Home Alone

Well, the family has left me alone in Park City for a couple of weeks. Colleen and the kids headed to New York for a couple of weeks. Dekker has an appointment with a specialist in Manhattan and then they will head up to Long Island to play on the beach with their cousins in Southampton.
I'm hoping Colleen will send some photos to keep me and you up to date on what they are up to. Colleen's uncle Cub is a member at Shinnecock. It would be great to get some photos of Dekker polishing up his golf skills at one of the classic golf courses.
So unfortunately most of the posts for the next couple of weeks will be mostly of what Braeden and I are up to. I'm getting ready for the Tour of Utah (and working). It starts in 2.5 weeks. I've got the weight down and just hope to keep the power up. I raced on Saturday and felt below average, but finished 7th. Three of the local pros schooled us. I was able to stay with them for the first 50 miles or so. But today, I rode 100+ miles (5+ hours)and felt great. The funny thing about endurance sports is you can feel absolutely horrible one day and the very next day feel great. I refer to the bad day as "blowing the carbons out." The next day the engine is in great shape. After the big ride, I ate a big burrito, took Braeden for a swim in Deer Valley and got in 18 holes of golf. I'd call that a full day. Plus the Tigers won (and avoided a sweep), so that was good. Funny story about the swim. There are a ton of trout in the lake. Braeden was swimming back to the shore and a fish jumped right next to his head while he was swimming. I actually saw the airborne fish. It scared the shit out of Braeden and he booked it out of the water and acted like the fish was holding on to his tail. It was probably one of those "you had to be there" stories, but funny as hell. Speaking of fishing, Utah fisherman got a huge victory this week. The Utah Supreme Court voted that Utah river bottoms are public domain. The West is big on property rights and up until then you could float on the water, but the river bed was part of private property. With the ruling, the river bottom is now public property and is now fishable. The river banks are private property (when not on totally public lands), but you can access the rivers from public lands. Seems small and insignificant, but it just double the amount of fishing in Utah. And now, I can fish the river that runs through the golf course if I want. The East Canyon Creek behind our house runs almost 100% through private land. So that opens up a whole river in my backyard to fish. Now I just have to learn how to catch a fish. Still working on that...

Another weekend

Another weekend came and went. On Friday night, I flew up to Boise, Idaho for the Wells Fargo Twilight Criterium. This is one of my favorite bike races. It is a national race and alot of the top pro teams show up for it. 15,000+ people line the course in Downtown Boise. We race for a fair amount of money and then all the bike racers hit the bars. For a guy who is usually in bed at 10pm, the night is a bit of a shock to the system. The race starts at 8:30pm and finishes around 10:00pm. With an 33+mph average for 90 minutes the body is wide awake for quite awhile after wards. So we all hit the bar. I was the old guy in the crowd and bailed a little after 2am. The younger racers decided to stay up until their flights left around 6am. I finished a disappointing 24th in the race and only made $100. It was a bit of a bummer, but still a good time.
The family met me at the airport at 9am in SLC and we headed to the Blue Plate Diner (see earlier post)for breakfast and then to the zoo. The Drive In's, Diners and Dive episode featuring the Blue Plate just happened to be on the Food Network last night.
Dekker and Colleen went to the pool. Haydenne and I took an afternoon nap. I needed it!

One cool thing to report, concerning the high gas prices. I've been commuting to work on my bike almost every morning and I just missed going a month on 1 tank of gas. I made it 28 days without having to go to the gas station. Felt pretty good.

DINOSAURS's

I took the kids down to Thanksgiving Point which has the world's largest collection of dinosaur bones. Utah is a great place to live if you like Dinosaurs, since there are so many dinosaur quarries in the state. Dekker is definitely into the dinosaur phase. We must have been to this museaum 20 times now. He can identify not only the easy ones like T-rex and Triceratops, but he also identifies and pronounces correctly, dinosaurs such a Pachycephalosaurus and Psittacosaurus. For some reason, he is terrified of the giant sea turtle, but I think it excites him as well. He wants to close his eyes as he goes by the turtle, but wants to go back several times to see the turtle. Here are some photos of Haydenne with the Sea Turtle and Dekker underneth Utahraptor and the two of them under stegasaurus.

I take the kids myself and it gives Colleen a few hours to get some well deserved rest. So I decided to take the long way home up and over Big Cottonwood Canyon. I like the long way home..
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Busy, Busy Day!!

