#8 - See Cristiano Ronaldo Play Live

When I added this to the list, I thought it was pretty far fetched.  I make a grad student salary (negative), so unless the best player in the world (yep) happened to find his way nearby with an affordable ticket, I was out of luck.

But then.  There was a rumor.  And then it wasn't a rumor, it was an announcement.  Real Madrid and Manchester United were playing

AT THE BIG HOUSE!

(That's Michigan Stadium for those of you who don't worship the gods of college football.)

Cristiano Ronaldo and friends would be playing against my team in my hometown, in my home stadium.

Then I feared I wouldn't be able to get tickets or they would be too expensive.

Wrong again.

Reiko, Nicole, & me loving life

$35 got me a seat with a chunk of friends who were as excited as I was.

Then there were the injury rumors and the absolute FAIL of a World Cup for both Spain and Portugal.  But I held on.  He'd be there.  Right?

Gareth Bale before his penalty kick.

Then the roster came out and there were a lot of names missing from the list...  Sergio Ramos, Casillais, Chicarito...  AND RONALDO.  NOOOOO!  I'd already seen Rooney  play.  I wasn't flying all the way to Michigan to see Rooney.

But then a few days later, an article came out that said he was injured but would be meeting the team in LA but not playing (good thing I didn't buy one of those tickets) and then would be off to Ann Arbor to play at the Big House.

Ann Arbor got pretty jazzed up, like it did for the NHL game in December.  Shut down Main Street.  Stages, bars, food...

The Krones had dinner at Aventura Friday night.  Our server told us they were on hold to host REAL MADRID later that night.  I freaked out a bit.  We gave up, knowing we'd get kicked out if they showed up anyways.  Rumor is they did eat there later that night.  I ate at the same restaurant as Ronaldo just an hour apart!

So happy that Billie & Steve made the trip too.  That was a nice surprise!

Saturday was magical.  I got up a little late, headed to the tailgate my lovely friend Nicole set up, played some games, saw some friends I didn't expect to see, and headed to the game, ignoring the texts from Al that Ronaldo would not be playing and what a "jerk" he was.  (I'm giving Al credit for being there even though I never saw him.  He texted me when he was outside my gate but I was already in the stadium and there was a line to get back into the section.  He didn't want to wait in the line and risk missing first touch.  I didn't want to go out and then have to wait in the line and miss first touch.  That's real friendship there.  Live on different coasts but would never expect the other to miss a minute of a soccer game at Michigan Stadium.)

Whatever.  Ronaldo was there.  In my stadium.  The closest I'd ever been to him.

Nicole and I were on Cloud 9 from the start.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw Ronaldo walk across the field.  Luckily my Ma lent me her binoculars...  which also made me look a little silly because I started freaking out about subs walking across the field until I could fully communicate that it was RONALDO.  He sat in the stands and I have to admit, I watched him almost as much as the game.  Whatever.  I was there to see him, playing or not.

Brother hug

The Fray played at half time.  That was random.

I walked down a few rows to visit the brother and friends.  Walked back up.

Then... it happened.  A cheer went across the crowd.

RONALDO WAS WARMING UP.

That's Ronaldo.  At midfield.  Ready to sub in.  At Michigan Stadium.  Ahhhhh!

And warm up he did.  For real.  I watched it.  Through the binoculars.  Oh, at this point, Rooney and Bale had scored some goals.

Then he was at midfield.  Then the referee let him in.

Ronaldo ran around.  Did a little fancy footwork.  Chicarito scored a goal.  Ronaldo jogged a bit.

It was bananas fun.  Life changing.

I miss him already.

Chicarito cooling down with the "winners" of the game.  I say "winners" because obviously I and the others freaking out all day were the real winners.

#61 - Don't Eat Out at All for at Least 7 Days

BONUS item!  I finished my list early this year, so I might as well check off some more.

This one isn't the most exciting to write about, but there was one fun event: Kassi invited me over for lunch and we cooked channa masala, rice, and creamy spinach.  And by "we," I mean "Kassi" while I listened to directions, chopped up a few things, and then cried for a good five minutes because I somehow got onion or something spicy in my eyes.  It hurt a lot.  

