Last Day of 2009, First Day on the Slopes

Me and my roommate Holly

Jon, TJ, Amanda, and Jeremy

We headed up to WP for the first day on the slopes...on the last day of the year! We got a good crew together and got fresh tracks on a slope that opened for the first time at Mary Jane. It ended up being a pretty rough run for me...flat ground and waist deep powder with sniper rocks and logs all came together to present a HUGE struggle for me on my snowboard! Other than that struggle, the day was great!

So much white fluff!

I did a lot of unburying this thing!

I had a couple of options for New Years plans...in the end I chose a quite night hanging out by myself with my book curled up in bed. Hopefully I'm not setting myself up for a lot of lonely nights in 2010 with my welcoming in of the new year! :)

Christmas Come and Gone

My friend Jaymie Mart was in the country over from Scotland. She flew into Phoenix, and she and Melissa went to Vegas to ride and do a little dancing for the weekend. After that I flew down to Phoenix to hang out for a couple of days before Jaymie and I flew back to CO at the end of the week.

We had a great time and quite a laugh in Phoenix. We ate a lot of really good food, drank a lot of wine, road mountain bikes, and laughed our asses off for 3 days straight! On Thursday Jaymie and I flew back to Denver and headed into Boulder. I had school work that I had to do, so after a little last minute shopping, we spent some time in my lab, and then headed home for a relaxing Christmas Eve evening.

Super steak dinner!

On Christmas Day, we slept in, had a nice breakfast and then attempted to go XC skiing up at Eldora...when we got there it was 6ºF and the wind was blowing so hard that the windchill was nearly -30ºF! We made the executive decision that it wouldn't be much fun, so we went to the coffee shop and enjoyed some hot apple cider instead, definitely the right option! We came home and made a wonderful salmon dinner and learned how to knit! It was the most relaxing and stressfree Christmas I think I might have ever had! :)

We did finally go XC skiing. We rented some touring skis and skied out to Brainard Lake just North of Nederland. It was a beautiful day, and it was much warmer, sunnier, and much less windy than the day before!!

Such a lovely snow angel

Jaymie flew back to Phoenix yesterday after we indulged ourselves at Lucile's for breakfast! It was really fun to have her come to visit and spend Christmas here in CO!

Now it's time to get back to work! I've got tons of school stuff to do this week, am helping TJ move out of his apartment, and want to try and get some skiing in as well!

Jon's Navy Commissioning

Jon getting his Officer's stripes unveiled

Jeremy, "Sir Jon", and me

My friend Jon has been in Navy ROTC for the past couple of years of college, and after graduation on Thursday, he got commissioned into the Navy yesterday. The ceremony was really cool. I'm really glad I was able to go.

TJ, Jon, and Jeremy

Jon, TJ, and Phil...the grads!

All of the newly commissioned graduates had to throw down $200 towards on open bar tab at a bar last night. Needless to say, we all had a great time and enjoyed some great beer. Thanks Jon, and good luck with your Naval adventures!!

Graduation...Unfortunately Not Mine

I had several friends who graduated tonight. I went to their graduation ceremony, and it was inspiring to want to get done! haha TJ and Jon both graduated with their engineering degrees tonight, and my friend Garrett got his PhD. I'm really hoping that I'll be walking across that stage this time next year! :)

Adventures in the Kitchen!

Well, in light of all of the work that I need to be doing at school, I decided to spend the better part of Saturday screwing around in the kitchen! I found a webpage that described making hot chocolate on a stick and thought, what a great idea. Well, as it turns out, it wasn't quite as easy as I thought it might be, but they did turn out pretty good, in the end. :)

Montana is a Special Place

My dad forwarded me this email. Craziness!!

A couple from Montana were out riding on the range, he with his rifle and she (fortunately) with her camera. Their dogs always followed them, but on this occasion a Mountain Lion decided that he wanted to stalk the dogs...(you'll see the dogs in the background watching). Very, very, bad decision on the cat's part.

The guy got off the mule with his rifle and decided to shoot in the air to scare away the lion, but before he could get off a shot the lion charged in and decided he wanted a piece of the dogs.

