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!