Teem and I just returned from a monster road trip to Phoenix. All of Tim’s family lives down there, and it was time for us to visit them again. We looked at plane tickets, and when we added the cost of the tickets to the cost of renting a car, we were looking at an outlay of $1100. We knew we could drive it for about $400 + 2 hotel rooms, halving the cost of the journey. Plus, if we drove we could take our ancient chihuahua, Lucent, and our bicycles with us. So drive we did. Over the course of 8 days we drove 48 hours. We drove for a full-time work week.
We drove down on Christmas day. By the time we arrived at our stopover town of Amarillo, the only restuarants that were open were Denny’s and IHOP. We strolled into Denny’s at 9PM, expecting to be able to sit down, relax, and recover from our road weariness. Instead, we walked into a packed entry way, no hostess in site, and all the tables filled with patrons waiting for food. WHY was everyone in Amarillo eating out at Denny’s at 9PM on Christmas?? We said, to quote my mom, “Nuts to that noise,” and drove over to IHOP. The situation was only slightly better there. The hostess was in effect, at least, but she informed us that there would be a 45 minute wait. We turned around and headed back to the hotel. In an attempt to not go wholly off the rails whilst on vacation, I had packed road trip snacks – nuts, dark chocolate chips, figs, grapefruit, hard boiled eggs, and oranges. We had already plowed through a lot of the food, but we made a bastard supper of grapefruit, eggs, and free cookies from the front desk. By this time of the evening, we were both tired, hungry, irritable, and full of a weird mish mash of food. Fortunately, our moods were better in the morning, and we made short work of the remaining trip from Amarillo to Tempe.
Once we arrived, we welcomed the sun, the warmth, and the family. We had a good time over the course of the next few days – biking, running, hiking, playing games, and shopping at all the stores we don’t have here (Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc.). We also ate A TON of food. Since we were on vacation and since I’ve been more lax in my diet lately in general, I pretty much ate whatever I wanted. The day after we arrived, I had low-gluten pancakes for breakfast and then for supper indulged in bites of fries, bites of home-made pop-tarts, 1/2 a cookie, 1.5 slices of pizza, a sweet digestif, wine, a manhattan, a paleo cookie, etc. By the time we got on the light-rail train to head home, my stomach was feeling pretty off. I was also feeling pretty hot. I have a history of passing out, and I quickly recognized I was in danger. I moved over to an empty seat, took off my coat and sweater and fought furiously to maintain consciousness. Tim saw the sweat start to soak through my shirt and watched the blood leave my face and came over to fan me. Eventually the tunnel vision cleared, and I was able to focus and hear again. Ugh. This is what happens when I don’t treat my body correctly.
I ate much better over the course of the next few days. I still didn’t feel awesome just because when you are with a varied group of people, you want things to be easy as possible, so you make compromises. Also, it’s hard to poop at other peoples’ houses. Especially when you don’t get your coffee & coconut oil when you wake up. 🙂
But now we are home. We are still in leftover vacation mode, but starting on Monday we are doing a clean up. I’m looking forward to it!! Our gym membership expired in December. It’s super expensive to renew it, so we are going gym-less for January, and then we’ll sign up for Feb – May, so that we can train at the pool for the triathlon in June. So we’ll really need to eat better since we won’t be able to work out like we want.
Today is going to be the nicest day for the next 4-5 days (30 degrees), so we are going to run today. And then we are going to hibernate until at least next Tuesday. Over the next few days it’s supposed to get to something like 40 below with the windchill. UGH. The only thing keeping me sane is my faux sun-light and the knowledge that every day, even if it’s insanely cold, is going to get longer and longer. Eventually I will feel sun on my arms and legs again!
