I have been so freaking bad at running, lately. I haven’t done any running in almost a month. True, Piper has been sick, and I have been sick. But, even when I didn’t have an excuse, I have been extremely bad at keeping with a routine, for this entire winter. Hopefully that will all change, now. Monday, I registered Reagan and myself for this year’s New York City Marathon, in November. We gained automatic entry through the 9+1 program. I have to admit, that the motivation meter was going up a little, just being on the NYRR site, putting in my info.

In addition to running the NYC Marathon, this year. we have also started a club. When I say “we,” I should say Becca. She did almost all of the work. It should be really good for getting in some group runs. Nothing like a little healthy competition, for a pick-me-up. BTW, if you want to be in the club, and are not already on the email list, hit me up. Since we were able to Recruit Carl, I’m pretty sure that we will have the club points championship pretty much in the bag. But, if you would like to be a part of Carl’s entourage, we are currently still recruiting. As of Monday, our name is now officially showing up on the “affiliations” drop down, on the NYRR registration screen. At least it is, if you are registering for the Marathon .

This may sound totally dumb, but, after having so much fun shooting last year’s race, I’m kind of bummed that I can do it again this year. I’m a nerd, I know.

Go NYRC!

Reagan and I have been working all year long to gain guaranteed entry to next year’s New York City Marathon. We have been doing the NYRR 9+1 program. We have had all of our races (plus a few extra) finished for quite some time now. But when we got online to sign up to volunteer, everything was booked except for the last two races of the year. Good thing that we didn’t procrastinate any longer than we did.

Reagan and I woke up at 5:30 on Saturday, so that we could be in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, by 7:30. It was a gorgeous day. The temperature was in the low 20′s but it didn’t feel that cold, because we were bathing in sunlight. The photo above is of Reagan dancing to Madonna’s “Holiday,” which was playing through the PA. So, it is official now. We will be running in Nov. 2010. We also had that chance to talk to another volunteer, who was near us, who has run NYC and Chicago for like the last 15 years straight. He said that they are spread almost perfectly apart. We have wanted to run Chi town for a while now. We are debating possibly doing both of them next year.

In Piper news, the date that she is scheduled to move back to NJ, has now been pushed from Tuesday to Thursday. We took advantage and had a super long and fun visit with her today. She is a clapping and smiling fool, these days. It is really fun to goof around with her and watch her smile and make little squeaks, like she is trying to laugh.

Reagan told me that on Friday, she was clapping Piper’s hands together, and when she stopped Piper kept clapping by herself. I couldn’t wait to see it for myself. To my amazement, I had her bouncing on my knee, clapping her hands, and she totally kept going, when I took my hands away. I was busting up laughing. One of the cutest things I have seen. It is especially cute the way she turns around and looks at me for approval afterward. We took some video today, that I’m hoping to get posted at some point. Anyway, I have rambled too long. Below, is a shot of Piper being so patient while Reagan works on her hair.

Here for a few more shots.

With such an anticlimactic Valentino Rossi world championship victory, this year, I almost stopped paying attention to the GP headlines. But, today Vito Ippolito, the president of FIM Confirmed the rumored change in engine specs for 2012. This should make things interesting. You may recall when the bikes changed from the first 4 stroke size of 990, to  800 ccs of displacement, Stoner and Ducati dominated. Ducati had not really even been on the radar before that. I mean sure, Stoner had something to do with it, but I’m just saying. Also Nicky Hayden, who had won the world championship on the 990 cc Honda Repsol, the previous year, had a tough time even finishing in the top 10, on the 800 cc bike. All I’m saying, is that the new specs could shake things up, a bit.

For 2012, the maximum displacement limit will jump from 800 ccs to 1000. There will also be a limit of 4 cylinders, with a maximum cylinder bore measurement of 81 mm. The 800 cc bikes are pushing 200 mph. I can’t wait to see what the factory teams will be able to do with the extra 200. According to MotoGP.com, Mr Ippolito said:

The main changes we have decided on are new rules for the MotoGP class. We will have four cylinder engines, 4-stroke of course, with a 1000cc maximum, and the bore of the cylinders will be 81mm. This base will give all the manufacturers the opportunity to start work. At the beginning of next year we will produce the new rules in a more complete format, but that is the basis; 2012 will be the year of a new era of MotoGP.

I’m curious to see if this will open the door for a new factory team to dominate the premier class of motorcycle racing.

[Photo: FIM/MotoGP.com]

Reagan took me to a futebol game today. It was in the Maracana, which is one of the largest stadiums in South America. It has held as many as 200k people before.

Here we are field level about an hour before the game started. Also about 5 minutes before we took our shirts off. It was 40 degrees in Rio today. I’m not exactly sure what that translates to in Fahrenheit, but I can tell you that it is pretty freaking hot.

