First off, let me tell you about this little race. It covers 100 miles and has 13,000 feet of climbing. With some of the climbs reaching a 20% incline. Some of the climbs are 5 miles long. Lets just say living in Miami isn’t the best way to prepare for the race. Since we arrived in NC a week early, Jeremy had a couple chances to practice his climbing skills. Lets just say the practice session were rough and they were only 30 miles and 1500 feet of climbing. By the time Thursday came around, Jeremy’s confidence in finishing the ride were at an all time low! In fact he was so nervous about the ride he barely slept the last couple nights before the race.

Race day rolled around and it was time to give it a go. With great support from all his family and friends, finishing was the only option!

At the Start – Full of confidence

So the first 20 miles of the ride were, at the time, what I thought was going to be the toughest part of the race. Basically had to get to 3500 feet in 2 climbs with barely any rest. Along the way I had some deer literally running next to for a few 100 feet. That was awesome!

Taken at mile 20 on top of the Blue Ridge Mountains

By this time, confidence was high and the legs felt great. The next  25 miles went pretty well. I got a lot of phone calls which was great, helped me keep my spirits high and kept my mind off the pain I was starting to feel. By mile 50 I realize the Iphone app that was sending out my updates to some of you was chewing up my battery. So I had to decide to either keep you updated or enjoy the music on my phone. The music kept me going. Sorry guys!

From mile 50 to mile 80, the torture continued. With many more climbs accomplished my legs were starting to feel tired. Speaking of climbs, at mile 58 we had one of the hardest climbs of the day up snake pass. Basically this was a 5 mile climb up the mountain with the last 1000 feet being 20% steep (basically straight up!) . It literally took everything I had to get up this peak. You don’t know what a horrible feeling it is to ride up a mountain go around the corner and see on the road continue to go up the mountain.  My heart rate was locked in at 175, my legs were burning in pain.  People were walking their bikes up. It took a ton of pride not to jump off the bike and join them. The last 1000 feet of this climb I was doing about 4 mph… you could walk up faster.

At mile 80, I was surprised by Lauren. She drove and met me on the road. This boosted my spirit!

As I approached her car @ mile 80

After a quick stop to say hi, it was time to finish this ride.

Mile 80 – 98 – Agony! More climbs, the weather was 95 degrees, and every part of my body was aching!

Mile 98 (race was just over 100 miles). By now I knew my goal of finishing was within a few miles. The pain I was feeling was being drowned out by my excitement of finishing the race and then as I turn a corner I see another huge steep climb. I couldn’t believe it!  They have the nerve to put another really steep climb at mile 98! So I had no choice. This climb ended up being the physically and mentally hardest climb of the day. The pain I was in was ridiculous. The climb felt like it took forever.  There were a bunch of people cheering along the side of the road which kept me going. When I reached the peak I knew I only had one last descent and the finish line would be in sight. As I approached the finishing area all the pain left my body for that last few minutes. I was overwhelmed with joy, I actually had some tears! It was an amazing ride!

7:27:36 Official time!

100 miles!

I learned a lot about myself along the ride, I learned you can really push the human body way beyond what you though was possible. If I didn’t have all the support from everyone I would have quit the ride by mile 50! I have great friends and family!  It is really great to set a high goal for yourself and accomplish it. It really makes you feel like you are living!

Go get living!

ps… Lauren finished her puzzle!

Click here to view larger map – More details of the ride

- Thai people consider the top of your head the most respectful part of your body and your feet the lowest. If you touch someones head by mistake , even a child’s, you are supposed to apologize.

-Whenever you are in front of a Monk or Buddha, you should sit with you feet facing away from them.

- Thai’s  use their spoon to eat their food, the fork is used to move the food onto the spoon. Noodles are eaten with chopsticks.

-Nobody shakes hands, they bow their heads instead.

- You are never supposed to raise your voice, its very disrespectful.

You explorers,

The Schneiderman

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vuRf17O3ww

Here is one view of the room, the entire place had floor to ceiling windows.

The view was amazing no matter which window you looked out.

Here is the view from our outside area, as you can see we had our own pool

So with no tours and very few historic landmarks on the Island of Koh Samui, We were going to be able to take full advantage of our villa. The first night we stayed there, we ate dinner at the resort. They had a Thai dinner set up for the guests, the restaurant has a breathtaking view to enjoy during the meal. (you will see in the video).

