Dewey for Memorial Day Weekend!

I can't wait to make this bike my method of transportation for the weekend! This will be my first Starboard for Memorial Day weekend, and I'll be honest...my liver is scared. I'm a little sad because its not going to be super warm, but hey, at least its not going to be stinking hot! I'm so ready for a Grapefruit Crush right now that I can taste it!

If you're driving this Memorial Day weekend, please be safe! And no drinking and driving!

Luray, VA

After one huge fight with the BF, I told him it was beyond ridiculous that in 2.5 years together, we've never gone anywhere just the two of us. It's either with family, friends or rugby boys, which is totally unacceptable. I understand that one of us always drives to see the other, but why not both drive one weekend to somewhere new? I get really antsy when I don't travel anywhere for a long period of time and I wanted to go somewhere. I didn't care where, I wanted him to take charge and plan something.

Sounds great....but sometimes I shouldn't allow him to plan things. HA. He decided he wanted to visit Luray, Virginia and visit the Luray Caverns. Okay, sure whatever. It's somewhere new, just like I asked. We didn't realize that the weekend we picked was Mother's Day. All of the good places were booked, even the B&Bs :( Womp, womp. So we got stuck at the Best Western...but at least it was downtown and we could walk everywhere. Even to the ONE bar in town. Oh wait, there's two but the other one was a hotel bar.

Let me just say, there were some INTERESTING characters living in Luray. Like I-N-T-E-R-E-S-T-I-N-G! Matching couples mullets, children walking around shirtless, fanny packs, and a women pushing her dog in a leopard print dog stroller. WOW. We also picked the weekend it had a street festival, where most of our people watching took place. I'm really glad we went to the fair because I don't think I've laughed that long in a LONG time.

There's only one bar, Uncle Bucks (yes, true story). And MAN. Total redneck bar, I loved it. There was a SUPER drunk guy and we laughed so hard watching him talk to him self, dance and clap. I would totally go there again. Drinks were SOOOOO cheap!

The caverns were really nice, but I don't think worth the $50 for the two of us. I've been to a cavern before, so I had seen the stuff before, but it was still pretty cool.

We even found a wine tasting festival! It was pretty cool, all the glasses were donated by the Good Will in town. You could take any glass and you were allowed to take the glass home or donate it back! How cool! Sadly, we somehow walked right past the beer fest and didn't realize it :(

There was also a "duck race". You could purchase some rubber duckies for a chance at some prizes ($300, $200, etc). Our duckies didn't win, but it was fun to partake in.

Their downtown was pretty nice, lots of open parks.

Welcome

Apparently the Appalachian Trail cuts through the town. The town had a dedication ceremony.

Greenery

Entrance sign

There was an organ down in the caverns. Apparently some person came down and realized taping on the rocks throughout the whole cavern, it only produced 13 notes. So he created this organ system. It was pretty cool. Oh, and they hold weddings down there, so you can totally get married in a cavern....

They've got a spot to donate coins and at the end of the year, they drain it and collect the money. The sign details all of the organizations and how much money raised.

So cool! One inch took around 150-200 years to grow! Some of these were 50 feet tall!

Wish my iphone could take better pictures!

Living Social Beerfest Take Two!

Earlier this month, I inivted the girls up here to DC to go to the Living Social Beerfest. This is the second time we've attended this event. This last time was this past October. It was the same place, same time and JUST AS MUCH FUN!!!!

This time I got smart and made these AWESOME pretzel necklaces:

You will NOT believe how many times people came up to us asking where we got them and how they were such great ideas. I mean, I thought everyone knew about pretzel necklaces? Cool points go to me!

They had amazing beers AGAIN. Actually, I think this go around had better beers, or maybe we just tried more this time. They even gave out fun mustaches:

And this time they had a Silent Disco!!!! WOOOHHHOOOOO!!!!! Give drunk people some headphones and watch them dance ridiculously.

This was an amazing event! The only problem was that I got so drunk that I lost my cell phone :/ I thought it was a total gonner and I was morning the loss of it. Come to find out, some super super super nice bystander picked it up and turned it into the Metro. After a few days, frantic calls, and a 2 hour metro ride, I was able to recover my phone. YAY for awesome people!

Phi Mu Regional Officer Training

AAAAAHHHHH I am SO excited for this weekend! I am finally getting to go to a Regional Area Officer Training! This year, the one closest to me is held at the University of North Carolina: Chapel Hill. This is exciting in itself, but I also get to spend a few hours with my best friend, Nikki! She lives in Raleigh and is preggers with TWINS!!! Yes, TWIN GIRLS!

This weekend is going to be so fun filled that I'm going to need a weekend from my weekend!

Spotted in DC v2

Whoaaaa girlfriend...what were you thinking when you put those on today? And you'd think that this would have been a younger chick, but NO.....it was an older lady. Ew girlfriend, ew.

Giggles

Happy Friday!

6th One Down: Nike Women's Half

Jess and I after the race

Omgeeeeeeeeee I wanted to back out of this race SO BADLY. I had zero interest in running it, my heart and head wasn't in it...so much that I even posted on FB to see if anyone wanted to purchase my bib. However, my cheapness got the better of me. This race costs 160 freaking dollars...yes, you read that right. ONE HUNDRED SIXTY DOLLARS! For that price, I'd want them to run it for me! Yeah, yeah, yeah that Tiffany's necklace was pretty, but I don't know about $160 worth.

