Brookslanding

The morning before the race, Ryan and Bret met at my house and we loaded up our gear and started the long drive from Huntsville to New Orleans.  Ryan and I have either raced against or with each other in three other races, so we are on the same page with a lot of this stuff, but this was Bret’s first Adventure Race, AND  it was the first time I had ever met him.  The first thing you notice about Bret is his size.  He’s about 3 inches taller and has about 100 lbs on me.  He’s a former Marine who served in Afghanistan (salute!), and is now in the Army National Guard, so he could legitimately break me in half if he wanted.  He also graduated from Auburn in 2009.  So by the time we arrived in Louisiana, I was “the old guy”, and he was the “fat guy”.  All in good fun, of course.

After doing the tourist bit at the French Quarter with the obligatory walk down Bourbon Street, riding the Riverfront Streetcar, and eating a beignet at Cafe Du Monde, we hit the pre-race registration at one of the main sponsors, Massey’s Bike Shop.  They served Gatorade and Clif Bars as hors devours.  Classy.  The only pre-race tip that they were willing to give out was that we could use the Riverfront Streetcar during the race, so we were glad that we had already had some experience with where it stopped and how to find it.

The next morning, we arrived at City Park, which is a large park in New Orleans that is surrounded by water on three sides.  Lake Pontchartrain was to the north, and two bayous on the east and west.  As we we started suiting up, I realized that this was a different caliber of race that I had been used to.  The New Orleans race was the final leg of a 7-part series of races that had been going on all year long along the Gulf Coast, and so some of the “best of the best” were participating in this race.  I overheard conversations of racers who were making plans to attend the International Adventure Race Finals in France next summer.  I didn’t even know there was such a thing.  Additionally, Bret noticed that he was by far the biggest guy out there.

Ten minutes before the race began, they handed us a packet that had a tourist map of New Orleans, a map of City Park with 20 marked checkpoints, two pages of step-by-step instructions of how to collect each checkpoint, a flyer for the Civil War History Museum, and a passport with punches for checkpoints A, B, C, and D.  Then the race instructor pulled us all together and gave us a few tips about the race, and started rabbit-trailing about the same Civil War History Museum before finishing with the playing of the National Anthem.

The countdown began…and we’re off.

Our first challenge was to collect checkpoints A, B, C, and D in any order.  About 55% of the racers started with A, so we went with D.  A wrinkle that they threw in was one person had to be on their bike, and the other two on foot.  Since Ryan and I are stronger runners, we went on foot, and Bret happily took his bike.  (A note about City Park.  It’s huge.  It has ball fields, parking, ponds, swamps, trees, lakes, rivers and roads.  It would be easy to get lost here if you didn’t have a map.)  We got off the main road and started following the main group down a trail.  I knew that to collect D, we were supposed to eventually break off the main trail to the left, but once we came to the fork, all the other racers kept going straight.  So I stopped (not a good thing to do, especially at the beginning of the race), and somehow convinced my team that everyone else was going in the wrong direction.  Here we were, one minute into the race, and my navigation skills were about to be totally validated, or I’d be handing the maps over to someone else.  We took the left, and went straight to the checkpoint D.  Awesome.  My navigation skills live to see another checkpoint.

The checkpoints are actually orange hole punches that have a series of pins that make odd designs when you punch them through your passport.  These punches are usually found hanging from a tree.  If you are ever at a park and you see one hanging there, don’t take it, or else you’ll ruin a race.  FYI.

After that, picking up the C, B, A was relatively straightforward.  We did have to jump across a small stream, which was not hard, but you had to run up to it and spot your landing.  Ryan and I jumped it while Bret dismounted off his bike.  We turned around to help him lift the bike across, only to see him put the bike on his shoulder and jump the stream with the bike on his shoulder.  Yeah, he’s that kinda guy.  He later said that him jumping across with a bike was the weighted equivalent to me jumping across with a football.  Fair enough.

In past Adventure Races, Ryan and I have enjoyed interacting with some of the other racers while we are on the trail.  You’d probably hear us making jokes or giving out high-fives if you raced alongside us.  Apparently, these “high-caliber” racers around us did not appreciate this kind of behavior.  One group of ladies that we were running alongside remarked that they had won this race three times, but that they hadn’t raced it in two years.  Shortly after that, one of the ladies caught her toe on a root, which staggered her steps a little, but she didn’t fall.  I remarked, “I guess that root wasn’t there two years ago.”  Apparently, that wasn’t the right thing to say.  I’m sure they beat us.

