We both participated in the annual Abu Dhabi Triathlon along the corniche.We completed the spring triathon that had a 750m swim, 50km bike, 5km run and we did all of it (bar the swim) together.

Our times for the discipline were:

Swim - Jen 12mins (1st in!) Nick 14 mins
Bike - both 1hr24mins
Run - both 29mins
Total - 2:21:51

Stoked to have finished and looking forward to the next one.




 

 
Have you heard James Morrison? Singer and songwriter of albums like Undiscovered and The Awakening. An awesome singer and an awesome concert at the Dubai Jazz Festival. The concert was super chilled and he is a great live act. Everyone has to check out the single super funky Slave to the Music. Full of awesomeness.Good times with Nina, Sheila, and Eric.

We've been lucky enough to meet Jose Sanchez and to sample his paella. First of all he cooked a massive Spanish omelette that turned out as big as a cake. I was waiting for him to write on it "Happy Birthday" in red capsicum. Then he starts a fire in his backyard and sets up a massive pan. He started some onions sizzling and then some other veggies. He then dumped in a ton of seafood broth, the water that he had cooked some prawns in earlier. After he put in rice and there were 5 of us there but I'm thinking, is that enough? He let that slowly simmer away and put muscles and prawns in too. It slowly developed so much flavour and it just tasted so goooooood. Amazing bbq flavours from the wood fire pit too.



Thanks Jose but I apologise. The chef should never have an empty glass, bottle or can on them. Your wine glass is empty.......

We were waiting until we moved to get new fish and this past week Nick brought home two new ones! Since Nick is in charge of pet names (I get to name the kids one day), he went with a Modern Family reference, Clive Bixby and Julianna. They seem happy in their new home, we'll see how long they last :)

Since our move we been enjoying riding our bikes around Yas Island and enjoying Nolus, a cafe just down the road from us. We can ride there, which is great and even better they open early and have breakfast. They don't really have breakfast places here in Abu Dhabi unless you visit the hotels, but more and more western style cafe's are popping up and Nolu's is quickly becoming our favorite.

We are looking forward to many more of these with friends!

 We're all settled into our new digs and super happy with it! We seriously can't believe that every morning we get to wake up look out at the sea! Neither of us seems to be missing city life and are enjoying the short 13 minute commute to work, the ease of parking and obviously having a beach to paddle from!

Here are some pics from our Go Pro (it's a wide angle so they look a bit distorted)

We've been waiting for this new wave pool to open in Al Ain for ages. Well it finally did and we headed out there last week to try out the waves on our SUPs! Surfing in the desert, pretty cool! You pay to get into the park and then you book a surf session with up to 6 other people. It's not really a wave pool, but a surf pool, even better! It took us a bit of time to get used the waves, but I am looking forward to next time and taking advantage of waves in the UAE hoping to help progress our surfing skills. There's also a whitewater park with 3 runs and we'll soon be headed down those on our SUPs too. This place is definitely an exciting addition to life in the UAE.

Just your typical drive home from Al Ain, look at how cute these baby camels are!

We've been trying to move for ages, over a year and half and all of this waiting has finally paid off. After looking for over a month for apartments and working out storage options for all of our SUPs we found a apartment Raha Beach. It's a new development with pools, gyms, storage, parking, grocery stores soon and we can't wait to get all settled in and start to enjoy. We've got the keys and can't wait to enjoy the beach, paddle whenever we want to, and entertain with sunset views!

We had a few pics in the SUP Calendar this year! 2 from Switzerland including this one we took of Neil heading down the Aare River in Thun and then one of the Dubai skyline at Sunrise.