But, it was worth it.  Lunch was delicious and Kassi even sent me home with leftovers that I ate for dinner the next day.

I am hoping making myself cook at home and bring lunches/dinners to work/class helps me make that the norm and eating out an every now and then exception.  I'm giving myself a little slack with the World Cup but I have already been just assuming I'll eat at home or pack food these few days after this week.

#30 - Run a New Half Marathon

I cannot believe I am done with my list for 2014 already!  I had 12 done by April 27!

Nike Women's events usually have a wall with
everyone's names near Niketown.

While I'd love to just up my goal for the year, instead I'm going to focus on one of my big goals: nailing down a research question for my dissertation so I can take dissertation seminar in the spring.

So, if there was something on this list you really wanted to do this year, I'm probably still down... as long as it's free or you're paying.  I can't wait to be off this student budget!

Anyways, #12 was a fantastic time.

The start

A couple months ago, someone from this crew, I don't remember who, started an e-mail about entering the lottery for the Nike Women's Half Marathon in DC.  I was hesitant but then I remembered how much I like this gang of girls... and that instead of a medal, these races dole out unique Tiffany necklaces.

It took us 2 tries to get into the Nike Women's Half in San Francisco but 5 of us ran it in 2010 and it just this year got knocked down to 2nd on my list of favorite 9 and 2/3 races that were 10+ miles I've done (behind Ragnar, obviously).  (Sure, I'll tell you the story about the 2/3 sometime, but it's not a happy story.)

It just took us one try to get into DC.

I headed to DC from Nashville, still a little sore from climbing.  I met my old UM roomies Laura Masters and Andrea Meewes Sanchez out for what was supposed to be a chill night but ended up being fairly epic.  We even wound up playing Cards Against Humanities with some dudes we thought were random but just happened to be 5 other Michigan grads reuniting for the weekend.

After very little sleep, we met a high school friend of mine, Melissa, for a lovely brunch, and then picked up our packets.

The packet pick up was swift and easy and had some really cool features that probably aren't that exciting to read about but were REALLY COOL in person.

We had a nice dinner and made it to bed at a reasonable time.

The fast ladies got going way earlier than Andrea & me.  I have to admit I got a little nervous at one point but seriously, when you're slow, you're never late to these things.

That blue box :)

The course was flat and scenic.  I loved the start right past the Capitol as the sun was rising.  The bridge to Arlington and looping back to see the Lincoln Memorial was pretty special too.  I was really impressed at the number of people out cheering us on with silly signs, and I loved the drummers in what would have otherwise been a dismal tunnel.  Plus, the necklaces are pretty lovely.

We all finished, some of us (Andrea!) in record time (not me)!  Then we showered, considered napping, popped some bubbly instead, and headed to brunch...

On our way to "schmammered"

Epilogue: Brunch included bottomless mimosas and STRONG margaritas.  We followed brunch with bar hopping, including a whiskey flight for Andrea & me.  Somehow Masters, Andrea, & I stayed out until midnight or something.  Man, I love those girls.  But seriously, Andrea, let's not make unreasonably late nights our thing, even if we only see each other ever few years :)

"I thought he deserved a serious face."

Monday Masters & I got to do some sight seeing and then met Katie, Beth, and Sarah for brunch and some giggles about our Sunday Funday.

#54 - Climb Outdoors

The whole group.  I had a camera with a timer and one dude had a tripod.  Oh, the magic of the collective.

I counted this last year but I probably shouldn't have.  (Don't worry, I'll untag it.)  This day trip definitely counted for outdoor climbing though.

Getting ready for that 5.8

One of my favorite friends in the world, Nicole Green-Valentine, just so happens to be in the same profession as me.  (Okay, fine, it's not, like, just-so-happens, like some coincidence.  We met when she was officiating intramural soccer and I was supervising intramural soccer at the University of Michigan.  We both thought we were going to be teachers.  Then, the teaching market sucked the years we graduated, and so we were like, well, at least we have these officiating/recreation skills.  Let's use those for now.  Wait, what?  This is a profession?  Well, maybe we'll still be teachers.  No, actually not.  This is kinda sweet.  So we're Campus Rec-ers for life.  Or at least for the forseeable future.  And it's awesome.)  This year our annual conference was in Nashville (sweet!) and one of the pre-conferences was an outdoor climbing trip.  Nicole asked me if I wanted to go, and I was like, "um... yes."

