Please let us know if this works...

A week ago Saturday, I left for Georgia for a few days of meetings. It was the usual type of stuff there - long, drawn-out meetings that are as organized and coherent as a herd of cats, followed by long dinners with many, surprisingly concise, coherent toasts, followed by not nearly enough sleep, hopefully a workout, then rinse and repeat. It was a good few days though and we got a lot accomplished.

Thursday morning, bright and early, I headed to the airport and flew to Vienna, rented a car (my first time driving in continental Europe) and drove to a trade show in Brno, Czech Republic. As this was my first time driving in Europe, and the signs aren't in English in either Czech of Austria, I made sure the rental car company gave me a GPS. Upon receiving the GPS device, the rental car representative said the following to me (believe me, not making this up) - "You're the first person to rent this model, so we're really interested to know if it works." Hmmm....well, if I end up lost in rural Slovakia, I'll be sure to give you some good constructive feedback. More on that later...

I made it to Brno without a hitch. Driving across the border was a total non-event, it's more of a production to drive across the New York, Pennsylvania border. The "Welcome to Czech" sign was smaller than the "Welcome To Osceola" sign in the Tug Hill. Overall, it was pretty underwhelming. Brno was a cool looking city, even though I was only there for a day and spent most of it working. Our local partner there, took us to dinner Thursday night at a touristy, medieval restaurant where we had some good Czech beer and ate some BBQ ribs. The ribs weren't much to write home about, I'll stick to Dinosaur, but the beer was all Czech beer is cracked up to be.

Back to the GPS...the following day after spending all day at the trade show, then breaking down the booth and packing up our equipment to ship back, I drove back to Vienna. I was supposed to stay at a hotel near the airport (our travel department told me it was within a mile or two of the airport), then fly home the next day. My GPS couldn't find the hotel name, but did find the street address, so I plugged it in and started the 1.5 hour drive back to Vienna. Once I got into Vienna, Mr. GPS started taking me through downtown Vienna, lots of traffic, strange traffic patterns and a stop light every 35 feet or so. Having never been to Vienna, I didn't really have much of a choice. Anyways, after about 45 minutes of stop and go traffic, I arrive at my destination...only it's a random house, not a hotel and I'm in a residential neighborhood, no hotels even close. So, I type in the airport in as my new destination, it's gotta be close, right?...recalculating...estimated 40 minute drive away, WTF??? I'VE HAVEN'T GOTTEN A DECENT NIGHT OF SLEEP IN 7 DAYS, FEEL LIKE CRAP, HAVE ALREADY BEEN DRIVING FOR 2.5 HOURS, AND I HAVE TO DRIVE 40 MINUTES BACK THROUGH ALL THAT STOP AND GO BS!! I'm not sure if I actually said that out loud or not, but I was pretty close to a total meltdown...anyways, I drove back to the airport and couldn't find my hotel after a lap around the airport. I do a "Close Hotel" search on my trusty GPS, find a hotel by the same name as mine 5 miles away, not too bad, not 1 mile, but whatever, I just need to get some food and sleep and everything will be ok...drive to hotel, which takes about 20 minutes with traffic, park in ramp garage, lug all my stuff up to the front desk...Sir, you're at the wrong hotel, you're hotel is by the airport....AHHHHHHHHHHH...lug all my stuff back to the car, drive back to the airport and finally find my hotel. It turns out, it's not only on the airport's complex, it's the very first thing you see when you exit the arrivals hall in Vienna, the walk from the rental car drop-off to the terminal was longer than the walk from the hotel. All in all, the GPS and my own stupidity turned a 1.5 hour drive into a 4 hour drive...morale was not high at this point...

Adding to my morale issues is that I picked up some type of bug somewhere along the way that hit me pretty hard Friday, which also made the trans-atlantic flight home the next day not exactly one to remember, but I made it home and the worst seems to be over. I'm already to the point where I can look back on this trip and remember a lot of really positive experiences and not the lovely Hertz agent that asked me how the GPS worked out for me.

New stuff...

I finally broke down and added a mountain bike to my collection of training tools (they're actually toys, but "training tools" sounds more legit). For several years now, friends of mine have been telling me that I would love mountain biking and couldn't believe that I didn't have one. So, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered this bad boy through our bike shop sponsor Towpath Bike.