The next day, we woke up early had a big breakfast and headed to the beach. The water is turquoise and the scenery is just amazing. After a few hours of lying out , the wind picked up and it was time to give sailing  a shot.

Here is our captain! He brought us home safe!

After sailing, we did some more relaxing and then it was time to grab a drink and get ready for the sun to set.

ahhh this was a nice spot to do nothing….

or maybe this one…

We watched this sunset from the main pool

The view improved minute by minute.

The following day, we decided to be a bit more adventurous so we rented a car, grabbed a map and explored the island. In Koh Samui you drive on the left side of the road and there are thousands of people on scooters everywhere. Its total chaos driving here.

This is what they called the Big Buddha, the most famous Buddha on the island.

We stappoed on the side of the road to take this shot, the view was great!

The next place we found on our driving expedition was this guy. This was a Monk that died in the 70′s that they mummified and put on display…pretty gross! After this stop, we had to eat…just kidding!

The next stop was to see some rocks that we naturally formed into some well know shapes.

any guesses?

What about this one?

After we took this tourist shot we headed back in the car in search of a fodors recommended place for lunch. 2 hours later, we threw in the towel and found a place on the beach instead. Its very hard to navigate around when all the signs are in Thai! After lunch it was time to head back to our villa and catch some last minute sun before sunset.

that’s Lauren in the corner of the pool taking in the view

Jeremy’s turn

Can you beat this pool view?

The last thing on our list to do in Thailand was to see a Muay Thai boxing match. So we did some research and found one in town on our last night. First we headed to a restaurant at a hotel called the Library – how fitting for Lauren.

Very chic hotel that had great food. Our table was overlooking the beach.

Then it was over to the stadium for some Muay Thai boxing!

Guess who wins…

Not this guy…he was knocked out and took a while to get to his feet. Even when they were walking him out of the ring he was still seeing stars! After the fights it was time to call it a night.

The next day we only had a few hours to relax so what better to do than this.

What a perfect way to end an amazing honeymoon!

Unfortunately, all good adventures come to an end so we had one last buggy ride to the reception area and it off to the airport for 24 hours of flying

Jeremy waiting for our final buggy

Hope you enjoyed our adventure as much as we did! Video highlights coming soon.

Koh Samui 89.6 °F ]]> http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/2010/04/05/our-final-stop-koh-samui-thailand/feed/ 1 9.5120168 100.01359299.5120168100.0135929 http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/2010/04/04/part-2-video-highlights-from-chiang-mai/ http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/2010/04/04/part-2-video-highlights-from-chiang-mai/#comments Sun, 04 Apr 2010 06:35:44 +0000 Lauren and Jeremy http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/?p=1170 Since the Video Highlights from Chiang Mai video was such a blockbuster, here is the sequel fittingly called -- Part 2 -- Video highlights from Chiang Mai, Thailand

Hope you enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfnZj6unoxM

Next Stop -- Koh Samui

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1lYXynzucM

Enjoy! Part 2 coming soon.

1. Thai people are super nice, they always have smiles.

2. Nobody shakes hands

3. Thai people greet by lifting the hands which join fingers to fingers,bending the head and say”sa-wad-dee-kah”.

4. If you like spicy food, the food here is the best in the world!

To get to Chiang Mai, we took a driving tour from Chiang Rai, it was about 4 hours with various stops on the way.

Our fist stop on our drive brought us to the White Temple which was deigned by a very famous artist in Thailand. Kind of looks like something in a movie. They even have white fish swimming in the water behind us.

Our next brief stop was at some hot springs. There are people walking around selling bags of eggs to cook in the springs, we joined in and boiled some. All the eggs here are brown eggs and you see people selling them everywhere. They sell hard boiled eggs in the shell on a stick at some of the street vendors.

This is the entrance to our hotel. The hotel property was huge, over 60 acres. Most of the rooms here were villas. They were basically small 2 story homes scattered throughout the property. The place had incredible scenery and manicured  grounds. Our villa was overlooking a rice field.

The next morning we woke up early,  had a big breakfast and headed out for a day of touring with a guide. Our first stop took us high up in the hills to visit a tribe of people called the Meo. The  Meo originally came down to Thailand from China. This village was made up of about 500 people.

As soon as they saw us, the kids came running out with a table and their wares to sell (you may be one of the lucky recipients of an elephant purse or pillow case)!

This sight definitely brought a huge smile to our face, even though the dog didn’t look so thrilled.

