First time for everything...

So, my brother John went to Clarkson and waxes poetic about how fun Clarkson hockey games were and how strong of a program they have, and I was dragged to numerous Colgate hockey games during Nancy's time there, and to bars since to watch them on ESPNU. However, upon review of the bracket for this weekend's NCAA Hockey Tourney, I see RIT in there, but no Clarkson or Colgate...

That's the first time I've ever bragged about my alma mater (other than the baseball team). It might be the last chance I get, so I thought I'd take advantage and talk a little trash! Go Tigers!!

The first-day-of-sunshine-and-above-50-temp phenomenon

Ok, so I need a better name for this phenomenon, but every March/April/May (whenever mother nature decides to give it to us), people seem to come out of the woodwork for the first couple days of decent weather. All of a sudden, sidewalks and trails in local parks are crowded, dogs are being walked and baby strollers are being pushed. People leave their cubicles at lunch and eat outside or walk around the block. When I was at RIT, this was usually a day to go directly home from baseball practice, fire up the grill and worry about that pesky homework tomorrow. I think some people are getting fresh air for the first time in several months on these days, and they're happy about it! People are in good moods when this phenomenon occurs, only because of good weather. In a month, they will likely be back inside on a similar weather day, but it's great to see people outside getting fresh air and enjoying being outside.

So, this phenomenon came early this year, as it was in the mid-60's for four days this week. I am out of ski races to compete in this winter, so, the warm weather was welcome and has enabled me to mix up my workout regiment a little. This past week I rode my new bike a couple times (awesome!), did some trail running and got in an awesome ski in shorts on the man-made snow at bristol mountain.

Next week it'll probably rain/snow/sleet and be windier than chicago on steroids, but this past week was awesome!

Fast week and short history lesson...

The last 6 days seemed like they took 10 minutes. I landed on Monday, and now it's Saturday morning and I'm sitting in the Warsaw airport to fly home. We were pretty much in wall-to-wall meetings with customers and local partners. It was a good week business-wise and we got a lot accomplished. I was in Warsaw on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. On Wednesday Sylwek (our field engineer in Poland) and I flew to Wroclaw (pronounced vro-swav).

Wroclaw is in the southern part of Poland. It belonged to Poland up until the 5th or 6th century, when it became part of Germany. It remained under German control until the end of World War II. The lasting impact of WWII are evident almost everywhere you look and among the culture of the people. The city actually held out 6 days longer than Berlin, but was almost completely destroyed when the Russian army finally took the city. At the end of the war, following tremendous atrocities committed by both the German Nazi's as well as the Russian "liberators", the city was turned over to Poland. More recently, 12 years ago, the city was besieged by what is referred to as the Thousand Year Flood, where the entire city was completely flooded in a disaster that would compare to Hurricane Katrina in terms of loss of life and damage to the city. Despite a tragic history, the people of this city are very proud of their culture and resiliency. Another source of pride is Rynek, which is one of the largest Main Squares in all of Europe. We had a couple hours of free time on Thursday, so one of our local partners took us down to the square to walk around and check it out. Here are some pictures:

This is a picture of Adam, who works for one of our local partners in Poland. Despite the expression he's giving in this picture, he's actually one of the most positive, optimistic people that you will ever meet. I've known him for 3 years now and exchange e-mail and phone calls with him on a weekly basis. When he found out that I was engaged, he gave me a big hug and the next day gave me chocolate to give to Nancy on behalf of his wife and him. This is just another example of the tremendous friendships that I'm lucky enough to develop with my current job.



This is a picture of Sylwek at dinner. That smile on his face is perpetual (although it does get bigger after a few beers). He's worked for Harris for about 10 years now. Prior to that, he spent 12 years in the Polish military. He has some amazing stories, but the one I'll never forget is the way he describes the day his company commander informed them that the communist times were over and they were adopting a free society. Poland was the first country in the eastern bloc to make this giant leap away from Soviet influence. Obviously this was a huge risk, however, Sylwek says that almost everyone in their unit starting crying when they were told that they were allowed to publicly practice Catholicism (Poland being 96% Catholic). He's a great guy and probably the most talkative human being you'll ever meet.Random picture of my hotel room. It's not the ritz, but I've stayed in worse.

Two other random stories/facts:

1. According to Sylwek, anywhere in the world, if you see as statue of a man on a horse, the following principle applies (I'll refer to it as the "Statue of a Man on a Horse principle"):

- if all 4 of the horses legs are on the ground, then the statue is of a hero who died late in life of natural causes.

- if 3 of the horses legs are on the ground, the hero was wounded in battle and died of that wound some undetermined time after the battle ended.

- if the horse is only on it's hind legs, the hero was killed in battle.

