1st Place!!!
That’s right, Thursday night we took first place!! And at the finish line, this gorgeous sunset was waiting for us!
Pictures From My Day
My tooth-brush smiles at me when I hit two minutes. Who doesn’t want to see this every morning!
Off to work!
Beautiful day!!!
Lunch time run!!! And it was a KICK ASS run!!!
Back to work
Sometimes you want to drink your Jack Daniels, other times you want to marinate it overnight in salmon (AMAZING!)
Evening snack because everyone should drink a smoothie out of a wine glass 
Baron climbing on top of me trying to get my smoothie
B and I going for a sunset walk
Beautiful sunset!
Every girl should have pretty painted toes
Bachelorette Party, Yes Please
And not just any Bachelorette Party, it was MY bachelorette party!
That’s right, I’M GETTING MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I get to marry my best friend and partner in crime!!!
Before the wedding comes the bachelorette party, so let’s get back to that!!
Years ago as my friends started getting married, I would make them wear the typical “Bachelorette Party” gear. Sash, blow up penis straws, flashing rings, etc.
As their revenge, I got a sash (which I actually liked), a flashing ring and … a HOT PINK shiny cow girl hat complete with veil. Lucky for me, they did not subject me to the penis straws.
It started with dinner at the ever delicious Kona Grill, LOVE this place. Cheers to me!!!!!!!!!!!
To die for sushi!!! I could have kept eating, it was that good.
Love these girls!
And in typical bachelorette party tradition, the waiter picked out a shot for me to take…Chocolate Cake. At the end of the shot you bite into a lemon and all of a sudden it tastes just like chocolate cake.
After dinner and drinks, it was time to move this party to the next place for a few more drinks and dancing!! Obviously my friends love me and make me do stupid things Revenge for all my bachelorette shenanigans I pulled on them.
It was a great night surrounded by the best friends a girl can ask for. We didn’t have a late night because we had to be somewhat normal in the morning for a dual baby shower for our two friends (who did come out for the dinner part of my party).
My two friends are both due on JUNE 1st, what are the odds of that happening?!?!?! Which we all arrived today for The Baby Sprinkle and NO ONE was hung over. So nice!!! The Sprinkle was such a great time.
So much love going around this weekend. I feel so truly blessed to have the people in my life that I do.
And on that note, hope you all are having a wonderful weekend 
7 Knots and Add A Little Bit of Rain
Last Thursday night was amazing on the water!! The wind was around 7 knots for the race and a storm was looming near by as we arrived at the yacht club.
It was still far “enough off” to where we could try to get a race off. Pre-race action:
I might need new gloves! Wait, non-sense, these are perfectly broken in
For most of race I kept my camera below. But after the rain lifted, I ran below and got my camera. Trust me, the pictures do not disappoint! What an amazing sunset as we raced to the finish line.
It’s That Time of Year Again…
Not only does Thursday night racing gear back up with this time change but with the warmer weather so do play sails!!!
We did a couple over the winter but nothing beats shedding all those layers for some bikini, sunscreen and sailing action! Nothing better than the smell of the sea mixed with sunscreen
The first real official play sail was kicked off last weekend. 10 of us ventured out on the water to enjoy the beautiful day. Sadly, it turned out to be slightly chillier than originally planned so a light sweater was needed at some points but I still was able to work on my tan for the most part
We spent the day sailing about the bay enjoying rum, champagne, fried chicken, and chocolate covered strawberries (Shari’s Berries, try them…LOVE THEM…DO IT!).
Always apply your sunscreen!
Party on the mid-deck
Letting Mike take over the helm. Hold on ladies and gentlemen!
Heeling the boat trying to get their butts wet
As tradition, we followed up the play sail with a visit to Estella’s, the island Mexican restaurant! Love that place and their Mango Margarita’s!
Thursday Night Racing is Back!!
Some people get all excited when football or hockey season starts back up, I get excited when the weekly Thursday night race series start back up. Just something about spending every Thursday night out on the water sailing. Racing, rum and good friends, what more can you ask for.
The first two races were green light races. Last week we came in second place by 1 second, 1 stinking second. This past Thursday night we came in second again, by 2 seconds! Seriously! So close, so so very close to victory.
Here are some pictures from last Thursday’s race.
Race time!
Post race:
Powered Paragliding Part 2 – Time To Fly!!
After a great Friday heading over to Melbourne and having dinner with some friends, it was time to start the party!! I wanted to fly!!!
It was an early Saturday morning as we wanted to be at the airport at 7:30am. Paul said the earlier the better so we would get there right before or at 7:30. I really hate alarm clocks sometimes
Just kidding, we were super excited and woke up before the alarm even thought about going off. We got everything packed, stole some food from the continental breakfast downstairs and took off for our adventure!
