there's a first time for everything. this is the first time i have ever seen anyone riding on the narrow death roads by beth's parents house.

Guess Who's Coming To Town

Off we go! Beth and I will soon find out who's been naughty and who's been nice this event filled year. Go Santa! Go Santa! Go Santa!

It's on

Tis the season to start blogging again. Here's Beth getting into the holiday spirit by yelling at the "price is right". She was very happy for the little old lady who won $20,000 playing plachinko and was afraid to shout about it.
?
?we're off to Texas in a few days and I've got some hours to get in on bike before we go.

Office Hours Update for 12/10

We're riding Saturday! Bring your warm clothes, we'll bundle up and head out for about 4 hrs. mostly easy, flat cruising. Turns out the most difficult part of the ride will be getting out of the cul-de-saq. Be prepared for slip sliding fun.

Good times!

It's snowing for real now and the skiing is getting pretty good! Here's Beth's brother Todd and his daughter Gracen. She's starting to really rip on skis!!!

Coaching... It knows no bounds

Brent came over for turkey so I put him to work on my parents exercise bike.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The lift stopped

and look...it's snowing!!

Excitement in the Mountains

This is my nephew Griffin taking his first steps in snow. He was a bit apprenhensive at first and was irritated by the snow on his boots. In fact, he would stop occasionally to brush off the snow.

Gracen was along to help show her brother the ropes.

What was really classic today was how Griffin greeted me at the airport. As he saw me he let out a long "Jjjooooonnnn" which was immediately followed with a loud "my BOY!!" like we were buddies from college or something.

We headed out for a walk and hit the ice rink up at the base of Beaver Creek. On our way home it was dark and we were all glad to be gettng inside soon. I saw something down the path and remember thinking: wow, that's a pretty realistic bear statue by the playgroun. All of a sudden I got a very bad feeling. Midway through that feeling, my suggestion to everyone of, "I think we need to walk a little faster" apparently, what I thought was a statue turned and started walking towards us. The rest was pretty blurry to remember. We all calmly hurried up but the bear actually tried to cut us off as we headed home. It was sad to see that this bear had NO FEAR of humans. Beth's dad finally managed to scare it off with the help of Beth and her camera's flash. Check out the sweet picture of the incident on her blog. I was busy during the whole thing keeping "my boy" out of harms way.

Look Closely!

We went to a team party tonight. It was for the VC master's team to celebrate their kick-ass year. It was at team captain Pinkerton's place. When we got the tour we saw this superb specim of a mullet with ***an extra long rat tail*** extending from the party side. The mullet was found on the head of Bob's son, and VC member Joey "the rooster" Pinkerton.

Beth and I were riding a four wheeler through some south Texas backroads when I slammed on my brakes to let this big guy cross our path. He was rattling his tail at us and Beth got a photo as he slid back into some brush. It was a big sucker, 4-5 Ft long.

A good reason (along with the huge cactus thorns) not to ride the cross bike around there!

How old am I?

Really???
?
?I'm on my way home from Texas and had two people make "interesting" comments on my age during the trip. An older gentleman who was processing our rental car said, "Mr. Jon, when you get to be my age people will stlll think you are a boy. That's a good thing". Now I thought that was a bit flattering and cute but nothing really prepared me for what I heard when checking in for our return flight. I had just finished putting our bags up to be checked as Beth was asking if we could get emergency exit row seats and the woman checking us in repled, "And how old is he?" as she ponted to me. Yep, that's right, she mistook me for a minor!!!
?
?Look for some more trip details and pctures later.

Visiting Mom

even though she's "retired" my mom still works. She teaches new teachers or something like that at an elementary school. we stopped by to see her after having lunch with my dad on the way to DIA. she showed us her favorite poster that one of the kids made.?

this is what it said. man, life was good in elementary school.

It's Official

I suck at posting on a regular basis. Anyway here is a quick update...

I got my head on straight and got most of my ducks in a row for my clients. I'm still trying to figure out a convenient way for them to pay without going through to much trouble.

I've reserved a house for February so look out, it's a whole month of hard training camps in Montecito. I'm still waiting for another coach to finalize the week that she'll be contracting from me. If you're going to Valley of the Sun you should think about including some time with me in Montecito, it would be worth the 7hr drive from Phoenix.

Over the weekend I managed to have my best cross race since espoir nationals back in 1997. I guess the Louisville rec center is a good course for me. I also weenied out and put on race wheels with good tires. It still felt good to do one of those things and finish well while not puking in the process.

Now it's off to Texas. Look for some posts from "katherine" while we're on the road. I'm looking forward to the warmth, it's supposed to be in the 90's down there. Gitty-up!

DANG

BUSY BUSY BUSY I sure end up doing a lot of "good will" work. I seem to have gotten myself in kinda deep in try to grow and develop the Vitamin Cottage women's and cat 3/4 teams. I just hope it all pays off next spring and they end up being very noticable imrpovements over years past.

The other big work item I've overdone this week is the Santa Barbara Training Camps 2006. Yes that's right plural...camp-S. Well actually we'll be staying in Montecito (bling bling). I'll be opening them up to my clients next week as I finally get many of them going with training for next year. I have break down and say it, I've been slacking at that. I guess part of it is I still haven't figured out a way for people to pay me without either paper checks or outrageous fees.

