Nathan's 'fun' triathlon

At the start of the month, we promised to blog about recent events, like Nathan's first triathlon in Australia. Nathan's done a 'sprint' triathlon before while in Minnesota. After several attempts to learn to swim, he was somewhat undone by the 4 ft wide pool of algae that greeted him at the start of his first triathlon in Chester Woods. Although the last man out of the algae at that race, his speedy biking and running let him finish in a respectable position. The algae was enough to send his dreams of becoming a triathlete into hibernation.

Australia, the land of triathlons, has reawakened the dream. With beautiful beaches, lined by miles of pedestrian/cycle paths, its really the place for it. This year, Nathan's new year's resolution was to train for a triathlon. The emphasis here is TRAIN. So, in October, Nathan makes the commitment of buying a road bike and begins his training. The water is a bit cold so the last week of October Nathan buys a triathlon wetsuit. After a test swim in the wetsuit, Nathan signs up for a fun triathlon one week later on November 8.

Triathlons are like candy bars, they come in fun, regular, and king size (fun run, sprint, and extra sprint)...of course, then there are the real biggies...olympic distance, half ironmans and ironmans. The fun length was a 200m swim, a 10k cycle, and a 4 k run. The extreme is the iron man--2.36 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, followed by a marathon (26.2 miles). The fun size is a good way to get into the sport, so lots of people use it to get a taste of a triathlon.

The Powerstation Triathlon seemed like a good way for Nathan to get started as its only a few minutes from our house. THAT was before we heard that registration/instructions was at 6:30 am with a 6:45 am start. To ensure we got a good start to the morning, we packed all the bags the night before and walked through the race.

RACE DAY:
The alarm goes off AT 6:30. SH!T--Nathan's exclamation shakes the entire bed. We are out the door in 5 minutes (me with hair like Yahoo Serious). We roll up to the event at 6:45, Nathan racing towards the start line in bare feet.

Luckily, the race instructions are a little behind schedule. I set up his transition set (shoes, socks, helmet) and take our bag out of the way, and set up near the start line to cheer him on.

Meanwhile, Nathan is looking for me because the goggles are in the bag, as he's trying to get his wetsuit on, but his race singlet is caught in the zipper. THINGS are NOT going his way.

He misses the start of the men's heat and has to start with the women, with his shirt caught in the zipper of the wetsuit and no goggles. He starts the race with the gals, so at this point he's not too worried about turning in a personal best. He manages not to drown for 200 m, then staggers up the beach, still trying to get his shirt out of his wetsuit zipper.

At the transition, he peels off his wetsuit and slides into his shoes, and races his bike up for the cycle portion. After the way the morning started this is EASY, and breaking a pedal on the new bike while getting started seems natural. Finally everything goes right and he cruises up several spots during the cycling leg. The course is tight, with a couple of laps, so dodging slower triathletes keeps the speeds down a little. Jumping off the bike, Nathan commits a triathlon faux pas by stopping to remove his cycling shoes -- a breach of etiquette, but keeps him from breaking anything else.

He heads off for the 4k run with jelly legs for the first half kilometer before finding his cruising speed. The wet singlet (that clogged up his wetsuit) begins chaffing making the last 1k more painful than any other part of the race. Finally, the finish appears and he races to the end....

I think he's hooked on triathlons, because he had the worst possible start imaginable and he's already training for the next one!

Emilio Estevez has left the bedroom

For those of you who tried to donate (Hilary and Todd), and those of you yet who haven't, try logging into www.movember.com (not the australia site) and click donate. You can search by individual.

Kristin

Mo' money

What: Mo-vember
Get sponsored to grow an outrageous moustache and keep it for the entire month of Mo-vember. Men can get sponsored individually or in teams. Nathan and his male colleagues at Ranford Road Veterinary Clinic are all involved.

Why: The sponsorships raise money for Men's Health, in Australia they focus on Prostate Cancer and Mental Health. These issues are close to both our hearts....as Nathan's grandfather and my dad have been affected.