We did have to sacrifice what was my only night to party it up in Nashville to be ready and willing at 6:30am.  We had one presentation together and I had two others on my own, so it was all professional for the actual conference.  (Fine, relatively professional.)  (Well, relative to past conferences.)  We did manage dinner on Broadway and a couple drinks on the strip, which was quite lively for a Tuesday night.

5:30am Wednesday morning came a few hours too soon, but we made it up with our required water and things.  We had a 45-min or so van ride to King's Bluff, which we spent chatting with some folks we knew and folks we didn't.

The outdoor staff from Vanderbilt, Western Kentucky, and Austin Peay did a fantastic job prepping the gear, teaching us how to use it, and making sure we were all situated before the quick hike down the bluff.  They set up 5 lines for us ranging from 5.4 to 5.8.

Nicole, Dan, and I elected to try the 5.8 first since no one else would.  Dan skimpered right up that thing.  I went next and, well, I put in some good effort to make it part way, as did Nicole right after me.  We downgraded to the less difficult spots and had much less difficulty with those.

After a couple climbs, I remembered that I was running a half marathon in 5 days time and should probably call it quits or I'd hate myself by mile 2 instead of the usual hating myself by mile 11.  Nicole took a few more routes and Dan did them all, I believe.

Our lovely hosts then provided us with quite the spread for lunch.  Some of the group headed back to the hotel to prepare for the conference and others stayed to climb more.  I forgot how much fun climbing is when I remember to trust the safety systems.  The scrapes and bruises are still healing but they were worth it!  Can't wait to go again sometime!

#49 - Run a Ragnar

When we were strangers.

I don't know what to say about this experience.  Mostly because, if you're not Van 2, does it even matter?  But here are some forced words about it:

We make good decisions together.  Sometimes.

Ragnar SoCal was 194 miles this year.  We ran from Huntington Beach to San Diego (the convention center), skipping Camp Pendleton (though driving through it on our way there).  12 people, 2 vans.  

I wanted to do a Ragnar.  Somehow Vanessa was easily convinced.  We tried to form our own team.  We failed.  We followed the Ragnar SoCal facebook page and found a nice, young gentleman named Terry looking for a couple more runners for his team.  So we joined them.  So 30ish hours in a van with 4 people we wouldn't know and another van of 6 people we also didn't know.  Then more people dropped out.  So Vanessa invited her friend Alex.  And then some magic happened and everything was eventually covered.

The leg lengths kept changing, so I expected something around 14/15 miles but ended up with around 12 spread out over 3 legs.  That was probably good because I'm already slow and I did not train appropriately.  I had that half-marathon attitude of "whatever, I know I can finish, so training just makes it hurt less," which was not the best tactic in a team event.  In team events, I tend to push myself a bit more, and that meant a bit more hurt.  And I still loved it.

Van 2 for Life

So back to the timeline.  I picked up VV and Alex around 9:00am on Friday.  We drove up to Encinitas to meet the van, arranged by our fearless captain Terry, and were introduced to our teammate AJ.  Much of the conversation for the next 20 minutes was about the movie Frozen, which Vanessa, Alex, and I had not yet seen.  We packed up then picked up our 12th / 6th of our van, Wes, at Pendleton.  He hadn't seen Frozen either.

Terry gettin' tatted up.

Inked

We got to the first major exchange around noon and hung out until our 6th runner, Lydia, from Van 1, arrived.  We mulled around, listened to a painful safety speech, saw some weird costumes, and confirmed we were just Not That Kind of Team (NTKOT).  We applied tattoos.  Some came off.  Some were reapplied.  Some more went on.

Van 1 coming in hot for the first major exchange.

