When things fortuitously don't go as planned...

First things first: I finished my first-ever tri!

Race and weekend recap to come.

Second thing: I open up my web browser today and see that Bin Laden is dead. Crazy!

But to pick up where I left off, the whole camping and competing thing. Thanks to a friend who did the Wildflower a few years ago (twice - she's a beast!), I had several packing lists and kept checking them and crossing off items that we had and were ready to go. One significant item, of course, is a tent, and we possess not one, not even two but THREE tents. Mind you, we really only make good use of one, our backpacking/hiking tent.

For this trip, however, we took our car camping tent which is a Coleman, not great but works fine. The last time we used it, I confess, was two summers ago when we road tripped with our dogs and they slept in the tent with us (they were usually drugged on Benadryl while we stuck to beer as our drug of choice).

We left Friday afternoon, as soon as I could possibly walk from school to home, change and finish the final packing stuff. The trip up was easy - except for the many bathroom stops because I was trying to stay really hydrated, so that meant a lot of peeing! We arrived at Lake San Antonio, a state park, around 7:00. It was a ZOO! I have never seen camping like this. As we drove around the camping area, I realized why this was called the "Woodstock of Triathlons". Cars were parked in wherever they could go and then tents were set up all over the place. Michael said that it looked like a triathlete refugee camp. I realize that may be a somewhat offensive comment, but it seemed very apt. It was so crazy!

We finally found a place and started to unpack. First things first: the tent! We got it out and started to set it up, and then scratched our heads' many times. We seemed to be short at least one set of significant poles, maybe even two. We decided "What the hell", we'd just make do with a lopsided structured. And then we looked for the top of the tent, a VERY important component because the temperatures were already dropping and it was chilly. We looked in the car, around the tent stuff, UNDER the tent that we had tried to set up. Nope, nothing.

Apparently, we left the top of the tent, along with the other sets of poles, at home. The first sentiment that hit was embarrassment - I couldn't *believe* that we had made such a ROOKIE error!

We looked at each other, each of us contemplating our options, and then we seemed to both agree - head back into town and look for a motel. Once we arrived in Paso Robles and had cellphone service, I started calling around. I knew that there would be nothing available in Paso, but finally called further south, in San Luis Obispo, and a luxurious Motel 6 had a room for both nights - Friday and Saturday.

We immediately made a reservation, and then we headed to Artisan, the restaurant where we ate with my parents at the end of March. There, we ended up having a glass of wine and sharing a cheese plate before we headed to SLO (as it's known) and crashing for the night.

Even though we were at a dumpy little Motel 6, we both agreed that we were SO happy that we had forgotten half the tent. So much for being hard-core!