Well, I’m here, and the day is quickly approaching. I’ve only got a little nervous nausea.

On Wednesday I boarded a plane bound for Los Angeles. It was a fairly uneventful flight save the two babies that screamed non stop for 3.5 hours.

I knew that once I arrived in LA my friend Tyler, who was putting me up for the first couple of night, would not be home until 9ish. Immediately upon landing I set out for Manhattan beach for a little training swim……with all 80lbs of my luggage.

Let me preface this by saying that a) I generally love public transportation and b) I have schlepped luggage across cities using public tranportation before. This one had to take the cake though. LA is a city with an expansive public transportation system, but its spread out in one of the most spread out cities in the world! Little did I know Manhattan Beach is a dead zone for the bus system, and I was fooled by the bus stop called “Manhattan Beach.” As the bus driver was pulling up to my stop, I asked him which way the beach was. My first clue should have been the fact that I could not SEE the beach. He pointed and said “its kind of far”to which I shrugged off, assuming he was just judging it from the perspective of someone who hates walking. I thanked him, thought “good thing I’m an endurance athletes” and head out. Well Mr. Bus driver, I owe you an apology. I finally wheeled my luggage up to Manhattan Beach 40 minutes later……40 grueling minutes of hills, a broken luggage wheel, and near mental breakdown. Once I got there, I changed, then proceeded to drag my luggage across the sand, thereby drawing attention to myself as the most ridiculous tourist at the beach. Hey lifeguards! I saw you point at me and laughing from your stupid tower, and I didn’t really appreciate it. The trip back was just as hairy, and the treck up to Sherman Oaks would have been much faster if it hadn’t been for the fact that I have the short term memory of a goldfish and kept missing buses because I couldn’t remember which number I was waiting on. At the end of the day, I was a little sore from my backpack and from my rolling luggage hitting me in the leg, but it was worth it because I had a fun bouncy little swim at Manhattan Beach, where I did about 3k.

The next day Forrest Nelson picked me up in the wee hours of the morning and we headed to San Pedro to catch Jim and Victoria’s Catalina Finish. The did great with a time of 8:43…….fastest time of the season! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JolRYlCvcEU At one point, I could see hundreds of dolphins jumping and playing and moving right toward them http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7JyWWDUb5o Afterwards, Forrest and I got in for a little swim and we swam over to the location of my finish (Jim and Vic had a different boater-and they have different preferences on where to land the swimmer.) After our swim, we met with Jim and Victoria and their crew for breakfast and then headed back. After a quick lunch with my husband Morgan and our friend Morgan after she picked him up at the airport, we spent the rest of the day I spent resting and relaxing back at Tyler’s place.

Yesterday Morgan and I headed to Santa Monica Beach where I got in a short little training 2.5-3k swim during which I felt great. Once I swam in (I have to swim out farther that most beach goers to get past the breakers) I had two people approach me to ask me to ask “where did you come from?” From the beach we then walked around the 3^rd Street promenade for a bit and got gelatto at Angelato’s Cafe. There were somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 flavors to choose from (I got Spumoni, it was delicious), as if it isn’t hard enough to choose at Coldstone! We also headed over to Hollywood for a bit, and continued on to City Walk at Universal Studios. Taking the bus was nice because it gave us a chance to take a look around and to get a feel for the different neighborhoods before our move to the area in December.

Today Will Simmons flies in to serve as my handler for the swim. I am very lucky to have someone as knowledgeable (and such a great kayaker) as him on my swim. Will and I trained together quite a bit last year while he was preparing for his English Channel Swim. I have a lot of respect for anyone who bounces back from swallowing salt water and proceeding to vomit for the first 5 hours of their swim (and at one point falling asleep “at the wheel” when he went into total energy depletion). After meeting up with a good family friend for lunch, we will be checking into the hotel in Torrance and spending the day prepping for the swim, with one last short little swim at Redondo Beach. Hopefully I will be able to get a good night’s sleep and a good nap in before we board the boat around 6ish tomorrow.

I don’t think I can really say this enough: I feel so very blessed to have had the support of so many good people on this journey, I most definitely could not do it without all of you. Thank you for sharing with me this incredible journey, and know that each and every one of you will be on my mind as I’m stroking my way across the channel in the dead of night.

http://twitter.com/swimsevenseas

Here is the Twitter page where you will be able to get updates on the swim. I’ll be jumping in the water sometime around 11pm and hope to make it to the beach just south of Pointe Vicente Lighthouse sometime around 7am (Pacific Time). Would love to see anyone of you who happen to be in the area at the finish line!

I’m off to swim a channel……..