Holy Cow am I a slacker!!!

So some of my friends have been giving me crap about needing to update this, and when I logged in today I was shocked to see it's been a month and a half since I've written! Sigh, too busy busy busy.
Sooooooo, what's happened since the last entry?

• A trip to Reno/Tahoe, where believe it or not I didn't even ski/board one day! Purpose: to visit two of my very good / best friends from Alaska and Australia that I hadn't seen in 3 years or so. Good times! Thai food, driving around Reno, snowy mountain roads in rural areas, poetry / wine / macaroni, etc. Awesome to see them. Long drive out from Utah in a blizzard with the dog, shorter drive back, in beautiful weather. :)
  

• Skeleton skeleton skeleton! I started out sliding about 2 - 3 times a week, and towards the end of the season (the season ended last week, sob) was up at the track sliding 5 days in a row! Talk about exhausting! Leaving for work at 7:30am, going straight from work to sliding, getting home at 9 or 10pm, days upon days upon days. But it was good; I've improved a lot!
• Brought my finish times down from close to a minute per run down to a personal best of 53.70 seconds,
• Brought my push time (the time it takes to push my sled from the start, load, and pass a timing eye 50 meters down the track) down from over 6 seconds down to a personal best of 5.5 seconds,
• Improved my speed - up from a max of about 70 mph in the beginning to a max of 76.8mph,
• Went from wearing downhill bike armor, snowpants, and a fleece down the track, to wearing minimal pads and a speedsuit (heh, I look funny either way),
• Became WAY better at steering - I'm now able to (often, not always) steer myself out of trouble, i.e. coming out of turn 6, if I'm going to smash the wall, can often steer enough that I either miss smashing or turn it into a minor hit (thus the wearing of less armor),
• Went to an orthoepedic specialist and had custom pads made, for my hands, feet (to protect the bunions from smashing my feet into the wall when I'm going sideways through low point - I have problems going through there), hips, and arms. Nice to have the extra hard protection,
• Learning sled maintenance, i.e. how to change runners, polish them, alter the weights in the sled, work with padding, balance points, etc.,
  
• Trying to work my budget to AFFORD a sled, which would be somewhere in the range of $2000 (really used) to $3500 (new), OUCH,
• Still don't have any pictures, though Maija and Elis took pics and video at the last race, so I should have some soon (hint hint if you read this, heh),
• Had a damn good time doing it. GRIN.

• Skeleton continued: Competition. Brad and I both raced in the Western Regionals Championships, which is a three-race series that determines who will go to Team trials next fall.
  
• There were 10 women and 11 men competing, with the top 8 in each going to either Team trials or America's Cup trials.
• Both of us were among the newest sliders, with me competing against women who had at a minimum a years advantage over me, Brad racing men with a miniimum of 2-3 years more experience.
  
• In my three races, I finished 9th, 8th, and 7th, improving each race. Yay!
  
• You can drop your worst race, which meant I ended up with an 8th and a 7th finish, so I'm going to trials, right? Nope! The other girls that I beat had some bad days and good days, and dropped some of the races where I beat them. Which ironically means that I finished 9th overall. Sigh, disappointing but that's okay, I should probably have another year of training before I go to trials. How cool would it have been though, to make it to trials in my first season! Oh well. ;)
  
• Brad had a similar experience, but was in a worse position due to his competitors. While there were a few women racing that I usually could beat, in the men's race, all the men that Brad usually beat decided not to race. One decided to be a forerunner, one went to Italy, one pretty much stopped sliding a few weeks before, one just didn't come. So, Brad was racing against former World Cup and America's Cup sliders, and development team sliders with 2-3 years more experience. He raced really well, but also placed 9th. Sigh. Also, he had sled troubles in two of the races, issues with the runners, so he was at a disadvantage as well, and STILL slid solid races. Grin, I'm so proud.
  
• Matt, a kid we slide with, finished 9th last season and didn't make it to trials, but this season he finished third. So.....there's promise for both of us!

• Other things happening - just work and work and work. Working for Summit County, getting a raise last week and another one next month (yay!), working for the Mustang restaurant (fun place to work since I like my coworkers, but the management/ownership is NOT pleasant to work with, I keep wanting to quit but really need the money, especially with skeleton expenses). And occasionally teaching snowboarding to the twins I taught last year. Took them to the Canyons last week, their first time riding there. They've come so far! From falling over every ten feet last year, to riding anything and anywhere they want this year, including jumps and powder and steeps and trees and.....

Okay, that's about all I have for you today. I'm heading off to Alaska next week for a few days, and then a work conference in Denver the following week. I'll try to do better at keeping this updated.

Oh, a cool blog, checkout Waiterrant , a cool blog Brad found. It's all about the perils of working in the restaurant industry - go back through the archives, there's some HILARIOUS stuff back there!