crunch time...

The last few days were an absolute blur. Between hunting, training and hanging out with some high school buddies that were in from out of town, it was non-stop action. It was a great weekend, but I'm now looking forward to getting back into my routine for the next couple weeks and hopefully catching up on some sleep and laundry.

I went to the Bills game yesterday - we had about 30 people at our tailgate from several different friend groups, so it was great to catch up with some old friends I hadn't seen in a while. The best part about Bills games are the tailgate, the worst part about Bills games are Monday morning. I was not feeling 100% when I woke up this morning due to a few too many blue lights yesterday, apparently I'm getting too old for a serious tailgate these days!

We are leaving for Minnesota two weeks from Thursday, and it seems like there are a million things that need to happen between now and then, and there's still no snow in Rochester (or anywhere in NYS), but I've been training consistently am getting anxious more than anything else. Especially after seeing all the pictures online of the races in West Yellowstone and Canmore, in what look like awesome conditions.

Colin Robert Maynard

My sister-in-law gave birth to my first nephew yesterday. Here are a few pics of Colin (He looks like a catcher if you ask me!). 9 lbs, 21.5 inches.

He was sound asleep while we were visiting.
There's the proud parents!
If it seems like I'm really focussed in this picture, it's because very few things make me as nervous as holding an 18-hour-old baby...I've given sales pitches to Minister's of Defense and not thought twice about it, but let me tell you, I was pretty nervous when this picture was taken...

some days are long and some days are really loooong.

Timeline of my day thus far:

- woke up at 430am to go hunting

- success! got deer at 8am

- left parents at 1030am

- arrived at mendon ponds at 1105, put myself through tough interval workout and finished at 1pm

- ate pre-packed lunch, then met nancy at verizon store at 130, got new cell phone and combined our plans. For the first time in 8 months, I have a cell phone I can talk on for more than 3 minutes before the battery dies.

- drove to medved to get new pair of running shoes, sat in traffic for 30 min. afterwards on monroe ave due to people driving like idiots

- got home and showered

- drove to Doug The Barber and got a haircut

- sat in traffic again due to people driving like idiots, eventually got home

- waxed 4 pairs of skis and cleaned biathlon rifle (long overdue)

Now I'm watching meaningless tv and enjoying a beer...

Throughout the entire timeline above my sister-in-law has been in labor and my buddy kevin left tbilisi, georgia 7 hours before I got up and still isn't home (on supposedly the worst travel day of the year)...point being - no matter how long of a day you think you've had or how tired you may be or how much you think you've accomplished, someone out there has done more, so stop complaining!

Nothing better than time spent in the woods!

The last week was really hectic - two days in the office to catch up from being out of the office the previous week, then a three day offsite for the MDP program at work.

The offsite was very interesting - we did a 3-day seminar where we essentially ran a simulated company over a two year time period in competition with our fellow MDP classmates. My team did not do very well, but it was a great learning experience.

This was also a great week for training, even with the offsite meeting eliminating my lunchtime workout for three days, I managed to get my arse out of bed and workout in the morning and after work every day. Ultimately did three interval workouts and an TT on roller skis Saturday along with some easy runs and a nice long classic roller ski this morning.

This weekend was also opening day of deer season. I was up at 430am yesterday to drive out to my parents for the traditional opening day. I sat until about 11am (saw nothing but a lot of squirrels), then did the aforementioned TT (which went pretty well), then headed back out. While I came up empty in the deer category, it was a great day to be in the woods and (as it always is) a great escape from all the nonsense that corporate America can bring.

Also, my younger brother was in town from Philly with his girlfriend, so my parents cooked Thanskgiving dinner today. My dad cooked up an awesome deep fried turkey cajun style, which was great. My older brother, his wife (who's 5 days overdue with their 2nd child), and my niece Lauren came over as well. Here are a few pictures of the family get-together today.

