I can’t believe this trip was already a week ago.  Life was so hectic right up to the trip and then right afterwards.  I will be providing you my details of the trip in segments.  Today we will begin with the travel day out to California and the Expo.

The trip began with a little bit of frenzy. When my alarm went off at 6:00 I snoozed it. Then when my backup alarm went off at 6:15 I snoozed that. I finally got up at 6:30. I wasn’t motivated to get moving too quickly. I wanted to be around to see Kevin get on the bus and then at least I’d have a few minutes with Adrienne also. I watched the traffic on the news so I was keeping up with any issues on the highway. With the last traffic check I did at 8:05 there was an accident just outside of Hartford! That’s when a little panic set in. I grabbed the
last of my things, kissed Adrienne and my husband and got on the road. Thank God for the Waze app. The traffic was looking OK according to the app. My estimated arrival time was 9:07 and I was leaving my house at 8:20 for a flight at 10:30. I arrived at 9:00 – Perfect.

I parked the car and got on the shuttle. Diana texted me that the line at the counter to check bags was very long. When I arrived, there was no one left! A flight to Chicago had a large amount of people there so they moved them all through. Security had a longer than usual line. It was doing the Disney zig zag rather than the usual straight lanes. But even with that we got through in less than 10 minutes. But of course, BOTH of my carry on bags needed
to be inspected. We were fine though. We had plenty of time to get a tea, use the restroom and chill for a few minutes before getting on the puddle jumper to New Jersey.

It was a quick 1 hour trip to New Jersey and when we arrived, we picked up sandwiches and snacks for lunch since it was close to lunch time and our flight to California was 6 hour flight.  We wanted to make sure we had sufficient food with us to keep us fueled up for the flight.  The flight ended up taking 5 hours and 30 minutes flight and was a good flight.  I got some work done and rested and Diana read her book and rested.  When I think back on it, it did go by quite fast.

When we landed we gathered our luggage and used the restroom. I had a moment in the restroom where I heard a woman calling out for help. I was alone in there with another woman and the woman in the stall. So we both walked over to see what was wrong. The woman who needed help had MS. She needed help moving from her motorized scooter toward the toilet so she could go to the bathroom. She did need the help of both of us women in the bathroom to help her move her legs.  She had no feeling and mobility in her legs. We helped her and left her to her privacy and then helped her get dressed and move back into her chair again. She was a wonderful woman, whose daughter was going to run the Dumbo Double Dare Races. After she was all set and back into her chair we said our goodbyes and I felt grateful for my health and to appreciate the little things like how easy it is for me to quickly go in and out of a stall to get my business done and rush onto my way.

Diana and I got our rental car and went on with our journey to Disneyland. I took the advice from the man at the rental car check-out counter and we took the back roads to the Disneyland hotel. He said the highway at that time of night was a mess. That didn’t surprise me because that is how it was for me for the past two prior years. So we typed in the address to our phones and started on our way. As usual, it took 45-50 minutes to get to the hotel, when it is usually a 15-20 minute drive. Like in the past, I had to make a few U-turns and then we parked at the Downtown Disney parking lot and walked over to the Disneyland Hotel to go to the expo.

It was around 6 pm and many of the items at the Expo were picked over and there wasn’t as much of a selection left. I purchase an “I Did It” shirt; but it was only for the Disneyland Half Marathon, it wasn’t even for the Dumbo Double Dare. I also picked up a new Coast to Coast shirt. Those are the two items that I always want to grab when I run the Dumbo Double Dare races.

 

I did have the chance to go to the New Balance booth with no wait time and had the chance to pick up a pair of children sized Donald Sneakers. They didn’t have the exact size I wanted; but I was able to squeeze my foot into a half size smaller and was OK with that. We went downstairs to pick up our bibs, park passes, and coast to coast wrist band. Then we went upstairs to pick up our shirts. As we walked to the car it dawned on me that I had a coast to coast wrist band and Diana didn’t. Good thing I noticed it! We went back to the expo and talked to Runner Relations to get that resolved and she got her wristband.

It was getting late and we were getting hungry. So we dropped our items into the car and grabbed a sweatshirt to bring with us to Disneyland to watch the Electrical Parade and fireworks. Mandy had landed around this time and we were making arrangements to meet up near the gate so we could give them their passes. Diana and I went to Earl of Sandwich to pick up dinner and brought it with us into Disneyland to eat. But being close to the parade time; there was a large crowd on Main Street. I didn’t want to be too far from the gate because I still had to walk out to meet Mandy to give her the park passes.

 

We finally met up and the parade had started. Unfortunately, it was just too crowded to enjoy the parade. There wasn’t a good place where I could see the floats. But I did my best to take some pictures. We hung out for a little bit at the park and then decided it was time to head back to our hotels because it was getting close to 9:30 (12:30 back home) and I wanted to be asleep by 11:00 PST the latest.

We checked into the hotel, laid out our race materials for the next day and hit the sack around 11:00 p.m. The alarms were set for 4:00 a.m.

Stay tuned for my recap of the Disneyland 10K race recap.