We arrived at the park Saturday morning shortly after it opened at 10:00, but since we did not have a printed copy of the online promotion, we either had to find an Internet shop to print the coupon or pay an extra $30 for the family to enter the park. The promotion we saw online did not say we needed a coupon and therefore we thought it was just a standing promotion. I spent almost an hour running up and down the streets near the theme park looking for an Internet cafe to be able to print the coupon. Since I went through all the work, I printed a couple of extra ones and handed them out to others in line.

The theme park itself is pretty small and it is geared towards young children as you would expect. We were a little disappointed that every time we saw one of the Sesame Street characters walking around they were walking with a handler who was trying to rush them off to a show or something. The characters never had time to stop for a photo. It was not until after we were leaving the park that we saw a few characters who had time for a photo shoot. Then our kids were not interested in getting a picture with them. Our daughter was scared by the larger than life version of the Muppets and our son is too old to be interested in a photo with them. I felt a little awkward getting my picture taken with them by myself, but at least we have a photo to show the kids later.

There were only a couple of rides that were of real interest to us as older people, but our daughter was thrilled with just about all of them. One of the neat things that they have done is make the rides accessible to all ages. We were able to ride the majority of them with our daughter. We did not have to stick her on a ride by herself with the exception of a couple.

The water park section of Plaza Sesamo was great for all ages. We spent the majority of our 7 hours in the park playing in the water. They did a great job in building play areas for small children as well as having a good amount of thrilling water slides. Though we are in the middle of the summer, it did not seem that the crowd was as large as they could handle. Some of the areas were packed, but many of the lines were very short. Much shorter than they were prepared to handle.

Our one major disappointment with the park centered around the difficulty of finding information on the website. It would have been nice to know that I needed to print out the online coupon to get the good price which would have saved an hour walking the streets looking for an Internet cafe. We also specifically looked on the site for the clothing requirements in the water park but did not find them at the time. Unlike the general public, we prefer not to run around mostly nude. We always wear a shirt and shorts at the beach to protect our white little bodies from the sun as well as maintain a bit of modesty. My wife and daughter were not allowed in the water with a shirt on. My son and I ditched our shirts at the bottom of the stairs and slipped them on after each ride. We ended up having to buy a suit for our daughter and I gave my lycra shirt to my wife. The lycra is permissible, but not cotton. Every time she wanted to get in the water she had to prove to the life guard that the shirt was not cotton. All of that could have been avoided if they would put their clothing requirements on the website in an easy to read manner. The requirements are there, but they list the rules for each attraction separately instead of just giving a general set of rules. By the time you read through several pages of rules for a bunch of rides and you finally get to the water park rules, your eyes glaze over and it is easy to miss. But there is no mention in the rules that lycra is a permittible form of clothing.

All in all it was a very fun day. We have not been able to see as much of Monterrey as I had hoped, but we certainly feel like we have had a great vacation. Even though we are here for a reason, it has been nice to be here a couple of days early to relax and enjoy a few days as a family.

I needed a 10 mile run for my long run of the week. I had planned to run near our hotel. This route was recommended by a few people over at Run the Planet. The route they recommended seems to be quite popular since 3 different people mentioned it. That route is also conveniently located just 2 kilometers from my hotel. But, after driving around yesterday, I found out that those 2 kilometers might as well be 200. There is no way to cross over the major highways that I would need to to get to the start of the route. I could have driven there of course, but that kind of defeated the purpose for finding a route near the hotel.

After visiting the two parks yesterday, I really wanted to run there. But that meant a 20 minute drive and I did not have time to get there, run and be back before we were scheduled to do an outing this morning.

I decided to run this evening after having spent the whole day with the family in a theme park. Who’s bright idea was that? I figured if I could have gotten a nap then the late running would not be that bad. No nap happened.

I wanted to do the run anyway and with the family tuckered out and ready for bed when we got home this evening, it was a perfect time to run. So I got ready and headed out the door and back to the area where we had spent the last 2 days. The theme park we went to today is also connected with the two parks we were at yesterday.

