Back on track!

Where to start. First off I forgot to write about this wacky scene we saw driving up to Keystone the weekend before Thanksgiving. So we are cruisin up I70 somewhere up past Georgetown and on the other side of the road we see a 4 Runner pulled over on the side of the road with a Ram Big Horn sheep literally EMBEDDED in the front end of it! Picture this... the sheep is looking away from the vehicle and its horns are holding it up like a hood ornament smashed into the radiator. It was probably the craziest thing I have every seen! I couldn't get over it.

Next, good news on the Big Daddy Bacon Cheeseburger I had lodged in my chest. It passed. Everything is back to normal though I am more careful when consuming a cheeseburger these days.

Onto Thanksgiving. I have talked to many of you already about how it all turned out. Graham, Tim, and I all pulled off a delicious meal and actually finished off all the left overs by Friday evening! I got on the indoor trainer for a while on Friday to work some of the food off and it felt fantastic. I hadn't been eating as much as I should the week prior to Thanksgiving. Not that I didn't want to I was just to lazy to go to the store and get food to cook. But I definitely caught up over Thanksgiving and I am making more of an effort to keep up with it again. I would say that was why I probably got sick in the first place a few weeks ago.

Tim and I spent Saturday and Sunday up at Breckenridge. Both days were sunny and beautiful though there is still a major lack of snow. We did still have fun and enjoyed the terrain there. Breckenridge seems to have a lot of rollers that Tim and I can charge and huck ourselves off of doing lots of spins. We survived the weekend on the ice injury free for the most part though we both did take a couple of spills we were able to laugh at each other about. Sorry Mom we would have had pictures on Sunday but Tim successfully forgot his pass and his camera which were in his jacket he forgot on Sunday which leads me to this.

Tim = not a morning person. It is sheer torture trying to get him to wake up for the drive up to the mountains. On top of that, his friend Alexis who goes and rides with us also is not a morning person or she is typically to hung over to get out of bed. So I get to play Dad trying to get these guys up there at a decent time. When the snow arrives in big quantities I will leave both their punkasses behind I guarantee you that! Anyway Sunday Alexis finally shows up and is gettin all pushy about Tim and I not being ready (which we were she was just being a smart ass) which therefore led to Tim forgetting his pass and camera which he didn't realize until we were an hour away from home. Luckily he was able to get a new pass up at the resort otherwise he would have had a long day of just walking around or trying to find some football on somewhere.

Today it was back to work as usual. It was definitely tough to get back into the groove but I did get quite a bit done at work and talked about setting some goals with my boss Patrick. It has still been pretty tough trying to get time where he can teach me more about the financial analyst position because he has so many deadlines with France and the budget but we will be making time soon enough. I really look forward to setting some goals with him that he pushes me towards. I know I can learn a lot from Patrick and he will be real good about working with me.

I hope everyone had a great holiday! I look forward to headin back to the midwest in less that 4 weeks to hang out with the fam!

WTF...

Ok so before I get to what the title of this blog is all about I will start off my saying the Slipstream Chipotle cycling team launch at the Historic Boulder Theater was awesome! It was amazing to see so many great cyclists just laid back and having a good time enjoying themselves especially after the year cycling has gone through. We have some world renowned riders that are going to lead this team to greatness next year so definitely watch out. Below I have included a picture of the team of 24 riders for the 2008 season and hopefully an invitation to the Tour de France.

Onto the title of this blog.... WTF... that is what I have been wondering since Saturday afternoon up at Keystone riding with Tim and Alexis. We got some really good runs in and I was feeling the best I have all year up there so far starting to get the snowboarding legs back. Before I know it I start getting spotty tunnel vision and I know a migraine is coming on. So I let Tim and Alexis know that it is probably going to be my last run and they seem to be alright with that and we go down to get some food have a drink and relax before the drive back to Boulder. However, I start losing feeling in my right and and it is all tingly and what not and when I talk it sounds like it is someone else's voice.

Everything kind of calms down for a bit but then on the drive home I finally get the splitting migraine and feel like I am going to get sick. I was supposed to go to downtown Denver with Tim to hang out with Graham but I told Tim there was no way this headache was going away anytime soon. So we drove back to Boulder, Tim went downtown, and I, well I went to bed at 6:30pm when we got home and proceeded to sleep waking up only once until 8am Sunday morning. When I woke up I still had a bit of a headache so I slammed some more Excedrine and chilled out for a couple of hours. The headache finally subsided but I knew I wasn't going to be able to sleep if I didn't do something that day.

I decided to get on the road bike since it was a gorgeous 65 degree fall day and told myself I would take it easy, by easy I mean a long ride but not really push the lungs to hard. All in all I stuck to the plan other than once section I felt the need to fight the headwind by maintaining 19mph which drained me. However, I was a good hour from the house so turned it back down and just enjoyed myself out in the sunshine keeping a decent pace. Ended up being about a 2.5 hour ride at an avg of 18mph mostly because that headwind I fought was a tail and cross wind for most of the ride so that made it pretty casual.

