Monday, Oct 4th - Finally arrived in Kona!!

Well, I was delinquent in updating after I arrived yesterday. My flights were all on time and I arrived in San Francisco with just enough time to make my way over to get a yogurt and board my flight. The timing could have not have been more perfect. My seat was 25F, which was thankfully in the aisle. The flight was uneventful and bordered on boring. There were a lot of athletes and their families on board. I caught glimpses of lots of water bottles, transition bags, Lava magazines, etc. The hype was only beginning! Then we touched down at 11:30PST in Hawai'i! I stepped off the plan into perfect weather----in the 80's and retrieved my bags. As I mentioned earlier, I had one large roller (57 pounds), a hard wheel case and then my 2 carry-ons. So from that point on I felt tethered to a bench since I wasn't about to lug all that gear with me around the aiport. Hawai'is airport is open air and the leis were out in full force. After about an hour sitting there, I swallowed my pride and decided to call one of the other guys from the Navy/Marines to ask for a ride. My original plan was to wait for Robert Killian (All Army male athlete) to arrive and bum a ride from him. But his flight wasn't scheduled to arrive until close to 3pm. I will spare you the mundane boring details and just say that they came and picked me up and I also got a visit from the Muscle Milk reps. I was so grateful to finally "arrive." I took a shower and then went out to see the complex. I do not have an ocean view, but there is a walkway where there is some cool volanic rock and great views of the ocean. I snapped some photos and then came back to do some dreaded schoolwork. I took 2 quizzes online and then closed my laptop for the evening. After picking up my family from the airport we went out to dinner at Ohana Grill Jackie Rey's. Dinner was nice and then we went to pick up some groceries (extremely overpriced of course) from the local store. Then it was to bed to get rested for the next day's adventures! I had a full morning planned with swim, registration, bike pick up and rental car pick up.