So we left for Vegas on the 15th of November a Tuesday and stayed in Utah, just past Salt Lake for the night, and got up super early and made it to Vegas early on Wednesday in time to meet Shawn's dad and step-mom and aunt who had flown from Texas to Vegas that morning at the Grand hotel where I met them for the first time. We stayed in Vegas until Friday morning when I drove all of us to Tempe, Arizona where the Iron Man was being held on Sunday. Shawn finished in record time and his folks flew out Tuesday the 22nd and we drove back to Vegas and would leave Saturday and get home late that night in time to rest Sunday and be back at work on the 28th.
So that was just the logistics now for the details. I enjoyed the drive from Helena, MT to Vegas as I missed it last time due to needing to be on my phone with my grandmothers doctors last year. I like the Grand hotel, it's nice but the casino is very small, or so I am told by Shawn and his family. I don't casino. The restaurant in the hotel was so good I could've eaten there for every meal but his family likes variety so we ventured out and it was cool. We walked to a casino and it took us past the Fremont, and it was GROSS. No one wears clothes it seems, and I am not sure if it was performance art or if they were trying to make a statement, but I saw bits and pieces and wobbly bits that cannot be unseen, poor Shawn's family were like "we won't be back, it's just changed too much". I talked Shawn and his dad into going to take the tour of the Hoover Dam where you pay $40 a person and get a guided tour into the bowels of the dam, and it was incredible and suggest everyone do it once in their life, it was awesome. We saw some sheep, or "sheeps" if your Sam and you misspeak; on our way back to the hotel, it was really neat.
Driving us into Phoenix was slightly painful. I miss mom you guys so bad I can't think of her without crying. I miss my family, they keep dying, always with the dying, it's just too much with the death. I keep reaching for the phone to make calls to people who are never going to answer. Don't delete voicemails folks, that is my tip of the year, you will give just about anything to hear their voices just once more. Trust me on this one. While we were there I took Shawn by my old apartment where my mom and I lived together, best times of my life with her, and when we lived there it was brand new and we were the first to live there, now it is ghetto, and it just made me hurt. You can never go home again folks, just like Inola when I went to settle her estate. I couldn't bare to go any of our properties because it was all gone, like it never was. That's a place I know too well now, the Neverwas, I will write a autobiography and title it Neverwas.
I took the family out to the Superstition mountains and really showed them the best parts of the Phoenix area. It was nice. Shawn killed it at his fourth Iron Man, 12 hours, best time yet and Shawn took me to the finish line at midnight which is the cut off time to cheer on those last few beasts who were able to stay in the race to the very end. Thing is about Iron Man is take the swim for example, it's the first heat, and if you don't finish in a set time you're disqualified, period. No matter where you flew in from or drove in from or how much you spent in training and equipment, if you don't, you don't and you get out of the water (and this is the part I went and did during the race) you are disoriented and everyone is cheering for you not because you finished in time but because you finished on your own steam and didn't get on one of the life boats and quit, so you are hauling ass to get out of your wet suit and on to the bike 112 miles and a lady has to come and tell you, "I'm sorry, but your race is over". I cried and cried every time someone climbed out of that nasty Tempe Town Lake Lagoon, thinking they were moving on, well this happens, for the bike and the run, someone comes and pulls you of the course if they do the math and you aren't far enough ahead in the course. Shawn says some people still come in after midnight but that we need to leave so they can without embarrassment and without the, sorry it is 12:01 you are NOT an Iron Man, because that's what they say after every single person crosses the finish line, they say "Shawn Pennartz you ARE an Iron Man, or "Jane Doe you ARE an Iron Man", yes, women are Iron Men also.
Shawn finished at 7 so we came back 5 hours later to see the folks coming in just under the wire. It was cool. I cried. Again.
So we saw Shawn's family off to Texas Tuesday and headed back to redo Vegas since I wasn't exactly "present" the previous year, but we had a 5 hour drive ahead of us where; as previously agreed upon on Monday, 2/29/16 when we got engaged we would pick our wedding date after Iron Man because training is pretty intense. So we decided after talking to his folks and agreeing to have our reception in Texas and let them host it; and that 5 hour drive that we will go to Ireland November 3rd and fly into Dublin and rent a car at the airport and go on our own self driven tour around the whole island and take a ferry from Ireland to Scotland and tour some distilleries and get married in Ireland at a chapel on an estate that was established back in 1881 and get our rings in Galway, where claddagh rings were invented and write our own vows, Shawn's idea if you can believe it; and then return 11/25 and factor in jet lag and go back to work 11/28 and our jobs already approved the time off, gotta love working for the state!
So in Vegas we went to see the Titanic exhibit and that was neat, so we will go see the actual Titanic birthplace in Ireland while we are there. I used Shawn's points and went to the spa and got a 90 minute massage and another 90 minute reflexology it was Heaven. I also used his points to go and watch the Chippendales and it was a funny show, yes, funny. I mean Shawn's is as ripped as those strippers so that wasn't a big thrill but the acts were funny and I had a good time, even met a nice gay boy to sit and watch with. Shawn and I went to see a showgirl show, and it was awful, again with the gross, and given that the tickets are so expensive you'd think you would see something hot, nope. There were MAYBE 23 people in the whole place, it was awkward. So we crossed a few things off our bucket lists so you can say, "been there, done that".
All in all, good visit and mini-vacation. Always good to come home though.
I miss you and think about you every day and hope you and the kids are well.
