Thursday, October 30, 2008
IM FL - the beginning
And so the adventure begins…Ironman Florida! It can never be simple, planned out or normal. What fun is that! Instead, Audrey and I hit the road Wednesday night at 9 pm after we finished Boot Camp. It’s only a 6-7 hour drive to Panama City Beach from Clearwater, why not do it at night and avoid the traffic. Honestly, it was a great move because we made it in 6 hours exactly and that’s including my potty breaks every 2 hours! And on a side note, who knew there were more deer along the side of the road in Florida than Michigan! Holy deer country!
The “plan” was to stay in a cabin at Campers Inn because Ponch and Nan are here with the motorhome and the campground is practically across the road from the host resort/transition area. Now, we stayed in the cabins at Fort Wilderness in Disney for the Half IM there so this will be the same thing, right? Um…could we have been more wrong. Yes, that was Disney and nothing is like Disney, but how different can cabins be. Let’s just say we couldn’t even figure out how to get the door open when we got there at 3 am for starters. Let’s also mention its 40 degrees outside, I’m getting over a nasty cold and we’re extremely tired! After figuring out you don’t actually use the handle to open the door (silly us!), you pull the rope which lifts the 4x4 level contraption so the door can be opened. We step inside and I do mean a single step because that’s all the more room there was before you ran into either the full size bed or the bunk beds. That’s all folks. If you shuffled your way in between the set of beds, you reached what we initially hoped was the heater fixed to the wall. Mistake #2 (or is that 3 now)! Our options were low fan or high fan and last I checked fan ≠ heat! We looked at each other, simultaneously let out a “Hell No” and ran for the HEATED car. We called Ponch and Nan and headed for the motorhome. Heat, bathroom, and sleep…we were now happy.
Come morning, we decided to discuss our options with the front desk help. “Yeah, you can rent one of these little space heaters for a $10 deposit. They’re a hot commodity this weekend!” she explains. No, really! That would have been a bit more helpful yesterday. But seriously, she was wonderful and I really appreciate their help because she fully refunded us for last night and the rest of the stay. We figured we might as well start with the host resort and take our chances on a room still being available. We were in luck; there was 1 efficiency she could get us into. Unfortunately, while we were making the phone calls to arrange the cancellations, it was booked out from under us. Again, the woman working was looking out for us because she comes back with an efficiency in one of their other properties that’s a bit bigger, has a balcony looking out over the gulf, and she will give it to us for the same rate. Um…is that a question! Thank you, thank you, thank you! We got checked into Sunbird Condos, made our way up to the 6th floor, entered our room and began shrieking with excitement when we saw the view! This is awesome! The rest of the day has pretty much followed suit, so I’m just going to pray that tomorrow and, most importantly, Saturday are the same! Bring on the IM!
The “plan” was to stay in a cabin at Campers Inn because Ponch and Nan are here with the motorhome and the campground is practically across the road from the host resort/transition area. Now, we stayed in the cabins at Fort Wilderness in Disney for the Half IM there so this will be the same thing, right? Um…could we have been more wrong. Yes, that was Disney and nothing is like Disney, but how different can cabins be. Let’s just say we couldn’t even figure out how to get the door open when we got there at 3 am for starters. Let’s also mention its 40 degrees outside, I’m getting over a nasty cold and we’re extremely tired! After figuring out you don’t actually use the handle to open the door (silly us!), you pull the rope which lifts the 4x4 level contraption so the door can be opened. We step inside and I do mean a single step because that’s all the more room there was before you ran into either the full size bed or the bunk beds. That’s all folks. If you shuffled your way in between the set of beds, you reached what we initially hoped was the heater fixed to the wall. Mistake #2 (or is that 3 now)! Our options were low fan or high fan and last I checked fan ≠ heat! We looked at each other, simultaneously let out a “Hell No” and ran for the HEATED car. We called Ponch and Nan and headed for the motorhome. Heat, bathroom, and sleep…we were now happy.
Come morning, we decided to discuss our options with the front desk help. “Yeah, you can rent one of these little space heaters for a $10 deposit. They’re a hot commodity this weekend!” she explains. No, really! That would have been a bit more helpful yesterday. But seriously, she was wonderful and I really appreciate their help because she fully refunded us for last night and the rest of the stay. We figured we might as well start with the host resort and take our chances on a room still being available. We were in luck; there was 1 efficiency she could get us into. Unfortunately, while we were making the phone calls to arrange the cancellations, it was booked out from under us. Again, the woman working was looking out for us because she comes back with an efficiency in one of their other properties that’s a bit bigger, has a balcony looking out over the gulf, and she will give it to us for the same rate. Um…is that a question! Thank you, thank you, thank you! We got checked into Sunbird Condos, made our way up to the 6th floor, entered our room and began shrieking with excitement when we saw the view! This is awesome! The rest of the day has pretty much followed suit, so I’m just going to pray that tomorrow and, most importantly, Saturday are the same! Bring on the IM!
Labels: florida, ironman, panama city beach, triathlon
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