How NOT Meeting Team Wurtele Paid Off

Last month the newly married Kim Babij-Gesell (my wife) and I went on our Honeymoon in Kailua-Kona to watch the Ironman World Championship.  Check out the blog post below or at the link here for the non-honeymoony video about our day watching the race.

After the race we toured around for a few days seeing the sights.  One morning I opened Twitter and saw a post from Canadian professional triathletes Trevor & Heather Wurtele saying the following

"Still hanging around Kona? We're giving away some @smithoptics gear Tuesday eve. But you gotta find Heather up Mauna Kea during sunset!!"

I'm a fan of the Wurteles. They did a super cool thing and sold all their worldly possessions to buy a camper van, quit their jobs, and tour the world as professional triathletes. These folks are gutsy!! I wanted to meet them and being a properly frugal Winnipeger free shades were the clincher. We rented a car and started the 13,000ft climb up the island.

Well, apparently 13,000ft is really high and pretty dangerous to get up to. So 9,200ft and -4 degrees Celsius later we got stopped by the park patrol.

Ever see that movie "The Road"? Well that's what Hawaii looks like at 9,200ft, SUPER CREEPY! Cold, tired and hungry we tucked our Canadian beaver tails between our legs and headed back down the island sans-Wurtele Meet and Greet.

We ended up tweeting back and forth with them about missing them up on Mauna Kea Mountain and they asked for our address, saying that they would mail out some Smith Optics Sunglasses to us at home. Well, three weeks later and CHA-CHING!!! Package in the mail with some sweet sunnies, booya! Check out all the shots of what they sent below.

Thanks so much for the package Team Wurtele! We're even bigger fans now and so proud to have you as Canadian representatives in the sport of Ironman.