One more Cocos Picture

This is a shot of all of the Coasties and Coast Guard related swimmers!

The Distance... Completed!!!

We had a great swim today! I am so proud of myself, Amy and Traci for completing the Cocos Crossing. 2.5 miles of ocean swimming fun!

I finished in 1hr 24min; Amy finished in 1hr 37min; Traci finished in just under 2hrs. It was harder than I thought it would be. Trying to swim straight is challenging when there is nothing to guide you. In any case, I am so happy about my time and really proud of all three of us who committed to training and did it.

Here are some more pics after the finish of me and Amy. More to come in a few days...



And finally, a prerace shot of Amy, Traci and I:

The Distance

Amy and I drove down to Merizo yesterday to look at the distance for our swim next weekend. We know that is supposedly 2.5 mi (although I think it is a little less), but we just wanted to see it. Our farthest swim so far was 2.2 mi; we are doing that one again today for time.


So, here it is. We will be swimming from the island back to the spot where this picture is taken from.



While we were down south, we took a little walk to the Priest's Pools. I have been wanting to go there, but it is very short little walk, and hardly seemed worth the drive down just to see the pools (yes, the drive is about 30 min-40 min, I know, I have lived on an island too long already!).


When the water is higher, the pools are nice for swimming, but it has been so dry here that the water was sort of stagnant in the pools, so we just looked.

I am leaving for Hawaii on Monday morning (for work), and will be back on Friday evening. Hopefully I will get some swimming in over the course of the week since the race is next Sunday.

I am pretty excited about the race - it should be fun! My goal is to finish in an hour and fort five minutes - we'll see!

Just a flower.

Potluck

I have a huge kitchen which is underutilized about 90% of the time, especially since I generally cook for just the two of us, or often, just myself. I hosted a potluck dinner last night for wives from the ship and some other friends. It is nice to see the kitchen utilized to it's fullest potential.

Everyone always ends up in the kitchen anyway so it is nice to have a kitchen that accomodates lots of people.

The theme was to bring a dish from your heritage. I made hasluski (cabbage and noodles) which is from my ethnic and NEPA heritage and a yummy desert from a new recipe I found online (not actually my heritage, but amazing). All of the food was so good, we had Puerto Rican, Peruvian, Korean, Mexican, Italian, Southern, Mid-western, Polish and Slovak dishes.
Here is a shot of my cake:

This cake was very easy and so delicious. It actually tastes like Turkey Hill cookies and cream ice cream (tempting Jennifer?). It really does. It is a dangerous cake, thank goodness I waited until I had other people to share it with before trying the recipe, or I may have eaten the entire thing myself, and considering the ingredients it is a VERY good thing I could not eat the whole thing myself.