Running in Margaret River and heading home

Well, finally home...but not for long. On January 1 we loaded up the rental vehicle with all of our luggage and drove south to Margaret River - one of the best wine producing regions in Western Australia. There was a great trail run a short walk from our hotel - the Ten Mile Brook Cycle-Walk trail. I ventured out and ran twice - 6.3 miles one day, 3.1 miles the next. The trail is 15 km round trip, and while I would have loved to run the entire thing (apparently there is a dam and some other great scenery at the end) there were some time constraints so that never happened. There were maps of the trail posted a few times along the way, and the trail was pretty well marked with options to veer off on other paths. There is even a summer and winter option for the trail in case of high waters.

It looked as though a forest fire had been through here at some point, whether it was intentional burning or not I wasn't sure. It made for some interesting looking trees along the way. I also spotted (and heard) a few kookaburras and parrots.

They were definitely pretty runs, and I was really happy that they both felt remarkably good. No pain at all, which made me happy given my somewhat disastrous outings in Perth. We were in Margaret River for a couple of days and had some amazing wine. If you ever spot bottles from Evans & Tate, Madfish, Leeuwin, Voyager, Vasse Felix....I highly recommend trying them. They have some good stuff and export to the US and Canada. We drove back to Perth on Friday, then flew out at 8:30 am on Saturday to Singapore. I got to hang around the Singapore airport for a few hours and this is probably one of the best airports to have a layover in. They have tons of computers available with free internet access, and several of these massaging boot things called the iSqueeze. I boarded my flight for LAX at 4:15 pm on Saturday, flew for about 14 hours before landing at 2:30 pm...still on Saturday. I cleared immigration, picked up my luggage then dropped it off again with TSA, then caught my next flight out to Vancouver. I cleared immigration there, but discovered that one of my bags (sadly the one with the wine in it) somehow didn't make it to Vancouver. After filing a lost baggage report I ran across the airport to Air Canada to find out if there was any way of getting back to Calgary before my 10 am flight on Sunday. Luckily (for me anyway) the last flight out of the night was delayed an hour so I was able to get a seat on standby and was in Calgary at 2 am on Sunday. Talk about a long day... Luckily the missing suitcase made it in by Sunday afternoon (with wine intact, phew). Now I'm home for a few days before leaving for Orlando to run the Goofy Challenge this weekend. This weekend.......yikes!