As I mentioned several times before, I didn't mean to run this race in the first place. I definitely didn't want to run it the days leading up to that weekend. But, I put my big girl panties on and realized I've already run one of these in March and a 10 miler earlier that month. Suck it up cupcake and get over it. You're running it whether you like it or not.

This race had its positives and down right NEGATIVES. Having to pick up my race packet in GEORGETOWN?! NOOOOOOO say it isn't so!!!!! Not metro accessible and SUPER SUPER SUPER jam packed anyways!!! (But side note, I DID see Michael J. Fox in Georgetown randomly walking the street!) I get there on Saturday and there is a mile so long I'm afraid it reaches 13.1 miles long. Come to find out, there was a power outage and they couldn't process anything. Wait....what? Since when do we need a computer to pick up my bib? Well, because they wanted to be super fancy and just give us a bar code for them to scan. WTF?!?! There was no typical order to the numbers, it was just where we went to a station, they scanned our bar code and we got whatever number was next. Well, what about corals you ask? You got a PAPER BRACELET to signify what coral. Oh great, I have to wear a stupid paper bracelet while I run? Guess I just have to wear it for the start and can toss it and liter. Great.

Anyways, jump forward to race morning. There are so many people mushed up in wrong corals that I can't even get INTO my coral until after the start of the race. WTF?!?!? See below:

I've been in crowded corals before but I've always been able to get in while the next coral moves up to start, but this was ridiculous. Spectators cheering their wifes/daughters/friends were LITERALLY IN THE CORAL. GET OUT OF MY WAY IDIOT.

And that's not the worst of it! The gun goes off and what's that sound?! Oh that's only 15,000 runners STARTING AT THE SAME TIME!!!! There was no waiting time between corals. This only leads to pushing, running into each other, elbowing and people stepping on the back of your feet. It was pure chaos. I understand that this was most people's first race ever, but come on. Stop stepping on my heels, are you kidding me?

Okay, enough bitching. On to the good things.  There was a nice tribute to the Boston tragedy where the crowd went silent for 30 seconds and you could literally hear a pin drop. Getting 15,000 people silent is priceless. The course was beautiful and had some AMAZING entertainers. Twice we ran under this tunnel where there were 2 bands playing the drums and the acoustics were so awesome!! I could literally feel the vibrations from the music in my body. They gave out pretty great things along the course too, we got cliff blocks and Nuun water (not my thing, but not the typical Gatorade either).

During the race, I was okay really until mile 10 again. There was a pretty big hill at mile 10 where we came around the corner and I was like NOOOOOOOOOO SAY IT ISN'T SO!!!!! Then I walked a lot from there. I even had to stop right before the finish because I was like "um, I might vomit...shit". I crossed the finish line on a red carpet. How often do you get to do that?!!?!? And then men in tuxedos handed out that little blue box!!! They were probably so hot, but such good sports! I have to agree that they had a lot of goodies when you finished the race too! Bagels, bananas, protein bars, water, fruit cups and some more things too. And the shirts turned out really great too! I thought it was really weird that they made us finish the race before actually getting the shirt. I mean, I get it because it says "finisher" on it, but interesting because most people (not myself) wear the shirt the day of the race and run in it. Whatevs, to each his own.

And the BEST part was that there was a stretching tent afterwards!!!!! It was amazing to have a place to stretch out while not getting stepped on or freezing as you cool off. There were mats, stretching bands, and a person who could help yu stretch if you couldn't do it yourself. Can EVERY race have this please?!!?! Especially the Shamrock because you finish on the beach and you don't want sand sticking to every single sweat bead on your body.

Stretch it out ladies

No PR this time, but I did finish in 2:09...that's 8 minutes faster than last month! And this is the first ever half marathon that I ran by myself. I'm proud of myself because I didn't have my dad there to yell, "mind over matter, you don't mind...it don't matter". Though maybe I did secretly like not having to read it.

Ok, longest race recap ever is officially OVER. Now to enjoy pictures:

Hello tent!

Pretty cool high tech stuff in the tent

The course map. Me standing near that part that I really hate..Hains Point. It's long (4 miles long), cold and windy because its an island and there aren't many spectators because its in the middle of no where.

Pretty cool art work where you could add the reasons you run

#Werundc

Thankful that I didn't have to pedal to get my smoothy. Yes, that is a blender that is powered by a bike!

The glorious stretching lounge!

Pink overload. I had to bandage up my knees due to my lack of training..whoops

Professional photo of all of us starting. THIS.SHIT.IS.BANANAS.

At least my shirt was really pretty!

#swag

Up close and personal!

Had to rub out those muscles

An awesome message with my mom saying she was impressed by me!

And because there was so much social media afterwards, enjoy these other photos I borrowed from others.

Fun signs

Men in tuxes

A sign with everyone's name printed...I never saw this because it was on the side of the Nike store

This sign was amazing! It says "We know this is long and hard...since when did this become a bad thing?!"

Awesome signs along the course

This is an awesome shot!