellington and Auckland, hopefully future couches to sleep on :)

Here are some of the highlight photos of the trip. More can be found here.

New Sony Walkman W Series

Most people are trying avoid the rain that we've been getting these past couple of days.  But today I took it as an opportunity to test out my new Sony Walkman!!! The walkman is water resistant and thus I figured the rain would be a great test.

and it was!

Sorry the photo is not the best quality. I was dripping wet and seemed to have gotten the camera wet.  The Walkman worked great on this ride!! It was easy enough to turn it up when I got out of the way of traffic and on the bike path and down when I was back with rush hour with a quick button press.  I'm still figuring out some of the controls as there's no screen to navigate through and you are adjusting the songs, volume etc while it's on your head.

Overall great experience with the walkman.  I look forward to running with it tomorrow!

Craft Night

What better way to spend a rainy afternoon then whipping up some headbands.  Thanks to my roommate who had some elastic laying around we were able to grab some scraps and making two headbands in under 30 minutes.

It's a really simple process.  Basically you cut two rectangle, 16inches x your desired width x2 + 1/2 inch and then 10 inches x 3 inches.  The second will be wrapped around your elastic.

Then fold and sew the two rectangles right sides together. Turn them right side out and iron them flat with the seam in the middle of the backside (against your head).

Attach a safety pin to your elastic and thread the elastic through the smaller 'tube' and anchor it to one end by sewing back and forth a couple of times.  Place the rightsides of the elastic tub (with the elastic anchored end) to the right side of one end of the larger tube and sew those ends together.  Now pull the other end of the elastic through the tube so that you srunch the fabric and again so this end to the other end of the headband rightsides together.  I didn't get enough process photos but there are plenty of tutorials out there if you're looking to make one and need more instructions.

These guys supervised:

A Race too Big for this Little Girl?

In order to keep myself motivated to keep training and training well I find that signing up for road races every so often throughout the summer and into fall really benefits me.  Well I might have bitten off more then I can chew with this one... a week or so ago I looked for half marathons in the July - August time frame.  I've reached 10 miles on my weekly long runs so I figured it's about time to get some races in here.  And one of the only CO half marathon's that I'll be available for is the Keystone Half Marathon.
the race starts at an elevation of just over 9,300 feet above sea level! Should be a fun race, see if I handle these Rocky Mountains :)

Fourth of July Shenanigans

It's already Wednesday and I'm still loving this past fourth of July weekend. The three day weekend was filled with lots of CO activities including, hiking, camping, 3 nights of fireworks!, tubing!, lots of good food and a great afternoon spent with friends picnicing in the park outside the capital. Check out some photos below of the adventures:

four way high five

good times with new friends

check out more of Jenn's photos.

Denver Rock N Roll Marathon

I have official signed up for the 2011 Denver Rock N Roll Marathon taking place on October 9th!  I will be training with Team in Training (TNT) for this marathon as the Team Captain for the Central Denver team.  TNT participants raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS), a research organization working to find a cure to blood cancers. Basically it's a great cause. And the team is just amazing.

Find out more information and donate here.

Also, if you're in the Denver area we'll be hosting a fundraising Pub Crawl on East Colfax on July 9th.  Some of the details are still being worked out but it's looking like $25 ticket price for 3 beers and pizza, with all of the ticket proceeds going directly to LLS.  It'll be a good time and honestly you'll probably go out and spend $25 anyways so why not give it to a good cause?!! More info to come.