8 days seems like such an incredibly long, yet incredibly short time since I hopped that plane out of Vancouver. Now that I’ve gone on a little bit of a vacation, done my laundry, attempted to catch up at work and can’t watch the closing ceremonies due to the fact that I have rabbit ears on my upstairs TV and a rainstorm is running interference… now is as good a time as any to get to recapping! So much happened over the weekend, there’s just too much to squoosh into one post.

Thursday: Travel Day

With the introduction of Instagram stories (if you don’t already follow @luluandthebox, not sure what you’re waiting for), I tried to go pretty heavy on IG sharing during the weekend. Thing is, I then forgot to save a good 80% of the content I posted before it went *p00f* into the abyss at the 24-hour mark. Oops. I’m not so savvy sometimes.

It took me 3 flights to get from point A to point B. Airline loyalty can be an expensive time-consuming b*tch sometimes, but at least I was upgraded to first on 2 out of 3 flights getting to Vancouver, and on 2/3 getting home. Which segments weren’t I? the 2 longest ones, of course. (#firstworldproblems) I was still in Economy Comfort, so with free vodka, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and many episodes of the Big Bang Theory courtesy of the in-flight entertainment system, I happily made my way westward without delay.

Once in Vancouver, I cleared through immigration in about 32 seconds. It went something a little like this:

Border Patrol: You here for the marathon?
Me: Yup BP: It's ok, you all have the same look and you're a walking @lululemon advertisement

— AthletiKaty (@athletikaty) August 12, 2016

True story. Then, walking out towards transportation, there was a cheer station set up at the airport welcoming the thousands of lulu-clad travellers who had made the trip to YVR for the weekend.

Having rented an apartment downtown (we booked it back in JANUARY, no joke), I hopped the SkyTrain to downtown. For less than $7 CAD, I was within a mile of our place 20 minutes later. Easy peasy lululemon squeezy. If I hadn’t booked myself on a 5:40a flight out, then I definitely would have taken the SkyTrain back to the airport on my way out. It was super easy and I recommend taking advantage. Otherwise a cab to/from downtown is going to run you about $35 CAD.

While the photos are a bit dark, here’s the inside of the nice place we were able to score about a mile from the Vancouver Convention Center, Seawheeze’s home base for the weekend. So what if I ended up sleeping on a couch all weekend? It was a decently comfortable couch, and with the east coast jet lag I had, I would have found a bed of legos to be equally luxurious. ZzZzZz. There was also an Urban Fare 2 blocks down the street, which was a major score, because food.

Anyway, this takes me up to about 9pm Thursday night. Less than 12 hours from the opening of the Seawheeze Showcase store. I already was nervous about asking my friend Krystle to wake up stupid early with me, to the tune of 3am. With jet lag and the fact that she wakes up to train at 5a on the reg back on the east coast, she was game. Phew.

Over the course of the day, photos and tweets started popping up on social media about how the showcase store line had already begun at approximately 10:00a on Thursday morning. Here’s what I had to say about that:

I drew the line at not even bothering to sleep in a place that I had paid to sleep in. Jet lag worked in our favor for an early to bed and early to rise. So, I set the alarm for 3:07a and off to dreamland I went.

Friday morning was coming quickly.