With that, the mule took off and decided HE wanted a piece of that lion. That's when all hell broke loose for the lion.

As the lion approached the dogs, the mule snatched him up by the tail and started whirling him around. Banging its head on the ground on every pass. Then he dropped it, stomped on it and held it to the ground by the throat.

The mule then got down on his knees and bit the thing all over a couple of dozen times to make sure it was dead, then whipped it into the air again, walked back over to the couple (that were stunned in silence) and stood there ready to continue his ride as if nothing had just happened.

Fortunately, even though the hunter didn't get off a shot, his wife got off these four pictures.

Injured Reserve

Ah, Thanksgiving was filled with lots and lots of food and a night of great dancing on Club Beta in Denver. Unfortunately, I messed my knee up pretty good, and it's been smarting ever since! :( Hopefully it'll feel better tomorrow...just in time for snow and wet trails again. Ah well, such is life. I guess I need to be in the lab anyway.

T's Suggestion on How to Deal with a Sucky Guy

So, I was talking to one of my friends about how much guys suck right now, and she suggested sending this. I'll refrain from doing that, but I'll post it here, as I thought it was hilarious!

Happy Turkey Day!!

We've got big cooking plans, riding plans, yoga plans, and the late night clubbing plans!! Oh, and I have to take samples at school for 2 hours. That part sucks, but everything else is bound to be great! :)

Have a great day celebrating things that we are thankful for!

OR: Weddings, Volcanos, and Guns

I headed out to Oregon at the end of Oregon to go to my friend Molly's wedding and to visit my Dad for the weekend. I got to Portland on Friday night and my dad and I found a hole-in-the-wall BBQ place that looked like it should have been somewhere in the deep south...not Portland, OR. It was great!

Molly and our dinner table crew

A lil Sass!

Saturday morning, my dad and I drove down to Ashland, OR. Molly's wedding was at her parent's farm in this super cool southern Oregon town. My friend Molly is one of the most vibrant and stunning people that I know. Whenever she comes to visit me, boys always ask about her long after her departure! Flip is a lucky guy to have snatched her off of the market! She was a beautiful bride, and the wedding was absolutely amazing. The weather was awesome and her parent's farm is a lovely place to celebrate a wedding! I'm so glad I was able to make the trip out there to share with them in their special day! :)

Stunning Crater Lake

Me and my dad

On Sunday, my dad and I headed up to Crater Lake and Bend to do a little of the touristy stuff. Crater Lake is an amazing geological landscape. The lake formed when a volcano essentially imploded on itself thousands of years ago. The lake formed over many, many years of collecting rain and snowfall. Apparently, it's the purest high alpine lake in the world. Anyway, it was really beautiful! After that, we headed up to Bend for dinner and a couple of beers from the Deschutes Brewery. Mmmmmmm!!

My dad's revolver

Super old revolver from an old family friend

My dad's black powder gun

I grew up in Montana and Wyoming, and as such, hunting and guns were part of my upbringing. In fact, the first time that I ever "skipped school" was in Kindergarten. My mom dropped me off at school, and a little while later my dad picked me up and took me pheasant hunting! It was great, so many years later, it is still vivid in my memory. As such, my dad owns quite a few guns ranging from random modern guns to a black powder gun that he put together from a kit to really old ones that he's inherited. We spent the better part of Monday afternoon checking them out and trying to track down some missing clips for a couple of them. It is always fun to get to spend time with my dad when he can share something he really enjoys with me!

All in all, my trip to OR was great! I love that state...it's just too bad that it rains so damn much there!

Halloween!!

Sarah, me, TJ, Jon, and Abby

Halloween if my favorite holiday, and Pearl Street in Boulder is CRAZY on Halloween!!! Last year I was on crutches, so it sucked. This year I was ready to make up for lost time! Friday night I got stuck at school, which sucked, but Saturday night was go time! I had wanted to be Pippi Longstockings for Halloween for a long time, and with a haircut appointment lined up for the Monday after Halloween, I needed to do it before the long locks went bye bye!

