Three countries and two states later...

It's been far too long since I've updated this. Since my last post, I spent another week and a half in Germany and Holland, then flew home, spent one night at home and drove to Vermont for our good friends Rick and Shannon's wedding. Germany and Holland were relatively uneventful all things considered, although there were a few decent stories from the Germany leg of the trip, hopefully I'll post about those in a separate post.

We left for Stowe, Vermont last Wednesday, with the bikes loaded up - the wedding was on Friday and we decided to make a long weekend out of it and stay until Sunday. The first day we were there it rained heavily, so our planned bike ride was cancelled. Instead, Jason and I took the groom-to-be on a nice trail run on the ski trails at Trapp Family Lodge. Rick bikes and bike races a lot, but isn't much of a runner, and the 7ish mile run we went on ended up being the longest of his life. He was able to make it down the aisle just fine the next day though. In fact, we went for a bike ride the morning of his wedding up to the top of smuggler's notch, which was a pretty fun ride and had some beautiful views all around.

Here are some pictures of the main event:

Here's a picture of the program. Skiing is a big part of Shannon and Rick's life and, given that we were in an area of the Northeast known for skiing, it was definitely a strong theme throughout the weekend.

Here's a shot of the ceremony - it was a huge honor for me to be able to perform the ceremony for two close friends. It was also a pretty amazing scene with the mountains in the background.
Libby, Nancy and Anne - these three hung out a lot over the weekend while Chad, Jason and I were biking and running. I think the shoe stores in Stowe may have been a primary beneficiary of this dynamic.

Here are the groomsmen (Rick in the middle) - coincidentally the best man (2nd from the left) and the guy all the way to the right both work at Harris and the guy 2nd from the right used to work at Galyan's with me...oh and that guy all the way to the left was a groomsmen in my wedding as well...so yea, pretty small world I guess.
This was taken right before the ceremony, I had to have my game-face on!
This was Rick and I while we were waiting for the ceremony to kick off.
Here's our table for the reception. They named all of the tables after famous ski runs from different resorts in Vermont.
There's the happy couple.
I don't know who these idiots are, but it looks like they found out where the Vienna Lager was being served.

All in all, the ceremony and reception were great. I think we were all also relieved that we had a free day after the wedding before having to make the long drive back to Rochester.

On Saturday, Nancy and I sampled the Trapp Brewery's new Oktoberfest seasonal beer and had lunch outside overlooking the mountains. Not a bad view.

After lunch, we all went up to Williston, Vermont and watched a pro cyclocross race, which was pretty exciting and involved a lot of heckling from some of the spectators. Not going to lie, Cyclo-cross looks really fun!

After one final dinner Saturday night and one last trail run Sunday morning, we hit the road and headed back for Rochester. After doing about 3 weeks worth of laundry and mowing the lawn, I was back in my office today for the first time in a few weeks. I seem to have picked up some type of a head cold, which I don't really have time for as I'm running a half marathon this Saturday in Niagara Falls. Hopefully I can shake it off quickly. I'm also looking forward to being home for a little bit here and hopefully get back into some type of normal routine for the next few weeks.

Bachelor parties, Supras and long runs

I've been too busy to update this is in a while. I'm pretty much been on the road since my last update. Last weekend, my dad and I drove down to Philly for my brother John's bachelor party. Unfortunately Hurricane Irene didn't want us to execute our original plan for the weekend, but we still ended up making it to a Phillies game before having to head home. Coincidentally, Nancy's brother Doug was also at the game for a different bachelor party for a different guy from Penfield High School, so it was also great to catch up with him a little. So, it wasn't great to drive down to Philly on Friday and come right back Saturday, but after seeing the devastation that storm brought to some areas of Vermont and Northern New York, it seems pretty silly to complain that we had to cut a party short because of it, so we're not complaining. It was great to catch up with some of John's friends and to meet John's future brother-in-law and father in-law.

The upside of weekend getting cut short was that I got an extra night at home. Incidentally, I would get an additional night at home due to cancelled flights from the storm. I finally got on a plane headed for Georgia on Tuesday. It was pretty smooth sailing once I finally got going. We ended up getting two solid days of meetings in and getting everything we needed to get accomplished. My friends there also threw an early birthday "Supra" for me, which involved a large Georgian feast, a cake and a healthy (or unhealthy?) amount of vodka. Birthday's are a much bigger deal in Georgia than they are in the US, which I wrote about previously while I was there for Ivane's birthday. Everytime someone that works with Ivane has a birthday, they shut down the office at about 3pm and have a large celebration in the kitchen. All in all it was a good trip.