Not knowing the mile breaks, I decided to not do my normal Galloway run/walk plan. I just ran straight through. That also meant that I really don’t know exactly how far I ran tonight. It was somewhere between 10 and 11 miles, so I logged it as 10.5.

I started off by running through the Santa Lucia River Walk. I ran down one side and discovered a service road that is used for vehicles and therefore is less crowded by pedestrians. Even though it was a vehicle accessible road, there were no cars there. It was a totally safe place to run without worrying about cars at all. I ran to the far end of the park, away from the other parks, and then back.

*Warning: This is not a recommendation!* While running I decided to do something that may end me up in a hospital, but I am not really too concerned about it. I decided that since there are no vendors in the park, and I knew I would be thirsty, to take a risk and drink from the public water fountains. This is Mexico after all, and we are always told to not drink the water. We drink so much bottled water it is even a disgusting thought to me that I actually drank water out of a pipe all my life in the US. Yuck!

I went against all conventional wisdom and drank the Mexican tap water. I have a few things going for me though. First is the fact that I have lived here for 4 years and have only been sick because of parasites/amoebas one time. Secondly, according to something we were told several years ago, the number of different strands of e-coli in the water increases the further south you go. Theoretically, if I am somewhat immune to the bacteria in Yucatan, there are far fewer bacteria in the water in Monterrey since it is so much further north. Whether all of this is true, I don’t know, but I also don’t anticipate getting sick over this.

But: DON’T DRINK THE WATER!

I ran around the Champ Car race track at Fundidora 3 times adding a little to each lap by running off the track and into some of the walking paths around. These extra paths are where I was reminded that Monterrey is not a flat city. I got a little bit of hill work in tonight. Since I don’t ever get to run hills, I did a few little ones, but took them easy.

I also ran through the river walk a couple of times.

I highly recommend that if you get a chance to run in Monterrey that you make these parks part of your trip. I would have to admit that they would get boring to run all the time, but if you were running shorter 30 minute runs, you could easily vary your route and run through different parts of the parks several times before you had to run the same route. There are plenty of places to run hills, but you can also stay in very flat areas easily.

This ranks up there with the most memorable runs I have ever done. Of course number one would be the run in Long Beach that I have mentioned many times, but tonight’s run would take a close second. It was very nice to run without having to worry about getting run over by cars.

Wednesday
5 mile run with 3 miles of tempo work. I ran my 1 mile warm up and immediately jumped into my tempo run. I was not able to get down to the 8:57 pace that I was supposed to have. I averaged 9:26 per mile. I need to separate my warm up from my tempo pace. When I was running with Jeff regularly I would run 1.6 miles easy and then take a 10 to 20 minute break before our run which was essentially a tempo run at 8:40 per mile. I never seemed to struggle much, but I am sure that 20 minute break helps a lot.

Saturday
10 miles at a 10:32 pace was the plan. I ran an incredible run of 10.5 miles which I will write up in a separate post to tell you all about it.

Week 4
Monday: Easy 5 mile run at 10:32.

Wednesday: I think this is a 5 mile speed run. I don’t have my training plan with me (I am away on a trip), but I do know it is a 5 mile run which I will do at an easy pace. I am in camp and will be running at 7200 feet above sea level. I hope I will have time to get this run in, or at least a 3 mile run.

Saturday: We will get home from camp on Friday night and I look forward to a step back week of just a 5 mile long run. I will need it after the week of camp. I did not make the training plan do this, it just happened to fall at the perfect time.

Flight was un-eventful. Quite boring. Just the way they should be.

When we got to the airport I called the car rental company and they said they would send a shuttle to get us. Thirty minutes later I called again. He said that the shuttle had been there but could not find us. Through our quick conversation I found out that there was more than one terminal in the airport. He assumed we came in on a US International flight and sent the shuttle to that terminal. We filled out a bunch of information beforehand to rent the car. They had our flight number and should have known we were flying domestic.

