Spring Break Ski Trip

We spent Spring Break skiing Copper Mountain with Travis and his two sons. Despite some minor injuries, we had a great time. Read on for my summary, journal-style. Also, in case my account is too long and boring to get through, I’ll point out that there’s a pretty cool 90-second video at the end of the post.

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50 miles!

As of today’s swim, I have now swum 50 miles (50.77, actually) since I started with the Master Swim program at the beginning of August.

I really need to enter some triathlons next year. I did a few mini-triathlons a few years ago, but have only really done biking events for the last few years. Of course, I’ll need to get more serious about my running if I plan to do more triathlons.

Speaking of biking, Marci and I did the Wurst Ride this past weekend:

For this ride, we usually have my parents bring our kids down to Wurst Fest after the ride and get a ride back to the start with them. This year, however, we had other plans for the evening so we needed an alternate way back to the truck. I eventually realized that the short portion of the ride that we were doing was short enough that riding back to the truck was only a small stretch for me and I decided to do it. Marci rode back part of the way and I picked her up at the last/first rest stop. It worked out well.

I did another ride back at the beginning of October with Travis and his son:

Now it’s becoming winter, so nothing more ’til spring, probably.

Wurst Ride and Wurstfest

Last Saturday Marci, Travis and I participated in the Wurst Ride, a 100K ride from south Austin to New Braunfels. New Braunfels is the location of the annual Oktoberfest celebration, Wurstfest. For Marci and me, this was the third consecutive year to participate in this ride and it is one of my favorites.

Last year there was a bit of a headwind, but this year the weather was great, including some nice cloud cover for the first couple of hours. We are currently experiencing an extended period of perfect weather in Austin. It happens most years in both spring and fall, but varies greatly in length. This fall’s nice weather has been wonderful and I hope it continues for a few weeks, at least.

The cost of the Wurst Ride includes tickets to Wurstfest, so we headed there after enjoying the post ride amenities (beer and brauts). Additionally, my parents had driven down, with my kids and grandmother, to join us at Wurstfest and to provide transportation home. We didn’t stay as late as we have some years, but the kids still got in plenty of carnival rides.

Now, for the first time in months, I don’t have an organized bike ride to anticipate. I guess I should see about finding one….

Endymion Coronation Ball

As I previously mentioned, we went to New Orleans this past weekend for the Endymion Coronation Ball. The trip was great and played out pretty much as expected. We left Austin on an 8:10 AM flight and arrived in New Orleans at about 11:15.

After picking up our rental car, we headed to the hotel to drop of the wives before meeting Randy, our local connection, for lunch and bead shopping. However, on the way to the hotel we decided to stop at a Arc to check out their Mardi Gras sale (based on a recommendation). It seems like a pretty good program they have going, employing intellectually disabled adults to help reduce waste by recycling beads.

The two of us that were there were buying beads for ourselves and four other people. Though I didn’t end up buying any for myself (I was too picky based on a disappointing experience last year), we did get half of the beads for Travis the other four. This ended up being a great time saver later in the day since these beads were sold in 30 pound bags. While Travis was dealing with these beads, I went ahead and took the wives to the hotel.

Next up, Crazy Johnny’s! I got my steak in the form of a wonderful steak sandwich — which I then realized is the same way I had it last year, though I was the only one to do so then and all three of us did so this year. Three people is the fewest I’ve been part of at Crazy Johnny’s; certainly a different feel though still wonderful.

After dropping of the Arc beads at Randy’s apartment, we headed to Beads by the Dozen to shop for the rest of our beads. I didn’t enjoy this as much as usual, and I’m not really sure why. Certainly the fact that they were out of some of our favorite beads didn’t help, but I think there was more to it. This resulted in not spending as much time there, which was probably a good thing as we ended up having less time to get things done than we expected. With half the beads for five people, all of my beads, and some beads for Randy, we had quite a number of boxes of beads to transport back to Randy’s and then transfer to bags. I’m not sure how long it ended up taking us, but by the time we were finished it was probably passed the time we really needed to head to the hotel to get ready for the Coronation Ball.

Food. Drink. Music. Dancing. Parade. Beads. Painted tattoos. Palm readings. It was a great party. Here is a selection of pictures from the event:

For lots more pictures, including higher resolutions of these and shots of our group, head on over to my Gallery2 Album.

Only three weeks ’til Endymion!