My niece Lauren with her proud Grandpa.
Nancy and I
From right to left is my little brother Johnny and his girlfriend Theresa, my mom and dad, and nance. My parents used to live in Green Bay and my dad loves the Packers (as is obvious from his sweatshirt), but I think in his heart of hearts, he'd like to see the Brett Farve bring one home for the Vikings this year. I wonder how many Pack fans are in this conundrum (I'd be willing to bet more than ESPN will allow you to know).

This week coming up looks pretty hectic as well, but it's all good stuff - two days of work, some more hunting and training, then the Ogborne brothers are coming into town from Pheonix to hang out, and go to the Bills/Dolphins game next weekend, should be great!

Great teammates and friends

Andy's dinner was great last night. There was a nice mixture of his former teammates and family and friends. The picture below was the "couple's table" From right to left - Nancy (fiance), Sarah and Knodel (one of my roommates from college, left handed pitcher and an all-around goof-ball), Allison and Drew (same class as me, a great shortstop in his own right, and a great companion for 3 bonnoaroo's and countless other concerts), Crissy and Colin (was a freshman my senior year, ended up becoming an awesome catcher and lived with me for a few years after college - his parents also live in central vermont and have opened up their home on several occasions to both jason and I when we are in new england for ski races), and danny (played shortstop at RIT after drew graduated, and now works in alumni relations).

The picture below from right to left is George (works with me and has been brought into the "inner circle"), Brendan (same year as Andy, played left field for us and did a good bit of mashing as a hitter, he and I also split a basement at RIT for three months and worked together for a short period of time in a meat shipping warehouse on a night shift - definitely a living situation and a job that kept both of us motivated to stay in school!), Joe (he's basically the godfather of RIT baseball, two years older than me and used to pitch), Tim (senior my freshman year, really took me under his wing when I was acclimating to play at the college level, also was inducted into the hall of fame last year, had an error free senior season and hit .398 playing 2nd base), dan (from fairport and played baseball and football, played corner opposite andy on that 97 state championship team), kurt (also a fairport football/baseball guy and played baseball at RIT, threw a no-hitter in his final collegiate game, which was the only no-hitter I called, and that all happened 8 months after he tore his rotator cuff), kevin (works at Harris, is the sales guy for Georgia and originally from fairport) and berger (from fairport, played hockey at brockport and now lives in the Rochester area).
I didn't get any pictures of Andy's family, but they were there in full force, including his younger brother Jamie who also played baseball at RIT and was a freshman my senior year (Jamie, who lives in seattle and was a former state champion alpine skier, and I decided last night after several shots of jack daniels to win the "pole, paddle run" 2-man relay event in Bend, OR next April, I think we have a good chance). There were a few other people inducted last night, but over half the dinner was people there in support of Andy.

That got me thinking that I really am very lucky as I know a lot of former college athletes who aren't anywhere near as close with their former teammates as I am with mine. Not even pictured here are three of my other former classmates who couldn't make the trek back to rochester (although I know they wanted too), but will be integral parts of my wedding.

Pictures of big vehicles and an RIT HOF'er

Wouldn't a nice new tactical radio look great in these vehicles? I think they would, and we're hoping our customers agree...I took these at the Expomil trade show earlier today in Bucharest.

I fly home tomorrow and the weekend is shaping up to be a pseudo college reunion. One of my former teammates and a good friend named Andy Schild is being inducted in to the RIT athletics hall of fame Saturday night, and a bunch of former teammates are coming in to town to attend the ceremony, should be a fun one.

