Life out of the Pool: Catalina Weekend

So yes I have lived in California my whole life and never been to Catalina Island. Brennan beat me out to the island by about 6 months. He visited Catalina when working the Eco-marathon for Spectrum Sports Management. Since he worked most of the weekend he was not the biggest fan of the little island. But when the opportunity presented itself for Brennan to race in Catalina we decided why not take a little trip. So after 23 years I finally made the trip over to Catalina Island.

Catalina Island is located about 23 miles off the California Coast

Of course the night before we are set to leave the terribly devastating earthquake hit Japan, causing Tsunami warnings here in California. So needless to say my family who was all in Las Vegas at the Mountain West Conference Basketball Championships with Brooke who was receiving the Conference Community Service award on behalf of San Diego State were freaking out!!!

Brooke with the Community Service Award- so proud of her!!

They did not want me to head out to some random little island. After having Brennan call me from work laughing and then saying "do you think I would ever put you in danger." I know that he wouldn't ever let anything happen to me, just to make sure I called the ferry company. They had cancelled the first ferry of the day but were back on schedule with no problems. So we would forge ahead on our adventure. We were on the 7pm ferry out of Long Beach and would start the hour long ride to the island. Well the captain said it would be a smooth ride with about 2-3ft swells. I think most of the passengers would disagree with him. I thought the woman behind us was going to die. I managed to get all the way to Avalon Harbor without throwing up, but Brennan was sweet enough about half way there to get me a bag just in case. With Brennan's steel stomach he could have read and eaten the whole way, while I spent the hour long trip trying to convince myself that its mind over matter. I was successful!!!

Avalon harbour during the day

After getting off the boat- thankfully with dinner still in my stomach we were on the move to find our hotel check in and then head to race registration. After a bit of wondering we found the hotel and dropped our stuff off. They nicely gave us a ride to race registration, where Brennan changed from the marathon to the 10K. He planned to use the race as a training run. After registration and saying hi to a few of our classmates working the event we headed back to the hotel.

Saturday morning started out early. We headed down to the race. Since Brennan was only using this for training, he was not as crazy about all his pre-race schedule and things. I was actually joking with him that he was so calm. He had a great 10K. Turns out the course was extremely hilly. I wouldn't know I just walked a few blocks and took some pictures. One of our classmates was leading the race and gave me some insight in that he was on his way back toward the finish. That he was also toward the front. I laughed and said about exactly where he was in the course, the kid was wondering how I knew that. I said this is not our first race together, and it sure wont be our last. I knew about what pacing he wanted to hold, so I keep track of the mileage. Needless to say our classmate was impressed with how good Brennan did (remember this was a training run) and with my ability to know about where he was on the course. Brennan finished the race with a time of 47:48 about a 7:43 pace with a minor detour on the final stretch to give me a high-five.

Go Brennan!!!

After the race we showered up and headed out to explore Catalina Island. Turns out the Island has some very weird history in that Mr. Wrigley (yes, the chewing gum company, former owners of the Cubs) used to own the Island. He is the reason that it is not extremely developed. The middle of the island is protected as well as some beach areas under the Catalina Island Conservancy. Well when Mr. Wrigley owned the island the Cubs used to have spring training on the island. That end in the early 50's. So the people of the Island have since built a monument to Mr. Wrigley. Brennan's race went by it but we decided to hike back up to it.

We have reached the monument. Only took us about an hour and 3 miles later. It was farther then we thought.

The front of the monument

The view from the monument. Past the mountains is the ocean. It was absolutely beautiful.

After our great hike we headed back into town where we found a random restaurant/ bar and were able to catch the SDSU basketball game against BYU for the Conference Title and automatic seed into the NCAA Tournament. The Aztec's won and then we headed back for a nap. After our lovely nap we headed out to dinner. We found this little Chinese restaurant and it was so good. We had so much food and spent hardly anything for it. We would seriously eat at this place every weekend if it wasn't on an island. After dinner we walked the board walk, looked into some stores and then headed out to the old casino. It was a beautiful walk along the water. Then we stopped at the local ice cream shop for me, they made amazing waffle cones!!!

The boardwalk during the day

The round thing is the old casino.

Sunday morning we slept in and packed up all our stuff. We had booked to leave on the 12:30 ferry back to Long Beach. Since we had liked our dinner so much we decided to have lunch there before we left. After a great lunch we did a bit more shopping where I picked up some Dramamine (Brennan's suggestion) just in case the ride back to Long Beach was a bit rough. However this time we were able to sit outside, we got a great seat on the top of the ferry.