Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Been A While
Well I've been out and about quite a lot lately trying to figure out what direction to go in life. I'm still in Portland though. Don't have any new pictures or for that matter stories to tell at this point. I'll get back to this whole blogging more than once in the past 4 weeks things soon.
Friday, February 1, 2008
January Training Wrapup
I take back everything nice I said about Active.com. On with the training stats which they generously don't provide for you anywhere on the site. Here is the graph they provide but if I want to know how many miles I ran or how long I ran for or what my average pace was I guess I have to get out the calculator and add it up myself. Not that I'm bitter or anything about it:) Anyways not a bad start for my first month getting back into the groove. Living a mile from the Nike headquarters is definitely a bonus as they have a great wood chip and dirt running trail going all the way around the complex. A nice 2 mile loop which makes for a 4 mile run total from the apartment.
Update: Total miles for the month was 35.
Update: Total miles for the month was 35.
Carnival Spirit
Since I don't really advertise my site in to many places it seems a lot of my traffic is a result of my reviews of the Carnival Spirit. If anyone who reads the site wants to know anything else about the ship, cruise or ports just let me know and I'll do what I can. You can leave a comment or email me at lower49 at gmail dot com. You know just change the at to @ and the dot to . and you'll be good to go. I think I'll also add a contact me link to the blog page...if I can figure it out.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Multnomah Falls
My trip to Multnomah Falls today. Due to our recent cold snap the areas hit by the spray have all frozen over with ice.
The bridge in the picture was pretty icy and the trail beyond was almost unwalkable without crampons.
This was the chain along the trail. Or at least this is the ice along the trail, there is a chain in there somewhere.
Looking at the upper and lower falls. Multnomah Falls is the second highest waterfall in the US after some little stream in Yosemite.
The bridge in the picture was pretty icy and the trail beyond was almost unwalkable without crampons.
This was the chain along the trail. Or at least this is the ice along the trail, there is a chain in there somewhere.
Looking at the upper and lower falls. Multnomah Falls is the second highest waterfall in the US after some little stream in Yosemite.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
CoolRunning.com
Ok so I posted earlier that I loved CoolRunning.com for their training log. I'll admit I hadn't been running or logging my runs up until the start of the new year so I missed the fact that they had moved everything over to Active.com. Initially I thought it would be the same log but just on a new site. Well its not the same log. While it is a good log it does have a bit of a learning curve as its not as straight forward as the CoolRunning.com log. Active.com also doesn't have the cool graphs that CoolRunning had. While they do have some graphs they aren't as comprehensive or detailed as CoolRunning's old graphs. I'll stick with Active because I'm sure as they get more feedback on the log they will make adjustments to their features. Either way I guess we'll see what happens...
Workouts
Change of heart. Well I'll still be running but a change of heart of posting stuff on here all the time. It would make everything way to convoluted and would push actual posts off the page a lot quicker...even though they aren't that interesting since I'm having trouble posting some of my pictures. I think I'm just gonna stick to a monthly update...maybe even post a cool graph or something from CoolRunning.com which now is actually Active.com. Well CoolRunning is still there but the activity log is now on Active.com. So thats that.
This picture has nothing to do with running but its still pretty cool. If you enlarge it a bit you can see its a fish of some kind chasing a school a little fish. I took this from my balcony on the Carnival Spirit.
This picture has nothing to do with running but its still pretty cool. If you enlarge it a bit you can see its a fish of some kind chasing a school a little fish. I took this from my balcony on the Carnival Spirit.Cruise Review Part 3 - Ports of Call
The Carnival Spirit's Mexican Riviera run is a 7 day/8 night cruise. The first 2 days are "sea days" and since we left on January 1st it really didn't warm until the 2nd full day at sea. It was warm but just not quite lay out on the deck all day warm. Though by the 3rd day it was hot. The first port of call is Acapulco with the ship arriving around 10am and staying until 1am. This leaves plenty of time to take an excursion and still provides free time to tour the city or, as we'll get to in a second, see the famous cliff divers.
We chose to take a Birds, Turtles and City tour. This tour takes place in the southern, I guess you could call them suburbs, of Acapulco and involved a 90 minute bus ride each way. The tour, which included a boat tour through a bird sanctuary and a chance to release baby turtles into the ocean, was great. The bird sanctuary was beautiful and relaxing while the turtle release was one of those things that you really will only get to do once in your lifetime. The tour in itself took around 5 hours so we were back at the ship by 5pm.
After stepping onboard to grab some dinner we took off again to go see the cliff divers and take a tour of the downtown area. The cliff divers I would also highly recommend although paying for a table at the restaurant is a bit pricey if you are only staying for one show...each show lasts around 20 minutes.Reading reviews online about Acapulco I found that a lot of people complained about the ship stopping there because of the crime in the city. While Acapulco is a very large city I personally think it is just fine for a cruise ship destination. There are a number of beaches, bars, restaurants and other experiences which people taking cruises tend to look for. I didn't see anything that would dissuade me from coming back again and I think some people tend to be overreacting with their criticism.
