Swim Bike Run Live

New Years Promises

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

I’ve had a pretty eventful few weeks.

I got engaged, got laid off, celebrated Christmas with my soon-to-be in-laws, celebrated my Dad’s 60th birthday, threw a killer New Years Eve party at my apartment immediately followed by a January 1 wedding for my cousin.

Wait, what? Laid off. Yeah. My mother told me that if I don’t have anything nice to say, not to say anything at all. So I’ll leave it at that.

The good news is that this opens me up to freely moving on to greener pastures without having to do that whole thing with pretending I’m going to doctors appointments to sneak out of the office for interviews. And luckily I’ve found some some awesome jobs out there so far. After all, it only takes one.

I’ve even been toying with the idea of moving away from the healthcare/tech industry and doing social media marketing for some outdoor, sports or sporting goods companies. Luckily Boston has a few, so we’ll see how that goes.

Now on to the resolutions…

I think I did a pretty bang up job in 2010. My main goal was finish Rev3 Cedar Point and have fun while training for it.

DONE. Aces.

For 2011, I originally told you that my main goal was to qualify for USAT Nationals in Vermont. Well, that was before I proposed to Sam and we decided to tie the knot in November. Since the wedding (and the necessary planning involved) obviously takes priority, that may significantly impact my ability to come anywhere close to that one.

But to be perfectly honest, the wedding may not impact my training at all. The more I learn about wedding planning, the less I realize that I’m actually responsible for. That is even more true now that the date has been set. And with my newly found free time, I have almost limitless free time.

Just 4 days in to 2011, this year is filled with a lot of question marks right now. All I know is that I have to show up in a tuxedo on November 19 and say “i do.” As long as I get that done, I can mark another New Years resolution aced.

| Posted in Life | 7 Comments »

Santa Came Early

Sunday, December 19th, 2010

Santa came early this year and brought me some new skis. Pretty, eh?

So after cracking my snowboard last year, it was time to end my 15 year hiatus from skiing and hit the slopes with Sam. The skies dumped plenty of snow on Bretton Woods last week, so we headed North.

Here we are heading up the one of the first chairlifts of the morning. Sam is a much better skier than I am. My first few runs were pretty shaky. Flailing about while almost completely out of control is NOT fun.

Thankfully after a few runs I became less of a danger to those around me and started to get my confidence back. I love muscle memory!  I only took a few tiny spills when I got stuck in some deep powder, but nothing too bad.

Slowly getting my ski legs back…

But the one thing that Sam didn’t know is that Santa was coming early for her this year too.

On the last run of the day, I stopped Sam at the top of the mountain before she pointed her skis downhill one last time. The view looked a lot like this, but just cloudier. I figured this was as good of a time as any to make things official.

I had been carrying around a little round surprise on the inside pocket of my ski jacket all day, and decided that was the perfect time to give it away. (Needless to say, I was freaking out a little when I took my falls and was glad that it wasn’t lost somewhere in the snow.)

I let the two friends were were skiing with go on ahead of us, and I dropped down on one knee and asked Sam to marry me. While she was surprised and stunned for a second, she said yes! We kissed, hugged and smiled and made our way down to the bottom of the mountain to share the news and start celebrating.

The best part is that she had no idea and was a major surprise. Sure, she knew it was happening EVENTUALLY, but I wanted to make sure it was something special. The only person that even knew that I had bought a ring was her dad, who I called the morning before to ask for his blessing.

The Rock

All smiles at the base of the mountain. Right before we start making a million phone calls to our family and friends.

Celebrating with champagne!

Sam and I are getting married!

And I couldn’t be happier.

| Posted in Life | 15 Comments »

Project BB: Completed

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

I finally got all of the fiberglass splinters out of my hand and can stop scratching because Project BB is finally complete.

And congratulations to Kim who was closes with her guess of a place to store my water bottles. She would have been right if my water bottles were made of glass and filled with booze.

Behold, the booze (snow)board.

My favorite new addition to the man cave and it will get plenty of use this offseason.

I snapped my snowboard last year and rendered it unusable. The fiberglass core was shattered about half way across the tail. I’d like to say that I broke it while landing some sick backflip, but unfortunately I have no idea how/when it broke and I definitely wasn’t attempting any backflips that day. Riding with a broken board did explain why I was falling so much that day…

Since last winter it has been sadly buried in the corner of my closet, covered in coats and old boxes never to be used again. While it would never see the slopes again, I refused to think that there wasn’t some sort of value left in that sucker. I needed to think of some way to recycle it and not have it sit in a landfill.  Eventually I ran someone selling these online for $50.

Seems simple enough, right? Without a blue print or the ability to go to the lumber yard and pick up another snowboard if I f’d up, I had to be extra careful. Thankfully, I didn’t completely trash it but it worked out pretty well. Apparently I’m surprisingly handy with some power tools.

My one regret is not making the holes just a little bigger so I can fit bottles of Duvel or Ommegang in it. The wire cage and the extra big cork just won’t fit… Oh well, there is always next time.

Oh, and I only spent about $6 on supplies for it. Extra sweet.

| Posted in Life | 2 Comments »