Pippi and the Nondescript Native American Squaw :)

I convinced Abby to go out with Matt, Sarah, and I, and we had a great time! I ended up breaking the key for my bike lock off whilst trying to get my bike off the top of my car to ride home for the night...bummer! Luckily, Matt and Sarah let me crash at their place so I didn't have to sleep in my car or walk home! Overall, we had a lot of fun and saw some great costumes out for the night!

2009 Collegiate MTB Nationals

Another one is in the books. We headed out to Northstar at Tahoe for Collegiate MTB Nats. We had an entourage of people heading out to race and support the racers, 20 total people!! James, Peter, and Andy left on Tuesday evening and started driving our bikes out to the race. They pinned it out to NV and ended up getting there before we did! It was great, they got all checked into the condos and started getting our bikes all built up. The rest of us rolled in around 8:00 after some tasty dinner at In 'N Out. After a quick trip to the grocery store, we were pretty much all setup to have a great weekend!!

Thursday was XC preriding and DH track walking day. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately for me, one of the XC girls sucks and bailed on waiting to preride the course with one of our late arriving girls so I decided to preride the course with Katie on my 4x bike. Although it probably wasn't the most ideal thing for me for to be riding XC with a road cassette on my bike (lots of standing during climbs) at a bike race that I wanted to do really well at, in the end, I was really glad that I got to go. The course was one of the most fun XC race tracks I've ever ridden!

Our club president, Jamie, cooked up some pasta for us all for dinner on Thursday night, and I think we all felt ready to kick off another great Nationals race. The XC race went off early on Friday morning, and although we had a few issues with crappy call ups and some mechanicals we got off to a decent start. At the end of the day, we were 3rd overall to FLC and Lees McCrae, with CSU and a Cal State school close on our heels.

CU Cycling '09 Nationals Team (mostly)

Saturday was a big day ST in the morning and 4x in the afternoon. Blake got our first podium spot in ST and set the stage nicely for 4x in the afternoon. Given that the XC kids were done racing, they got on board with helping to support the gravity racers. We all did our qualifying runs for 4x, and things were looking pretty good. We had 6 of our 7 racers that qualified to race. Even though the race course was way less than ideal, there was some good racing that took place, and in the end we ended up with 2 podium spots. With a less than ideal gate start and a course with little passing opportunities I ended up in 2nd place...honestly a little disappointing, but hey, at least I didn't crash! :)

Racing 4x at Nats

Joey also had a really great day of racing and found his way to the podium in 3rd, on his DH bike no less! At the end of the day, the team found ourselves sitting solidly in 3rd place, but a bit surprisingly...within striking distance of Lees McCrae!!! When we first headed out to Nationals, I was honestly a little bit worried that we might be in danger of not being able to stay in the top 3, so it was pretty exciting to be sitting in a position to maybe move into 2nd with some good DH results the next day.

We all dragged oursleves out of bed early Sunday morning to head up for our DH qualifying runs. The course was in great condition, and everyone put in some solid qualifying runs. It was going to take some super solid efforts from all of us, but beating Lees McCrae was on the radar screen!! Deidre, Brittany, and I headed up to the top of the mountain to get warmed up. I didn't have a spectacular run, by any means, but I didn't crash, and I can't really say why I was so slow, but I ended up in 7th. Luckily Deidre had a great run and got a podium spot, 5th. Next up were the boys, and they decided to run the fastest qualifiers first so people wouldn't be catching some of the slow guys going for the omnium. Joey came across the line WAY ahead of the guy who qualified in first, and nobody even came close to knocking him off the top of the podium! Michael also had a great race and was on the podium in 4th!

The boys all put in a very solid effort and we ended up winning the boy's DH! So, in the end, we put in the efforts that we needed to (boy's DH-1st and girl's DH-2nd), and we just needed Lees McCrae to have a bad men's DH experience....our fingers were crossed! I spent a little bit of time trying to work out the numbers in my head to figure out if we'd made up the difference and finally gave up because it was too complicated without a pen and pencil! haha We headed to awards ceremony, not knowing the results, and found out that we had actually done it!! Lees McCrae's DH boys ended up in 7th, and we ended up sailing past them for 2nd!!

