If You Won the Lottery…

Happy Sunday! We hope everyone had a great Father’s Day–we sure did! This YouTube video is about what we would do if we won the lottery. We ask each other three questions:

May222015

How to Learn a City: Run It

Going to a new place is fun: new sights, new food, new people, new smells–the list goes on. However, sometimes it’s hard to get oriented in a new city. You aren’t used to the way the streets run or even what direction they’re going in! Some people can easily figure themselves out in a new city (like Hungry), but others like me need other ways of doing so. For some it helps to drive around. That doesn’t quite do it for me. For me, I run or walk the city.

Mar102015

Education from Traveling as an American

In the Unites States, it feels like we are the center of the world. There is no second language and everyone knows or should know (in American opinion) English. We know we are a powerful country and certain unconscious thoughts feed into your mind because of that. And these thoughts will bleed out when traveling internationally, too, and sometimes it’s not pretty for either party. I’ve been traveling since I was a baby (a mother from New Zealand will do that), but I never started to realize my own American spoiled nature until recent travel experiences. Even though I consider myself an open-minded and culturally-sensitive person, some American travel habits can be just plain dumb. You can learn a lot from traveling as an American–about yourself, your habits, and other cultures.

Chris’ favorite burger place in NZ

Mar032015

Traveling is Exhausting

Especially if the point of travel is a sad reason. Recently, I had a death in the family in New Zealand (my mum is from New Zealand). So not only was I in very low spirits, but New Zealand is a long way to fly. It is especially long when you’re buying a ticket for the night of and you’re looking for the cheapest one. The cheapest one usually has the worst travel times and worst stops. This is true, but it was not something I was concerned with when trying to get to New Zealand as fast as possible. With a frantic packing, I got to LAX February 17th, and arrived in Fiji the 18th. Time zones start to switch hardcore now, so I’m pretty sure it was actually the 19th in Fiji, but still the 18th in the States. The airplane was cramped, but I slept some 5 hours. I then spent $40 to spend about 7 hours in the lovely Fiji VIP lounge until my flight to Auckland, New Zealand. At one point, I was the only traveler in the Fiji airport.

at LAX

Sep292014

Our Past Weeks in Pictures

Interviews

First day of work flowers

Dinners made by Sophie

Walks with Noke on the beach

Workouts with Elevation Training Mask

Celebratory meals

Food trucks

Paintball for brother’s birthday

Close up

Noke settling into the new apartment

Aug072014

How to Travel in a Car with Animals

As you know, we finally made it to Santa Monica, California! However, it was quite the journey to actually get here from Boulder, Colorado. We have two cats, a dog, and a snake! So basically we packed our car and trailer full of all of our things plus a zoo. It was much different from any road trip I’ve taken because of our animals. It was certainly stressful and worrisome, but we all made it safely. Here’s what to do with each kind of animal:

Dogs

Surprisingly, Noke did the best of all the animals. When she was younger, she would throw up in the car nearly every time she drove with us. After time and time again in the car, her nausea rears its ugly head much less. We were incredibly proud and happy with her over this trip. She kept her cool even with Nymeria howling and trying to poke her. Here are some specific tips for travelling with dogs:

Put your dog on a blanket or something that smells familiar to them
Don’t feed your dog before you drive or feed very little
Make sure your dog can see you while driving
Give your dog enough space to lie down and sleep
Take your dog out every time you get gas to pee and drink water
Make sure the car is cool

Cats

Now here is where the nightmare begun. Sajah is the more skiddish one out of Nymeria and him. I expected him to be wild-eyed and going nuts, but he was absolutely placid. It was probably because he was stressed to death, but he simply found a place to lay and stayed there. After awhile, he got a little less scared and opened up a bit. Now let’s come to the problem child…Nymeria. Oh, Nymeria. Nymeria is very spirited. And that spirit showed during the car ride. She was not about being in the car. She wanted out. She would yowl and cry and get up like a monkey on the bars of the crate and try to escape. She eventually started acting crazy and eating litter so we contained her in a carrier. She was really the only pet who made the trip stressful. Here are some specific tips for travelling with cats:

Keep your cats contained in a small crate or something similar
Keep a small litter tray in the corner of the crate
Make sure your cats can see you and hear you while driving
Put in a blanket or something comfy (and familiar) for them to lay on.
Give water breaks when you can
Make sure the car is cool

Snakes

Well, Dovah was the quietest one on the trip (ha-ha) and we didn’t hear much of a complaint from him. However, he stressed us out somewhat because Dovah’s habitat should be around 90 to 100 degrees F. There was no way to keep his lamp on while we drove so we wrapped his cage up and hoped for the best. He came out fine and is a bit stressed out. We are hoping he will relax as he no longer has to deal with the bumps and vibrations of driving any longer. Here are some specific tips for travelling with snakes:

Try to keep your snake’s area as warm as possible
Keep the cage in a low place in the car so that it has no chance of tipping or falling over
Try to drive as smoothly as possible so it doesn’t get rocked around too much

Driving with animals can be stressful, but there are ways to make it as smooth a trip as possible. Use the tips above to keep your animal family happy and safe. I’m hoping we won’t be doing one of these trips again, but if we do, we know what to do! As always, stay hungry and fit!

Aug042014

We Made It!

We apologize for our absence! We just did a big move–Colorado to California! Or more specifically…Boulder to Santa Monica! We had quite the trip. 25 hours of driving with two cats, a dog, and a snake! It was stressful, but we made it! Here’s a taste of our trip. Get ready and geared up for Hungry and Fit to come back rip-roaring!