When we got the car they offered us insurance. After deliberation and seeing that the price of the car rental almost tripled with the added insurance, we declined. But the price did not go down much at all. Come to find out that the price we were given did not include the mandatory insurance, only the car rental. The non-mandatory insurance was just a few dollars more and it kept me from having to have enough credit on my card to put the full price of the car on it.

Getting around Monterrey is a huge pain. The signs that they have tell you where you should turn…at the moment you see the sign. Not that you have warning to slow down from freeway speeds, but that you should be turning immediately below the sign. You also usually only get 1 sign for each exit. Sometimes it says that the road or attraction you are looking for is up ahead in the left lane. But you never get told beyond that where you are supposed to turn. We drove 5 miles one time before we decided that the attraction that we were supposed to get to by getting into the left lane meant that we were supposed to make a u-turn on the highway and go backwards. Not much of a help.

The big thing we did today, besides eat ice cream for supper (yes, that was the whole meal), was go to the Santa Lucia and Fundidora parks. Santa Lucia is a river walk that has playgrounds all along it. There is a canal that that has boat tours going up and down it. It is a canal to nowhere though.

It was really nice and a great place to take the family.

It connects with the Fundidora (foundry) park. This is the old steel mill in Monterrey which now has a formula-1 race track built around it. It too is a very family friendly place with lots of people riding bikes, running and roller-blading.

Tomorrow, Parque Plaza Sesamo.

Interestingly the paramedics are part of the police force here. In the US they are either an independent agency or work with the fire department.

Every time they stop me at traffic lights asking for donations, I try to give them a peso or two. That is one public service that I want to be well funded when I need their services.

Click the photo for a larger version of the picture.

Wednesday
Speed workout of 2X1600 meter repeats with 800 meters in between. With warm up and cool down runs this was supposed to be a 5 mile day. Total mileage for the day was just under 5 miles. My speed sessions were supposed to be at a pace of 8:27. I managed an average of 8:36. Just felt sluggish.

Thursday
This was a rest/cross training day. I managed my first bike ride for exercise that day. I rode almost 8 miles at a pace of 13.2 MPH.

Saturday
This was supposed to be a 9 mile run at a 10:32 pace. Again, I left the house with not enough time to do the whole run. I did 8 miles at a 10:31 pace. I was very pleased with my consistent pacing. I ran my 4 mile loop 2 times. It was a bit disappointing to finish the loop and know that I had to do it all over again.

Week 3
Monday: 3 miles easy at 10:32

Wednesday: 3 mile tempo run at 8:57 with a 1 mile warm up and 1 mile cool down.

Saturday: 10 mile long run at 10:32 pace.

This book was loaned to me by an older missionary couple yesterday. We were talking about furlough (the topic of a soon-to-be-released Missionary Talks episode). The book talks about some of the struggles that missionaries face as they go back to their home culture. While the book focuses on people returning permanently, it also covers missionaries who are only temporarily returning home, such as we will be over the next year.

Two things the book mentioned that I thought might be of interest to you have to do with relationships and misunderstandings.

Peter Jordan, the author, mentions that relationships will be different upon return home. Even though a relationship can thrive over distance, often the individuals are no longer as emotionally connected. Our emotional togetherness happens through shared experiences and just spending time with one another. The missionary and the friend back home have not only been living through different experiences, but through different cultures.

We have friends with whom we love to spend hours and hours talking. We would often spend 2 or 3 nights a week with one another talking into the wee hours of the morning when we were in town. We were very connected. While we still have a tight relationship with them, we have also not been a part of their lives for the last four years. When we got a chance to be with them earlier this year I noticed that other mutual friends were now filling in where we used to be. I became jealous of the fact that we no longer occupied the same space we used to. Of course it is silly to think that your friends are going to not change or build new relationships over a four year period.

