Labor Day Fun

We have been needing to go on vacation, just the two of us for quite a while (at least 2 years since the last get-a-way), so when the chance presented itself we took it. We went to Santa Monica over the Labor Day weekend. I had never been there before and it was beautiful. My hair was out of control because of the humidity. I am always so surprised at the amount of uncontrollable curl I deal with on a daily basis here in the desert. So needless to say I looked like I was camping for the entire weekend....what fun! But we did have fun. Gregg had his agenda to fulfill as well as me. He has this thing that whenever he goes anywhere he has to visit the bookstore of the college team of that city. Well this so happens to be the city of the #1 ranked team in college football right now. And yes, not only that but now the #23 ranked team as well. So that was first on the agenda.

This is the beautiful UCLA campus (#23 for those of you who care)
This is Gregg feeling the love at the USC (#1) athletic trophy room.........
Then it was off to visit the stomping ground of his little league world series baseball field. His team won the little league world series in 1984 (man do we feel old--that was 24 years ago!!!) I don't know if he was trying to find it or not, but we totally just fell on to it and it brought back so many wonderful memories to him....yes including the throwing up of soft batch cookies(ask him, he will fill you in sometime).
Then it was off to relax at the beach. It was good weather all weekend. It was fantastic to get away from the heat of SLC. Santa Monica was cool and the ocean breeze was so refreshing! Our dumpy (but very pricey) hotel was within walking distance to the Santa Monica peir. That was really cool.
We walked along the beach and watched the surfers.......they make it look so easy.
Then we visited 'muscle beach' also right along the Santa Monica pier (on the other side of where we were). Gregg thought this would be very cool. I was so impressed with the non-existence of muscle heads! I had to deal with them enough working at a tanning salon as a teenager.....they can be such dorks! But some of the show offs were actually pretty cool to see. If you have ever been there there are just random gymnasium type metal bars and things all over the beach. One guy was doing some balancing jujitsu type thing on a pole that is probably no bigger around that 5 inches and probably 6 feet tall. Then we saw a bunch of guys swinging from rings that were about 10 in a row (that takes some serious upper body strength). Gregg and I did more people watching than I ever remember Gregg doing. That was quite amusing.
Then we finally did my agenda.....no we don't have any pics. Of course, who would you think would take pics of something I am doing? But that is okay. There was not much to see anyway. Not much other than 12,500 people running in a race?! Yes, what was I thinking? I am NOT a runner let alone run a 10K in LA?! The Non-profit I work for is amazing. Of course they do the fun stuff in California. The Non-profit (HCA) assists in providing low income individuals and families housing in CA. Mind you low income in CA is still $1500 a month for an apartment. These apartments we own are very nice and we have about 60+ properties we deal with. Well our wonderfull Resident services guy in CA teamed us up with Nike. Nike sponsored 100 of our kids from our properties. Nike provided these kids with brand new running shoes, running chips and the digital readout for them. Nike was putting on an amazing feat this weekend. They had a 10K in 25 different countries/cities in the world. We all ran trying to overlap at some point in time. Gregg and I flew out to CA so I could help get the kids ready and race myself. It was so humbling and a great oportunity to be a part of it. The kids were so polite and fun! After the race they all got to see Kanya West in concert.
I am not a runner. I have only ran a few 5Ks in my life. But with motivation to get to be a part of this amazing historical event I ran it. I was trying to get under an hour in time (that is what I was getting here in UT). But with that many people it was almost impossible to pic up that much speed I did the best I could and got just over an hour (1 hour 5 minutes). That is not the greatest time, but not the worst either. It was actually the average for the race in LA (and many other countries as well). Take a look at: www.nikeplus.com.