Car and trailer in tow

Fuel

Busy car

Pretty scenery

Bad accidents

Cute Nymeria

Crazy Nymeria did not do well in the car

Noke did AWESOME

Traffic…

IN N OUT SIGN

Made it home for sushi!

Noke loves it here

Fit and her dad

Yummy eats in Santa Monica

Jun262014

Hungry, Fit & Co are Moving!

The whole family is packing everything up again and moving to the West Coast! Los Angeles here we come. At first, we’re going to be staying in Santa Monica but our goal is to eventually move to Korea Town as soon as possible. We would love to stay in Santa Monica or another beach part of LA, but with Alana certainly going back to school, and Chris possibly going back to school, it’s just not going to be affordable!

The chances are Alana will be going to school part-time and maybe eventually full-time for nursing and Chris will start to take part-time classes working towards a Masters in Physiological Science. Therefore, Alana could be working part-time, full-time or just managing Hungry & Fit, while Chris probably works full-time. You, or we, never know until we’ve made the change and hopefully we have good like in finding a place to live and good jobs! All those things could change! A huge part of the excitement of moving is the adventure; we love adventures… like hobbits… well Bilbo, and Frodo. We will be sure to keep you all updated on what we choose to do.

We will be leaving Boulder August 1st and should get to Los Angeles August 2nd. It is two days of driving and we’ve done the trip before but not with all these animals in the car. We will have to take extra care and make sure to control the climate in the car. Again, it should be exciting and build character! Once we get there, we’ll figure out all the necessary evils such as where to live and how to pay the bills. Chris will probably try to be beach lifeguard, walk dogs, and do personal training… all things he has a lot of experience doing and enjoys. Alana will figure out a school and work schedule that is reasonable.

There is not a whole lot more to tell you other than this is the big announcement and we better get in high gear to start preparing for the move. Lots of items are being sold on Craigslist and we will be having a garage sale soon. Let us know if you are in the market for anything! We are really trying to be minimalists for this move and prevent Chris from hoarding and collecting things he never uses. He promised to change this time so we’ll see!

Hopefully, we get to see even more friends and family as a result of this move. We get to spend more time at the beach and although Chris will miss his whiter winters, we will hopefully be travelling to the East Coast more than when we were in Colorado. We like LAX a lot more than DIA. So if you’re living in LA and want to meet up at some point, let us know. We have friends there but building a new network is going to be a challenge. You make something out of yourself in one place and then decide to pick up and start from scratch again. I hope it all works out well for us! Thanks for all your support and look forward to an even better Hungry & Fit in LA!

Jun052014

Our Vacation in Pictures (LA)

Sorry for the big lapse in posts! Here are our excuses…

Excited to see my parents!

Omusubi (Sunny Blue)

Freshest of fruits

LA Street Art

Family timez

In n Out

Hungry taking creepy pics of me sleeping on the beach

Bad bad sunburns

Post beach-ness

Ramen!

Promenade

PIE

Hungry got interviewed by a Japanese reporter of course…

Airport food…

May092014

The Importance of Safe Driving

It’s the new age. The age of technology always at your fingertips. The age of constant connection. The age of instant communication. The age of obsession of knowing what’s going on. Where we don’t want to leave our smart phone for five minutes because someone commented on our profile. The moments that you swore you felt it vibrate so you just have to check it. Did you ever hear of a guy driving a buggy and cart and writing a letter at the same time? I didn’t think so. Even though this technology is great, awesome, and a big boon to our society, it’s also causing a heavy amount of distraction on the road.

Always appreciate Hungry’s distraction-free and skilled driving

I’m a fairly careful driver. On the highways, I’m always hitting 55mph (yay for saving gas!) and I don’t get infected by road rage. I’ve heard enough about texting and driving crashes that I don’t even want to stray on that road (no pun intended 😉 ). And let’s emphasize on the word crash instead of accident. Crashes are caused by intoxication, speeding, or distracted driving. Even though you obviously don’t want to get into a crash, it’s not an accident if you’re distracted or being careless. That’s the hard truth.

In Colorado, we get all kinds of weather–in ONE day. It could be 30 and snowing when you wake up and be 65 and sunny during the day and then give you some rainfall at night! This makes for seriously precarious roads and conditions to drive in. Despite these very dangerous conditions, every single day on my way to work I will see bowed heads, eyes floating towards that little screen of light. It makes me sad and also scared! Even if I’m the most careful driver in the world, it won’t matter if the person behind me doesn’t see me stop and ram right into my bumper. That’s scary! I feel more and more anxious about getting crashed into because of the increase of smart phone usage of those around me. Several of my clients have been rear-ended by someone who was on their phone. It’s a shame and it needs change.

Weather makes it critical to focus on the road!

That’s why I’m reaching out to you alongside the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Auto Alliance to make a difference. Encourage your friends, your siblings, your children to Decide to Drive. It’s easy to slip and just check that one message, but that one message could lead to a crash. Take part of the Decide to Drive campaign (seriously, click on the link and learn more about it, it’s really cool!) and end unnecessary crashes, injuries, and deaths due to distracted driving. This program drives to encourage the conversation about this issue and speak up about the distracted driving you see. This is something we at Hungry and Fit are incredibly passionate about.

I’ll leave you with this scary statistic: “According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), of the nearly 33,000 roadway fatalities in 2012, there were 3,328 fatalities and approximately 421,000 injuries in distracted driving-related crashes.” Are you willing to step up and help end these unnecessary deaths? Join Hungry and I in the Decide to Drive campaign and help American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Auto Alliance make a difference in the lives of millions. And as always…stay hungry and fit!