Zoos and the animals that live there

Right now I'm laying in bed, laptop where it was meant to be. A bag of pretzels beside me and a bottle of water not far. The pretzels made the trip with me and I'm about to polish them off. Slowly. It is about 7:50 pm here. I just finished a 90 min treadmill session. Yes, you read that right. I was accompanied by 45 min of Wolf Blitzer on CNN. I never really liked him; after watching his simultaneous coverage of the Republican National Convention (which hasn't started) and Hurricane Gustav (which isn't expected to hit land until tomorrow noon), I really don't like him. Talk about trying to make news out of nothing. And here I am in Nairobi!!

I finally decided enough was enough and changed the channel. Of the 15 or so stations, none was BBC or anything else interesting so I picked Monk. But the reception was poor and the sound terrible so my next choice was the channel that had the best reception. Oh Boy! Reruns of Clash of the Choirs. I never even heard of the show before and it started with Christmas carols during the opening shots. If only the little boys and girls that believe in Santa Claus could have seen my face. I was laughing so hard I almost had to stop running. The one thing I found worse than Wolf Blitzer. By this time I had stopped and started the tready 3 times (remember the 25 min max) so I just left it. I was totally suffering, but I figured it had to count for mental toughness.

Finally I hit my goal time at about 16.5 km. Praise the Lord and all my strength. I changed the channel immediately back to Wolf for my 2 min cooldown. And now I’m in bed suffering with a stomach ache – the kind that usually afflicts me after a long hard run. Oh well, I get a lot of time off now.

But back to the fun stuff… I went to a Giraffe feeding center in the morning. While it was cool and I took lots of shots, those giraffe were getting fed a lot of some sort of pellet. The kids loved it, the moms and dad got a little freaked every time one would eat out of their hands. I spent 10 min taking pictures and decided I’d had enough. Oh and did I mention the entrance fee was about $13?

Next stop was the Nairobi Nature Reserve. It’s basically a big zoo with large grazing areas. It was about 12:30 when I got there and it was getting warmer and warmer by the minute so most of the animals were passed out. A couple of crocs, some pigmy hippos, a rhino, a cheetah, and lots of animals that looked like antelope and ostrich. No, I didn’t read all the signs. And a few monkeys. I would have liked this park a lot more with the right company.

And tomorrow we are off at the crack of dawn for our flight to Juba, Sudan. I did take a ton of pics today but can’t upload them at the moment. So… stay tuned. More to come.