The after leaving Acapulco its a short run up to Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo. The ship arrives there at around 9am and just to note it is a tender port meaning you have to take a small boat into the dock. Since the ship arrives so early though and leaves Acapulco so late that there isn't much of a rush to be the first one off the boat. In one of the lounges they hand out stickers to take a tender to shore and we were able to show up 15 minutes before the first tender left and get sticker #1.
The Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo port comprises of two cities which you can probably guess the names of. Ixtapa is a government created vacation city full of...well actually I don't know what its full of because I didn't go into the city. But I hear its all square lawns and condo buildings. The tender dock is in Zihuatanejo which is a small fishing village and really a wonderful place to spend a day. There are an abundance of shopping and places to eat within blocks of the dock as well as 3 different beaches.
We took a snorkeling tour which took us outside of the bay and to a small coral reef. The water was warm and the fish sightings were decent. It was fairly exposed to the open ocean so it wasn't quite the still water, Caribbean snorkeling experience some are used to but still nice none-the-less. The catamaran ride was a good one and I guess they had seen some whales on the morning tour. Overall it was a good excursion but I also would have been perfectly happy sitting out on the beach for the day and wandering through the city.
The ship leaves port around 6pm for Manzanillo, which is the last stop for the cruise. Well not the last stop but the last port of call. Around 12 hours later you arrive in Manzanillo and honestly there isn't much to see from the ship. Its a commercial port so there are a lot of containers and a lot of coal being loaded into ships. We took a cab to a beach and hung around there for a few hours. As for the city I really can't tell you much of anything about it. The city really isn't geared for cruise tourism so there isn't he condensed shopping areas you will find in almost every other port city. The beach was nice though and there was a hotel on site at which you would pay $40 for access to their pool, unlimited drinks, and a buffet. We also rented a kayak for $9 for 2 hours which I think is a pretty good deal.
We chose to take a Birds, Turtles and City tour. This tour takes place in the southern, I guess you could call them suburbs, of Acapulco and involved a 90 minute bus ride each way. The tour, which included a boat tour through a bird sanctuary and a chance to release baby turtles into the ocean, was great. The bird sanctuary was beautiful and relaxing while the turtle release was one of those things that you really will only get to do once in your lifetime. The tour in itself took around 5 hours so we were back at the ship by 5pm.After stepping onboard to grab some dinner we took off again to go see the cliff divers and take a tour of the downtown area. The cliff divers I would also highly recommend although paying for a table at the restaurant is a bit pricey if you are only staying for one show...each show lasts around 20 minutes.Reading reviews online about Acapulco I found that a lot of people complained about the ship stopping there because of the crime in the city. While Acapulco is a very large city I personally think it is just fine for a cruise ship destination. There are a number of beaches, bars, restaurants and other experiences which people taking cruises tend to look for. I didn't see anything that would dissuade me from coming back again and I think some people tend to be overreacting with their criticism.The after leaving Acapulco its a short run up to Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo. The ship arrives there at around 9am and just to note it is a tender port meaning you have to take a small boat into the dock. Since the ship arrives so early though and leaves Acapulco so late that there isn't much of a rush to be the first one off the boat. In one of the lounges they hand out stickers to take a tender to shore and we were able to show up 15 minutes before the first tender left and get sticker #1.The Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo port comprises of two cities which you can probably guess the names of. Ixtapa is a government created vacation city full of...well actually I don't know what its full of because I didn't go into the city. But I hear its all square lawns and condo buildings. The tender dock is in Zihuatanejo which is a small fishing village and really a wonderful place to spend a day. There are an abundance of shopping and places to eat within blocks of the dock as well as 3 different beaches.We took a snorkeling tour which took us outside of the bay and to a small coral reef. The water was warm and the fish sightings were decent. It was fairly exposed to the open ocean so it wasn't quite the still water, Caribbean snorkeling experience some are used to but still nice none-the-less. The catamaran ride was a good one and I guess they had seen some whales on the morning tour. Overall it was a good excursion but I also would have been perfectly happy sitting out on the beach for the day and wandering through the city.The ship leaves port around 6pm for Manzanillo, which is the last stop for the cruise. Well not the last stop but the last port of call. Around 12 hours later you arrive in Manzanillo and honestly there isn't much to see from the ship. Its a commercial port so there are a lot of containers and a lot of coal being loaded into ships. We took a cab to a beach and hung around there for a few hours. As for the city I really can't tell you much of anything about it. The city really isn't geared for cruise tourism so there isn't he condensed shopping areas you will find in almost every other port city. The beach was nice though and there was a hotel on site at which you would pay $40 for access to their pool, unlimited drinks, and a buffet. We also rented a kayak for $9 for 2 hours which I think is a pretty good deal.
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