Inching Towards Peachtree

So, per the usual, E & I are registered for the Peachtree Road Race (AKA one of the largest 10Ks in the US despite subjecting its participants to heat, humidity, and hills on the 4th of July in Atlanta, Georgia).

Speaking of heat and humidity -- a memorial day pig roast in Texas is HOT!

Last Year's Peachtree is probably my favorite to date of the four I've done (2011, 2014, 2017 & 2018), mainly because it was also the US 10K nationals, and I was able to watch Steph Bruce win on the big screen just before crossing into the starting corral.  So emotional!

The cinderblock oven with aluminum foil plywood lid and vents works very well!

This has been the longest, biggest, running break I've taken since I started running regularly in the mid 2000s.  I intentionally took some time off before Morocco so that my pesky left leg hamstring insertion/deep glute inflammation could heal.  And then, the dog bite really reined in any aggressive running efforts while it was healing.

Fritos on chili -- very Texas.

Now, my bite wound is almost healed, and it turns out, my left hamstring/glute/whatnot is the best and most balanced it's been in years.  It's almost like the 6+ weeks of forced chill and doing some physical stuff that was more wholistic functional fitness and mostly not running-related were just what the doctor ordered.

Feta, swiss cheese, chicken sausage frittata --

The latest effort to sneak garden greens (chard) into dinner

Here's to hoping I can get the mileage for the week above 15 by Sunday and move forward from there.  I've been doing yoga, calisthenics, jump rope, and biking, but other than a few very easy aerobic low-heart rate jogs, I have no real idea where my running fitness is, so fingers crossed...

England and Paris

After the chaos of the Morocco dog bite and the subsequent Morocco adventures, we were happy to land in London and settle in for some Global City travel.

Random Tulip Garden in London near Temple Station

We spectated the London Marathon, which was awesome.  Then, between visits to the travel medical clinic, we visited with multiple friends who've left the bay area and E's parents who were vacationing in the Cotswolds.

I don't have the words for how great it was to spend a weekend with these ladies!

And then, on our way out of Europe, we chunneled to Paris and spent an awesome 40 hours or so there, walking in parks and eating our way through the best the city has to offer.

One of dozens of Eiffel Tower photos I took.

We are now home.  I'm slowly recovering from the dog bite (the final rabies vaccination in the US cost more than all of the other medical care combined, in keeping with stereotypes).  The actual wound itself is likely to take another 3-4 weeks to fully heal, but I think I can jog on it tomorrow, so that's my plan. In other news, I've put together a mild training plan for The Peachtree Road Race (10K).  This means I plan to start actually running some workouts again soon.

I'm hoping to start with a long run of 4 miles next week and increase 'til 8 miles before stepping back for the race.  After Memorial Day, I'll also be shooting for 1 yoga studio session per week, 1 track day per week, and some more easy miles and general fitness workouts (with a focus on shoulder and glute/hamstring stability).  Wish me luck.

Morocco, part 2

 Kefta (lamb beef meatball) Tagine with a poached egg in delicious spiced tomato sauce.   

The food in Morocco was possibly the best part.  They have a strong bread culture, and the bread that was served with every meal was fresh and delicious.  Tagines are a wonderful way to prepare food, in general, but in particular while hiking between very basic guesthouses (Gîte_d'étapes) where you (or a mule) must bring all of the cooking supplies (including the gas and burner).

Merguez and vegetable tagine.

Morocco is much more of a dry country than I realized.  For the entire 7 days, we only ate at one restaurant that served alcohol.  We also went to one bar in Marrakech, and it was one of the few places we visited where they obviously preferred French to Darija.

We were invited in for tea at a Berber home.

Linguistically,  Morocco is one of the more complex places I've ever visited.  While Darija is the official spoken language, in most of the places where we hiked, the people spoke a Berber dialect.  Unlike standard Arabic (which I studied briefly 15 years ago, but have completely lost all memory of and cannot follow at all except basic things like thank you, excuse me, etc.), after a couple of days in Morocco I found that I could occasionally follow Darija a little bit thanks to the context of knowing what was being discussed (typically logistics around hiking, eating, driving, etc.) and the French and Spanish cognates embedded in the language.