After collecting checkpoint A, I asked Bret if I could take over on the bike.  I was gassed by this point and was starting to develop a stitch in my side.  It was only about a quarter mile back to the transition area, but it gave me a break that I needed.

At the transition area, we handed in our passport, and we received a new passport with 16 more checkpoints to collect.  The first passport was used to thin out the crowd a bit, which was a good idea.  Having too many racers bunched up tends to lead to frustration as people are jockeying for position and standing in line for the checkpoints.  Our next stop was the bayou on the east side of City Park, where we picked up our canoe.  ”Unfortunately”, our paddles were on the other side of the bayou, so everybody had to paddle by hand to the other side.  Once we arrived to the other side, I hopped out and gathered our two paddles, and we were off.  It took us awhile to get things figured out on the canoe.  This was Bret’s strongest area, so we all agreed to put him in the front to serve as an engine, but that caused us to zig-zag all over the place.  Once we figured out that Bret belonged in the back, we HAULED.  I mean, there was a wake coming off our canoe, and we passed quite a few people.

So, about these bayous.  These aren’t the bayous that you picture in your mind where the trees are sagging over the water with the Spanish moss hanging down as an alligator slips into murky depths.  No.  None of that.  This was a bayou where well-manicured lawns came right up to the sea wall that sat just a few feet about the waterline.  And it was the kind of homes where the owners would sit out on their back deck and watch a bunch of people try to paddle their canoe with just their hands.  It’s that kind of bayou.

We collected a few points on the water.  Most of which were hanging off some low hanging bridges.  And yes, these bridges were LOW.  One of them was so low that we had to duck down into the canoe in order to keep our shoulders from hitting the bridge.

We got to the pull-out, and ran over to Massey’s.  I was half-expecting to go back there, since the primary sponsors usually get some love from the race director.  On our way there, another group of ladies (what’s with these girl teams?) had stopped a truck and were asking for directions.  The people inside gave them advice, which we all listened in on.  As the truck pulled away, Ryan joking yelled, “Can I ride in the back of your truck?”  The girls didn’t seem to like this too much, and even remarked, “We’re going to tell on you.”  After telling them that my buddy was merely joking, they repeated again that they were going to report us.  Oh well.

Once at Massey’s, we had to assemble a puzzle.  Easy enough.  Once complete, we received our punch, and headed back to the boats, which we had to paddle all the way back to where we originally picked them up.  Ryan and I learned with previous races that running after sitting in a boat for a long time tends to lead to cramps, so we started taking salt pills as we neared the boat put-in/put-out area.  I think that helped a lot.

We picked up the bikes that we had ditched at the boat pick-up area a few hours before, and grabbed a few more checkpoints in City Park.  Then we headed out of the park, and into some of the historic parts of the city.  We weren’t in the French Quarter (yet), but we definitely were in some of the older homes.

Our next challenge was to find a statue, and count all of the human faces on it.  While the other guys started counting, I just sat there in a daze, saying, “Are cherubs human?  If they are, then there are a lot of faces.”  Apparently cherubs ARE human, and there were 43 faces.  This number served as the code-word to get into our next stop, which was at a park where we dropped our bikes for the 2nd time.

After we dropped our bikes, our next stop was the Civil War Museum that the race director talked so much about before the race start.  However, we had to make a decision as to how to get there.  The bike drop was on the north side of the French Quarter, but the Musuem is the Warehouse district, which is a good two miles away.  We could either run the half mile to the Streetcar and ride it up to the next stop, or we could run the entire two miles.  We decided on the streetcar, as we knew we could use the rest AND we knew where to find the stop.  We arrived at the station, and waited.  After a few minutes, a few more racers arrived, and then a few more, and then a few more. After about 20 minutes of waiting, there was 12 of us waiting on the streetcar.  Finally, we saw it stop at the next station down.  And then, it turned around and went back down the line.  What?!  Now you had 12 racers running down the tracks trying to catch the streetcar before it departed from the 3rd stop.  By now, we were pretty much convinced that the streetcar was a collosal waste of time, and this sprint wasn’t saving us much energy.  Fortunately, all 12 of us were able to make it to the third stop.  We all piled on with a bunch of bewildered tourists, some who thought that the idea of Adventure Racing was really cool, and didn’t mind that we were all sweaty.

