Anniversary Picnic

Tonight John and I celebrated our 4th anniversary spread out on a picnic blanket at the park down by the Battery. It was blazing hot in Charleston today, the heat and humidity of summer is finally here. But with the sun setting and a cool breeze coming off the water, a shady dinner under the live oaks was just beautiful.

Happy anniversary, Love.

We've had a really crazy, busy week and are also preparing to head out out of town after work tomorrow for a week in Oklahoma (woohoo!) So we decided a low-key, relaxing picnic was the perfect way to celebrate. Our dinner consisted of some rosemary olive oil bread, chicken salad, pimento cheese and crackers, watermelon and two delicious cupcakes. 

John's such a Southern boy. He loves him some pimento cheese! 

Glad this picnic is another check off my Charleston bucket list!

The park was beautiful, besides a few pesky dogs off leashes who kept sniffing around our food. We saw a couple elope in the park's gazebo, right near our picnic spot, and watched the tourists goof around on the nearby cannons. It was a lovely evening eating, talking and snuggling on the lawn. 

Our view while laying on the blankets, looking up. Gorgeous!

Palm trees, cannons and cannonballs in the background. I love this town. 

What's SUP?

Last week my college roomie and best friend Sarah Roland came to visit me and John in Charleston. Sarah and I lived together for three years at OU and I was so excited to live with her again, if only for five days. We had a great time exploring Charleston together and she helped me cross several things off my Charleston bucket list while she was here.

My beautiful roomie. Miss you already!

One of my favorite things we did while she was in town was stand-up paddle boarding (or what the locals call SUP.) You don't know what SUP is? Well let me show you...

There are plenty of tour companies in Charleston who offer SUP guided tours, classes and even fitness classes. But we decided just to rent a few boards for the day and wing it. First thing's first, loading them up in the truck.

Three paddle boards ready to go.

The second obstacle was getting them from the truck to the ocean. You see, a paddle board is much bigger than even a surfboard. And despite the convenient handle in the middle, they are much heavier than you'd think.

What a trooper, carrying her own board. 

Demonstrating some SUP techniques, or just posing on the board, whatever.

We took our boards to Sullivan's Island (per the rental dude's advice) because the water there is much calmer thanks to the sandbar about 100 yards out. We soon discovered why he recommended calm water. Waves were our enemy on the stand-up paddle boards.

Oh yeah, we've got this.

After about 10 minutes of struggling, falling off in the water and getting laughed at by some passersby, we got up on the boards and were doing pretty good. The best part of the afternoon was when Sarah freaked out because she saw a fin near my board (lots of "It's a shark! It's a shark!") Turns out it was a dolphin! And he/she swam along side our boards for a while, which was pretty amazing! Who's laughing now, land-locked passersby? 

Paddling off into the sunset.

We Got Over It

Well we did it! Me, my mom, Larry and our friend Julie all ran in the Cooper River Bridge Run (10K) this weekend and lived to tell about (barely). I've been training for the race for several months now and it feels great to have accomplished one of my goals and to check another thing off my Charleston Bucket List. 

Although I didn't get my best time (more to come on that later), it was amazing just to be part of a race that big. Did I mention we ran this race with 43,000 people? 43,000!! I still can't wrap my brain around that.  

So here's how the race went:

The morning started off early, waking up at 5am, eating a quick pre-race breakfast and heading out the door by 5:30. Did I mention how much I loved having my Mom and Larry in town? I love it when they come stay with us!

The team all ready to go 

There was all kinds of road closures and traffic due to the 43,000 people converging on little downtown Charleston. So we opted to have John drive us from James Island to downtown and catch one of the race shuttle busses over the bridge. In hind sight, this may have been a mistake. We read online to be in line for the shuttle bus at 6 am. When we got there, the line already extended four blocks long! We ended up standing in that line longer than we actually ran in the race!

Still dark out and we're standing in the shuttle line on King Street wondering if we'll ever get to Mount Pleasant before the start of the race.

About an hour and a half later, we're finally on the shuttle bus as the minutes tick down to race start time. Will we make it?

Glad Julie was there to calm me down. Otherwise I would have been a nervous wreck about  arriving so late to the starting line.

 We were dropped off in Mount Pleasant about 7:55 (the race was supposed to start at 8am.) Luckily, through a little Twitter search, I found out the race start had been delayed. But, we never knew how long they would delay it. The race operated on a wave start, so all the runners/walkers were separated into corrals based on their estimated completion time. Once off the bus, we set off to find our corral.

An ariel photo from The Post and Courier shows all the runners in the corrals. This only shows a fraction of the groups. This continued way down the street. 

To my relief, we made it to our corral with plenty of time. Julie and I may or may not have snuck into the corral ahead of the one we were assigned to :) Mom and Larry were in C, and we were assigned D. We couldn't let them fly half way across the country to line up alone!

Finally at the start line in our corral. After some more waiting around, the start gun finally went off and we were on our way. 

