Wow! It's been a long time since my last post. A lot has happened since then, so I'll quickly try to bring everyone up to speed:

After returning from SOMA, I made an appointment with a gastroenterologist to determine if my problems were resolving. It turns out that my previous diagnosis of intestinal ischemia was a bit off. My current diagnosis (after a somewhat unpleasant round of testing!) is giardia and another parasite called blastocystis hominis. It turns out I ingested these nasty bugs while drinking too much lake water in Madison or at Timberman. Bummer. I am glad to know why things went wrong, but bummed to have such a nasty afliction. I'm now on some powerful antibiotics to right things. In the meantime, I'm happily out of shape, and a bit weak from all the drugs, etc. I'll be back to normal in no time, if I can just get over this jet lag...

... yes, Amanda and I are Down Under, after a long, yet uneventful trip to Busselton, Western Australia. We're here for Amanda's season finale: the IM WA! It's a great town; a bit of sleepy beach town. We're settled in our new accommodations, which is a pretty fancy beach resort. We've got our very own apartment that has all the luxuries (more really!) that our home in Boulder affords us.

The training has been pretty relaxed, as we're just trying to back in the swing of things. (I'm basically doing whatever workouts are right for Amanda to get on track for her race... it's very fun, actually!) Later today we are hoping to get ahold of our missing bike box! It never arrived in Syndey, and has since made the trip to Perth, but not further down the road to Busselton. We have been ok up to now, but are now anxious to have the wheels: the race is in thirteen days!

That's about it for now. We're off to get a bit of food at the natural store, and to follow up our early morning swim with some more breakie and perhaps a run.

Until the next time (hoping it won't be too long), buh bye!