By the time we arrived at stop #6, we ALL said goodbye to the tourists and started running towards the museum.  Now, remember that we are in downtown New Orleans, and this glut of runners is zig-zagging around planters, pedestrians and cars.  Ryan jumped out ahead of the crowd, and I was working my way through to catch up with him.  Bret had gotten stuck in the rear, and was working his way forward when a tourist stepped out of her hotel, locked eyes with him and laughed, “Hurry up!  You’re the last one!”  I guess that motivated the Marine inside of Bret as he then kicked into high gear, and he was right behind me before we got to the next street.  By now we had settled into a good rhythm on the run, and we had passed all of our streetcar racers.

We arrived at the Civil War Museum and were given three questions about the museum that we had to answer.  NOW we realized why the race director had “rabbit-trailed” about when he had given the pre-race briefing.  He was slyly giving us all of the answers to the trivia questions.  Nice.  Did we remember any of that?  Nope.  But fortunately, we had a hunch that we should hold on to the Civil War pamphlet that they gave us, and it contained all the answers we needed.  We handed in our answers, got the punch, and took off for another race sponsor, which was a downtown gym.

We figured that there would be some sort of “how much can you bench?” sorta challenge at the gym, but the REAL challenge was getting to it.  We found the office building just fine, but once we got there, we were told that we had to make our way up to the 13th floor, and we could not use the elevator.  So, we huffed our way up 13 flights of stairs, and just doing that did more to knock the wind out of us.

The challenge when we got to the gym was pretty tame, but original.  We were guided to the aerobics room, where we had to do a wheelbarrow race. I got down on my hands, while Ryan and Bret picked up my feet.  All I had to do was go about 30 feet, while traversing over 3 aerobic steps (which will not ski, by the way).  Once there, Ryan and I switched places, and he wheelbarrowed back the 30 feet.  Ironically, there wasn’t any discussion if he and I were going to try to pick up Bret legs and carry him.

Before We left the gym, we all hit the bathroom, and refilled our Camelbaks before going back down the 13 flights.  We exited the building and were directed to go to Jackson Square in the French Quarter for our next checkpoint.  After the failure with the Streetcar first time, we decided to run the 2 miles back to the Quarter.

Probably one of the most surreal moments of the race was running down the middle of Bourbon Street, home of some of the weirdest, raunchiest establishments in a weird and raunchy city.  As I ran down the middle of the road with Ryan The Joke Teller and Bret the Mountain of a Man following behind me, with all of us sweaty and decked out in our race gear, I realized WE were the ones everyone was gawking at, rather than the other way around.  I’ll probably never be a street performer, but this was probably the closest I’ll ever come to being the center of attention in the French Quarter.

We arrived in Jackson Square, and found a man wearing a Drew Brees #9 Saints jersey.  I got the checkpoint punch from him, while Ryan asked if he could shake his hand.  When the guy asked why, Ryan said he wanted to tell his friends that he met Drew Brees in person.  Again with the jokes.  That’s Ryan.

We were then directed towards the French Market, which is located on a very crowded Decatur Street–the main drag through the French Quarter.  We raced by Cafe Du Monde, where we had eaten benigets the night before, and began looking for stall #122.  The market takes up a few city blocks, so it took awhile to find it. Once there, a man handed us a little Mardi Gras trinket, which was our ticket to retrieve our bikes that we had previously dropped off.

We ran back to the park, picked up our bikes, and began biking back towards City Park.  I have something to admit; biking on these busy streets was pretty dangerous.  It’s not that the traffic was bad or dangerous, but we as racers were the one’s being dangerous.  Many times we saw racers (ourselves included) riding on sidewalks, riding down the wrong side of the road, or running through stop signs and red lights.  These actions put us all in danger, and they makes cyclists look bad overall.  Perhaps the race director should have struck some fear in us by saying that he would pull anyone who was found disobeying road rules during the race.  Just my two cents.

We got back to City Park, and picked up a few more checkpoints.  By now, our passport was almost fully punched, but they had a few more challenges for us.  We were directed towards the transition area, where we dropped our bikes for the last time.  The challenge here was that two team members had to make a 20-yard field a goal.  Ryan lined up, and drilled it straight through.  Bret then stepped up, kicked the ball up, and in a classic come-from-behind victory style kick, glanced it off the upright and went in.  Two for two.  By nailing that challenge, we probably passed 3-4 teams who were vainly trying to kick it through.

Now we had some more running to get to the next challenge.  By this point, we had been going for about 4 and 1/2 hours.  We were all flagging, but gained a little energy in knowing that this was our last checkpoint.

The final challenge was at a small fishing dock that sat over a pond.  It had a nice hand-rail around the perimeter.  Our challenge was to walk on the outside of the hand-rail around the entire perimeter, collect our last punch at the point furthest away from land, and the continue on to the finish.  Nobody slipped and fell into the pond, so it looked like we were going to finish this adventure race without going through mud or water.  That rarely happens in an adventure race.