Lemon Chicken, one of the traditional Moroccan dishes

(preserved lemons and cooked olives -- wonderful)

Part of the reason we'd selected Morocco, was that I wanted to go somewhere where French would be useful.  And it was. But interestingly, almost everyone we spoke to preferred English to French.  Much like Vietnam, there appears to be a generational preference, where the older folks who were educated in French prefer it to English, but the younger folks wish to learn, practice and speak English. There is currently a big debate in the country about whether they should move their STEM education from Standard Arabic and French to English or not.  Standard Arabic, French, and Spanish are all languages of outsiders who came to Morocco and ruled them.  Whereas English is seen as the international language, and Morocco is one of the few places that doesn't have a history of British colonialism.

The weather, wildflowers, and views while hiking were perfect

  Overall, even with the dog bite, it was a fascinating trip and we very much enjoyed ourselves.

Kefta Tagine, fresh chopped veggies, mint tea

and views of the Atlas Mountains

while listening to the call to prayer echo 

down the valley

Travel Medical Adventures (Warning, Dog Bite Photos)

Hello from the other side of the longest I've gone without blogging since 2003.  I didn't miss it at all, which surprised me.

Tulips on the way into AMS (before our quick hop to CDG)

Given that I've habitually blogged at least once a week for 16 years, I spent some time trying to understand why it was so easy to let it go:

1. I have Instagram and Twitter if I really feel the need to project my words/pictures, and they are faster and easier to use.

2. Over the years, I've gotten less and less dedicated to the actual craft of writing on this blog, *and* I've gotten less and less specific with the details I share. This means the blog has really shrunk down from a general purpose somewhat redacted diary with intermittent writing exercises to more of a running, fitness, travel, food, and reading tracker -- e.g. useful, but not a particularly creative pursuit.

3. I was preparing for and enjoying a 19-day trip, with at least half of it completely off work.  During our Sabbatical year, I blogged about our experiences and observations as part of the fun of the travel.  I built in time to prepare blog posts after each new location, to help me process and record my thoughts while they were fresh before I went to another place. On this vacation, I believe the longest one I've ever taken while working, I really wanted to just focus on enjoying the trip in the moment and minimizing the activities that could feel like work.

Chefchauoen, Morocco -- the blue city

Our original plan had been to fly round trip to Paris (because any chance I can build in a France visit, I will, and also because we weren't sure what might happen with Brexit at the time we booked our flights, so we wanted an option to bail out of England if necessary).  After one night in Paris to manage jet lag, we planned to fly to Morocco and visit Chefchaouen and do some hiking there, followed by a visit to Marrakech and hiking in the Atlas Mountains.  From Marrakech, we had flights to London, where we'd cheer on Jen at the London Marathon, visit London friends, possibly do some hiking in Wales, and then close out the trip with an awesome weekend full of Wiltshire adventures with Jen & Gypsy Runner as guests of Cat and her family and cats.

Roughly our route, except we flew from Fes to Marrakesh

How did we pick Morocco?  Well, I wanted to visit a country we'd never been to, and we wanted to do some hiking.  E had never been to Africa, and we knew we wanted to start in France, which made Morocco an easier option due to its history as a French protectorate and popularity with French-speaking tourists.  Once we decided to go, E's dad decided to come along as well, which made for a fun family trip.

Day 1 hiking, Chefchauoen in the background

Unfortunately, on the first day of hiking, despite having a local guide, I got bit by a dog.  We were on public hiking trails, but the dog's owner had a marijuana farm near the trail and the dog was a bit too territorial.  There were two dogs, actually, a black one that came running at our group towards the guide in the front of our single file line, and a yellow one that came at the back of our line (me).  The dog was loudly and angrily barking and I was oddly calm in the certainty that I was going to get bit.  I chose to keep my back to it, and sure enough, it did quickly nip at my heel, slicing through my wool socks and leggings and then it ran away.  It was a quick sharp slice, and it didn't actually hurt that much.  I was surprised when I pulled my sock down and saw how deep it actually was.  Later, I felt very grateful when I saw the other scrapes on the outside of my calf from the teeth that didn't puncture. Any deeper in the lower part and it would have injured my achilles.  Any deeper up above and it could have seriously injured my calf muscles.  I was very lucky and extremely thankful.