Now, I am currently in Weiden, Germany. I had originally planned to be in Oberhof to ski in the ski tunnel there then drive to Weiden tonight, where I will be for work this week. However, I was delayed getting to Munich and didn't land until 7pm yesterday, so it didn't make sense to drive 3 hours in the wrong direction to get to Oberhof, only to turn around and drive 4 hours again today. So, that was a little disappointing, but I did manage to get a long run in this morning and will catch up on some work this afternoon before the rest of the team arrives this evening. I had my first driving experience in Germany yesterday and they drive really fast here, do not get in the fast lane unless you know what you're doing! My hotel is pretty small, one of those deals where the hotel manager is also the waiter, bar tender, chef and lives in the hotel. I'm also relatively sure that my TV is much older than me. It's about 10-inches and there is one English TV station. I am currently watching the Track world championships in German. I have to get a slingbox set up or something.

About that run this morning...that's a good story - I intended to go for a ~2 hour run. There are bike paths that go everywhere in this town, so I figured I would run for an hour in one direction, turn around and come back, perfect, right? How could I screw that up? Well, I'm not sure how it happened, but I managed to get very lost and my "2 hour run" started to remind me of this story from Duncan. After asking for directions from several people who didn't have any idea where my hotel was. I finally found another runner who knew where it was and pointed me in the right direction. Or at least I thought it was the right direction, I somehow ended up running in a circle from there and ran into the same runner about 40 minutes later. Thankfully, he saw me asking someone else for help, ran over, patted me on the back and ran with me all the way back to the hotel. That guy gets massive training karma points for that because I'm not sure how long it would've taken me to find someone else who knew where this hotel is. I wasn't too worried as I don't have a real agenda for today, but still not the greatest feeling to be lost in a foreign country, especially when you know about 3 words of their language, and you've already ran about 18 miles without water, not my brightest moment, but huge thank you to that guy whoever you are! So, my run ended up being a little longer than anticipated, but I felt pretty good.

I'll be in Weiden for a NATO exercise this week and will head to Amsterdam a week from today for meetings on Monday, then fly home Tuesday, drive to Vermont Wednesday and stay there for a few days for a wedding after which I'm going to take a long nap...like a 3-day nap...

12 year olds throwing curveballs and oven doors...

I honestly think that ESPN is being irresponsible by not addressing the simple fact that kids should NOT be throwing curveballs until they are finished growing. I cannot overstate this. I don't know much about much, but I do have some experience in baseball, and I can tell you unequivocally that the most irresponsible thing that parents can do for their "future derek jeter" is allow him to throw a curveball before he can drive. When I was coaching modified baseball (13 and 14 year-olds), breaking balls were outlawed. I had several arguments with parents about this. I basically had to break it down for them...I actually drew a picture for one parent... Until your done growing, trying to throw them leads to shoulder problems, plain and simple...If you want to do your son a favor, teach him to throw a change-up, it's much more effective pitch to begin with, even at the big-league level.

Ok, now that I got that rant out of my system - I made my debut at the oven door run yesterday. I've heard for years about the "door" from one of my co-workers Dave (who I run with frequently on our lunch break), but had never shown up for it. It's basically the runner's version of the latte ride, essentially an unofficial race/group hammerfest. The run meets at 630am every saturday and does one of a few different loops every week. Yesterday we did the "classic linear park" loop. It was a relatively tame pace for about 3 minutes, then someone decided it shouldn't be, that someone happened to be a guy I know well from skiing...and after about the 3rd half mile clip, that the aforementioned Dave, threw in at a 5 minute/mile pace, I realized this was going to be a tough one, I managed to hang one for the bronze medal in the oven-door-lympics, but it was super tough...it was a great workout and given that I'm doing a half marathon next month, and want to have a good one there, this is the type of workout I needed.

This was my last weekend in Rochester until late September, but I will say, it was such an amazing weekend. I am definitely looking forward to some of the adventures to come, but I will miss home.

7 days - 1 baby, 1 wedding, 1 weekend-long going away party...

The items listed in the subject of this post have all happened since my last post...and some work a lot of training and an awful lot of humidity, but other than that, it was a pretty normal week...all of these events are worthy of their own entry, but since they all happened in such rapid succession, they'll have to be combined...

First, two weekends ago was a going away party/30th birthday party for my buddy Kevin. He's moving to the UAE later this month and turns 30 in September (about 3 weeks after I do). There were several events all day on Friday and Saturday, of which I participated in most. I think this was my 4th or 5th 30th birthday part that I've been to and all of them were pretty heavy weekends all around. This one was no different, especially when you factor in that Kevin is also moving to the Middle East for a couple years. I'm lucky in that I'll still be able to see him pretty frequently because of work, however, many of his close friends and family won't see him much more than once a year for the next couple years. I will say that I think everyone gave him a great send-off.