Based on my first two rides, that's the last time in this bike's life that it'll look that clean, but that's the point. My second ride was quite the trial by fire, I went with three other experienced riders, two of them (Jason and Duncan) I've skied and road biked quite a bit with and they assured me that the ride we were set to do was tough, but wasn't super-technical, meaning, you'll be going up and down a lot of really big hills, but you won't be riding over logs, through creeks and through narrow single track with big trees on both sides of you. That might have been the original plan, but Duncan's friend Andy came as well and called an audible. Instead of the previously planned route, we ended up going to Stid Hill. The first thing we did after entering park was ride through a creek, which I got about halfway through, panicked, stopped pedaling and promptly fell over. After about an hour of trying to keep up with these guys, but also continuously falling off, coming unclipped, or having to run with my bike because there were too many "obstacles" in the way, Jason finally came clean that this particular route was as technically hard as any single track area around here. So, that made me feel a little better, because up until that point, I was struggling to stay on the bike at all! All three of the guys were extremely patient and helpful and by the end of the 3+ hour ride, I feel like I was monumentally better than when we started and had a blast. I still have a ways to go to really improve, but it was a great time and I am very excited to now have this option for days when the weather might be suspect or when I just don't feel like eating the constant wind that you're exposed to road-riding in this area. Additionally, it seems to be a killer tough workout almost all the time, especially on trails like we rode on Sunday, you are constantly working your entire body just to keep the thing upright.

On a different note, I'm headed to Georgia tomorrow and may end up going to Czech Republic as well during this trip, which will be a first for me in that country. Should be an interesting adventure...

This is absurd

Last night I helped out at a little league practice (9-10 year olds) for a team that a friend of mine coaches. I worked with the pitchers and catchers and overall it was a lot of fun and great to be around kids playing baseball. Sometimes, it's easy to forget how huge a portion of my life baseball was for so long. Anyways, we were forced to practice in a parking lot because the fields are still too wet to play on. They're too wet to play on because every day the temperature has gotten above 45 (about 3 days so far) it's been pouring rain with 35mph winds. Last night's practice was 40 degrees and very windy and the ridiculous part - that's the best weather that team has had to practice in so far this year, and that's April 21st (theoretically a month into Spring). It's difficult to teach 9 and 10 year olds how to catch when you have to spend 10 minutes re-adjusting the chest protector to fit over their SNOW SUIT. My former college baseball team has had 9 out of the last 10 games cancelled and basically will have to play 4-5 doubleheaders a week whenever the weather breaks (hopefully by June?).

I had a bike race on Sunday and Tuesday. Sunday's race didn't go great and Tuesday's race went really well, but in both cases, I finished the race colder than any ski race I've done in the last few years (other than maybe the Fischer Loppet 3 years ago when I made some unfortunate apparel choices). The 10 day forecast looks pretty dismal and I have still yet to go for a bike ride without 3 layers on top and bottom, and this is supposed to be my "summer sport". Tomorrow I'm racing in the Binghamton Circuit races and according to the weather forecast, I might be better off bringing a snorkel than my bike.

So, Mother Nature, you've shown us once again, you're the boss, now knock it off...April showers can't bring May flowers when if I'm still wearing a down jacket everywhere.

I would say this blog post could be filed among the "howling at the moon" category.

Let's do this!!

Last weekend, two things happened - I rode about 130 miles and spent about 8 hours cleaning, waxing and re-waxing my skis to put away for summer storage. I also cleaned up the make-shift wax room, which takes over about half of our attic for 5 months a year (the latter task was substantially worse than the former by the way).

The last few years I've noticed that there's usually about a 3-4 week period after my last ski race, where I am in denial about ski season being over and find it difficult to really get going biking or putting any type of structure into training for anything. I work out a lot, but typically don't put any thought or plan into what I'm doing. After spending all winter outside, all of a sudden, the thought of going for a bike ride in 30 degrees and windy weather, and dealing with numb fingers and the rush to get a dry shirt on after working out in the cold (do avoid getting sick) and everything else that goes along with the cold, seems like the worst idea ever.