2. According to the taxi driver who dropped me off at the airport, the Polish population in Chicago is high enough that it would be the 3rd largest city in Poland.

I have no way of knowing if either of these are true, but both seemed interesting.

Pirogies, Vodka and Tactical Radios

Tomorrow I'm flying to Poland for work and will be in Warsaw and Wroclaw this upcoming week. Poland was the first major account I took over when I moved into my current position, so I've been there several times. In fact, I think that I've spent more time in Warsaw than any other city other than Rochester, and it honestly feels like a second home to me. It's a great city and absolutely my favorite place to go for work. Over the past few years I've also developed a lot of friendships with customers as well as our team that lives in Poland, so I'm looking forward to catching up with them.

I'll post some pictures if I get a chance during the upcoming week.

The future in-laws get on board!

This is a photo of a painting that Nancy's mom gave to us yesterday, which was promptly hung opposite the "Lift Closed" sign that was jacked from Bristol about 10 years ago (by an unknown source). What an awesome compliment to the dining room! Now I just have to figure out how to make the room look like a dining room and not a dumping ground for random sporting goods and beer bottles! Thanks Bonnie and Doug for "being on board" and supportive of my skiing passion!!

NYSSRA Champs

This past weekend was the New York State Ski Racing Association championships in Day, NY.

The weekend consisted of individual biathlon and cross country races on Saturday then biathlon and cross country relays on Sunday. Frenchy, Chad, Jason and I all entered all four races.

The individual races could have went better. I didn't feel great in the biathlon race, but still could have won if I had shot even reasonably well (which no one seemed to do). I ended up 3rd, with Jason taking the win. The XC race was kind of a disaster (or at least it felt that way) for me. Not sure what was wrong, but at 3km I knew I was in trouble, and at that point I still had 14.5km to go! It was a long slow slog to a 6th place finish. I've had slower races for sure in my skiing career, but I don't know that I've ever felt that awful. I was seeing stars, felt overly hot, my stomach was doing some strange things and I was having problems concentrating. I almost fell a couple times just from tripping for no reason. It could have been a combination of a lot of things, but who knows. Nancy took some video with Frenchy's camera during the race, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm sure it's pretty ugly! I'll chalk that one up to a character-building experience. In hindsight, something was off all day, usually I'm fired up before a race, especially this year, but on Saturday I had nothing all day. Oh well, sometimes it's just not your day, worse things can happen!

The next day, I was feeling more like myself and ready to race. The biathlon relay was first and the Western NY team was Jason, Chad and myself skiing in that order. The three of us collectively shot pretty well (much better than the previous day for all three of us) and we were able to ski away with the win.

In the XC relay in the afternoon, the RNR members decided split up the relays since there were five of us (Adam Swayze was also there to compete). Jason and Adam teamed up (with Jason skiing two legs) and Frenchy, Chad and I teamed up. We ended up finishing 1-2, with a pretty decent battle for most of the race with the third place team from the Hudson United Racing Team (or HURT for short).

Both relays were a lot of fun and totally different than most of the races that we get to compete in. It was great to team up with my training buddies in competitive races, but it's also fun to be able to watch your buddies' race, which usually isn't possible since we're typically all in the same races.

Here are some pictures from the weekend courtesy of Marque Moffett:

This is from the Sprint biathlon race. This is easily the closest picture of me ever taken during a biathlon race. That's either an awesome lens or she was on the mat next to me and I didn't realize it!
This is the start of the XC individual race. There's Jason (in red), me and Adam Swayze (all the way to the right).
That's me with a few km's to go. I was hurting at this point, and just trying to make it to the finish.
Frenchy and I on the range during the biathlon relay.

Jason and Chad at the beginning of the XC relay setting the table for an RNR 1-2 finish.
Frenchy (in the black) and a member of team HURT during the XC relay. He made a big pass before tagging off to me for the final leg. This was huge as I didn't have to make a pass to move us into 2nd.
There's me and Dave Kvam from HURT. Dave previously skied for Peru Nordic, but started up Team HURT this year and recruited a bunch of skiers including several fast juniors. It's definitely made the statewide ski races more competitive and fun with HURT in the mix. It also added some light-hearted trash talking throughout the year, which is good for everyone involved!

There's Swayze, Jason, Chad and me (Frenchy was skiing with his daughter) after the XC relay.

Another highlight of the weekend was that Nancy was able to go. It's not often that she's able to check out ski races because of grad school, but it's cool when she's able to make a weekend trip to see what it is I'm doing all these weekends that I'm out of town! I think she had a good time watching the races and met a lot of the people that make the NYSSRA crowd a great group of people. She also rang her industrial strength cowbell with all her might throughout the weekend!