Within 30 seconds of me explaining that I'd been bitten, our guide rinsed it with saline, applied betadine, and wrapped it with gauze.  He then called a jeep to come get us and we went to the hospital, where they cleaned the wound, gave me a tetanus shot in my stomach, prescribed antibiotics, and sent me to the municipality for 2 doses of the rabies vaccine and a card instructing me to get another dose in 7 days and another dose 14 days after that.

I'd already been taking it relatively easy, athletically, on this trip, in the hopes of calming down my pesky left hamstring/glute, but now it appeared that I'd be taking it *very* easy.

2 days post injury

On day 7, I got myself in to see a travel doctor in London, and they informed me that Public Health England disagreed with the regimen that Morocco had prescribed.  They wanted Immunoglobulin injected into the bite site (actually the most painful part of this whole process) as well as vaccinations on day 7, day 10, and day 21.  So, E and I took the train all the way out to Colindale and back to pick up Immunoglobulin and vaccine doses, which we took back to the clinic for evening treatment.  (Side note -- if you ever need treatment for travel-related medical issues in London, Dr. Dawood and the team at the Fleet Street Clinic is for you.  The first travel-clinic I tried shrunk in horror at the idea of post-exposure rabies treatment and sent me to them. They were wonderful.)

Monday's London vacation activities were:

laundry, Dishoom, 

and several hours of medical stuff with lots of public transit

Day 10, instead of staying in the lovely English countryside, we spent about 2 hours going from the adorably named Castle Combe back to Fleet Street Clinic for another vaccination (the vaccines had to be kept refrigerated and administered by someone PHE trusted) and then another 2 hours or so heading back to Wiltshire, where we met up with our friends.

Castle Combe -- does it get any more quaint?

Once back in the US, I called my local travel clinic and learned that the US doesn't agree with either the UK or Morocco about the treatment regime.  So, tomorrow, I'm headed in for my last and final vaccine dose (day 17 instead of 21).

I did do a little bit of hiking and jogging in the last couple of weeks, and it didn't really hurt, but the wound is actually fairly deep and most of those activities seemed to open up the most recently healed areas. So, I'm going to hold off any "training" until it's fully closed up and healed over.  Wish me luck.

Not Quite There

I'd hoped that the early 2019 fitness efforts would result in yet another decade 5K PR last weekend.  It was not to be.

I'd been averaging 18.18 miles per week for 2019 (including walking when I remembered to enter it), so certainly, I didn't have volume on my side.  But, I'd been having some success in my hard workouts, so I was still hopeful.

My last hard workout before the Run Rocklin was a treadmill workout in Cabo.  I hit decent paces and time intervals and left feeling confident, although my pesky left hamstring insertion was annoyingly triggered by it.  Then, I bruised my heel walking barefoot in the resort post workout, or so I thought (turns out, I actually stepped on a teensy-tiny piece of metal (think glitter sized) that embedded itself in my heel, and after a week of "bruising" that seemed to be getting worse, I finally inspected it and realized I needed to remove the intruding metal splinter that was causing inflammation with tweezers).

The week after we got home, before I realized what was going on with my heel, I aggressively dialed back my workouts to recover from the "bruise" but even so, I still felt like a decade PR was totally doable -- I was just extra-tapered.

And then, the day of the race came.  I was, as planned, tapered.  The highs were projected for the low 70s, but we saw 80F in the car on the temperature readout later in the day.  After more days of rain than Norcal is used to, no one was complaining about the first gorgeous true day of Spring.  But it was hotter than I expected and I'm not great in the heat, so secretly, I had some complaints.

Also, D (my Rocklin running buddy) is not a morning person, and E managed to forget to pack his shoes, so we showed up as a rag-tag group trying to find our way to bib pick-up and only succeeding after much confusion just as they started the 5K.  After the gun (and bib pinning) we ran from the bib building to the finish arch only to be informed that the start was actually the non-marked chip crossing "way over there" much closer to the bib pick up.  Good times.