How: Each participant asks friends and family to sponsor him to grow the mustache. The participant endures 1 month of facial hair with regular teasing and intermittent giggles. For instance, at about 1 week into it, one participant (who shall remain nameless) faced his loving wife to kiss her goodnight, but she started giggling because it was like sleeping with Emilio Estevez from Stakeout.

Participants also report they face endless commentary about the quality of their mustache (what is that the reverse hitler?), who the mustache makes them look like (Seth Green, really?). After a few weeks, participants grow more comfortable with the mustache beginning classic mo behaviours such as the "goatee stroke" and other such grooming (which returns said wife to giggles).

It is a great deal to endure...but it's for a good cause.

How you can help?

Sponsor Nathan at Movember
or www.au.movember.com registration number: 1868476
Plus the website has other cool features like helping you to select your mo style, blog pages etc.

Who do you think Nathan looks like with his mo?
We want to know your thoughts...but remember Nathan is enduring your jeering for charity. So...if you want to tease him, at least pay for the privilege.

Did we forget something?

Like, the month of October?
I don't know if you noticed or care, but we went pretty much from Summer Olympics to election, and didn't tell you all the cool stuff that happened in October! So...quick rundown.
Frantic cleaning and scurrying getting ready for a visit from Todd and Steph. We felt a little nervous, actually, since they had a limited amount of time, and WA is almost unlimited in scope, and we want everyone to enjoy themselves while at the same time appreciating the natural beauty, cultural and culinary delights, and enjoying the weather. That's a tall order for a 10 day visit.
So we tried a trip to Margaret River, a wine region like a cross between Napa Valley and the surf culture in the movie Point Break. Food, wine, and there are some cool crafts and stuff, but we managed to go to town every day 5 minutes after the shops closed. Some kayaking where we showed up the day after the whale encounter. Just hanging out, contenting ourselves with catching up and watching a movie in the beach house while it turned wet outside (thankfully, just after our walk). A little barbecued seafood (just shark and snapper, no shrimp on the barbie), a couple of haute cuisine meals out, and it was back up to Perth.
A visit to Cottesloe to show off the latest in swimwear -- or, more to the point, hang out on the beach and show off your bod wear -- a lunch on the river, where Todd found out all about the Australian fly plague, and a day or two for the VIPs to bum around Fremantle and have a tour from the director of the Maritime museum, prison tour. A trip up north was called off on account of time restrictions and danger of deep vein thrombosis (it's a long drive, folks), so instead we went to Mandurah and cuddled some of the orphaned Joeys being raised by some of the staff members at the clinic in which I work.
The sad time came for those guys to take off, and I went to work thinking of how long it would be before we would all catch up again, only to get the call from Kris that their flight was delayed...12 hours. I think that most of that day was spent hanging out, preparing themselves for the long flight back, and then we had a farewell dinner at a restaurant on the beach.
When all is said and done, it was a great time to catch up, and we'll miss those guys.

A few days of work, then I got another little break. In between hockey playoff games (I played goalie this year, and our team made the finals of the playoffs, only to lose in straight games), I took a quick trip up to Exmouth.
A little over an hour in the air, but 20 degrees warmer than Perth, it was sailfishing with one of the clinic owners. I am ashamed that I was lucky enough to enjoy beautiful, flat water for 2 and 1/2 days during which we saw dozens of sea turtles, humpback whales playing and courting, dolphins, and (it still makes me a little nervous), a shark longer than the boat is wide, at least 9-10 feet, which swam directly over the teasers that we had out to draw in the sailfish.
Strictly catch and release, Steve is only happy with billfish (sailfish, marlin, swordfish), and has a goal to get every member of his family a sailfish. So it was, that we had a day and a half with hi sbrother on board where we saw only bait.
Finally, after much lamentation and a little grovelling on Steve's part, Rick (the brother), got hooked into a sailfish. Much, much more satisfying than the barracuda which hit his marlin rod the day before.
So far, we had caught a shark, barracuda, tuna, queenfish...but I had yet to hook a sail. So when we had a double-hookup, we knew that the time had come for me to finally reel one in. One fish got loose, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, since I ended up fighting my fish for over 45 minutes, driving several miles to keep up. But all during the struggle, we kept waiting for the fish to jump, but it would not. This led to speculation about what kind of fish it really was, since it was not behaving in a natural way for a sailfish. We thought, spanish mackerel? Tuna? Bigger shark?
The answer was a sailfish...brought in backwards. I hooked it in the tail, and the line then wrapped around the base of the tail, reminiscent of snagging salmon in Alaska. The fish was exhausted, I was exhausted, and Steve was exultant that we had caught a second sailfish on switchbait. We swam the fish to revive it a little, then turned it loose. If it had had a middle finger, I get the distinct impression that it would have shown it to us as it kicked wearily for the deeps.
So that's all the excitement for October. A short-lived playoff beard for hockey made its way down the sink near the end of the month, to make way for...Movember. You will hear more on this soon. Probably in mocking tones from my easily-amused wife.