Then after a few casual bike rides, and typically one or two with reasonably warm temperatures, it seems like a flip switches. I think that happened this past weekend. Saturday, I joined a bunch of my teammates on a 90 mile ride, including, for the first time this year, trying to go hard on a bike and really crank it up. My legs were thrashed, but the next morning, I had absolutely no hesitation in jumping on my bike and getting some more miles in. Mentally, ski season is finally over. That doesn't mean that I can't wait for November, but at the same time, I can look back on a great season for a variety of reasons, and be happy with it, and also look forward to the summer and biking.

Last night was the first GVCC Tuesday night race of the year and it took me about 5 minutes to try to attack off the front. It wasn't the best race, but I felt pretty good and it was good to get back in the action. This Sunday is the GVCC Bloomfield Classic, which is a tough course that also overlaps with my roller ski TT course. We'll see how it goes, but I'm definitely looking forward to pinning a race number back on and getting out there. The next couple months should make for some exciting races (and hopefully some decent results for my teammates and I).

Airplane food

Sometimes, when flying on foreign airlines, this type of thing is put in front of you...

Or this...
What is that thing in the bottom left? The menu said that this was a "Tapas plate". I think there may have been something lost in translation because I've never seen Tapas that look like this.

Sometimes I'm feeling adventurous and try everything...however this is also why I always carry Clif bars with me when I travel...

This isn't going to slow down, is it?

I think over the last two years I've been waiting for life to slow down, but I've come to the conclusion over the past few months, that maybe it's only going to get more hectic. The change in my mindset recently however, is that I'm not apprehensive or anxious about it, I'm looking forward to it.

I've learned a lot about myself over the last few years on many levels, but one of the more important things I've realized is that I can handle juggling a lot of seemingly unrelated things all at the same time. Even looking back on my college years when I was working, going to school and playing baseball, living life at 1000 miles an hour is something I'm good at and can excel at.

I'm currently typing this blog post from the business lounge in the Warsaw airport and have been on six flights in the last 7 days and have two to go today. I've been in Bucharest, Romania and Wroclaw and Warsaw, Poland, and the last five days have absolutely been like sipping water out of a fire hose. Downtime has been non-existent, but it was a successful trip. I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish on this trip and only had a few moments trip where I was struggling to keep my eyes open.

I am relatively sure that I've spent more nights living out of a suitcase than at home since I left for Vermont back in December. Although, there are still times that I have to remind myself that I signed up for all of this - both work and personal travel - and that I am very lucky to have all of the opportunities that I have, it seems more so recently, I have to do that reminding (or have Nancy remind me) less frequently. I am less anxious about what the next few months may bring and am focussed on making the most of wherever I am and whatever I'm doing...so, I guess, here's to living life like a headfirst slide into first base!!

More Utah Pictures

Here are some more pictures from my trip to Utah. Following the two days of Alpine skiing, I put my nordic skis back on for a couple days and actually went snowshoeing the last day we were there. Needless to say, I was physically exhausted when we got on the plane to come home, but it was an awesome trip and an awesome place in the world.

I skied at Alta one day, whose "nordic center" is sort of a joke, but they let me ski anywhere I wanted around the downhill skiers and didn't charge me anything. They basically just told me not to get on any lifts. Despite the trail system being non-existent, the surrounding mountains were pretty epic. It certainly beat doing laps around the north meadow at Mendon Ponds that's for sure.

Here's a picture of me with Solitude in the background. I dropped Jamie off for work (at Solitude) and headed up to Alta, which is about 2 miles further up the Little Cottonwood Canyon.

The following day, I went skiing at Soldier Hollow, which is where all the nordic events were held at the 2002 Olympics. The trails were great and it was about 50F out, so I was skiing in a t-shirt.

This is from the highest point on the course. The area is so wide open that you can almost always see the XC and biathlon stadiums. It was sort of like skiing in a huge bowl.
The last day we were in Utah, I went snow shoeing. We had initially planned on downhill skiing, but ran out of time. My legs were still thrashed from downhill skiing earlier in the week, so I wasn't heart broken. This picture was taken at Solitude.

Pretty awesome scenery, no doubt about that.

Left to right - Jamie, Kevin and I at a pub in downtown SLC.

I'm headed to Romania and Poland this week and am headed out for my first bike ride of the season in a few minutes, so I'm sure there will be plenty of new adventures to come soon enough.