Two Weeks Left!!!

Good evening folks!  (Note: This was written over the course of Friday evening and Saturday).  

Typing up this post on my Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 while I wait for my friend Firdaus to come into Penn Station.  She's flying here from Cali and will be spending the weekend with me.  Her, her good friend, and I will be competing in the Tough Mudder Half in Bethpage, LI on Sunday.  I am completely unprepared physically.   I haven't done any training in months.  I am a bit intimidated to say the least.  But, if it's anything like the Rugged Maniac 5k obstacle course that I did last year with a few good friends, I anticipate that I'll get all jacked up when we're coming up to registration, hear whatever jammin' music they happen to be playing (hopefully they're playing something), feel the energy and adrenaline of the crowd... that itself will hopefully give me at least a little boost.   Pictures will follow on Sunday. 

Only two weeks (well, 13 days as of Saturday) left!!!  The week has pretty much flown by.  I figured out where my mom and little sister would fly home from and priced up some flights using Google Flight.   I only learned about Google Flight earlier this week from a colleague that I had lunch with.  Great tool for finding reasonable flights.   Seriously, what would we do without google?  Another app that I found out about but haven't used too much is Hopper; another flight search engine. 

What else is new...
- I've decided to apply for the Vietnamese visa during my last week. 
- I'll apply for the Indonesian social visa a few days before I fly out of JFK which means I'll have to be in the city maybe mid-day on the 9th. 

Last weekend I went out to Long Island and went to Smith Point beach.   As I was driving into the beach I looked up and saw people skydiving!  It made me want to go skydiving again.

I've been skydiving four times now! 
- 1st skydive: My first skydive was during college... I think it was the summer after freshman or sophomore year.  I can't remember exactly.  I went to a place in Schenectady, NY.  We jumped from 7,000ft. 

- 2nd skydive: A few years later, my brother was home and wanted to go so we went to a skydiving place in Weedsport NY.   We jumped from 10,000ft. 

- 3rd skydive: A year ago this past March, I went on a pretty epic two week vacation to Australia with Contiki (a tour company) touring the eastern coast from Sydney up to Cairns.  Made 50 friends from around the world... some I still keep in touch with.  My first skydive during this vacation was in the Gold Coast (Surfer's Paradise) if I'm not mistaken.  It was a totally incredible skydive with Gold Coast Skydiving.  We jumped from 12,000ft. 

- 4th skydive (latest, greatest, and most EPIC): my latest skydive was also in Australia but a little bit further north in Cairns.  I mentioned to the expert jumper I was paired with that this was my fourth skydive.  He responded "Oh, what do you need me for!?!!"  Hahahaha.  So, before we got on the plane, he asked (with explitives) "Do you want to go bleeping fast?" Of course I said heck yea!  So, instead of freefalling with our bodies in a horizontal plane, we did a free-fly which is plummeting head-first towards the ground during the free fall period.  Completely EPIC!!  

It's been a good weekend so far catching up with friends and former coworkers...  Tough Mudder Half on Sunday.  Wish me luck... 😃

Me and Typo at work waiting for my friend to get into Penn Station.  If you look closely, you can see my countdown is at 14 days!  

It's all about scale.  In Port Jeff, there was a canoe on the water right in the path of the ferry that was backing out of the dock.  Who's your daddy?  Hahhaa.  Common sense would be telling me to back away (and paddle out) from the path of the ferry.  

Beach day!!!!