Our Journey to Kona and Beyond!

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Packet Pick Up!

Aaron playing "angry birds" while waiting in line to get his daddy's race packet.

Our little monkey could not take the excitement anymore!

Because of extremely high temperatures, the race officials were very concerned about the athletes. They were all weighed prior to the race. If, at the end of the race, they had lost a certain % of their weight, then they were sent to the hospital.

After browsing the race expo for a while, we were finally able to check James in for the race and pick up his athlete packet. By this point in time, we were very tired and starting to get nervous about the big race!

Race Expo

Upon arriving in Lubbock, the first place we went was to the race expo. We all love to go to the expo and see all the products and try all the free samples. Aaron immediately made a new friend, Camilo, who is 7, and whose mom is James's coach for Kona. They had a great time hanging out together the entire weekend.

Frontier Texas

Aaron enjoying Frontier Texas!

All we could think of was how rough the trip would have been in a stagecoach! No A/C, no radio, no DVD player! And we thought the trip was long in the car!

Rylan and the longhorn!

Who knew that the journey to Hawaii went through "Frontier Texas"?! Ours did! We learned all about the early history of western Texas, from the Indians, to the white settlers, to the slaves! While learning about the frontier was exciting, by this point we were ready to get to Lubbock and the 1/2 Ironman race that was our reason for the trip.

The Trip Continues...

Ironman is not for the weak of heart! The "Iron Family" has to all work together. Our trip to Buffalo Springs Lake continued through Texas. We saw the "cattle drive" in Fort Worth. It was really cool! Definitely not something we would see at home!