Eventually, we crossed the start line as the last 3 runners and proceeded to weave our way through the walkers for most of mile 1.  This did not lend itself to race pace effort.

I hit mile 1 at 9:45 and knew this was going to be a good workout, but nothing spectacular.  My goal had been 9:20 miles and I easily let that go.  I trailed E & D, who were clearly faster and more fit than me, catching up to them each time they stopped to get water or walk uphill.  Eventually, around mile 2, E admitted that he was going to walk the remaining mile because he had a blister from running in his Simples.

I finished sub 32 on a course with lots of turns and a few hills.  I ran a race in my hometown and coupled it with a visit to my brother, sister & her husband and nieces and nephews as well as D and her extended family.  I was sore the next day in that pleasant "Oh, yeah.  I totally pushed myself" way.  It was a weekend well spent.

Also, while I didn't hit my time goal, thanks to E's failure to pack his running shoes, I have my first 5K where I beat E in the last decade or so, so that's something.

And now, while I'm still chasing my decade PRs and my 2019 running goals, I'm putting dedicated running goals on hold in lieu of some general fitness goals such as lots of yoga, healing up my hamstring, and good nutrition coupled with general purpose aerobic fitness (including biking and hiking in Morocco and the UK).  I'll dial back in to a more dedicated running/training goal in the Summer, but for now, I'm happy to just enjoy moving my body.

Scuba Taper, Cabo Edition

Last week was a very mellow down week, running wise.  E & I had booked a long weekend dive trip with some friends in Cabo for the end of the week, so I knew I'd be minimizing my workouts.

Possibly the most picturesque surface interval we've had to date.

(Los Arcos, Cabo San Lucas)

Monday, I did some active recovery, post ORF half, doing the dozen core/strength routine for runners followed by strap stretching/mobility and shoulder rehab.  All told, it was over 90 minutes of good work and I was proud of myself, as I definitely tend to skimp on this stuff more often than not, and a post-race day when I wasn't going to get in any good running really is a great time to fit it in.

First night's sunset didn't suck.

Tuesday, I'd hoped to run, but my legs were still trashed from the half, so I did 3 easy miles of biking to and from a pre-trip pedicure, where the pedicurist commented on how tight my calf muscles were.

We did make the error of coming during 

college spring break.  Thankfully

early boat times and early bed

times protected us from most

of the chaos.  The room next
to us had college-aged boys
but they tended to get loud and
leave to party right around when
we went to sleep, so it
all worked out.

Wednesday, I'd hoped to wake early and get in a short run before we left, but, due to working late, it didn't happen, so I just spent the day traveling, with the associated airport walking, as well as walking to dinner on the property next door to our resort.

The Cabo San Lucas marina is very picturesque.

Also, several yachts with helicopters...

Thursday was a dive day on the Corridor (Gavilanes & Cabeza Gallena) with an early boat time.  When we were thirty minutes into the boat ride, almost at the dive site, someone pointed at 2 late-season humpback wales breaching and diving.  Our captain stopped the boat and we just enjoyed the view as they migrated, at one point, less than 100 feet off the boat.  I must say, this was a very unexpected benefit of this dive trip and totally awe-inspiring.  They are huge!  The amount of surface area of the ocean that they modify when they breach is insane -- they leave a clear area of smooth water from the surface tension changes of their movements that persists for several minutes as a contrast to the mini-perturbations in the undisturbed sea.

Pancho the sea lion has learned how to hop aboard inboard fishing boats and beg for/steal fish.

It was adorable to see, but like many taming of wildlife situations, also a little depressing...

Sadly, I'd stowed my phone for the transit to avoid water risk, so I was unable to get it out in time to take pictures when the whales were spotted.  That night, we walked the 1.5 miles home from the marina, and again walked to a nearby property for dinner.

We fit in a proper Mexican Arrachera spot *and* an Argentinian Parilla

(Spoiler, I'm still behind my red meat goals for the year...)

Friday was another dive day (North Wall to Pelican Rock (and back) & South Wall to Pelican Rock (and back)), requiring a walk to the marina early in the day.  It was a gorgeous day of diving, including seeing my first sea horse!  Friday night, we walked at least 3 miles in town after dinner and back home.

We tried to dive off Land's End, but the conditions were too rough,

so we just enjoyed the views and headed back to the wall.

Saturday was a decompression day, which was wonderful.  We slept in, and then I headed to the gym for a full set of drills, lunges, whatnot, followed by a treadmill workout at 1% incline of 2X5 min 7 seconds/mile faster than target 5K pace; followed by 3X3 min at the same pace, all with walking recovery for a total distance of 3.25 miles.

Post-workout relaxation with gorgeous views, 

a book, and delivered drinks and food!

Sunday, I'd hoped to go for a run outdoors (the gym was closed on Sundays), but Saturday's poolside relaxation had resulted in enough of a sunburn that I decided it was smarter to skip the run.

Monterey Bay welcoming us home.

(Side note -- we discussed diving here, and E & I agreed that at this point, we're just too wimpy to brave the cold.)

All told, I put in very little running last week, for a total of 15ish miles total on my feet, with only one true workout.  Unfortunately, I managed to bruise my heel walking around the resort barefoot on Saturday, so yesterday's run was cut short, and today I opted out of yoga when it became clear that balancing on that foot without a shoe was going to make it worse.  I'd originally hoped to get in a couple of easier workouts this week to sharpen up for Sunday's race, but some or all of those are now off the schedule.  Hopefully, 2 weeks isn't enough time to lose fitness, and I'll just benefit from the aggressive taper while my heel heals up before Sunday.

Progress at home, and in Montana

Lone Mountain Peak, Big Sky Montana

Two weeks ago, I put in a nice running buildup week for the Oakland Running Festival half marathon.  Only 21.52 miles total on my feet, but it included a hilly hike with a friend, some decent shorter faster intervals (always good to see 7 in the minutes place on my pace), and, finally, a 9.4 mile long run.  Also, I dragged myself back to the yoga studio, putting me on track for a yoga session at the studio an average of every 2.5 weeks so far this year.

I have enjoyed returning to a more regular yoga practice, so in addition to my 2019 running and protein source goals, I think I'll add a goal of 20 yoga studio sessions to the list (4 down, 16 to go).

After the week of positive running momentum, I hopped on a plane and headed to Montana for our annual ski week with E's family.

It was the *COLDEST* ski trip I've ever taken.

Highs in the single digits.

Most of the ski towns where we stay don't have good gyms and running in the snow is not usually an option.  So, instead of running, I try to fit in whatever workouts other than skiing make sense and take it as a down week.

I grew up skiing from age 4 - 13.  My gymnastics coach demanded that I stop when I was 13 because if I was going to get injured from something, he wanted it to be gymnastics (I'm sort of joking, but not really).  It wasn't too hard to comply since I didn't really have much time to ski between school, coaching, practice, and competitions.

After I quit gymnastics, I tried snowboarding in college and quickly reverted to being a skier, as it was clear I'd have to spend a few painful seasons boarding before I became even remotely close to as good of a boarder as I was a skier.  I did a few college ski trips (including one memorable one where I was the *only* person in a car full of boarding bros who knew how to put on snow chains) and then I stopped skiing once the college ski club was not part of my life.

Yellowstone National Park in the Winter is very beautiful

Fast forward several years, and I'm dating E.  It turns out, E's family does a week long ski trip every year and they invite me along.  Ever since then, with very few exceptions, I've returned to being a skier, if only for one week, once a year.  It's been a great source of fun and joy in my life.  But, I've definitely got a healthy respect for the dangers of the sport and I'm much less aggressive than I was when I was 13 (when I was the best I'll ever have been).

Last year, in Telluride, I didn't get in much running due to having just dislocated my shoulder the weekend before we went.  I also didn't ski (due to the shoulder as well).  So, it was a very low-key week on the workout side of things.  

42 minutes of speedwork/recovery on a treadmill at 7,500 ft 

results in *much* less distance than at sea level

This year, I was on the fence about whether I would ski or not.  My fear was that if I were to fall, it was likely I'd dislocate again and potentially injure the structure of my shoulder.  In its current incarnation, I do not need surgery.  If the frequency of dislocation increases, I will.