We arrived early enough to catch the beautiful sunrise.
We found Paul and got things rolling! And of course, Baron had to say hello.
First step was the weight in. 220 was the max weight for going up tandem and that weight was pushing it. I passed with flying colors! Once that part was done it was time to head out to the runway and get harnessed in. Oh and go over all the instructions on what to do during the take off and flight.
It was colder than I had expected it to be so Paul let me borrow one of his awesome Bike Week sweatshirts. I made quite the fashion statement don’t you think?!
Now it was time to get down to business. As we got me all strapped into the harness, Paul ran over the process for getting us up into the air.
The key was to run, run, run. Do not stop moving your legs like you are running until you see him push the foot strap through your feet. This means even if you can’t feel the ground, don’t stop running, you could land back down on the ground and you want your feet moving.
Got it, RUN, RUN, RUN! Pretty easy instruction.
While Paul got the lines set up and made sure everything was good to go, I decided to do a little photo-op with the motor.
Paul grabbed the motor and brought it closer to the sail to get them hooked together then get us harnessed into it. 
Then it was time to RUN, RUN, RUN!!!
We were up in the air in what seemed like 2 seconds, granted it probably was
IT WAS AMAZING!!! The view was breath-taking! The sun was still coming up and no words can describe the view.
Powered Paragliding – Part 1
Hey there!! I’m back. Had an extended stay away from the blog it seems! Lots of catching up to do!
I’ll start with my Powered Paragliding adventure!!
My dream for as long as I can remember is to learn how to hang glide. It is just one of those things that I MUST do. There have been some almost trips happen. Usually money or time off came between the issue.
I can tell you strapping a motor on my back and taking off to the skies has never been something I MUST do. It always looked cool and I thought about how fun it would be but never went through the effort to research it and make it happen.
For as long as I can remember, Colin has wanted to go powered paragliding (PPG). A couple of years ago when we would leave the kite beach after a day of kite boarding, we would see a guy up in the air powered paragliding. A few times we pulled over to watch him glide through the air. I always knew it would be a matter of time before it was added to Colin’s list of hobbies.
So how did I end up with a motor strapped on my back and taking off for the skies?!
Back in January, I won The Leadership Award for Central Florida at my company, not bad for a newbie that has only been there since the end of October. It came complete with a pretty glass trophy that now resides on my desk and 8 hours of “Paid Time Off”. I decided to use that day on March 15th, 3 day weekend please and thank you!!
As that weekend approached we were running through ideas of how to spend those three days. The criteria was easy:
- It must involve getting out-of-town.
- It must be pet friendly because Baron would be coming with us.
- There has to be some sort of adventure aspect to it, no just sitting by the pool doing nothing.
We threw around a few ideas like driving up to the panhandle to explore The Florida Caverns or driving up to Georgia to hike Tallulah Gorge, which happens to be a trip I have wanted to do for a few years now.
Then the week of on Monday, Colin had an idea. “Let’s go powered paragliding!!”. My response was, “Let’s do it!”
The next day Colin started to doing research and found the two places in Florida you want to get lessons from. One place is in Fort Myers called Planet PPG. The second place is in Christmas called Paratour. He left a voicemail for both places.
As we waited for return calls, we started looking for pet friendly hotels near both locations so we would be ready for either place.
On Thursday both guys called us back. The Paratour guy said he was out-of-town this weekend but would be available the next. Well that wouldn’t work for us, we didn’t want to wait, we wanted to do it NOW!
Luckily for us, the owner of Planet PPG was available, just not at his home base in Fort Myers. It turns out, that weekend there was a fly in going on over on the east coast in Melbourne. He invited us over to the event and said he would be able to take us up on a tandem ride.
SOLD!! We immediately booked a pet friendly hotel because the next morning we were off to Melbourne! And since we have a couple of friends that live over there, we made plans to meet up with them Friday night for dinner.
Friday arrived and we packed up the Kia and headed east. I must say, Baron is a fantastic travel buddy!
When we arrived on Friday we checked into the hotel, showered and got ready. Our plan was to head over to the airport to the Fly In to meet our instructor for the flight on Saturday. From there we would head over and meet up with our friends for dinner.
When we arrived at the airport there were some vendors set up with all the PPG gear as well as campers and tents from people staying there for the weekend. We meet some people and they shared their knowledge of PPG with us. They also pointed us in the right direction to find our instructors vendor tent. 
