We're okay!!

Well, we've had an interesting and scary few days here in San Diego. We've housed friends who have been evacuated, we've wondered if we were next, we've watched major highways close and unfortunately, we've met people who have lost their homes. It's been a very unexpected and scary few days and I just hope they can start containing the fires soon and the winds will die down long enough for the fire fighters to do their job without the winds constantly at their fronts. As I type this, we have ash falling in and around our house, and our home smells faintly like smoke, which is so minimal compared to what so many of us around San Diego have experienced...

It's been stressful because our friends that were staying with us weren't sure how close the fire was to their homes, and stressful because we were watching people on t.v. with kids, families, elderly people, animals having to evacuate and move to the football stadium, talk about awful. The football stadium is this huge concrete playground, ugh-from what i've heard though, the volunteers there are amazing and people have been helping kids play games etc. and keeping them entertained. It was amazing to me to see the difference in response from the CA government, we had help immediately and no one questioned "is this important enough," as they did in Katrina and September 11th. I must say I was impressed with the communication on the t.v., radio and blogs they had for closures/fire hazards etc. My feelings go out to everyone here who has been affected both directly and indirectly from the fires.

And, um, no, I haven't been outside doing anything crazy like training, Monday was a day off, and yesterday the air quality was awful, so i'm not risking my lungs at this point. You know, I had been taking in so much Vitamin-C and taking care of myself, never really anticipated the possibility of lung irritation from fires! But, like I said, we are safe and very close to downtown San Diego, so unless they evacuate downtown, we are fine.

I was able to grab my bike from a local shop that was closed and I took it to another shop for it's final tuneup and changing out of my wheels---the guy was actually closed, but worked on my bike for about 2 hours, cleaned it, got it all set up..and only charged me $40.00...something like that usually would have cost close to $100.00 especially since he cleaned and polished it (whcih normally I did myself). I was so thankful for his help and it gave me a piece of mind.

Today, i'm driving up to Nytro, a triathlon store in Encinitas...I do this kind of excitedly because I know i'm *close* to getting to Florida..however, i'm a little nervous because Nytro is on standby for evacuation. Our Ironman Florida's group bikes are being picked up today by a company called Tri Bike Transport, so, as long as that guy can get down to San Diego and grab our bikes, we should be fine. Unfortunately, north of Nytro is having more fires at Camp Pendleton, so i'm not really sure what will happen, but we've been assured that they *should* be fine...ugh. I'll feel better once I know the guy has picked them up and he's headed East with my bike!

I do feel stupid--being *so* concerned about a bike when people in San Diego have suffered so much the past few days...and I definitely recognize that i'm lucky to be safe....however, the fires definitely added a new level of stress to our lives...thanks for keeping everyone here in your thoughts....