Day trip to Malahide Beach

Malahide Beach panorama

Back in the beginning of July, as I was walking the Everest Challenge, A, J, and I decided to head to the beach and have a nice afternoon walk.

Aoife, Jacqui, me

The weather was overcast, as is typical here in Ireland, and the water was freezing. It didn’t stop us, however, from slipping off our shoes walking on the tidal flats

Tidal flats

and then going for a bit of a wade into the salty water of Malahide beach.

I'm sinking! I'm sinking!

Despite sinking quickly once I was out in the water, I did have to laugh when A decided to get up to a bit of mischief…

splashy splash

by splashing J (who, like me, was shocked at how cold the water is!) to help her get used to it. Taking off with a cackle, she promptly sped out of range, so she couldn’t get splashed back herself…

Aoife's up to mischief

J took it with a fine sense of humor,

Jacqui & cold water

and very quickly, we were off to find the “perfect” bit of sand to dig our heels into – and leave our footprints behind.

Digging their heels in

It’s just a good thing it didn’t mess up our toenails!

Painted Toes

On the way back, we passed 3 old ladies sitting on a wall, overlooking the beach. As we paused to brush the sand off our feet and then replace our shoes, they commented on not only what a lovely day it was – but also how well we 3 younger ladies seem to get along. The funny thing was that somehow, I could picture A, J, and me, in 40 years, sitting on the wall – and see a reflection of ourselves in them. Just goes to show – the more things change, the more things stay the same.

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Olympic Decorations at work

Instagram of the Rings

Here where I work, we’re totally into the Olympics. Since it’s an international community and an international workplace, we try to generally avoid conflict because of cultures and cultural influences and find ways to bridge these differences. When the olympics comes around, however, things change. The Olympics are a huge source of nationalism (via sporting events), team work, and joy as we can all celebrate the Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals with others of a particular nationality. All around the building, we constantly hear – Sure, my guy lost, but yours won – what a stunning finish/great match.. etc.!

Paper chains & quote

In Honor of the Olympics, the events committee here at work has decided to challenge us on a floor by floor basis – to support charities, to decorate, and to show our cultural diversity while celebrating how well we can work together. On my floor, we have many varied nationalities – including French, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, American, Irish, Italian, German, Polish, Indian, Canadian, Brazillian – and this is just the ones I know about!

Flags of all the countries on the floor

The idea was were supposed to choose 1 color, but the floor decided to go for "ALL" the colors. I made paper chains for all the desks (I was up until 1:30 am) – and there were Olympic balloons for the end caps. There were also olympic balloon rings; and flags representing the countries of all our team mates on the floor.

Paper chains partly hung up

2012 London Olympics

We managed to get sports equipment & pictures of nearly every sport up on our columns, and then people participated in desk chair rowing, desk basketball, desk badminton, mini-football, and stick horse racing at the time of “judging”.

Basketball jerseys on windows

(Notice my subtle reference to the 1972 Munich Olympics being the 40th Anniversary of Massacre on the b-ball uniforms in the windows.)

There was also a podium for BOB the HR cutout guy and a few stuffed animals.

Gold Medal for Customer support

For all of our great efforts – We took 2nd (silver medal) for the building.

Gold for Customer Support

In other news, the Rowers / Cyclists / cupcake sale also raised money for charity. I’ve not got the totals yet, but they did a great job!

Cupcakes (in olympic colors) for charity

Cycling for charity

1000 meters complete - switch!

The good news is we also have more events coming next week – so it should be another fun week at work!

Olympic Rings in Balloons

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Everest Part 8 – The final day

Team Back Down Last Day

Great News! Today is the last day of the Everest Walking competition and my team has made it to the bottom of the mountain.
As a Team, we’re currently ranked in 7th Place. The impressive part (remember that in the screenshot, only the top 3 on the team are averaged) for 6 people is this we’ve walked 2,680,488 steps between us. Yes, that’s over 2.6 million steps. When you do the math, here’s how it worked out –

2144 km – we have walked the distance between Dublin, Ireland and Malaga, Spain and back again!

Last Day - halfway down

On a personal level, and out of 700 competitors, I’m number 103. 🙂 It’s been a great competition. My personal totals up to today – 433,623 steps which is about 216 miles… Basically, I’ve walked the distance between Dublin, Ireland and Edinburgh, Scotland in 40 days.

Not half bad, if I do say so myself!

Update: 08/08/2012 – With all this walking – my team got 700 Euros for the charity of our choice! Hooray!

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