We ran back to the finish line, and we started giving each other high-fives, excited to almost be done.  But ten feet before the finish line, a race official stopped us and verified that we had collected all of the correct punches on our passports.  She quickly looked over our card, and let us continue.  We crossed the finish line in just over 5 hours.  We congratulated Bret on becoming an Adventure Racer as he flopped down to the ground.  For a guy who participated in his first race with not much time to train, he did great.

Since the Adventure Racing season dies off during winter, we are waiting to see what races we’ll participate in next year.  In the meantime, Ryan is planning to run the Tough Mudder in February, and I’m going to run the Birmingham Marathon Relay with Ellen’s family.  Bret has found an Adventure Race in Texas that has a Clydesdale division, and he is excited about the possibility of matching up with guys his size.  Go get ‘em, buddy.

If you think of us over the next few days, please pray for Isaac and I as we attempt to potty train! I am going to follow Lori Jenson’s 3 day Potty Training e-book. (we know I like someone to just tell me what to do!!!) Which basically means tomorrow morning we’ll be removing all diapers from our house and not going anywhere for 3 days!! (no pull ups either!)  Please pray that Isaac would be able to stay dry in the day and night and that it would be a smooth, positive and fun experience!

Dan will be taking Davis on some adventures Saturday and Sunday so that Isaac and I can concentrate on potty training success! Big boy underwear here we come!!

Bye bye Crib!

This past weekend we moved Isaac into a big boy bed. He has been ready for awhile, but I’ve just been afraid of him not sleeping as long. (he sleeps like a dream 7 till 7 and is willing to nap from 12-3) No, he isn’t sleeping for all of that time, but he will play in his crib from 6:30am till I come and get him and then from 2:30 till I’d arrive.

My very wise husband reminded me that we do have the technology to put a lamp on a timer in Isaac’s room also. This has worked GREAT for Davis and has prevented many early morning wake ups. We have a timer on a lamp that comes on at 7am and that is Davis (and now isaac’s) cue that it is time to get up! Isaac got a special timer with 2 settings so he can have one for nap time also! It has worked perfectly and we are happy that Isaac is still getting the sleep he needs!

I'm so proud!

Isaac helped disassemble the crib and also assemble the big boy bed! What a big boy!

The first night went very well. Yet again, my husband had great wisdom and practiced with Isaac on how to get out of bed if RaRa (his bunny you see) drops and pick him up. We haven’t gotten the hang of that yet, but RaRa has successfully stayed in bed 4 of the last 6 nights. Isaac called out once the first night because of a RaRa drop, but that was it! And the last 3 nights we haven’t heard a peep from him all night!

I’m so proud, and a little bit sad as we don’t have a crib in our house now and are soon not to have any diapers! (Maybe I won’t be as sad about that one!!)

January 16th was Dan’s 34th birthday! We celebrated a few days early as we went to visit Great Grandma Davis over the actual weekend of his birthday. I need to get those pictures off of Dan’s phone, so that will follow later!

Davis and Isaac had so much fun celebrating Daddy’s special day! As for the “happy cake” Dan requested banana cream pie. A favorite after one of my very dear friends brought us one a couple weeks before.

We love you so much! Happy Birthday!

One significant snow a year is highly unusual for Huntsville, but TWO snows?!!! This is unheard of around here! We awoke Monday morning to the scene below. (looking out our front door). We had at least 8 inches of perfect snowman making, snowball throwing snow!! Here are some pictures of the fun we’ve had yesterday and today!

I had a really sweet friend message me on facebook and ask me not to give up on this blog! I feel like I have failed in a lot of ways on keeping ya’ll updated about our life, so I’ll try to sum up the last 2 months for ya’ll that may still come visit every so often!

OK… so October 31st we found out SURPRISE! we were pregnant. Baby #3, affectionately named Honey by our boys when we told them about the baby that would be born the beginning of July. Not expected, but a total blessing.

not very clear but that text says it all!

November 13th Ran in the Huntsville 1/2 marathon with my precious friend Morgan!

November 23rd Saw Honey! Ultrasound confirmed our little one had a strong heart beat at 7 1/2 weeks

what would life be like with 3 silly kids?

Thanksgiving we announced to our family that Baby Brooks #3 was on “her” way! Shock abounded with everyone as we gave Grandma her first picture of the little baby at 7 weeks. We loved hanging out with the Grinnell side of the family and getting lots of hugs from our little James Bradford.

our eldest turkey

November 28th week Decorate for Christmas!

my favorite boys!