But multiply this with every friend the missionary has, and you can start to see why re-entry can be stressful for the missionary. Things will never be the same as they were.

The other thing I wanted to point out is the matter of misunderstandings. The missionary returns home and comments about how things have changed for the worse, or how wonderful things are back home. Those who have lived through the changes won’t see it as starkly as the returning family will. They have had a chance to grow into the changes a little at a time.

Where we personally had greater frustrations were when we would mention some things that were so great in the US and then hear people complain about that very thing we found to be wonderful. We have to remember that others will never see things from the same light we do. Nor, will we be able to see things from their perspective.

One example of this is the variety of products you can find in the stores. When we go looking for something here in Mexico, a can of peas for example, we might find a can or two on the shelves. There will be no choice as to which brand you get. If they do carry them, they will only have one brand, and more often they won’t have any anyway.

Earlier this year when we were home for a few weeks we were amazed at how much people complained that Wal-Mart did not have the particular product the person wanted. Maybe they were looking for milk. Of course they want a particular brand in a particular size and fat content. When we arrived in Mexico just four years ago we could not get pasteurized, homoginized milk like we expect in the US. All the milk came in un-refrigerated liter boxes with expiration dates 6 months into the future. Now we have a choice of 2 brands of milk that resembles and tastes something like the milk back home.

I just have little sympathy for the person who has to settle for a different size (a gallon as opposed to a half gallon) or has to go to the store across the street to get the milk they want because the store they are in doesn’t have it. At least it is available relatively easily.

It would be easy for the missionary to become bitter at their friends and family for not understanding them, and the missionary is just as guilty for not understanding those back home.

I am half way through the book and find it very insightful. I am glad I have gotten a chance to read it and will probably write a review of the book in a couple of days when I am done.

After I got my bike back from the bike shop, I got a flat within a week. I pulled the tube to repair it and found that there was a pretty good size cut in the tire. The bike shop did not replace the rim tape when they put the new rims on. The old rim tape was stiff and carried a lot of rust from the old rims.

The purpose of rim tape is to keep the lugs that hold the spokes onto the rims from poking into the tube. Good rim tape will protect the tube well. Good rims won’t be caked with rust. Old rusty-crusty rim tape on brand new aluminum rims somewhat defeat the purpose for having new rims installed.

I patched the hole. I was not able to get to the bike shop to buy rim tape. Then a few days later I patched the hole again. The patch did not hold, so I placed another patch on the tire the next day. No good. Today I removed both old patches and put on another patch. After getting the tire blown up and almost on the bike…PSSSssssttt! New patch removed and number 5 installed. This one seems to be holding for the moment.

Much of this was my fault as I was not patient with putting the patches on. The glue was not dry enough when I slapped the patches in place. After a bit of googling I learned how to do it right.

New tube = $1.20

5 patches = $0.60

I guess I can put about 5 more on before springing for that new tube. And, when I do make it back to the bike shop, I will be picking up a couple rolls of rim tape.

By the way, the bike shop I am going to now is not the same one that held my bike hostage for several days.

The reason I did not do the run on Monday was that I wanted to go to one more swimming class. I knew it would be the last chance I had before we started traveling and would not be in town enough to pay for another month.

Wednesday
A tempo run of 3 miles with a 1 mile warm up and 1 mile cool down. The tempo part was to be run at 8:57 pace. I struggled to keep the pace up.

From my running log:

I tried something different this morning that may have affected my pace. I ran before eating breakfast and hitting the bathroom. I did this in an attempt to get out on the road earlier. I felt awful the whole run. I need to get me some kind of snack bar that will put a little something in my stomach before hitting the road.

Pretty disappointed in the slowness of this run.

I did a 1 mile warm up and then the 3 miles at an average pace of 9:20 per mile and then an almost 1 mile cool down. I have regularly run at 8:45 pace. I was disappointed that 8:57 was such a struggle that day. But, there are just some days that are hard.

