Bikram yoga: OC style

I was on vacation all last week in OC/LA and San Diego, and what did I do?  I finally dragged my lazy ass to my first Bikram class in almost 4 months!  I was a bridesmaid in Rani's wedding this past weekend, and I (wisely) decided to take two chill days beforehand to visit my cousin Marissa in Orange County/Irvine area.  We definitely did chill; we ate, drank, and went on Beach Tour 2012!  We went beach hopping to most of the LA area beaches: Day One was Long Beach, Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, and Day Two was Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach.  All wonderful, and the weather there was SO NICE!  I want to move there, le sigh.  Didn't really do wonders for my tan lines pre-wedding, but who cares?  It felt so good, and the sand and sun was "soo dope" as Californians say, haha.

Needless to say, all the bikini wearing and pre-wedding dress jitters made moi feel very bloated aka fat, not to mention, I was very tired from jet-lag (even though it was only three hours behind, the beach was SO tiring).  So how coincidental was it that Marissa goes to Bikram pretty often, too?  Some background: Marissa and I met once as kids at my aunt's wedding, and then somehow reconnected on Facebook, and randomly decided to reuinte in NYC earlier this summer.  We are way alike in many ways and I am so happy we have become closer...clearly we share similar interests if we are both interesetd in this torture.  Anyway, what perfect way to wake my ass up, than to go to a Bikram session? 

It was pretty funny how we tried to fit this sacred 90 minutes into our day.  First we planned to go to the 10am class, but on our way out the door, decided we wanted to save the imminent post-yoga energy boost for later that night when I planned to go meet a friend (since LA traffic blows).  We went paddle boarding at Huntington Beach, instead, which turned into tandem kayaking bc I didn't think I could balance on the board for an hour.  Then we ate lunch at Wahoos, which made us decide to postpone the 4pm class to the 6:30pm class due to rice and beans.  After the most relaxing nap ever on Laguna Beach, we went to the Bikram Irvine studio, which was super modern and less bohemian feeling than my familiar Bikram Hampden stuido.  I was kind of disappointed that the British accented teacher made no reference to the regular "Momma give me money" or "japanese ham sandwich".  She was kind of cold, and so I was trying to get her attention by doing the poses really well, but she was just zipping through the poses, not even instructing us on how to do the poses...I haven't been to class in four months, okay?  I barely remember what set comes next!  I'm used to my instructor talking us through with heavy detail, a la "you should be compressing your pancreas" blah blah blah.  I think my mat borrowed from my poor cousin was dripping with my sweat by the fourth pose, but it did feel great to attend a class.  As promised, I was super energetic (and hungry) for my dinner date.  I relished in the refreshed feeling and it felt good to stretch all of my muscles.  So dope. 

After these few work nights, I should be going again.  It's about time, because my groupons will soon expire at the Baltimore location!...and to think, all I had to do was go on vacation to restart up again!