Jay completed an Iron Man last year and unlike most Ironmen he decided it's the only one he will ever do! But, he'd put in so much training that he wanted to capitalize on that on the best segment of the triathlon for him, the swim.
He's been training with the Aurora Ducks Masters and the Uxbridge Swim Club elite swimmers, competed in a bunch of swim meets and now we're off to Doha for the World Masters Aquatic Championships.
Maria and Jim are meeting us in Doha, as is Jay's Dad (not really sure how that happened but he's working in London, UK so he's making the trip over) and Grey, who Jay has been training with, and his girlfriend Ashley will be there as well.
Our flight is at 9:10pm - Lindsay is taking us to the airport. Because my parents are away for the winter in Florida and South Carolina someone has to stay with the girls. Lindsay has dog/house sat for us before and I was like "how do you feel about teenagers?" She's super sweet, just graduated University last year and has been working with us (The Cindy Wood Team). She really wants the girls to like her and hang out with her so she's likely going to be a total sucker!
It's a pretty decent trek to Doha - it was significantly less expensive to fly Air Canada and do a stopover in Frankfurt (where we currently are while I write this) than to fly Qatar Airways with just a stop in Montreal and then the rest direct.
Our first flight is an 'overnight' where we're hoping to sleep for 4-5 hours and then stay up for the duration until we get to Qatar because it's 8 hours ahead and we arrive at 11:30pm their time which is 3:30pm home time but with only having had 4 hours sleep and travelled and it's dark we're hoping we can just get to the hotel and go straight to sleep and be somewhat on 'time' tomorrow. We got on the plane and our seats are pods so they're all facing every which way and even though Jay and I are both in row 6 he's behind me and on the same angle as me so I can't really see him. I told him it probably wasn't a bad thing because I won't use my CPAP while I try to sleep on the plane and he got this really thankful/wistful look on his face and said "there isn't enough magnesium in the world"...(we've been taking a magnesium supplement to help us sleep and it's great and now that I have the CPAP I don't snore so we're both sleeping well!)
Jay's first event isn't until Tuesday (today is Saturday, we left on Friday) and his big event that he wants to do well at is on Thursday. Jim and Maria arrive on Monday, Jay's Dad there was a miscommunication in timing and so he arrived 2 days ago and leaves before Jay's final event, Grey and Ashley left yesterday but they might be there already because their layover was short in Montreal and ours is 4 hrs here in Frankfurt.
Travel has been awesome (not really) because I have cramps (of course, hello vacation) and fucking hot flashes. Worst. These are new (like in the last week) and I'm not happy about it. The lounge we're in has showers though so I just went and had a cold shower to try to cool off but then got all hot again getting dressed in the tiny shower room. FFS.
I expect there will be a lot of down time on this trip because Jay's going to want to rest up for his events so I figured it was a good time to pull out the blog again! I haven't blogged in a LONG time...not since the height of Covid. Obviously we're travelling again. But I haven't written about it - we've been back to Costa Rica (twice), to Florida, to Curacao and to California I think since the last time I wrote - but not a big trip like this, that I'd like to remember, thus the writing. I did have a couple of half started posts - one about Jay's Ironman in Maryland just about the drive down there and one I have no idea where we were but Maria was in it and so was Juls - might have been a trip to Arizona (oh, we also went to Arizona for a girls weekend and to Vancouver last summer to see Matt and Stephanie get married). This is a big trip though, and a great accomplishment for Jay so I want to remember it - there is nothing I love more than going back through some of the travel blogs (I just read a few from out last trip to Italy and so many awesome memories).
The second leg of our trip we flew Qatar Airways and holy shit is it nice. Our pods had doors on them..doors! sliding doors where you could close yourself off from the world - I didn't close myself off but I could if I wanted to!
I didn't sleep the second leg so I just got the 4 hours of crappy sleep on Air Canada on our first leg. We arrived in Doha, went through security and immigration - they took fingerprint scans and had to scan your face and eyes - she had to ask me to open my eyes (they're very squinty) and so I can just imagine anyone reviewing footage later coming across my photo with my eyes bug out which naturally makes me extend my neck and chin out like a turtle. WTF.
We took a taxi to the hotel, checked in, got to our room - it's big, a corner room, two double beds instead of a King but whatever. It's almost 1am here - we're 8 hours ahead so it's 5pm at home. The time difference is going to be a doozie with working and communicating with the girls.
I didn't take any photos - I really got out of the habit - can't wait until Maria gets here with her snap happy outlook and shares all her pics with me - haha.
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