Today was a pretty busy day. I woke up at 5:30am, met up with a friends 16 yr old son to ride from Park City to SLC to do the Big Cottonwood Hillclimb. BC is 14 miles and climbs 3500 vertical feet. It hurts. We did it in an hour.
After I got home a mere 4.5 hours later, we got the gang together to go to the Utah Olympic Park. In the summer they have a Freestyle Show on Saturdays that features past, present and future Ski Team/Olympic team members jumping off the inverted jumps into a pool. There is also a museum featuring the 2002 Olympics and history of skiing in Utah. Here are some photos of Dekker in the bobsled and luge and a video of the jumping. Haydenne fell as sleep on the way over and spent the time at the Olympic Park sleeping in the stroller.

After the Olympic Park, we hit the Park City pool for about an hour and then got ready for the Deer Valley Concert Series. Tonight was Marc Cohen (of "Walking in Memphis" fame) and Aimee Mann (of 'til Tuesday "Voices Carry" fame). Aimee Mann was a bit lame and didn't even playing the ONE song everyone knows. She even did an encore and everyone thought it was going to be "Voices Carry" and it was just another lame song. Not that I love the song, but it's the only one anyone knows. For god's sake play the damn song. Marc Cohen was much better, but again we wanted to hear the ONE song we knew. "Walking in Memphis" is a great song. Of course, we didn't hear it until we leave. It got pretty cold and late and time to get the kids home. We hadn't even left the base area and we hear the first chords. We sat on a chair lift at the base of Deer Valley and listened to the song.
Deer Valley is a great place to hear music. We show Keb Mo and Bonnie Raitt last year. And believe it or not, I've been to TWO operas there with the Utah Symphony (work related).
You can pack in all the food and beer and wine you want. If you think Utah is dry, just come up to a Park City concert. Booze and wine fest. It's great. I'm beat and need to go to sleep.

Ted's home and doing well.

I spoke to my dad yesterday and he is doing well. The surgery was a success. I think I'm on to something here with my golf theory. In the recovery room, he said he now has an excuse for his poor golf play.
He will be home today ..probably has an afternoon tee time!

Good Luck Ted!

Send you best wishes my dad's way. Ted woke up Wednesday in alot of pain. After a series of tests and a bunch of morphine, it was determined his Gall Bladder is useless. I spoke with my mom and they are taking him into surgery to remove his Gall Bladder. The doctor says it's pretty common and routine. We hope so.
I spoke with him this morning and he was talking about the weather and his golf game, so I'm taking that as a good sign. Maybe the weight of his Gall Bladder was throwing off his balance and causing him to slice the golf ball. I wonder if this is just a crazy way to improve his golf game. Look at the photo below, I think the weight of his Gall Bladder is causing him to list to the right.
With the Gall Bladder gone, he may now be in perfect balance and on his way to scratch golf.
I always thought humor was great medicine.

We got TP'd!!!!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: WE GOT $%#@ing TP'd LAST NIGHT.

Braeden woke us all up in the middle of the night barking. That's not unusual as he barks alot at night, especially at the old house, when he could go out and bark at the deer and moose in the middle of the night.

I woke up this morning and there was toilet paper all over our yard. Lucky we don't have those big oak trees like back east. Just as I started to assess the problem, the sprinklers went on. Perfect!! So, that's what I have to look forward to tonight.
What's up with that anyways? If the kids were in their teens, I can understand. Have I become the grumpy old guy on the the block in just a couple of short months?? Damn Kids!!! At least they don't have Devil's Night out here (That's an official Detroit holiday.)

Also, I should point out that I'm 134 lbs on purpose. My mom read the post and thought something was wrong with me (tapeworm, dysentary, no money/food,etc). I'm just fine. The lighter you are the faster you ride up hill. The downside is that I am not an attractive man anymore, especially poolside. Bald, big ears, farmers tan and protruding ribs don't make for a pretty picture.

4th of July Weekend

The 4th of July was a nice weekend for the family. On the Fourth, PC has a great parade. Over 15,000 people line the streets of Park City for the parade. The town only has a population of around 7,000. It started out with some F-18's from Hill AF Base doing a flyover. Dekker got a kick out of that and kept looking up in the air for more. The parade is alot of fun. It's a bit small town parade, a bit funky and definitely has the ski town feel. We did a little swimming afterwords and finished it up with some golf and a BBQ at the house. Click on photos to enlarge

8 year Anniversary!!

It's been 8 years today since Colleen and I got married on that beautiful day on the side of a mountain in Telluride.

That's not us, but that's the spot we got married. Our marriage pre-dates the digital camera.