I've been killing it on the fitball with the "mature" women in Balance and Strength class. Doubling up with a ride afterwards usually prety much wipes me out for the day, luckily I only attempt it twice a week. I'm gonna try and race twice this weekend. Maybe if I'm a bit tired from actually working out during the week I won't puke like I did last Sunday.

Ketchup

Sorry for the lack of posts. Last week was pretty busy. I didn't get on bike once between my first cross race and the second. That made yeaterdays race pretty hard. Boulder Racing's bad-ass race yesterday once again proved why they are the the current kings of cross promotion in the state. It was all grass and it was HARD. They made the most of what they had to work with in a small area.

In other news Beth and I did join a gym. Flatirons Athletic Club is our new spot. Last week we did some swimming and few exercise classes in the early morning when it was way to cold to ride. I found that my inability to keep a beat also let me off the back in these classes. Instructor and class would be making one movement and I was usually doing the opposite. Oh well, we're trying some more classes this week.

Veloswap was Saturday and I had a ball working the Vitamin Cottage booth. It was a prime opportunity to meet with some people from our club and help them to get the ball rolling for next year. Look for much improved squads of Women and Cat 3's and 4's from VC next year.

We also got to hand out a bunch of products that VC carries. Good stuff from a good company. The hot topic on everyone's mind was the new store going in @ 15th and Platte. This is right by the big REI in downtown and is sure to be a big hit with everyone in that area.

Maybe I'll update a bit more this week.

I went bike racing

After one ride on the new rig I decided to race. Turns out my fitness wasn't as bad as I had previously thought. It went ok and I managed not to get lapped. The promoter went out of their way to ensure the course had a mud bog. I ran it every lap so my bike looked like this, but my legs....

,,,my legs looked like this. It was kind of like having dry crusty boogers all over my legs.

lame

bethie blogging our EXCITING thursday night activities. nothing like blogging a blogger blogging.

Tomorrow

this arrives...

But right now I've got go to a lecture on bike fit at teh Boulder Center for Sports Medicine

I'm SLOW

Tried riding my bike again today. Not so pretty, this is the worst I have felt since getting knocked out by mono several years ago. I look ok but I've got nothing when pushing on the pedals. It's kinda scary to be this out of shape. Rode with Roscoe and ended up running into the long lost Kurt Rees. Roscoe did a good job at going slow with me, Kurt didn't. Kurt didn't help anything bay saying he hadn't been on a bike in 3 months.

Slowly slipping in more wedding pics, here's my mom and my sister getting down on the dance floor. That gene was apparently not passed on to me, only Sara.



Here's my Dad doing the unthinkable, ENJOYING A SOCIAL FUNCTION!!!


Hey wait a minute, where's Chris????

Straight shooting again

Finally able to focus clearly on work and life in general. It's good to be back.

Here's a picture of me having fun at the wedding with Beth's father and brother. If you look carefully her dad he is actually smiling, rare, very rare. Maybe they really do like me!

I would be skeptical of a guy if I were in his shoes, I mean just look at that beautiful young lady dancing with her father...

Yeah... I almost cried when I saw the two of them dancing. Memorable times.

Getting back on track

Finally, life is slowly returning to normal. I road my bike yesterday for the second time in the past 3 weeks. The other day was the wedding day. I felt great that day. Yesterday was not so good. I was pretty beat after 90 minutes of EASY spinning. I got my cross bike ordered so I should have some extra motivation to get back into the swing of some sort of training after this current storm lets up.

We still don't know what's going on with VC for next year and it's driving me crazy. I hope to get a better idea of the situation tomorrow.

hope to be posting a bit more often now.

I thought I was ready...

I wasn't. Once Beth's mom arrived everything went crazy. even the honeymoon was a blur. Make sure to check out Beth's Crazy Days. She kept up with her blgo through the chaos. Now that all is said and done it was an EPIC experience and we both agree we will not be doing it again.

Look for more pictures soon.

who's got style???

here's beth getting her pre-wedding haircut. i'm up next in aida's chair. aida is pretty damn good with cuttin hair. beth's mom get's in tonight. the final countdown begins...

marriage license, check

move out old bed, check

move another bed to basement, check

assemble new bed, check

DANCE lessons, check

new lights, check

read coaching manual, not really

take coaching test, check

catch up in office, check

sleep, hopefully

good times in lyons

mmmm.... Double shot and a bagle with "racin bacon" I guess I don't really care that there's no racing going on, I still love bacon!

@ barking dog in lyons

poopy day

today I got to supply bethie with lots of clear liquid. she had a bad digestive illness and was laid out all day. sprite was high on the request list. mmmm lemon-lime... refreshing!

trying to go mobile?

slow poke

it took me more time to design and post a link on my website than it did to create this blog. I must really suck at HTML.

Uh huh

... will be working on this a bit more. should be good when it gets rolling. speaking of rolling, who the heck is this character?

maybe not

ok maybe this is cooler than I had previously thought. I might play with this a bit more. The blog thing is way more fun that writing HTML for my website.

this is lame

umm yeah I just want to make fun of schillings blog