Our instructors name was Paul and very passionate about gliding!! He gave us a run down of everything involved for our adventure tomorrow morning. The pilots meeting was from 7 – 7:30am so we could arrive anytime between 7:30 and 8:00am. The earlier the better. It would be $100 a piece but 50% of that went to their charity. Having fun and giving to charity, win/win!
After our little meet and greet with Paul, we head over to a pet friendly restaurant to meet up with Teresa and Dan for some beer and food.
Sadly this was the only picture I took during dinner
The restaurant was right across from the beach so we walked over there to watch the last moments of the sun going down. The beach also happen to be dog friendly so Baron got to run around without the leash. He was in heaven! Even more so with the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crashing on the shore. He loved playing with the waves, running toward them in attack mode then running away as they came on the beach.
We spent an hour or so hanging out on the beach and it was amazing. So much fun catching up with friends we haven’t seen in a while plus getting to watch Baron have a grand time running around!!
Stay tuned tomorrow for Part 2 of the PPG adventure that will be posted in the morning!
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A Weekend Full of Sailing!
Last, last weekend (2nd and 3rd) the highs were only supposed to be in the 60s. Quite a change from this past weekend when the temp was in the high 70s or so. Florida is so all over the place.
Both days were chilly. Saturday it was blowing in the 20s and Sunday it was blowing in the high teens. Perfect for some sailing.
Saturday we had a small group of 6 of us head out for a play sail. As soon as we hit the dock it was time to pop some bottles, crank up the rap music and set sail!! I am only kidding about the rap music part.
It was a fun sail. The 6 mile leg back we got pretty soak but definitely fun! Since we didn’t have experienced crew we just feathered the boat back instead of sailing her like she was meant to be sailed.
Wrenches and Champagne!
Goofing around like we always do
After the sail though we hit up the Mexican restaurant for some Mango Margaritas and burritos!
Sunday’s sail was like a million times better than Saturday’s sail. We had the actual crew on the boat and were able to sail the boat how she liked to be sailed.
It was in the 50s so we were all bundled up in our gear. So fashionable right?!?!
Since it was wind on, the boat was heeled over and were flying. Seriously, so much fun. We didn’t care that we were getting hit with waves, which of course made us super cold!
We were having a blast out there!! We started last and ended up passing the other boats which meant we finished in first place!! Yeah, that’s right, first place baby!!!
We of course celebrated with rum drinks!!
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Sunday Funday – Motorcycle Addition
Since my motorcycle was finally fixed and ready to go, Colin, myself and our buddy Pete took off for a day of riding!
Before we met up with Pete at 11, we kept an eye on the radar. There was a large rain band moving our way, so wanted to see the chances of us getting wet. I’m not a huge fan of riding in the rain, but living in Florida it is something that I need to get over cause it rains everyday here in the Summer.
I will say…it was a great ride!!
Kind of strange in a way though. During one stretch it was like a beautiful Fall day. The trees were a mix of brown and green, and the leaves fell through the air as we rode. Then we hit another stretch that resembled a crisp Spring day. The trees were as bright green as you can imagine and the temp seemed to drop briefly through that area.
After all that though, you realize, “Wait a second, it is February so technically it is still Winter”. Of course, the final thought is, “It’s Winter, looks like Spring and Fall but it feels like Summer because it is 80 something degrees outside”.
Florida loves messes with your mind!
Enough about the weather, for now.
We rode down to Arcadia hoping to have lunch at our favorite little restaurant there. Sadly, it was closed. Such a shame because we don’t make it down there nearly enough to eat at this place.
Not pictured Pete’s Ducati, he parked on the other side of the SUV you see.
So instead we went to another place to grab lunch. No where as good. Not even close. Not even a little bit. However, it fueled us for where ever the rest of the day would take us.
We knew that the next leg back home would not involve taking 70 back. It is boring and straight. No thank you!
We had two options and we left our next move up to the flip of a coin. Heads: We head back the way we came with a few different roads here and there. Tails: We head west over to the beach and take US 41 back up to Tampa.
Tails won, so we headed west over to Sarasota area. As we arrived in Sarasota, a strange fog filled the area. It’s the type of fog that you wake up to in the morning. Mind you it was 3 in the afternoon. On the plus side, it did drop the temperature a good 10 degrees. Which was great timing because it was getting quite toasty.
It was around this time that my wrist started hurting on my clutch hand. Not riding for 2 months and my wrist reverted back to a dainty little thing.
But I manned up and kept on trucking. The ride home ended up being about 3 hours and we made one stop along the way to rest my wrist and grab some water.
After a day of riding, a shower and the couch never felt so good!!
Hope you all had a great weekend as well
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