Fifth day

This time Laura met us for breakfast and we all went to the Ramona Cafe. The waitress was amused that I'd started out on my own and each day was incrementing the number of women I brought with me. She was waiting to see how many I brought the next day, but we spoiled that for her; The next day we started our run on Denny's. Laura had Tabasco sauce on her eggs, something she'd talked about in emails, but that I'd never actually seen anyone do and certainly never for breakfast. So she wasn't joking after all!

I had my picture taken by the Brand X sign, fulfilling another longtime ambition.

From BrandX

We did the WOD – Cindy was running this class and Andrea had this morning off

75 power snatches

Cashout
Max pull ups
Max push ups

I fell off the straight bar trying to adjust my grip to find a place that didn't hurt with torn hands. I still got a PR with 11.

Jeff arrived as the class finished to coach Nichole (Nichole811) DeHart.
She's a lovely person, so nice and very friendly. Nichole training with Jeff is a laugh, she complained constantly and then would switch it on and do some fantastic lifts.

She has the most beautiful squat form.

From The_amazing_nichole

From The_amazing_nichole

Nichole lives in Portland now and Jeff never let her forget that lapse in judgement. Nichole was struggling to get under the bar as she warmed up and complained "Jeff, my muscles are too big. My arms are to big to get under this bar!" Jeff while laughing managed to squeeze out "Those arms? Those are Portland arms, those are the arms you get when you move away from a  real gym".

Partway through Nichole's training Jeff discovered a humming bird had found its way into the gym overnight.

From The_amazing_nichole

We'd never seen one before.
Deadlifts were a struggle for Nichole that day, she couldn't stop dragging her shoulders back to finish instead of pushing her hips through. Jeff was using his best material trying to explain what she was doing wrong and then Cyndi pointed out that it was like doing a kettlebell swing and it clicked. Jeff accused Cyndi of holding back cues from him. Cyndi really knows her stuff.

We wandered off down Main street again and bought a cheapy pre-pay phone from k-mart so we weren't fighting over the unlocked one we brought from NZ. Lunch this time was Rubios and I had, wait for it, fish tacos! Oh my goodness those things are nice! Lynette discovered refried beans are really good as a dip for tortilla chips, she hadn't liked them until then.

We walked back to the motel, calling into a few shops, as you do. I bought a belt buckle. As I do.

We had a swim while we did laundry, yes, real laundry Anita and then went back to the gym with Andrea. The SS & DA show isn't on on Wednesday's so we had a bit more time to fill in. Andrea had a couple of private clients and when she was done she took us to her house for dinner. I shuffled money around between bank accounts on one of Hans' computers and caught up a little with what TP had been saying on the forum while Lynette helped with dinner. Andrea and Hans had kicked the kids out for the evening. We'd taken a small sample of some NZ candy we'd brought over with us for the kids, oh alright, and the adults and we left that there, along with some bone carvings in maori designs, one for each kid. The carvings went down much bigger than we expected apparently. But anyway, I'm missing the most important thing; the food. Andrea and Hans cooked Carne Asada and Pollo Asada. We had no idea what that was. Andrea tried to fob us off by saying it was just a store bought marinade, but I'm considering lobbying for an international pipeline for that stuff to NZ. It was absolutely fantastic, the perfect thing to have at a summer barbecue and a flavour I'd never experienced before. I restrained myself and only had one beef and one chicken taco or burrito or whatever the resulting assembly is called (I confess I don't really understand the difference still). It was all I really had room for but left to my own devices I would have forced a lot more in. Man that stuff was good! Oh and they have avocados all year round there. In NZ it's a narrow season so we make the most of them while we can. For us they're a luxury.
I took a look at a revamped XFitmom site Hans is working on as I was familiar with the CMS he's using for it. I helped with a couple of points he was getting stuck on, but which he would have worked out himself given time. Hans is a bright guy and he's doing a great job on the site, getting ready for when Andrea becomes a Crossfit affiliate and can use the Crossfit name for her ante and post natal programming. Have you seen it? Go take a look at http://www.xfitmom.com/ if you haven't. Brilliant stuff.

It was a great evening with two great people.

On the way back we picked up two mountain bikes from Laura's. We thought they'd help us get around Ramona but as it happened they never left the hotel room. It was a very kind offer from Laura and John though. It took me half an hour of fumbling around in the dark to eventually find out how to disconnect the brake cables and get the front wheels off to load them in Andrea's people mover. Bradley eventually rescued me by getting a torch.

I may have to do a catch-up post, I know we'd met Debbie by then, I missed Dan out and I'm sure we met Steve by this point. Mary was a regular at the 0900 classes, so we must have met her. There are all these great people at Brand X and I hate to leave any out.