We crossed the starting line at 9:06 and we were off. Here's the play by play on how the running went for our team:

Katie: My goal was to finish in 50 minutes. While training, I ran several 6.2-runs in 49 minutes, so I beat my race goal in training. But add in 43,000 people and I had a lot of dodging to do! I pushed myself the whole way, surpassing several people in the time group ahead of mine, and really started feeling tired between mile 4 and 5. But I kept at it and sprinted across the finish line for a time of 51:56. My average pace was 8:20. Not my best, but I'm still pretty proud!

Julie: Julie's goal was to keep up with me. Yeah right, she's faster than I am most the time. We did stick together for almost 6 miles of the race. I was glad to have her with me, because she motivated me to keep pushing myself when there were times I really wanted to just ease off the gas and trot along at an easy breazy pace. We were also a great team when it came to finding holes between the masses of people to dart through. Julie finished in 52:04.

John managed to get this blurry shot of me and Julie running together down King Street. 

Mom: Mom's knee had been hurting her in the few weeks of training prior to the race, but thankfully didn't bother her come race time. She was proud to say she ran the entire way without having to walk, including on the long uphill stretch to the top of the bridge (go Mom!) Mom finished in 1:02:22

Larry: Unfortunately, Larry's chip didn't work! So we don't have any stats on his time, but he finished a few minutes after Mom. 

On the spectator side of things, John kept track of us on the nifty Cooper River Bridge Run app. He used it to track where we were on the run, so he could try to get a picture of us as we ran by his spot on King Street. It also gave him our split time and estimated finished time. Pretty cool!

Got to love technology!

John also caught one of these shirts they were throwing to spectators on the side of the road. He calls it his spectator shirt. 

Glad to have a big kiss from my biggest fan after finishing!

We all met at our designated meeting spot after the race and headed to the finish festival for what else...food

Unfortunately, there wasn't any beer at the finish festival (lame), so we stopped by Monza on King for a celebratory drink on the patio.

Exhausted. And immediately following this picture, my temperature sky rocketed, I got body aches and chills all over and so began my post-race strep throat that kept me bed ridden for the rest of the weekend. C'est la vie! 

Bucket List: Paint the Folly Boat

Today I got to cross off one of the things on my Charleston Bucket List! This morning, we woke up early, put on our grungy clothes and painted the Folly Boat!

Here's the back story on the Folly Boat: On the drive down to Folly Beach, there is a landlocked row boat sitting off the side of the road. The boat washed up here during Hurricane Hugo back in 1989. When no one claimed the boat, locals turned it into a Folly Beach landmark by painting it to greet all beachgoers. Because of its close proximity to Folly Road, the only road in and out of Folly Beach, the painted boat has become a free-for-all billboard. Nowadays it has a new painted message almost everyday, from birthday wishes and farewell tributes to silly phrases and advertisements. It's legal to paint the boat. The only catch is your message is likely to be painted over as soon as the next passerby decides they need to proclaim something roadside.

To see what other people have painted, check out the Follyboat.com website for a full gallery of pictures. Some people are really creative!

But this morning, it was our turn to have our message on the boat. Our couple friends Connie and Daniel both have birthdays this week. So Connie asked us if we would help her paint the boat for Daniel's birthday and surprise him. He's turning 30 after all--- this is a pretty boat-worthy birthday.

The before picture of the boat. First we used white paint to erase the previous message. The previous message was also a birthday message though, so we left the "Happy Birthday" part. Less work for us!

Just so you can get an idea of how many times this boat has been painted. Look at all those layers!

Connie is about 7 months pregnant, so John and I were in charge of the spray paint. This was the best part! Who knew vandalism was so much fun?

Connie handled the white paint like a champ.

John decided polka dots would be a nice touch. Daniel loves polka dots after all....

Me and Connie with the boat.

Me and John on top of the finished product. I think the 30 is the best part. What do you think?

Apparently we weren't the only ones who discovered a newfound love for vandalism. Everything around the boat was painted too. These trees and some pine cones on the ground-- now multicolored.

The street in front of the boat. Once you start, you just can't stop.

And of course, we had to leave our own mark, too (on the back of the boat.)

Charleston Bucket List

John came back from the pharmacy Mid Year convention in New Orleans this week with...dun dun DUN!.... a list of possible employers for next year. He did some interviews while he was there and is planning on applying for some jobs from Dallas to Denver to West Virginia. No word on any jobs for him in Charleston yet, so it's a strong possibility we will be moving again this summer.

So today I was thinking about how much I love Charleston and how many things I will miss when we don't live here anymore. It also made me think of all the things in Charleston I still have yet to do.

If we only have 6 or 7 more months here, I better get to making some more Charleston memories fast! Therefore I made a Charleston Bucket List. And of course, I made it into an art project because I'm cool like that.

Here it is:

Please excuse the pathetic attempt at drawings. But hey, that sailboat and martini glass didn't turn out too bad!

I'm sure I'll be adding more to the list and updating you with a blog entry when I check one off. Or better yet- out of state family and friends: Come visit me and help me complete a few!

Until then, I hung my new fancy list on the refrigerator so I'll remember to get out there and appreciate beautiful Charleston while I still have it!

Happy weekend everyone!