224workouts

Fried chicken and peanut mousse.

I am back blogging after a hiatus while I was in Atlanta, Georgia.

The trip was a business success but a workout nightmare. There was little time to get out for a run, and Atlanta is not ideal for foot traffic – no sidewalks –  so I spent at least one hour or each day in the hotel gym. What I found really interesting was that the channel selections on TV were really quite limiting. One night as I was working out to Jersey Shore I questioned if it was actually having an affect on my ability to think intellectually. And when a fellow hotel resident took over my treadmill as a grabbed a drink at the fountain, my immediate reaction was to say “robbery”…time to change the channel. Choosing between over zealous news broadcasts and reality TV meant I became familiar with the Housewives of Atlanta, Orange County, Beverley Hills…(I think there were others?). What a moment of pride when I came home to find out we will be hosting our own Canadian franchise of housewives in Vancouver!

But the real problem about Atlanta is that no amount of working out would ever compensate for the amount of calories I must have consumed in my short week away. Fried chicken, fried catfish, fried potato, fried clams, fried mushrooms, fried peanuts, fried onions….well just about anything that would fit in the fryer was served – and yes, it was good.

I was lucky enough to break from routine and have dinner with Governor Nathan Deal and his wife at their mansion in one of the most privileged neighborhoods I have ever visited.

The menu was a fantastic list of Georgia’s home grown favorites including sweet onion soup, quail for the main course and the most wonderful peanut mousse for desert. The quail confused me a bit since a bird the size of a hamster is very difficult to eat with grace and at one point I asked the gentleman beside me if it was a bad idea to just use my fingers. He laughed and dismissed my question as rhetorical which was a clear enough answer for me.

The following pics are a couple I took of inside the mansion and the menu for the dinner….

So now I am back home and back to the gym. I met a Banook Alumni while working out the other night who mentioned her sister was going to reach out to me with a workout for me to try…this couldn’t come soon enough. If any of you out there have been working out daily like I have, you might be getting bored. I am looking for anyone to challenge me with a fun or interesting workout that I can add in to my weekly schedule. I am up for anything so please send your thoughts along. I will share any of the workouts I get with the group on my blog to help keep the motivation up!

I have seen many followers of the challenge over the past few weeks and have had great conversations about how they have engaged in the challenge and about the CanoeKayak team. I am always thrilled to hear your stories so please pass them along.

Good night for now.