The medical recommendations I've gotten are to push out surgery as long as I can (with shoulder strengthening work and avoiding activities that cause problems) in hopes that I can have one more reconstruction and not have to go down the multiple surgeries route.

I'd also forgotten that I didn't really have the freedom not to work the whole week, so between my injury fears and professional obligations, I settled on a tentative plan of 1 full day of skiing, 1 day in Yellowstone, and the rest of the days working and fitting in whatever I could.

Petrified trees soaked up the minerals from the geothermal features.

Hard to date, but probably at least 1,000 years old.

Big Sky, Montana is beautiful!  But, boy was it cold.  According to the lifties, Bozeman set records for the coldest temperatures in March since 1955 while we were there.

I had such a good time skiing on Tuesday (remembering that I'm actually a pretty decent skier, and as long as I ski conservatively, I'm unlikely to fall) that I moved my work obligations around and rented gear for a second day on Friday.  Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great, so I settled for a half day and didn't go back out after lunch.

All told, I managed 2 treadmill workouts, 2 days of skiing, one shoulder strength session, 1 core/strap stretching session (to keep the peace with my traitorous left leg) and a short run at target half marathon pace on Sunday after we returned.  The week at elevation probably did some good for my fitness as well.  As expected, time with family from the South and in Montana means I had 6 servings of red meat in 8 days instead of the annual average target of less than 2 per week.  There will be lots of running and vegetarian/fish meals in the last 2 weeks before the Oakland Half Marathon.

Austin 5K, Revisited

In what is becoming an annual tradition, we headed to Austin to visit friends and run the 5K.  On Saturday, we picked up our packets at the same time as the Manzano Mile.

No filter sunset arrival at AUS

What a cool event.  I sincerely enjoyed watching the elites race the mile.  They stage the non-elite milers by age group before the main event of the speedsters, and I think I may try to run it next year.  Improving my mile time is one of my fitness goalsand having a goal race to perform at to see how those efforts have paid off could be fun.

Look at all those fit ladies -- it was fun to watch them take off fast, 

run by on their way back on the outside of the finish,
and return to close the loop to finish the mile

Sunday AM, we woke up in time, and enjoyed the gorgeous sunrise on the drive to the start.  From there, it was a very pleasant 20 minutes to take advantage of the blocked off streets, empty port-a-potties and time between the close of the half/full marathon start line (their start is open from 7 - 7:15), and the 5K start (7:30).

Sunrise in Austin on race day -- gorgeous

Unfortunately, we lined up too far back in the 5K crowd and I spent the first minute or two weaving and jogging in place behind some slower folks -- this was doubly frustrating because this portion of the course is downhill.  Eventually, after much effort, I found some space to run without obstacles and hit mile 1 at 9:59.  Given the congestion and that the first mile contains 75 ft of climb, I couldn't complain.

Texas is Texas and Beef loving is everywhere!

Mile 2 is 2/3 climb (another 75 ft) to the turn around, when, thankfully, you start to drop the altitude you've gained with 20ish ft of lost elevation before the mile marker.  The constant climb in miles 1 and 2 had started to take a toll on my speed, and even with the downhill at the end, I finished mile 2 @ 10:31.

I was glad to see the long downhill in front of me, because I was going to need to push to beat my performance from last year (31:46).  I tried to take advantage of 127 ft drop in this mile, hitting the 3 mile marker and lowest point of the race @ 9:49.  And then, because this course is brutal, I pumped my arms and tried to go as fast as I could, struggling against the 43 feet climb in the last 0.1 mile from the river to the finish line.

The finish photo game was a bit off - this photographer was 

ANGRY!  Yelling at all the finishers to keep moving...

Understood that he had photos to take, but um... 

people just finished a race

if they want to slow down that's kind of okay...

I crossed the line with a time of 31:29 (10:06/mile pace).  A 17 second improvement over last year, and definite confirmation that this course is difficult (only 2 seconds per mile faster than the 10K two weeks ago?  Oh, right, because it had 2.5 times the elevation gain in half the distance and was net neutral instead of net downhill).

Forever Sunset on our trip home.