Overall, we had some really good performances from several different people, which makes for a fun team experience. Coordinating all of that for 20 people was a ton of work, and it would have been nice, for at least one year to be able to just be at the race, as a racer, not as a racer, team directory, and nationals coordinator, but so is life, and it's not in the cards for me! Ah well. Collegiate racing was a mixed experience for me. I'm glad that I did it, I met some great people (and some not so great ones, unfortunately), and hopefully I've helped develop some good stuff at CU Cycling that will carry on long past when I've gone!

Denver, Late Night

Matt, Sarah, and I at Club Beta

Matt, Sarah, and I headed down to Denver to see DJ Armin van Buuren at Club Beta. I'd never been to Club Beta before, so I was pretty excited for a night of dancing.

DJ Armin van Buuren

Interesting Art at Club Beta

We had a great time dancing but knew that we had to get back to the bus station by 1:04 to get on the last bus to Boulder. To be fair, we were on it. We had a plan. I took the coat check tickets and was gonna meet Matt and Sarah at the door with all of our coats 5 minutes later...that's about where everything broke down. I waited and waited at the door, inside the club whilst Sarah and Matt were stuck outside yelling my name, as we were all watching the clock tick closer and closer to bus leaving time. Sarah and Matt decided to run to the bus, and I decided to wait, thinking that I didn't want to leave them without their coats. Long story short, I missed the bus and ended up spending ALL night in Denver with only my driver's license, credit card, and bus pass in my pocket. Blahh!! I headed back to the bus station to wait it out until the 5:00 bus back to Boulder only to find the bus station locked, apparently they don't want all the bums (myself included) sleeping in the bus station every night. Bummer! At least I was going to be warm with all three coats in tow! I ended up walking around 16th Street Mall for quite awhile and finally found a 7-11 that was open. I bought some highly intelligent (hahaha) mags to read and found a 24 hour coffee shop. It's amazing, really, how slowly time passes when you just really want to sleep...in your own bed! I ate some food...one potato at a time and watched the clock tick closer and closer to 5:00. I made it back to the bus station and found a few other Club Beta misser outers waiting for the bus back to Boulder along with morning commuters, it was a good mix. haha Anyway, I made it home in time for a couple of hours of sleep before getting back on the bus and heading to the airport to fly to Reno for Collegiate Nats. Ahhhh, a good story anyway! :)

Injury Article

Here's an article that I did an interview for about being injured and coping with not being able to ride.

CU Cycling Washes the Mud Off

Current and Ex CU Cycling Presidents

Most of the time you will find the members of CU Cycling chamois clad, covered in mud, or dressed as dinosaurs/robots/cowboys/Indians/etc... Last night we decided to have a cocktail party theme, and most people actually pulled out their smart clothes and showed up in style! It was a lot of fun!! We had an empty warehouse for a location, a sweet DJ, 5 gallons of Cosmopolitans, 2 kegs of beers, and smiles all around!

We did a little smart clothes shopping earlier in the day!

Me, Flora, and Merilee who knew Karl was so photogenic?!?

Me and James...Once again, I have yet to capture a picture of James where he's not pulling a face!

Andrew had his eyes closed or was out of sorts in every photo he made it into!

Exhibit B: Andrew and the girls of CU Cycling

Abby and Tanesha...the Vic's Coffee Girls

Sarah and me

Things that Make me Smile

All things British...well most things anyway!

Beautiful trees that turn red in the fall

Colorado singletrack...even if the sun isn't shining!

Our New Little Projects

I LOVE the $1 bins at Target. I have gotten loads of stuff for people from these bins...rarely stuff for myself, which is a good thing! Anyway, I found these little pumpkin and sweet basil "kits", so I got some for Holly and a couple for me. They're awesome, you open up the package and there is a little "puck" of dirt inside and some seeds. You add a cup of water to the dirt puck in the baggie, stir it up, and presto...insta potting soil. Add the seeds, go to Austria for 10 days, then come home to pumpkin plants and basil plants growing like mad!! I've got a couple of tiny flower pots projects as well, but they haven't started growing yet.


Ahhhhh, Autumn is here. Life slows down a little bit, and the simple little pleasures bring me great joy!! (Keep your fingers crossed that I don't kill them all, hahaha!) :)