Eventually around 2pm Wes took off for the 7th team leg of around 10 miles.  He killed 23 other runners and then passed off to Vanessa who passed off to me who passed off to AJ who passed off to Alex who passed off to Terry who passed it back to Van 1 at Doheny State Beach.  Somewhere in there I had a perfect life moment: We were in the van; I was already loving being part of a team, had had a nice first leg, then my favorite song came on the radio, then the view of strip malls melted into the hills and the ocean.  Beautiful.

Then we ate some Chipotle, drove to Oceanside, decided to sleep, failed, decided not sleep, had a total tease of a bedtime story, didn't sing Journey at the top of our lungs, learned some facts about the Paleo diet, learned some Disney theories, put on reflective equipment, and then Wes started us off again around 12:30am.  Then Vanessa (with guest star AJ).  My leg was through Vista at 2:30am.  It was sketchy and dark and lonely and had a few sprinkles.  Then AJ.  Then Alex.  Then Terry.

Second major exchange.

My night exchange.

Then we drove to the Gliderport in LaJolla.  And we slept.  Super uncomfortably.  For what, 2-3 hours?  Still without a bedtime story.

Waiting.  Again.

I was SO HAPPY to see AJ.

Then we meandered around.  Hung out.  Stretched, foam rolled, Tiger tailed.  Then Wes took off again.  Then Vanessa.  Then me (through PB, mostly on the crowded boardwalk).  Then my fav pics of the event happened during my hand off to AJ.  Then there was a pause for the not-currently-running folks to stretch and chill in Tecolote Park with Special Guest the String Cheese I Forgot I'd Brought, which ultimately earned me Saint status.  (Yes, women can be saints.  I learned so much this event.)  Then Alex, who had to run that flippin Narragansett hill from OB to Point Loma.  So mean.  Then Terry finished the whole team from Liberty Station to the Convention Center.

Last hand off!

We searched for our team.  Found them.  Fake finished as a group.  Took some photos.  Eventually had some beers.  Drove back to Encinitas.  Cleaned out the vans.  Drove back.  I dropped V & Alex off and then went out to Stone Liberty Station for some not-at-all-needed drinks.  Then Jessica & Elizabeth came by to finally bust open that scotch my bro sent me since I hadn't found a good-enough excuse for it before.

We finished 57 out of 510 Open Mixed Teams and 106 out of 724 total teams with a time of 29 hours, 18 minutes, and 10.6 seconds.  That includes the hour-ish van delay at one of the checkpoints that didn't have enough parking.  30 hours and 194 miles from Huntington Beach to San Diego: I am so proud of NTKOT.  

I'd try to convince you all that this was all way more fun than I can explain, but you'd never believe me if you aren't Van 2.  Van 2 4 life.

Winners (at Life)

#2 - Take a Road Trip to Somewhere New

The road trip fully entailed a drive out to the Salton Sea detailed in the previous post about my camping trip, but the ride home was certainly more eventful than the trip there.

Our first stop on the way home was Bombay Beach, a once popular tourist destination in the 60's that was hit by hurricanes in back-to-back years.  Yes, hurricanes.  There are still folks who live there but there are also still the remains of washed-out homes and trailers from the 70's.  It's spooky.

Our second stop was Salvation Mountain.  Salvation Mountain is a strange place that an artist created with mounds of trash, hay bales, adobe mud, and paint.  It's visited by strange people.  It's surrounded by Slab City with is a bit of an off-the-grid living environment in the middle of the desert.  Chris MacCandless wrote about it in his diaries and it was featured in Jon Krakauer's book and later the movie Into the Wild.  The volunteer at Salvation Mountain told us we had just missed a rager of a "prom" the previous night, where men dressed in tuxedos or tuxedo t-shirts and women in ball gowns, some they come wearing, and some they select from the racks of donated dresses available.  He told us that it was cool though because they were having an end-of-the-season party the following weekend we were welcome to attend.  Thanks, homie.  It was super strange but I loved every minute of it.














Then we headed home.  I'm sunburned and happy.

The last stop was for gas and milkshakes in Pine Valley.  Delish.

#50 - Go Camping. For Real This Time.

Our campsite.