Friday
It was not a running day, but I wanted to get out and do a nice easy run. Did 2.89 miles at a 9:52 pace.

Saturday
Long run of 8 miles at 10:32 a mile was the plan. I did the 8 miles (plus a little) at 10:20 pace. I did a run/walk, which is the way I plan to do the marathon. I ran 1 mile and walked 1 minute. It is amazing how much fresher I am at the end of an 8 mile run that way. I am curious as to how well I will finish the half marathon distance doing the run/walk. Based on my run today, I could finish a half marathon 4 minutes faster than my current half marathon PR. And that is without racing today.

Total mileage for the week: 20

Week 2
Monday: 3 miles easy 10:32 pace

Wednesday: 5 miles speed at 8:27 (2X1600 meters with 800 meter recovery jog in between. Plus warm-up/cool-down runs.)

Saturday: 9 miles long 10:32 pace

It is a bit difficult to get into the spirit of the 4th of July when you are living in a foreign country. We do have a party that the consulate is putting on tomorrow, but we don’t feel comfortable with all the drinking that is planned.

We have not found any fireworks yet, but we may be able to make that part of our day as well.

The fun thing is to just be together as a family knowing we are from the greatest nation in the world. While we won’t be celebrating with all the hoopla people back home will be, we will still have our own fun.

Here’s to wishing everyone a happy 4th of July.

This week my training plan says that I need to run 3 miles on Monday at an easy pace. Wednesday is a tempo run of 3 miles at 8:57 per mile with a mile warm up and cool down. Saturday will be a long run of 8 miles.

I am very excited to be back on a training schedule. It has been a year since my last schedule when I was training for a half marathon. To me a schedule is somewhat freeing in that I don’t really have to think about what I am going to run on a particular day. I just look to the paper to give me my guidance. It also lets me know when I can take a break and engage in other activities without jeopardizing my plan.

Get ready for weekly updates as I work through the plan. The end of July and all of August the schedule will be hard to follow exactly as we will be traveling quite a bit, but I have managed to follow a plan the last two years during this time.

I ran 17 days and did not run 13 days. There were only two times that I took two days off in a row and once I did not run for three days in a row. Even though the mileage was down a bit, I was still consistently on the road, just with lower mileage. My longest run this month was just under six miles.

This week I finished with my swim class. It has been a great six weeks of swimming, but my schedule over the next two months before we leave to move back to the US will prohibit me from being able to regularly continue going to the pool. I will still swim when I get a chance. The most important thing is that I have learned how to swim properly now.

I started marathon training this week. Over the next few months I will be running between 20 and 35 miles a week. By the time I run the marathon I will have made up my lost miles and gotten a few miles ahead of the yearly goal once again.

Reading
I read 1097 pages in six books this month. Among the really interesting books were Flags of Our Fathers, Healing ADD and Freakonomics.

Flags of Our Fathers was great! It was well written and gives a history of the six men who are in the Iwo Jima flag raising photo. The author is the son of one of the three survivors of the six. The book helped me understand why my grandfather never talked about the war. My grandfather, like the central character in the book, was a Navy Corpsman stationed with the Marines at Gudalcanal, Bougainville and Guam. Like the men in the book, I suspect my grandfather believed that the heroes were the men who did not come home after the war. He went over there to do a job. He accomplished it and came home, but probably believed the real heroes were the men who sacrificed their lives so that he could come home.

My personal opinion is that anyone who serves in the military to protect my country is a hero.

With a better understanding of what he went through, I only wished my grandfather were alive today so that I could possibly get more information from him.

Freakonomics is a book that was wildly popular a couple of years ago. Steven Levitt applies an economist’s eye to societal trends that don’t necessarily fit in the realm of economics. He explains why school teachers sometimes cheat and how they do it, as well as how they get caught. Also he tells why drug dealers live with their mothers. Many other interesting topics too.