Andy was our shortstop and batted leadoff most of his 4-year career, and a big part of the reason I went there. He was a year older and I knew him as the shortstop from our rival high school team. When I was still undecided in June of my senior year of high school, he met up with me, at our coaches request, and convinced me that RIT would be a good fit for academics and baseball (nowadays he has a career in sales, so that might have been his first one!). By the time his career wrapped up, he had (and still holds) career records for hits, runs, stolen bases, and assists (among probably a few others). Incidentally, he was a 3-sport star in high school winning a state title in football (which he still talks about at length whenever the opportunity arrises) and skiing in the Alpine Junior Olympics. Since he, like many engineering students at RIT, was in a 5-year program, he was able to ski his fifth year, after running out of baseball eligibility. Having not raced in 5 years, he still managed to qualify for NCAA championships for skiing. So in summary, he was a pretty good athlete - I still give him a hard time about going bald at 23, but you have to give your friends crap from time to time just to keep them honest!

Offset

I made it to Bucharest this afternoon as planned.

Tomorrow morning I'm meeting with the Romanian Offset Agency (a department in the ministry of finance). Offset is one of the more unique responsibilities I have as a program manager. I could write a book on the complexities of offset, but the basic gyst of it is that since a country (in this case Romania) is giving contracts to foreign companies (in my case a US company), the foreign company is responsible for investing a certain amount in the Romanian economy to "offset" the money being given to the foreign company. The concept is great, however, the implementation is loaded with so much bureaucracy in some places that I question the actual economic impact of some of these programs. The rules vary from country to country and I've heard that The Netherlands and the UK have laws which are conducive to investments that would actually benefit the economy, but in Poland and Romania, you have to negotiate very specific projects and associated values of those projects. In most cases, we do things like open a maintenance center with a local company, or transfer cable manufacturing to a local company. In Poland, we actually outsource a product from a local engineering firm, but if a project doesn't fit into a very specific "bucket" the government isn't interested in it, even if it would create jobs, etc.

I think everyone who does business internationally should negotiate an offset contract for the experience of it. You basically have no leverage in the negotiation and you have to convince these offset agencies (who are independent from our end user groups) that a project is worth a given value or will create a specific tangible economic benefit, without much data to actually back up some of those claims. They are not incentivized to agree to anything because they're an independent agency, not a customer. You are almost 100% dependent on your relationship with these people to get them to agree to approve the projects that your company wants to do - which is why I always stop in and see these folks whenever I'm in town, even if it's just to say hi and update them on the status of our offset execution. I've found that meeting face to face with these people goes a long way toward building trust with them.

Dear France, here I come

So, I'm leaving for Romania tomorrow and apparently my deposits in the karma bank have not been sufficient recently because tomorrow I am flying through JFK (known to be awful) and Charles De Gaullie in Paris (presumed to be awful). I've never flown through Paris (and this will be my first time on French soil) before but I've also never heard anyone who's had a good experience in that airport, and I've heard of a lot of people who have had nightmare experiences there...but, maybe I should just be thankful I've been able to avoid that airport thus far.

My extremely biased opinion of France is that they're much worse than Alabama and even further worse than Massachusetts in my list of "cultural places I hate." So, we'll see how it goes...

The good news is that Bucharest is a great city (except for the traffic) and I am looking forward to seeing some of the friends I've met over the last couple years over there.

Winter around the corner

I saw a few snow flakes this morning, which was a welcome sight considering it had been about 40 and cold rain all week. Although, it did feel good to rollerski in winter gear this week, and get that first super hard workout in cold weather out of the way. Also, with daylight savings ending, it's completely dark when I leave work, so headlamp season is officially upon us. We're also starting to get into that gray area where the roads are sometimes too messy to roller ski, but there still isn't snow yet, so we have to get creative occasionally.

The last three weeks have been really good training. I'll be in Romania next week so it will be a lighter week on the workout front, but that's a good thing, since I'm starting to feel a little drained, and it should give me a chance to recover. It's also a good thing for business reasons, or at least we hope so! Six weeks until we leave for Minnesota, and the snow can't get here fast enough!

The future of US Biathlon

Jason, Frenchy and I ran an air rifle clinic today for the local Bill Koch Youth skiing group. About 20 kids came out and had a blast. We had all the kids shoot at the air rifle targets (everyone hit at least one target), then we did a relay race.