Overall, I really like this race.  Not a PR course, but it's got a good vibe, and it's a great excuse to combine racing with visiting friends.  Plus,a 5K with the hills really makes it a harder effort than most of the stuff I run these days, so that feels good.

Mexico City New Year

I'm a sucker for airline miles manipulation, and this year, they got me.  After our trip to Aruba and our flight back to California, I was shocked to see that I hadn't flown enough on actual paid trips this year to maintain our Delta flight status.

Sunset on our way to Mexico City.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Super ridiculous privileged first world problems, but if we're going to be honest about privilege and first world stuff, then we need to talk about financial literacy.  It's very important in terms of people's ability to transition from parents who are "poor, first in their family to go to college" to children who are "Bay Area hyper-educated normal." My family was *not* upper class, my parents were both the 1st to go to college in their families, and my 2nd generation college-groomed privilege was that I found finance interesting and I could subscribe to magazines about investing and business and my parents let that happen (they were all essentially free due to some weird sweepstakes magazine thing)...

Tacos from El Rey De Suaderno -- Delicious!

All of this (understanding the scarcity model plus a desire to maximize profits) contributes to my ability to realize that if I didn't get at least Silver Medallion status on Delta for 2019, I was losing quite a bit of value (as I had several reserve MQMs that wouldn't roll-over unless I was at least Silver, not to mention upgrade opportunities, free drinks/food, etc.).

Zocalo, the 3rd largest public square in the world.

E called it when I saw my status on the Delta App on our flight home from Aruba/Atlanta, "You're totally going to book a New Year's Trip that gets you status to protect our 2019 travel, aren't you?"

consommé -- one of the best things about  CDMX taquerias

Well, yes.  I tried to brush off his suggestion initially, but of course he knows me better than I know myself and 1 week later, we'd booked a New Year's trip to Mexico City.

The ruins in downtown CDMX right off the Zocalo.

We have several friends who've gone in the last few years, and they've all had wonderful things to say, particularly about the food.

Aztec Sun Stone

I knew we'd have a wonderful time -- it's the largest city in North America -- of course we could find things we'd adore.

Stereotypical touristic stuff at a ridiculously charming outpost near Teotihuacan.

But, folks, it totally exceeded our expectations.

Pyramid of the Sun -- the largest pyramid in the world you can hike up (3rd largest overall)

It was awe-inspiring.

View from the pyramid of the moon.

The teotihuacan pyramids are, frankly, almost as impressive as Machu Pichu, but with less crowds, and much easier to get to, so net, possibly a better experience.

The food was, as promised, excellent.

We decided on a light Portuguese lunch

(Jamon Iberico, Pan Tomate y Mejillones y Pulpo)

The museum of Anthropology was one of the best museums I've ever been to, which is saying a ton, as I tend to prefer my museums on the modern, arty, side.

We originally went with hopes of out of control Mexican fireworks (for which they are known), but, one of the few downsides of modern day Mexico City is the air quality (abysmal).  As such, fireworks had been more or less outlawed (as had tire fires and trash fires), so we found ourselves on Paseo de la Reforma with a cheery, happy group of folks with nothing more than a band, lights, and *HUGE* sparklers.  It was wholesome and wonderful and one of the more enjoyable ways I've crossed the new year's threshold.

Overall, it was a wonderful way to transition into the new year and I'm a bit shocked that it isn't held out as more of an international destination for Americans who want to travel.  It is the largest city in North America, very tourist friendly, but clearly its own Latin American destination where English will work, but not remotely as well as Spanish (so if you have some, use it -- they will appreciate your efforts!), and it has tons of culture.  Why it is not on the default list of easy places for American families who want to raise world traveling children is shocking to me -- the pyramids alone are worth a trip.

Also, the food.  Did I mention the food?

Chapulines -- look closely, those are baby grasshopper tacos (delicious!)

We'll probably go back as our friends stayed an extra day and did stuff we didn't do that sounded wonderful, plus there were neighborhoods we didn't visit and food we didn't try.

We fit in all sorts of fun cultural stuff including a great night of Lucha Libre!

If you're looking for a short international trip that has tons of culture, you should consider Mexico City.