I am back...hopefully for a while

It looks as though I feel off the face of the earth for about four months.  To be honest I have no idea why I haven’t taken a few minutes to sit down and write.  I really wanted to get a detailed post out about my Turkey trip, but since that never happened I just stopped writing.  There is no excuse for it, although I have been going a mile a minute. 

              
Turkey was incredible; I would even go as far as one of the best trips I have taken outside the country.  I went with a fantastic group of friends, got to explore some incredible areas of Turkey and eat phenomenal food.  I promise I will write about that soon with lots of pictures.  In the mean time I have a lot of catching up to do.  I am going to try and summarize what has happened in the last few months.

Work:  Work has been good.  Busy as always, but I am very blessed to love what I do.  I recently went to West Virginia for a week long corrosion course, which was very interesting.  A lot of my job revolves around understanding pipeline corrosion and prevention so it’s good to get as much education on the topic.  I also spent some time in the field with one of our corrosion managers to see how everything really works. Both of these were very beneficial courses.  I will also be taking a hydraulics class later in the fall.  Plains is really good about providing training and classes for their employees to take.   

Working out:  Working out is probably the main reason I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write.  A while back I decided to buy a road bike so I could compete in a Sprint Triathlon.  The road bike was quite an investment, but boy was it worth it.  I think I am in love with biking, probably one of my favorite outdoor activities.  I signed up to compete in the Aggieland Triathlon on July 14,2013.  It was go time after that.  My daily routine for the last month or so was:

                                4:30-6 a.m. – Crossfit M/W/F

                                                      Swimming T/TH     

                                7-5 Work             

                                6-8 Tri training (biking/running)

                                9-10:30 Dinner

Needless to say I didn’t really have any time to do anything.  Granted I would take a few days off every now and then, but those were normally filled with dinner with friends, concerts, happy hours or going out. Saturdays spent in-town, I was up at 6 am running, biking, and swimming.  It might sound like a little too much exercise, but let me tell you I love it.  I just can’t get enough; I look forward to getting off work and riding my bike.  The running I did more out of necessity, currently it’s so hot in Houston it make running incredibly hard.   The best part was I found some people to train with so that makes it even more fun.

Leading up to the tri I was incredibly nervous due to the fact that I am very competitive.  I had a few friends competing with me and my main goal was to beat them! I also wanted to do well in the tri but wasn’t sure how my times stacked up to the rest of the competitors.  Since the tri was in College Station Christy and some good friends of mine came out to watch me compete.  The tri was a 400m swim, 12 mile bike ride and 3.2 mile run.  Since my swim time was fairly fast I was one of the first few people in the water.  It was a whole new experience trying to transition between events.  After the swim I ran outside put on my bike shoes and hopped on my bike for the ride, after the ride I changed into running shoes and took off to finish the race.  It was so awesome having people there to cheer me on, it really makes a huge difference.  I ended up finishing in 1 hour and 18 minutes.  I guessed that was a good time, but wasn’t really sure.  Turns out I beat all of my friends and got fourth in my age division….WHATTTTT.  If I had only known I was so close I would have put a little more effort in jeeze.  Oh well that just motivates me to do another one! Who wants to join me?

Starting the swim

Swim to bike transition

Bike to run transition

Finish line time!

Some how survived.

The awesome sign the girls made for us.

Fun: If you ask my parents, all I do is have fun.  The last few months have been packed with tons of fun outings.  The weekends have been spent with friends enjoying the sights and scenes around Houston; with side trips to Austin to float the river, the hill country for wine tasting, and Surfside for some beach action.  I have also been cooking up a storm, I feel like I have a small restaurant at my house.  There is always someone over trying my culinary creations. 

Other News: Gabby and I got a new roommate this weekend so pretty excited about having him around.  August will be a crazy month with three weeks of travel to good ol Midland!!  September brings the start of Football season and we all know what that means…College Station every weekend.  I have also booked a few trips with in the country to finish out the year.  I will be heading to New Orleans this weekend, Maya (one of the Crossfit girls) and I will be visiting Seattle in September, planning a group trip to Chicago in October, and then home for Christmas.