Nations Triathlon: Day 1

I've made promises, bloggie friends. Now it's time to uphold them. I've decided to split up my DC/Nations Triathlon posts into segments by days of the trip. I have waaaay too many pics to post and if I make it all one giant post, I doubt I'll be able to keep anyone's attention for very long. I'll try to make this entertaining, though. The trip was a blast, so hopefully I can portray that in my posts.

We arrived in DC on Friday (yes, 9/11 - I have to admit I was a little nervous about flying into DC on 9/11). Not to mention that there were tons of military helecoptors flying all over the place that day. Slightly unnerving... There were snipers on the White House, which I'm sure is normal, but my mom sure seemed to get a kick out of this. She's not much of a city girl. She thinks Kansas City (where I live) is HUGE (it's not) and gets a little overwhelmed driving here.

Here's a pic of my mom and me at the White House (you can see it in the upper right corner of the pic). Yep, took this myself. ;)

Mom & I did quite a bit of sight seeing that afternoon. We got into DC a few hours before the rest of my team and I was really glad we were able to squeeze in some sight seeing that day because Saturday and Sunday were completely booked with race-related activities. Monday was the only full day of sight seeing we got, which was unfortunate since there is so much to see and do in DC.

Here's a pic of the White House up close:

And here's a pretty cool pic of the Washington Monument with some storm clouds all around. I thought it turned out pretty cool:

Here I am at the World War II Memorial. It was a really windy day and we actually got sprinkled on a bit near the end.

Me with the Lincoln Memorial in the background:

Another nice shot of the Washington Monument:

A pic of Honest Abe, up close and personal. When I talked to Rylie on the phone that night, she wanted to know all the places I had been too and she specifically asked if I had seen the Lincoln Memorial. She then proceeded to ask me if I climbed up in his lap and got a pic taken with him. LOL. Yes Rylie, and I told him what I wanted for Christmas while I was up there. ;)

All day long, my mom was having issues with her contacts. She couldn't see or read anything, so I found great humor in taking a pic of her in front of this Eye Exams sign. ;)

We saw this random bike on the street and joked that I should use it during the race. So my mom took a pic of me with it. We later found out that the white bikes were memorials to people that had been killed on bikes at that intersection. Not so funny after that...

My mom and I did so much walking that day. We guessed between 8 - 10 miles! Yeah...I was sore the next day. Luckily I had that day to recover before the race on Sunday. ;) That night we went to dinner with the team. We had a pretty large group, so we were spread out over 3 tables. But here's a pic of my table:

Jeff & Jodi are on the right. On the left from front to back: Me, Coach Jen, and Ann.

Okay, that's it for day 1. I'll get more posts up soon. I'm working on them now! ;)