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Sunday, December 21, 2008

Ski Trip 2008

Ok, so I've been saying that I am going to try to be more like Amanda and my sister and start using pictures in my posts more often. Since I uploaded my last batch of pics to Facebook, I will just like those directly and see how that works. We'll try out some of my other picture hosting sites as the need comes.

I don't know how detailed of a post I can really create considering how much went on over the past week. I could detail it, but most of if would be pretty inane to read over so I will try to keep to the high points and let the pics do a little more of the talking.

So the snow...

We had tons of it! By far the most snow we have ever gotten on a ski trip. I forgot the exact final tally, but we got over 40 inches of snow during the week we were there. 40 frickin' inches!!! It was awesome. Some of it was the kind that had big dry flakes and there was little wind so it just stuck to everything. Some of the bare trees looked like coral because every little branch was covered. It was awesome!

I also started to get a little more comfortable with the rails this year. Typically I just hit the flat boxes (like below) because they have a wide stable platform and aren't really that tricky.

This year I started to branch out a little bit. I still didn't hit any of the really narrow metal rails, but they had some cool "rails" that were basically bent over trees, and a couple of rainbow boxes (like below) that were pretty fun to hit. I landed what was basically a 270 off one little jump and started having a little more fun trying different things over the rails instead of just hitting them and hoping I don't die. haha

I was pretty stoked because, though I had been talking about it for the past few years, I actually demo'd some new boards since mine was about 9 years old. It is a huge board that is perfect for big steep powder runs, but not really suited for doing any kind of tricks or terrain park kinds of things. So I demo'd three different boards and ended up loving the first one they gave me. So I actually ended up snagging it and it was so much fun and perfectly suited for hitting the parks a little more. I love it and can't wait to give it a little more exercise when I go out to Breckenridge in January.

Another super duper exciting thing about this trip was that it was the first time that MC had ever been skiing!! We got her a lesson on the first morning and then I tried to give her a little lesson the next day, but snowboarders don't make the best ski instructors. ;-) Didn't help that I've probably skied once in the last 11 years! So dad gave her some more pointers and she did absolutely awesome.

She improved so much over the week and it was so much fun having her there with everyone. We've brought friends and significant others on our ski trips in the past, but this one was by far the best. So much fun! Lauren and her even got to build a super snazzy gingerbread house. Apparently, MC has wanted to build one for years but never got a chance to. Glad we could help out!!

Now we still have to build a snowman and go ice skating, so I guess it is good to leave a few things to be done in future trips. ;-) It was also cool that my Aunt Janice (Dad's sister) got to come along. We only lost her once and she seemed to have a lot of fun as well. I also kept with my postcard writing. Hopefully no one got left out (when you are writing 30 postcards it's easy to get a little discombobulated!) and I hope they travel quickly! I also added another postcard to my collection where I get someone from the destination of my vacation to sign it. Since I was in and out of the snowboard shop (forgot to mention that I also got a kick ass plaid travel bag since my existing snowboard bag had a huge rip in it) I got the guy who actually picked out the board that I ended up buying to sign it. And my collection grows!!

Well, hopefully the new style of embedding pictures will continue and make this a little more entertaining to read. It has been a long day of traveling, so I think I am going to pack things in and hit the sack. If anything doesn't work or looks crappy or odd with the addition of the pictures, leave me a comment and let me know so I can try to get a hang of the best way to do this.

** EDIT **
I forgot yet another unique experience associated with the trip! Lauren, MC and I decided to take the shuttle and bus to get to Radio Shack (instead of dad driving us down in the rental car) to try to get her phone fixed. We took the shuttle to the main Avon station, then hopped on the bus. Not too long after we were on the bus, I was talking about my trip on the bus in Breckenridge my freshman year spring break. We were taking it to the grocery store and we heard a loud noise and the driver asked us what it was. I told him it sounded like he blew a tire, and sure enough he did. Anyway, right after I told the story, our bus stopped, then jumped a little...

We had stopped coming out of a round-a-bout and we think the guy was looking to see if it was clear to merge and didn't notice that we had stopped and totally rear-ended our bus. We sat there for a few minutes waiting for a new bus to come pick us up, then the driver said that we were like a block from where we were trying to go so we just hopped out, braved the snowstorm, and walked the rest of the way. Catching the bus to get home was fine, but it was definitely an interesting experience to get in a wreck while riding the bus.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Turkey Trot 5k

A brisk (low 30s) 5k in Johnson City. It was pretty jam packed with people and we accidentally started a little far back in the pack so our actual time is probably 30-45 seconds faster than chip time. Lauren decided to take it easy and run with mom and me so it was a fun time to run all together. Hadn't really been running much lately, but I was happy with how my legs felt. Mostly got slowed down by a lot of nasal drainage due to a stuffy nose and the cold weather.

30:55

Mom - 30:55

Lauren - 30:55

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Team Gey 5k

It was kinda chilly and MC and I had been kinda sick, not trained, and enjoyed ourselves the night before so we took it pretty easy. It was for a good cause and was fun and we actually walked most of the time, but I figured I would throw it on here anyhoo. Hopefully we'll be a little more prepared next year :-)

~45:00

MC - ~45:00

Friday, October 17, 2008

I Run For The Party - Halloween 5k

Nice and cool evening race in Nashville. It was MC's first race, and she picked a good one! Almost everyone was in costume so it livened things up a bit and made for some more interesting scenery. I stayed with MC the whole race and mom and lauren ran ahead a little bit. We definitely were out to "run for the party" and weren't going for a snazzy time. MC did awesome for her first race and we all had a lot of fun! I'm going to go ahead and log our chip time, even though we could probably subtract 20 seconds since it took about that long to actually cross the start line because of the crowd.

35:08

MC - 35:07

Mom - 33:20

Lauren - 32:26

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Eastman Road Race - 3k

While I was home for Matt's Bachelor Party, mom and I decided it would be fun to try to throw in a race. Matt and his friend Dan actually joined us as well, which was fun. Considering I had a bit of a rough night the night before and haven't been running, I was actually pretty pleased with how well we did. Hopefully we can coordinate some more races soon!!

17:49

Mom - 17:48

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Muddy Buddy

Cool race that Michelle heard about and thought I would be interested in. We were gonna do the one in Orlando, but it sold out so we did the one in Atlanta. Not sure exactly how long the Atlanta course was, but it was 6-7 miles with 4 obstacles and a mud pit at the end. I started biking so I did 3 legs of biking and two of running while Keith did 3 running and 2 biking. It was a pretty hilly course, and it was rainy so it was a little slicker than normal, but it was a lot of fun. Definitely need to train a little harder if I'm going to do it again though, haha. Obstacles were a balance beam, over-under, 6 foot climbing wall, 15 foot rope mesh with slide, then of course the mud pit at the end. Finished 16th out of 50 teams so overall we were pretty happy with our results. Keith only had to wait for me a little at the very end so I was pretty stoked about that. Definitely would like to look into doing it again some time.

42:20.8

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Tails and Trails 5k+

Mom was in town so we got to actually run a race together. Haven't been able to run many together so it was nice to get to do one. This was mostly a trail run, which was pretty cool. Got stuck behind some people a couple times, but it probably helped us pace better. Weather was pretty nice too. The last section of the race was a brutal uphill, but I heard that the + made it around 3.5 miles so considering, our time was actually pretty good.

32:22

Mom - 32:35