Anywho back to the WTF aspect that continued after the migraine. So many of you are going to laugh at this and I kind of laugh about it myself but yet it was and is painful but has subsided over most of today. After the bike ride I took something back to REI and got some lunch at Good Times. I always get the Big Daddy Double Bacon Cheeseburger. Well when I got home I absolutely demolished it along with the fries. Along the way I think I forgot to chew a few bites and basically inhaled the burger. Later in the day I started to get a sore throat and chest. I didn't know what the hell was going on but I thought maybe I was starting to get bronchitis since I have been sick with a cold and what not. However, it didn't really hurt to swallow anything but it hurt when it felt like something needed to come up out of my chest to burp or whatever. This morning things felt a bit better but still more of the same but as the day has past it has continued to get better.... my thoughts.... I have had a Big Daddy freakin Bacon Cheeseburger lodged in my chest! I don't know for sure but I guess we will see how I feel in the morning! Anyway I thought some of you might find that humorous cause I sure do but I also wonder WTF is going on with me lately.

On a final note... I think I might give up the snowboard for a day here real soon and learn how to Telemark Ski with a buddy from work. I am looking for a new challenge on the mountain and tele skiing looks super appealing so I figure why not give it a whirl. Should be fun!

Discovery Out... Slipstream Chipotle In!

A lot has gone on in Professional Cycling this year. The Discovery Cycling team that Lance Armstrong rode for is dismantling this year and the Slipstream Chipotle Professional Cycling Team that is based right here in Boulder looks to be the new super power in American Cycling. The reason I bring this up is I will be attending the 2008 Slipstream Chipotle Team Launch tonight! A fellow co-worker's wife works for the team and he coaches one of the youth teams in the area so he always keeps the cycling fans around the office updated as to what is going on. I think this should be a pretty unique experience and it will be awesome to see some of the best riders in the world.

Where is the snow...?

I am really beginning to wonder if we are going to get any snow this year. I started out this fall being very patient about snowboarding. However, now that I have gone up twice... once to A-Basin and once to Keystone I am starting to get very IMPATIENT because there is literally no snow up there besides what is man made. All I want is knee deep powder blowin up in my face so that I can't breathe but yet can't stop smiling so it forces me to choke on it! IS THAT TO MUCH TO ASK!?!?!?! I really don't mind that it has been some what warm down here on the Front Range but I want it to be frigid and moist up in the mountains so I can get back to my weekend warrior ways.

So this past weekend I went up snowboarding at A-Basin with my buddy Robert from work and we had a good time. But the lines were long and it took about an hour to do a complete run from top to bottom with the waits in line on the few runs they did have open. That is another frustrating part about there not being much snow up there. Everyone is out and there is limited space with not much snow. Then on Sunday it was about 65 degrees down here so I went and put in 30 miles on the mountain bike. It is both good and bad that I can keep riding but I am not in winter mode and would like to put more time on the snowboard than on the bikes.

Other than being depressed that it isn't snowing I am driving myself crazy around the apartment, since it is getting dark around 5 pm and is definitely dark by the time I get home from work. I feel like I am starving for knowledge but I can't get myself to sit down and read or concentrate on any one thing for to long. I need to focus and do it anyway because I know it will relieve anxiety but I just can't seem to do it. I tend to fall into these slumps every now and again and it drives me crazy but I know I will come out of it at some point.

Alright my thoughts are all jumbled and I am losing focus. Prime example of what I was talking about with not being able to focus on any one thing for to long. Hope things are going well for everyone else out there.

P.S. Reagan I loved the video of Camden and Brayden! Brayden was to cute coming up to the camera saying what color the balls were and Camden is precious as ever moving her hands around! I was going to post it on here but I can't download it on the MAC so maybe I will do it when I bring my work computer home.

Being sick...

SUCKS and gives me cabin fever. So first off I am really not that sick but I have taken the last day and half off work because I don't feel like sitting in my office coughing and I don't want to get anyone else in the office sick so therefore I have stayed home. It is good because it will lead to a faster recovery however I am going freakin insane being trapped in this house. I thought about doing some indoor cycling today but realized it probably wasn't a good idea because I would have coughed my lungs up once I finished riding. Therefore, I just humored myself with sleep, the internet, and reading magazines.

So last weekend I finally got up to the mountains snowboarding for the first time this year with Timmy. We went to Keystone and it was the first time I had been there. There was only one run open and you had to download the Gondola to get off the mountain but all in all it was a good time even though I was aching as the start of my sickness was setting in with a headache and aching body. Probably head up again at least one day this weekend. We'll have 3 choices between Keystone, Breck, and Arapahoe Basin. Who knows where we might end up.

Graham Knapp had been crashing on our couch for a few weeks hoping that a place his parents had put an offer on down in Denver would open up soon. However, that offer fell through when the house didn't pass inspection. He did end up finding a month to month studio down in Denver and moved out on Sunday just after he had gotten me sick! Me bitter? NOOOO! HAHA believe me I have given him a lot of shit about it.

Well alright nothing else really all that exciting. Hopefully we will get some good snow in the mountains here before long and I will have a lot more to write about with weekend warrior trips. But for now while it is still 55-65 out here in Boulder and it gets dark before 5... just a whole lot of boring from this guy!