Race Day

Today got off to an early start. We were at the race setup around 5:30 and spent the morning manning the Crocs tent right near the finish line. Over 4,000 women participated in the triathlon, and it was fun to partake in the festivities.



After packing up, we hit the road headed towards a final destination of Toledo, Ohio. Of note on the way was watching a semi pass a Corvette. We're staying in the Toledo area tonight and will be hitting the road early tomorrow. Nate is heading on to see friends in New Jersey, and Molly and I are probably going to see where the road takes us tomorrow (though the current plan is to stumble upon an AT&T store so I can purchase an iPhone). The ultimate destination for this upcoming weekend is the Nautica Triathlon in New York City.

Expo day

Today we got up and headed to the expo. The expo was pretty standard, with all the women participating in the triathlon tomorrow coming in to pick up their race packets and check out sponsor booths. We sell Crocs at our booth, but our main job at the expo besides set-up and take-down is doing the marketing aspects, including giving away free stuff, having people fill out surveys, and generally promoting Crocs as a recovery shoe. Here's a poor quality cell phone picture to give you an idea of the layout.

After the expo finished, we had to break down the entire booth area and reload the trucks to drive around the other side of the building to set up our finish line tent, where tomorrow we'll have a presence on race day. We provide foot ice baths, self-massage sticks, sell shoes, and continue to promote Crocs for recovery.

After finishing the set-up this afternoon, we headed over to Mars Cheese Castle, which featured a huge array of cheeses, candies, chocolate, meats, wine, beer, gift items, and Green Bay Packers paraphernalia. The also had a sandwich shop and a bakery, and I got a tasty reuben with a slice of apple pie.

We ended the night by checking out the welcome to Wisconsin sign looking for a geocache, but we were driven off by bugs before we found it.

And finally, a picture from yesterday's slightly less than exciting adventure to the Jelly Belly factory.

Schnitzel is a Fun Word

Today got started with a workout while watching part of the Bourne Identity. After that we made a quick stop at the Jelly Belly Factory in Pleasant Prairie, which is really more of a distribution warehouse from what I can tell. I was somewhat excited by the free tour, but it was a bit of a letdown as all you really see is a bunch of videos showing production rather than any real production. Good news is we got a few free jelly beans out of it.

After that we headed over to setup for tomorrow's expo. Well, Nate, Molly and I did. Stephen decided to take the scenic route back through Chicago. We finished most of our part and waited for Stephen (who was stuck an hour away in traffic) to figure out where exactly he was supposed to be. I can't be too hard on him, however, because shortly after that I managed to lock myself out of a truck that is supposed to be lock-out proof. It's one of the types that you have to hold the handle for while shutting the door or it unlocks itself. It swung shut but only half-shut, so my best guess is that it didn't close fully enough to pop up the lock. I wish I'd thought of that at the time, because I never tried shoving the door all the way closed to pop the lock (I was too concerned with trying to pop the door back open since it wasn't all the way closed). Later Molly managed to apply the steering wheel club without a steering wheel club key in her possession. Nate is the only one of us who hasn't done anything particularly dumb today, so he'd better hurry up since he's only got 25 minutes left.

After that I met up with the Deines family who thankfully were willing to drive several hours to come see me. They're close family friends from back in Alaska. We went and had a tasty German dinner, and my main dish was a Cordon Bleu Schnitzel. It was great to catch up with them even briefly, and hopefully it won't be so long until next time I get to see them. Right now I'm waiting on laundry to finish before catching some sleep before tomorrow's expo.

Nothin' doing at the moment.