Remember that time I bitched about how often I'd had the "You've Never Been Camping?!" conversation?

Me too, and guess what?  I WILL NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN.

I am so excited.

I am so excited never to have that conversation again that I'm having trouble focusing on just how fantastic my first camping experience was.


Since no one ever followed through with organizing an actual camping trip with me, I found another route to get myself into a sleeping bag on the ground in the middle of no where.  I asked Mark Ceder if I could be his teaching assistant for his Outdoor Leadership course at the University of San Diego.  He graciously accepted even though my outdoor experience did not include any camping or real outdoor overnight experience at all.

One component of the course is a class camping trip.  We debated a bit on where to go and landed on the Salton Sea in the Sonoran Desert in California.

The Salton Sea is a weird place.  A WEIRD PLACE.

We left USD around 5pm on a Friday and drove to the desert in a van with a trailer full of kayaks.  We got some looks.  We stopped at El Centro for some In and Out and made it to our camp site around 10pm.

We set up our tents by the light of headlamps and had some s'mores around the fire.  Emily and I decided that the 4-person tent looked a little squishy for 4 actual people, so we set up our own and then had no idea how 4 people would fit in a tent that size.  Until we got up in the morning and realized that we had set up a 2-person tent that was half the size of what everyone else was sleeping in.

I don't have much to say about sleeping in a tent except that I really don't mind it it all... as long as I'm not 400 yards from train tracks of a line that runs regularly all night.

Mark, Scott, and Weston cooked us a lovely breakfast of scrambled eggs with peppers and hash browns with apples that the 10 of us enjoyed all together around the picnic table.

Then we headed out on a hike of the Painted Canyon.  The rock was in a variety of colors but those browns, blacks, whites, and grays were the only colors in the Painted Canyon since it's the desert.  So that was weird for me.  But there was a bit of variety of terrain in that we entered in the canyon, climbed some ladders, headed through some slot canyons, found ourselves on a ridge, and then hiked down into a wash for lunch and then the trek out.  I really like hiking and it was fun to chat with some of the students I hadn't gotten to know as well.  Retroactively, I really liked that Mark kept vowing to jump into the Salton Sea when we got back.  A ranger had stopped by in the morning and announced how refreshing the water was.

After 4-5 hours on the trail, we stopped by the visitor's center for a short video about the weird place we were in.  Then we headed back to camp for some down time.  Mark convinced a couple students to join him in his swim, so I followed them to the shore with my camera.  (Because of my professional background, I don't really enjoy recreational swimming.  I definitely don't enjoy it in waters that have substantial warnings about eating the fish that come out of them.)

We quickly found a pile of decomposing fish.  Then we walked across what should have been sand but was really just crushed up fish vertebrae that are extremely uncomfortable to walk on and get into flip flops very easily.  Then, at the shore, we noticed how snotty the water looked and the film that seemed to lie across the edge of the sea.  It was disgusting.  We stood around and commented for awhile.  Then we headed back to the site.  I accidentally stepped in a marshy section of fish bones and got the nasty fish water on my feet, which then made the fish bones stick to it more.  Gross.

Everyone washed up and then we had a delightful burrito dinner, and, in true California style, that included avocado, cilantro, limes, and Tapatio.  Obviously.

Then we lit a fire, Mark made us apple cobbler.  We played Hot Seat.  I loved how open everyone was to sharing, even some difficult stories.

The next morning we got up for a sunrise paddle (kayak) on the sea.  However, once we were up, Mark informed us that it was way too windy so we should go back to sleep and we'd go for just a quick paddle from the Visitor's Center back to camp in a bit.

That was awesome.

We had bagels and fruit for breakfast.  Then we headed to the Visitor's Center.  We had a quick paddle school at the boat launch and then spent some time practicing in the marina, which it was pretty calm.  Then we headed out to the sea, which was not calm.  It went really well, except for every time someone got sprayed or splashed with sea water, there was a cry of disgust.  We got to camp in about 10 minutes and checked kayaking in the Salton Sea of our lists.


We packed up and headed out.  See #2 - Road Trip Somewhere New for the fantastic tales of the trip home.