December 4th Uncle Rob, Aunt Melody and Drew (our new wonderful nephew!) come to visit from Florida! So much fun and the boys LOVED playing, wrestling, and just having so much fun with everybody, but especially Drew. He is 12 and just about one of the coolest kids you could ever meet!

December 8th we celebrated Davis’s 4th Birthday (unofficial!) at Jump Zone, an inflatable fun zone. Davis requested a Buzz Lightyear  cake and I had a great time making it!

Happy birthday Davis!

December 20th was a sad day for us as I went in for for my 11 1/2 week check up and Honey didn’t have a heartbeat.  I was by myself as we had decided that Dan wouldn’t come again until the 20th week appointment. Thankfully, Dan hurried to the doctors office and was there with me as we scheduled a D&C for the next day. It was quite emotional, but we were very thankful that my mom had come to take care of the boys. She brought Davis and Isaac back to Birmingham.  They were more then THRILLED to be going to Grandma’s so I was happy that they were so content. Dan took me out to dinner and I ordered yummy, greasy food. On the way home we bought a brownie mix and ate just about the whole thing that night. Dan enjoyed joining in on how I handle my sad emotions.

December 21st I went in and had surgery. Never a dull moment in our family though, because as I was in recovery my sweet sister, Anne fell and had to be taken by ambulance to the emergency room. Well, broken leg, 8 screws, 1 metal plate and 3 days in the hospital she was sent “home” with instructions that she couldn’t put any weight on her leg for 10 weeks. That has equaled living in the bed and a wheel chair all of the time. It hasn’t been easy on her with James Bradford to take care of!

Note: superstar Grandma had all 3 of her grandsons  Tuesday morning through Wednesday afternoon. Between her and Aunt Laura they saved the day for Anne and I!!

December 24th Davis officially turns 4!!

December 25th We woke up to a white Christmas! (the first for Huntsville in many decades) It was the perfect snowman making, snow ball throwing snow. The neighborhood came out in full force for so much fun!

sledding! on Gramps's sled.

Frosty!

helping daddy bring in wood for a fire!

So, you can see that it is hard to sum up these last couple of months! I’ve had a lot of fun writing this post though, so hopefully they’ll be more in the future!!

Isaac had been requesting ice cream for several days, and a reoccuring request of his is to go to the train tracks,  so one Sunday afternoon we surprised the the boys by heading to Sonic, getting some yummy vanilla (their request) and eating it at the train tracks that are close to our house.  Unfortunately no train came through while we were there, but we had a nice walk on the tracks!

It was so much fun! Our boys are hilarious and they are still fascinated by trains! We love it and love that we can hear the trains that go on this track from our house. It sometimes brings tears though, as they want to hop in the car instantly to see the train. They don’t quite understand yet that the train will probably be gone by the time we get there.

funny face pics of Dan and I were taken by Davis.

OK, I guess it is easy for me to see where I should start! I have an adorable, sweet and charming new nephew named James Bradford. Most of you already know this, but I wanted to properly introduce you all to him! He was born September 14th, 2010! Davis and Isaac LOVE him and were so disappointed for about 3 weeks when they had runny noses and I wouldn’t let them near him. Oh! and as I write this post I am having a hard time getting the pictures to be the same size. I’ll have to get my computer genius hubby to help me fix them later, but I am not going to fail at getting them up!! Here is the precious little one! I love him so much!!!

The last couple of weeks I’ve been quite the slacker in trying to update our blog. It has been on my “should” list, but somehow has never gotten done. (ironing is also on this list and is still!) Anyway, I like putting pictures up and writing about our life, but I’ve somehow gotten out of the habit! Right now I am downloading the 129 pictures on my camera. That may not sound like a lot to you, but I usually download and erase them every time I blog so this is a lot for me!  Where do I start???

We’ve enjoyed some yummy peaches lately and Davis has been insistent for over a week that we needed to plant the seeds and grow our own peach tree. The other day we finally took the chance to plant one seed outside and another in a little planter that we are watering inside. We hope they grow! It is Davis’s experiment!

In Isaac news, today we have had my FAVORITE weather. Sunny, a little bit cool. Perfect weather for playing outside and letting the kids ride their bikes in the culdesac. It made me feel like I had old kids though as they raced around in circles and I let them be in the culdesac with me watching and cheering them on.

Is my “baby” really 2 years old??? Where does the time go?