The book Healing ADD breaks down ADD into six categories instead of the traditional two. Besides medication, which the author believes is very helpful, he recommends other interventions that can help each of the different classifications of ADD. While there is a lot of controversy as to whether diet helps or hurts ADD behavior, Dr. Amen recommends dietary changes that can help certain types, but clearly stresses that diet alone is not a cure-all. He also recommends coaching and exercise as two other methods in a multi-faceted approach to controlling ADD.

Amazingly, I finished five of the six books I was reading. I will be picking up all new books this month to chew on. Or, I will be pulling books from the shelf that were previously partly read and need to be finished. There are 13 books on my “To Be Read” shelf. I have plenty to choose from.

To start off, let me list some of the basic ones that everyone should know.

• CTRL + C = copy
• CTRL + V = paste
• CTRL + X = cut
• CTRL + P = print
• CTRL + S = save

Here are three very useful ones he pointed out that I did not know.

• CTRL + ALT + Up/Down Arrow = moves the current paragraph above or below the previous or next paragraph.
• CTRL + Left/Right Arrow = moves the cursor to the next word either left or right.
• SHIFT + Up/Down/Left/Right Arrow = selects the text appropriately. Just try it and you will understand how to use it.

Jump on over to the original article to see the many others he showed. Not all of them will be useful for everyone, but using keyboard shortcuts really are a better way to work once you learn them. Until you learn them and put them into practice it is hard to see their value.

In the last few days I cleaned up the CSS to make the site more readable. I also changed fonts. You can sign up for our prayer letter mailing at the site. That was a feature at the old site as well. This site is functionally equivelent to the old site, it is just easier for me to maintain.

One thing that has been broken for a very long time at the site was the RSS feed. Now that is fixed.

Since it is a WordPress site, I am going to allow people to leave comments and see if I can build a bit of a community there. My readership will grow over the next year as we travel to our supporting churches and announce the site. I also plan to do regular updates. The old platform was not as easy to update as WordPress is. But, that was somewhat by design. When I built the previous site, I did not want it to look like a blog. I also did not want to bother people with constantly changing content. I am going to treat the site more like a blog now and see if I can get some interaction going.

With that done, I can come back to working on the new design of My Thought Spot. I changed the theme here and then abandoned the work I was doing on it. But, I did learn quite a few things at dpeach.com that will help me working on My Thought Spot.

Normally we only get rain in the afternoon between 3:00 and 6:00. But with this strange storm we had come through, it broke loose at 2:00 in the morning. That meant that in our sleep deprived stupor, we were running around trying to get things shut down and unplugged.

Since there is only one outlet in my office, it is pretty easy to unplug the 16 items plugged into the 4 daisy chained power strips. Fortunately we never lost power in all of this. Quite surprising too since the lightning bolt that woke us up felt like it was right out our window. We bounced out of the hammocks and clung to the ceiling before the light and noise left the room. Then we bumped into each other trying to figure out what needed to be unplugged.

When it was all over we laid back down and I thought about needing to unplug one more item–the telephone line to the DSL modem. I did not do it though. The lightning was essentially gone by then. I don’t know if that was the culprit, but the next day our modem would connect to the Internet just fine, but would not connect to the internal network. My computer’s network card is dead as well as my PCI bus.

Our son’s computer is just flaky. In Windows no USB device will work, and the only PCI device that works is the video card. Also the keyboard is dead. In Linux the keyboard works, but PCI devices (except the video card) are all dead along with the USB devices.

We were without an Internet connection most of yesterday. I was finally able to get a new modem at the ISP’s office in the late afternoon. They replaced the modem with no charge. That was a surprise to me since I don’t have a contract with them and I bought my modem outright instead of renting from them monthly.

Still trying to figure out what to do with these two crippled machines. One is my main box, but I am able to work with my notebook on the Internet and transfer files through a USB flash drive from the big box.

This means my website updates that I was hoping to finish on Thursday have been seriously delayed. Maybe by Saturday night I will have them up and running.