The game was after we spent the morning on the beach, before it became incredibly crowded. I’m wondering if the the beach is this nuts here during the week. Anyway, I really enjoy this shot the Reagan took, when we were passing through a feira.

After the game, we went out to the point between Ipanema and Copacobana beaches to take some sunset shots. We kind of missed the sunset, and it was kind of cloudy anyway. But we still snapped a few. Hopefully we can have better timing/weather on a different night.

This one is of Reagan, with a little cove in the back.

When I was just a little tyke, snowboarding was just starting to become an acceptable sport. What I mean by acceptable, is that it had it’s foot in the door, among the alpine sports community. There was only one resort along the Wasatch Front that allowed snowboards in, and it was only on two lifts. Yes, that’s right, segregation. Brighton, and it’s parent Boyne was like the like JFK of snowboarding, trying to usher in the era of peaceful co-existence between snowboarding and twoplanking.

Not long afterward, several other Resorts along the Wasatch range decided to allow those pesky mogul wrecking “ski-boarders.” The early 90′s brought in the Jim Crow-type of era for snowboarders. “Sure, you can come on the lifts with us since you are buying a ticket, but don’t get too comfortable around here, you lateral stance hip-hop loving freaks.”

What happened next, I still have mixed feelings about. Snowboarding made its debut as an Olympic event, which was kind of the catalyst for world acceptance of the sport. Before that, I think that it was still viewed as a passing fad, to a certain degree. It was so exciting, as a snowboarder, to feel validated. At the same time it was kind of sad, because snowboarding was losing it’s edgy nouveau freshness. Suddenly snowboarding was all the rage. All of the little silver spoon turtleneck wearing Austrian tourists were riding, instead of skiing. Those were the same kids that we got in fights with on the ski-bus bus in jr. high.

Suddenly the sport was flooded with tons and tons of money. From the perspective of a kid who had to save for months and months to buy his first deck, and who wore Sorel boots because he couldn’t afford Burton, it felt kind of sad to see the sport change directions so abruptly. It felt like the sport went from a bunch of rag-tag hoodlums to glitz and bling, over the course of a few short years.

After 2002 SLC, I embraced the new “snowboard culture.” I accepted the fact that, like anything else, the sport and culture associated with it, is an organic thing. I was a little irked at Park City Ski resort, that vying for the Olympic bid is what it took for them to finally open their doors to snowboarders, and buy a pipe dragon. There are still a few resorts that don’t allow riding. Not surprising, two of them are in UT. One is Alta, another is Deer Valley. I like to think of them as the dirty south good old boys of ski-resorts. Since Alta is located on BLM land, there is no stopping riders from poaching early season pow, before the lifts open. In honesty, I prefer the bird anyway.

Before this rant/manifesto carries on too much longer, I’ll get to the point. One of the things that I absolutely love about the modern snowboard culture, is that the roots rowdy originality that has always surrounded the sport, still comes through in modern snowboarding innovation. Only– now it is super deep with funding. The DC mountain lab is a great example of this. I’m sure that Ken Block isn’t the first dude to come up with the idea of a rally car-style snow cat. But since DC supplied the cash flow, he was able to make it a reality. When I saw this video, I was smiling ear to ear. Who else is getting stoked for snowboarding season?

BTW: all references to the American civil rights movement are tongue-in-cheek. This post is not meant to diminish the struggle for racial equality, in any way. I fully understand that the struggle for snowboarders to be recognized as athletes, can’t even be measured on the same scale as the magnitude of the civil right movement. So there is my disclaimer

This year was the 40th New York City Marathon. It was such an awesome race, for so many reasons, including the fact that an American won the mens’ race for the first time, since 1982. For me, though, it was especially cool, because I was able to photograph it from the photo bridge at the finish line. It is a borderline spiritual experience to watch these athletes come through. It was so heartbreaking to see Paula break down in tears, after falling back into fourth place at the end of the race, when she lead, practically the entire way.

^—-Paula and Grete embracing.

Here is a shot of the TV crews that were next to me.

Many mo’ photos over here.

Burton is one of the brands that is featured on SoJones.com. As a result, I attended  a couple of Burton parties last night for their fall video release (“B” Movie). I had an extra enjoyable time hanging out and chatting with pro snowboarders all night, since I grew up in SLC and have been riding since I was a young pup. These events are the kind that I dreamed about attending, when I was in high school. I invited Reagan to come meet Shaun White. She told me no thanks but tell him that I like his red hair, for me. Hahahah. Anyway, it was a really good time. I posted about it over on SoJones, along with mucho mas fotos. Check it.

First of all, I had to share this photo, because I’m still laughing over it. If you have ever run a NYRR sponsored race then you have undoubtedly seen all of the course photographers along the way, and received the subsequent email solicitations to purchase the photos. Last Saturday, I figured “why not have a little fun with them?” So I fired off a couple of pretty nice poses as I was passing the photographers. I was pretty much rolling when I received the proofs in the email. This is definitely my favorite one, though. If you have ever seen “American Psycho,” then you know where I got this pose.