They invited us in to one of their homes to see how they live. This one had a poster of David Beckam in it.

The tribe and us and their souvenirs.

We look like we are doing humanitarian work here. We should have brought toys with us or something

We stopped along the way to a government funded agricultural project where they grow coffee. The government many years ago implemented the growing of new and different crops to discourage against growing opium.

Our next stop was to a temple called Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. This temple is 3500 feet up in the mountains.

Here was are circling the Buddha 3 times. (Luckily we had our guide Ung here to tell us what to do)!

We lit incense and candles as well, and offered up a lotus flower.

This tells you which Buddha is yours based on the day of the week you are born. That is very important here, as it determines a lot of things about you.

Here is Jeremy standing with some young monks. Most, if not all males, become buddhas at some point in their life. Even if it is only for a week. These guys are probably on school break and so they are doing theirs now. Women are not allowed to touch or get to close to monks, so we had Jeremy get in the picture.

Back at the hotel….

Overlooking the rice paddy….

This is very young rice…the whole process takes about 5-6 months.

Finally found the water buffalo we heard was here. He helps with the rice.

I’m sure this guy is enjoying this.

Video Highlights coming soon

For you history buffs here is a little something about Chiang Mai:

The city of Chiang Mai was capital of theLanna Kingdom after its founding in 1296. During the same period of time as the establishment of the Sukhothai Kingdom. From then, Chiang Mai not only became the capital and cultural core of the Lanna Kingdom, it was also the centre of Buddhism in northern Thailand and King Meng Rai built innumerable temples.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgPUC6aZPWQ

This was our deck….

And this lovely surprise was in our tub after dinner our first night.

It just so happened that the 3 days we spent in the Golden Triangle coincided with the annual King’s Court Elephant Polo tournament! How exciting for us! We decided to drop by and see what it was all about. Pretty odd!

After polo, we stopped over to see the new baby elephant in town. This little girl is about a year and a half old. We took some time to feed her some bananas and take some pictures.

Jeremy is in heaven!

After our ride back to the “camp”, we had a nice lunch and then had to get dressed up for our mahout training. A mahout is an elephant trainer. We had to put on our special outfit and then head over to the elephant camp to go through some training and then take our elephants out into the jungle.

Looking quite spiffy! Luckily they gave us one of these shirts to take home as a souvenir!

Here we are mid-ride. You actually sit right up on top of the elephants head. It was actually pretty comfortable (except for the next day when I couldn’t walk). My elephant was Yuki. She was a film star in Japan for a while. Jeremy was on Boun-Maa. Both females.

The toughest part was getting on and off the elephant. Besides that it was pretty simple. They taught us 6 or 7 commands to use with them. Mine had a habit of eating every single thing it walked past, but besides that she listened pretty well!

Here we are after we finished bathing them. All I could think about was bathing myself in our gorgeous tub!

You can see one of the tents in the background. When we got back from dinner later that night, we had Mahout Trainer certificates in our room for us. So, if you are ever looking for a certified elephant driver, call one of us.

This spot is the greatest vantage point of the Golden Triangle…where 3 countries (Laos, Thailand and Burma) all meet. It is called the Golden Triangle because gold was always used in the buying and selling of opium, which was grown very heavily in this area. The day before we visited the Hall of Opium, a museum all about opium (no samples).

Here we are at a local food market, which the video with highlight better!

Local transportation to the next Wat (Temple).

Here we are in front of the Buddha at the Temple. As you can see below, we had one of the monks offer up a prayer for us at wishing us good luck in our marriage. He gave each of us a special bracelet that we have to wear for at least 3 days. He could only drop mine in my hand, as monks are not allowed to touch women.

Back to our hotel for Spa Time! Let’s hope Jeremy knows how to drive this thing!

Videos coming soon!

Chiang Rai 68 °F ]]> http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/2010/03/29/chiang-rai-and-the-golden-triangle/feed/ 2 19.8737421 99.723267319.873742199.7232673 http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/2010/03/29/part-2-chiang-rai-and-the-golden-triangle-video-highlights/ http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/2010/03/29/part-2-chiang-rai-and-the-golden-triangle-video-highlights/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:00:02 +0000 Lauren and Jeremy http://www.jeremyschneiderman.com/?p=1104 We had way too much good footage for just one video from Chiang Rai so we decided to send you another.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-XLtjIRzhA

More good stuff coming soon….Don’t forget to leave us some comments!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWePbbssQlQ