My Winter Has Started

I finally got out on my sweet Icelantic Nomads.  It has been exactly 7 months and 5 days since I was last on these bad boys, and man it was sure nice.  As the snow was falling in huge flakes Sunday night, Christian and I hatched our plan to skirt our work for the day and head out to get some video footage and just get out for some preseason powder.  I will admit that I had a hard time falling asleep because I had the "Christmas Eve" jitters as I couldn't wait for the morning to come.

Christian and I decided not to get out there until the skies had cleared and we had good light for filming.  That meant we wouldn't even hit the trail head until closer to 10:00 am.  This was a nice change of pace as Christian usually likes to meet at his place around the wonderful hour of 6:00 am.

The day was great with beautiful bluebird skies and a foot of 5% Utah blower powder on a minimal snowpack of unconsolidated snow.  Christian did his usual "skirt the main path" routine and we ended up getting a little bushwhacking in.  Nothing like climbing through a tough thicket first day out to get you ready for a full season.

Now the skinning, on the other hand, kicked my butt as I haven't done any cardio in close to 2 months.  I knew that'd be the case, so I just pushed on.

I had a couple of good face shots and Christian had some sweet powder bursts. The snow, was great. All the hidden shark tooths, ie rocks, weren't.  I seemed to hit a rock on every turn and that sucked.  Fortunately my Nomads held up to the "Wasatch Tune" I gave them.  I did hit a pretty good rock right when I started a turn going at a decent speed and ended up face planting.  Luckily I didn't hit my face on hidden rocks. And for you, luckily we caught it on tape.

Look for my season goals and my first skiing video edit to come out in the next day or two.  For now, here are some pics:

Christian a.k.a "The Dude" now resorting to bushwhacking after deadending us

Traci, The Dude's cool wife

 Looking up at Flagstaff

Me setting up the camera with a nice sun flare

Wolverine Cirque in the Background

The Real Man

Every once in a while I feel that I need to remind myself, as well as those around me, what a real man is and what he should look like.  To become a real man, it takes much time, dedication, and discipline.  For me it took about 3 weeks.

You might be wondering what standard I have become and now I'll show you.

The Real Man "Cool Man" Look

The Real Man "Excited" Look

Joey's Wedding

I know that I've slacked on this so I'll give you a little blurp on the most ridiculous, fun, exciting, touching, joyful, crazy, humorous, and out of control weekend.

That's pretty much it; I don't know how to describe it any better than that.

No really, I enjoyed being home with my second family. I've missed the Kraemers and this was a great weekend being together. I was so honored to be in Joey's wedding party. We definitely rocked the house, were loud, obnoxious, and joyous. I really can't detail how much fun we had.

Here's some pics

Marjean and Me

















Greg's wife Jess, Greg, Me, Sara, Ally, and Sara after Rehearsal















Getting the boys ready
















My wedding party counterpart and me exiting

Let the party begin







Jeremy at the end of the night

Black Diamond Gear Swap

I love this event; Not only do I get to find some good buys of things I "need" for ski season, unload my gear and come home with some money, but I get to feel the electricity in the air of winter being right around the corner.

I didn't take much to the gear swap this year since I don't have much to sell, but I didn't come home with much either. You see, I've learned to curb my gear purchasing, mainly due to the fact that I have 95% of the things I need and haven't been purchasing much recently...... of course I know you're all sitting their thinking "yeah right." Trust me, that 5% is a lot of items.

Since I saved Christian a spot last year, he was supposed to get there earlier than me and grab a spot. Yeah that didn't happen. I arrived about 6:20 and the place was already half full. I managed to grab spots for Christian and Scotty V, the Icelantic Ski Team Manager. We had our own little party section.

Winter is right around the corner. Yay!!


Christian rocking sweet handle bars and a sick mullet beanie

Bye Bye Birdies

So it finally happened: Marek and Seth got rid of Jackson and Bentley. These were their two African Grey Parrots that I've grown to love. Unfortunately with having a small almost year old baby crawling around, Seth and Marek didn't want to risk Scout crawling into the bird room and accidentally getting bit. You see the birds were very curious yet scared of Scout and would get defensive if she was around.

Yes I am sad and it's just not the same around here anymore. Here are a few pics for my memory.

Bentley


Jackson


Bentley 'n' Me



Bentley


Bentley and Jackson going at it - Bentley tells her off

Let's Go Shootin'

After all the fun at work with the Flybar pogo stick, Travis, Chris, and I travelled to Travis' father-in-law's place to let out some stress and have fun shooting. We, more like they, brought a decent arsenal of all types and calibers. We did everything from rapid fire close quarters, off-hand rifle distance shooting, to 150 through 300 yard shots.

You can really tell that Travis has spent a lot of time here as he is deadly fast and accurate with his .40 S&W. I really enjoyed shooting Chris' .45 LC pistol and carbine. You gotta love cowboy guns.

It was a really good time with some buddies that I've come to enjoy and am sad to see be let go from the company. That's one thing that I've come to not enjoy with working in the government contractor's world.

Gotta Love Handguns


Chris enjoying the awesome handgun target setup


Chris getting sharp


Taking Travis by surprise

Pogo Stick on Steroids

If there's one thing I like about my generation and those just a little bit older than me is that we love to bring things back from our childhood, but when we do bring it back we take it one step further.

Let's take pogo sticks for instance. They were cool back in the day (probably everyone's childhood) but they lacked the "takin' it to the next level" capability. Well some genius had the idea to make a pogo stick out of stronger materials, add 12 more springs to the equation, and call it the Flybar. This thing can actually propel you over 7 feet high if you know what you're doing. Paul actually bought one of these $200 plus items and we convinced him to bring it into work. Let's just say that we weren't too talented with it and "barely" missed the 7 foot mark. Here's a few shots:

"What?!! I'm only a foot high?!"


"How about now? Huh?!?! Still the same? Watch this!"


"Wow that was close. I'm done!"


Paul banging his knee getting on the thing.

This made me feel better

So today I got some bad and saddening news. My last living grandmother passed away after the post-op "safe period." I received a call from my father as I was getting ready for work. As I never get calls that early from him, I knew something was up. Even though I hadn't seen my grandparents in a few years, the news and details of it put me on an off key for the day.

But I found these videos on a forum thread in this order and it just made me laugh and feel better. Enjoy.

Watch how far his goggles fly


I laughed probably for 2 minutes staright while replaying this over and over


This is what you get for sporting no beaning, sunglasses, and tight gear on a cold day




And this was just icing on the cake

Fun at the Jibyard

I was a little bored today after doing some garden setup with Seth, so when the call came requesting me to try out the Jibyard, I went without any hesitation. The Jibyard is a indoor rail park with rollers and plastic carpet. The handheld video will help you understand what I'm talking about.





Here's a video of a kid there so you can see the big picture.



Oh one more thing: I've moved out of the ghetto condos and moved in with Seth, Marek, and Scout. Once I get a dresser and finish putting the last of everything away, I'll give you a view of my new place.

My New Classy Look

I realized that it was time to fit in more with my work environment. The Air Force has a pretty stringent requirement on hair. I decided that I need to have that "classy" look to maintain the necessary relationship with my customers.

It's time to keep it high and tight.


Still looking high speed-low drag.


What is that? Is that a mull.......


Ah yeah!! That is a really sexy mullet!!!


Business in the front, party in the back. That's right I decided to get a mullet, a business mullet. It needs to be a business mullet to stay classy.