Second, the Hartford Marathon is just around the corner. In fact, it is only 2 days away. I am really excited and nervous about it. My best marathon time was on this course, so I’m kind of putting a lot pressure on myself to do well. I have been resting all week. I have even left out going to the gym, except for on Monday. I want to try to have as fresh of legs, as possible. On Tuesday, I had a bit of a scare, when I started sneezing and sniffling a bit. I seriously would have been devastated, had I gotten sick right before the race. I have been swallowing hands full of vitamins for the last couple of days, and knock on wood, I haven’t had any other symptoms. Thanks everyone who sent me suggestions for my playlist. With everyone’s help, I have checked out close to 300 new tracks over the past couple of days. I was able to get some really good ideas to keep me moving on Saturday.

Lastly, I haven’t posted anything in a couple of days. I’m sure that some people may have been worried/hoping that I ran out of things to say. Hahahahah. In actuality, I have been pretty busy on a few other projects, and haven’t had a lot of time to write anything good. About a year ago, I had the privilege of joining a group in my extended family that had undertaken the challenge of organizing genealogy for my mother’s side of the family. For my contribution, I helped them put together a couple of websites to publish their work on, as well as to facilitate networking, etc.. For the past few days, I have been kind of re-working the sites. Here are a couple of screen shots:

Here is the link, if you want to visit: www.christensenfamilyhistory.com

Here is the link, if you want to visit this one: www.whitneyfamilyhistory.com

In addition to those two sites, I have been working with my cousin, who has a candy-bouquet/gift-basket business that she is building a site for. So anyway, between all of that and my “real” job, the hours have pretty much been filled. But, I’m really looking forward to this weekend. I’m hoping to get in a couple of more good poses for the camera guys. “Blue Steel,” maybe?  We’ll see.

I titled this post “Conference Weekend,” because it is the weekend that our church, instead of having local meetings, just has one mega-meeting, that everyone watches on TV/Webcast Billy Graham-style. Okay, not really Billy Graham-style, at all. Lucky for us, everything comes out in print, in a few weeks. Because we missed most of it. We ended up having an insanely busy weekend.

I ran a half marathon in Central Park, Saturday morning. I wouldn’t recommend the course. It is basically just 2 laps of CP Drive. Normally this is fine. But when you are trying to get a good time, the hills at the north end of the park can break your spirit a little bit. Reagan showed up to cheer me on (which helped, immensely) and take some photos. My goal was to score less than 1 hour and 30 mins. I missed it by 5 minutes, but still beat my previous best by almost a minute.

^—-My blistered up feet.

I thought that I was going to have to go into work after the race. It turned out that I didn’t have to. So after having a nice visit with Piper, Reagan and I basically went nuts and tore our entire house apart to accommodate a new shelf that Reagan has been begging to buy for a month or so. In involved moving a 1000 lb. aquarium, dismantling some wall-mounted shelves, patching the wall, painting the wall, re-arranging all of the furniture in 2 rooms and cleaning up a spilled gallon of paint.

^—-Reagan, driving us up to see Piper

We were able to take a break on Sunday morning, while having some superbly delicious homemade cinnamon rolls with a few of our friends, followed by another great visit with our baby. Our house still hasn’t completely recovered from the transition, but it is pretty close. All in all, it was a pretty productive weekend.

^–Dash Snow Tribute in SoHo

It is such a nice surprise, when I think that I’m going to be working all weekend, then find out on Friday afternoon, that I’m off the hook. I took full advantage and slept in on Saturday until noon, to catch up on some sleep. Reagan was a good sport, to let me. She wakes up before 7 AM every day by default. Normally, on the weekend, she is jumping on the bed to get me up too, so that she doesn’t get bored.

This afternoon, we took an impromptu trip downtown with our friends the Carter’s which was cool, since we haven’t really been able to kick it with them since, like, last month. Reagan wanted to check out a flea market in SoHo, plus we were meeting up with one of Aubrey’s other friends. So Col and I were just kind of along for the ride. It was cool though. It definitely felt like fall, today. It wasn’t cold, but it is definitely not summer anymore.

^—Reagan and Addie

I had the camera with me. So of course I got some shots of SoHo and Chinatown. Os Gemeos are a street art duo from Sao Paulo, who are identical twins (which is actually what Gemeos mean in Portuguese). They came to NYC recently and threw up this mural:

It was the first time that I have seen it in person. So that was kind of cool. Like the first shot in the post, the mural is a tribute to Dash Snow, a legend from the neighborhood, who died this summer.

Other noteworthy event= Utah Football chalked up another W. It is probably one of the last games that I will be able to get on TV out here, this season, since conference play starts soon.