So Leigh and I drove over to the airport last Thursday for our 5:50pm flight to LAX, and as soon as we walked in, our flight was delayed until 8:45pm...hate that. All the weather in the northeast had all of the flight crew schedules messed up, so that caused the delay. Shortly after that, they d
elayed until 9:30pm!! It's not even 5pm yet, so we have a 4+ hour delay...not fun! Leigh and I both used to travel extensively for work, so we knew there was only one thing to do...hand over a little extra $$ and go wait out the delay in Continental's President's Club. While I would have still rather been on a plane heading to LA, at least we had a "comfortable" delay. Unfortunately, we didn't get in until almost midnight and missed dinner that night with Stephen and Mike. The hotel we stayed at is in Santa Monica and it was great...right on the beach!!Alarm went off pretty early, but I met Stephen down in the lobby of the hotel about 7am. The hotel actually has a really nice fitness center, so did some cardio on the bikes for about 45 minutes. It's funny because I had never met Stephen before, but I've been using his products, reading his magazines, and participating on the board for so many years, that I felt like I already knew him in a way. We ended up talking the entire time about the company, the business, the industry, and a host of other things. I really enjoyed learning some of the history behind the company and the products. I even got the skinny on Eat Smart, and he let me try a new supplement they are about to roll out. I won't say anything until they do, but the new supplement isn't even for adults...it's for kids, and it's cool!!!
Later that morning, Leigh and I met Stephen and Sean (head of Operations at Isatori) for some breakfast. While we waited for them in the lobby, I see the coach of the San Antonio Spurs walk by...which was cool for me because I'm a huge basketball fan. After him, we see each player come down one at a time to check out of the hotel...Tim Duncan, Michael Finley, Bruce Bowen, Robert Horry, etc... Of course my wife was hoping to see Tony Parker and Eva Longoria, but they must have stayed elsewhere. Anyway, breakfast was good and we headed out to the beach to walk down Santa Monica/Venice Beach. The weather out there was so nice...clear and 60s. We walked all the way down to the Venice Boardwalk which is a big tourist attraction in and of itself...real ecclectic stuff for sale, and some very interesting people to say the least. A
long that way is the Venice Muscle Beach, an outdoor gym...which Stephen says is pretty popular during the summer time and weekends. So we decide to head back up to the street and take a cab back, and as we're walking down a residential alley, we here someone yell "hey"! We look over and it's Mike Ryan sitting in his house. Pure chance that we walked down his street and he saw us walking by. So we hung out there for a bit before he had to leave for a training session. We grabbed some smoothies and got ready for my workout with Mike at 1pm.
We head over to the Mecca, Gold's Gym Venice at 1pm to train with Mike, and do the photoshoot. First of all, Gold's is MASSIVE! It has equipment everywhere!! Nothing too fancy, just weights and machines filling up every space...true body building going on there! We saw some pro body builders, a few minor celebrities, and just a lot of others working out. Mike, Stephen, and I trained for about an hour or so, and they snapped photos throughout. It was a great learning experience training with those guys! What I liked about Mike is, he's keeps it to the basics....but trains extremely hard. He pushed me for sure! We did this one exercise, that I'll just call the "death rope". You sit down on a seat and just reach up for this rope, hand over hand, pulling down as hard as you can. You set the rope to a certain resistance, then do it for a m
inute...the longest minute in the gym for sure!! I'm telling you, it will work every part of your arm, your back, and will test your cardio/muscular endurance. We each did 2 sets of 1 minute. When you get done, it shows how high you climbed, and I have to brag, I clipped Stephen by a few feet!!! After that, we did some curls, pull-ups, shoulder presses, tricep-pull downs, hanging eb exercise, and a couple more. Leigh even got in on the action and got some sets of abs in...and got photographed! All in all, great workout, I had a blast! I'd love to be able to train with Mike for a few months and see what I could do. Turns out the photoshoot will be in 2 magazine, Real Solutions and Planet Muscle!
After Gold's, Stephen, Sean, Leigh and I did some shopping on Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade...which is a very nice outdoor mall. There's a lot of street acts and musicians performing up and down the street, so it's a cool atmosphere. About 8pm we met up with Mike again, and his buddy Chris...hometown friend who is a sportscaster back in Boston. We went to eat at The Ivy in Santa Monica. As soon as we walk in, the first person I see right in front of me is Bill Murray. He makes me laugh just looking at him! Caddyshack is still one my favorite movies of all-time, which we all know he is classic in! He's talking 
with someone that acts on ER...a red-head guy, not sure his name though. Anyway, we have a fantastic meal and had some hilarious conversation...most of which can't be repeated :-) It was honestly like hanging out with a bunch of buddies on a Friday...really laid back and easy guys to get along with. After dinner, Mike took us over to an outdoor bar called Hidden, where we all had some drinks and hung out until about 1:00am. Very cool bar, good atmosphere. Only celeb there was a guy from CSI Miami...I think his character name on the show is Eric.We got up the next morning and rode to the airport with Stephen and Sean, and flew home. All in all, it was a great trip! I thouroughly enjoyed myself and learned a lot from Stephen and Mike! I'm lucky to have won the trip and tried to take full advantage of it!
-MD
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