On to last Thursday. My sister-in-law Sueann gave birth to their 3rd child (2nd daughter), Megan Elizabeth. Here are a couple pictures.

Aunt Nancy

Keith and Megan

The day after visiting Megan in the hospital, we went to Kate's wedding. Kate was one of Nancy's bridesmaids in our wedding and one of her closest friends. She's also really into biking and a lot of other outdoor activities. Below are some pictures of the wedding.

Kate and JT.
Kate and her father. Not going to lie, the kilt was a pretty cool touch.
Kate and Nancy.

Since I got back from Georgia, I've managed to string together a few solid weeks of volume training doing all types of stuff - lots of running and roller skiing, but also some mountain biking (still a trainwreck) and road biking, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. I've got nothing going on this weekend coming up which will be really strange. I am planning on doing a 5k running race on Saturday and get in some other training through the weekend. I'm also trying to put some plans in place to ski (that's right, ski, on snow) on my 30th birthday in a few weeks, we'll see how that materializes. So, plenty of good stuff coming up.

Pictures from Georgia

I haven't had much of a chance to update this site recently. Literally been on the go since July 2nd. I've been all over the place recently, but all things considered, things have gone very well. I was in Georgia last week and arrived home late Saturday.

My role at work has changed, so I took the replacement for my old role in Georgia (Jim) with me to introduce him to everyone. Since I took over Kevin's role in Georgia, every customer meeting started with Temuri saying the following - "Marty is the new Kevin, Kevin is the new Marty". Ok, now we can begin. This was Jim's first time in Tbilisi, and I have to say, he fit right in. Below are some pictures.

That's Jim standing up and digging into a traditional Georgian feast.
...and you can't come to Georgia and not give Cha-Cha a try, first shot documented here.
This is the old church on top of the hill over looking Mskete (the old capital). This church was build around 600 AD.
View from the church.
View from the other side of the church. There are mountains everywhere.
This is the major river that flows from the Black Sea to all the way to the Caspian Sea. It goes through downtown Tbilisi.
Another shot of the church.
Our old friend Bata opened a new pub near the hotel where we ate twice during our stay, here's a shot of Jim and Irakli in front of "Gold Time". Nice place, I have a feeling we'll be back there soon.

I'm in town for the next few weeks, but things are still pretty hectic...hopefully I'll be able to update again soon, more big stuff coming up later this summer and fall...

still a terrible golfer, still have awesome friends

This weekend was Knodel's bachelor party. We ended up renting a house down in Ellicottville, NY, played some golf and had a more than a few beers in the woods. It was pretty awesome to catch up with so many old friends. It's amazing how, even though most of us don't see each other nearly enough, there's nothing but big hugs and serious hi-fives everytime we do see each other. Here are a few pics.

Here's the man of the hour. So pumped for Matt and very honored to be involved in the wedding!

Drew and Doogie showed up late, but we still decided to fire up the grill for them once they arrived.
Doogie on the left, John on the right. Pretty psyched that Doogie moved back from LA to Buffalo, not that psyched that John's pretty much naturalizing in Canada, but, it also doesn't suck to have a place to crash in Toronto if needed.
left to right - Knodel, Colin, Jamie, and Jim P...other than the Mets hat, that's a great pic.
This was a shot of our "neighbor" for the weekend. The confederate flag was the tip of the iceberg on the sketchiness of this set up, but there weren't any encounters. George actually sprinted through this cornfield in 1 minute 20 seconds...which cost a few of us a few bucks, but was worth it in my opinion...

I also hit up England and Holland and went to a wedding in the last week. I ran into a bunch of old teammates (high school) at the wedding and everyone I ran into fell into the "I wish I kept in contact with (insert name here)" category, so that was really great. Overall life is more hectic than usual but so much to be thankful and excited about.

Buckle up and hang on tight

Here's my itinerary for the next 3 weeks - London, UK (1 day), Amersfoort, Netherlands (2 days), Rochester (15 hours), Ellicotville (2 days), Rochester (1 day), Verona, NY (2 days), Rochester (1 day), Poconos (2 days), Rochester (15 hours), Tbilisi, Georgia (4 days)....

This might seem like a pretty random list of places to go. It's a combination of work and personal travel. I also started a new job at work and will be responsible for a slightly different list of countries from what I'd been handling. I will still be headed to Georgia (more frequently than before), but will now have responsibility for a few other countries in Europe that I haven't traveled much too including Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

I'll try to update frequently as I'm sure this will be an adventure.