Did we forget something?

(the following post is written while hanging in a hammock in the sunshine, glass of chilled chenin blanc nearby, thinking of all of you in the snow...or does that sound too smug?)

Hail to the Chief (Elect)

Ahhh...what a feeling, what a relief.
Of course you know to what I am referring.
It's that sense that, when somebody asks me where I'm from (and this happens roughly a billion times daily), I don't have to be embarrased by saying that I'm American.
Until recently, it was okay to say that I was Alaskan -- but since Palin came on the scene, Alaska has been viewed less as a groovy frontier kind of place, and more as the home of overreaching whackjobs who abuse their authority. That isn't my opinion of course, I'm just repeating what the rest of the world is saying. I still quite like Alaska, think of it as my home, and have great memories of playing hockey in Wasilla against a team that was, mercifully, Palin-free. As far as I know.
I had the day off, more by luck than design, but it was good timing. I drove out to Kris' office, we shared a glass of champagne with her boss John and our friend Phil, and listened to the victory speech. It was a speech so well-crafted that Kris was moved, just for a moment, to go back into political rhetoric. It was enough to bring tears to my eyes. As (president elect) Barack said, speaking to us directly, I am sure, "all those watching tonight from beyond our shores...those who are huddled around radios in forgotten corners of the world..." Now, I wouldn't exactly call Perth a forgotten corner of the world...okay, maybe I've called it that once or twice, but I didn't know that it would show up in (president elect) Barack's speech!

Anyway, this was just to let you all know that we haven't abandoned the blog, we've just been pretty busy. More soon about October (Todd and Steph and our trip down south), as well as November (Nanowrimo, Movember, Triathlons, and more!).

Election Day--

It's weird to be overseas during a presidential election. Here--the election for prime minister isn't on a fixed day. The group in power "call the election" within a specified timeframe. 6 weeks after they announce it, its all over....and there's a ban on advertising the day before and the day of the election.

The federal elections were quick, just 6 weeks of political ads and photos ops. 6 weeks of talk show hosts taking jabs at John Howard's irritability and Kevin Rudd's boringness. It ended with a new Labour Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd whose polls picked up after visiting a strip club in NY while campaigning. It helped his image...it made him a man of the people.

The State Elections were in September and over almost before we even knew who was who in our local seats--this time with a split government, almost perfectly split between Labour (the democrats) and Liberals (the republicans) with the Nationals (for rural Australia) carrying the deciding votes. Eventually the Nationals formed a coalition with the Liberals 8 days later....which was a change of majority and opposition in the State government.

But they don't have to have years of campaigning--voting is mandatory by law, punishable by real fines. Since you have to vote, its not a question of if its a question of who. The question of who isn't really about an individual--their character, voting record etc--so much as it is about their party...because the majority party sets its team in place afterward and can change leadership without an election.

Not saying its right or its wrong, but its different.

Campaigns in the US elections don't really seem to be about deciding who most Americans support...its actually about which candidate can get their supporters off their butts to vote. We've already filed to get our absentee ballots...cause we can't sit this one out.

Neither can you (whichever way you are voting--this is gonna be a BIG one).

So here's a friendly reminder from famous people to REGISTER to vote --you have to register soon or you can't vote! and if you aren't persuaded by famous people, think of Nathan and I, we are political refugees from the last elections longing to come home.