Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Ski Utah... day one

4 Years ago, I took a long trip to Salt Lake City, UT in a big 40ft truck.. The Timex truck. That was my second event with Timex and first driving the big rig. This trip marked my first experience skiing. Oh, how things have changed in four years..

Salt Lake City hosts the Outdoor Retailer show twice a year, once in winter and summer. OR as it's dubbed, is an outdoor industry trade show of the largest sorts. Companies ranging in size from The North Face and Arc'Teryx to small companies like Icebreaker fill the thousands and thousands of square foot expo hall at the Sal Pal Convention Center. Timex is among these companies, thus my involvement. My duties at OR are to help Timex at the booth as well as meet with current team sponsors and prospective partners. However, this year I was off the hook. No work at the booth and only one meeting with my friends at Nathan Sports. This year it was all fun.

Traveling with me, by plane this time, was good friend and co-worker, Jack Hirt and outdoor adventure seeker, Lindsey Kriete. The three of us made our way to the airport late Wednesday afternoon and boarded the plane bound for SLC, arrival time 11:47pm. Everything was going as planned until luck happened to strike while at our layover in Phoenix, AZ. Our flight to SLC was overbooked out of Phoenix and they were looking for a few folks to get bumped off the flight and take an early flight out the next morning. 'Why not', we figured. Get a $300 flight voucher and spend the night in a hotel. We weren't going to ski at midnight when we got in on Wednesday anyway.
As we filled out the paperwork for our flight vouchers, Lindsey got a text from her friend, Mary in SLC.
"You guys!" She yelled. "We can ski for free tomorrow! Park City gives you a free lift ticket if you can present your boarding pass from the same day flight". It was true, all we had to do was show up with our boarding pass, which was now an early Delta flight, and receive a lift ticket worth $90.

I don't think a trip has ever started better than ours did. We each walked out of the airport with $300 flight vouchers, a free shuttle to our free hotel, the Crown Plaza (aka Crown Jewel), a $10 food voucher, and a free day of skiing in Park City the following day.

The Crown Jewel was no let down either. While chatting away with our new friend, a 70-something, retired cop turned GPS entrepreneur/cancer patient who had missed his flight and was pissed at the world. A stranger (to me) walked over to our table. "Holy crap, Rajinder?" Jack stood up to greet the man. It was Jack's professor from UW Madison, Rajinder Chauhan. What a coincidence, Jack's prof from 8+ years ago was in the same hotel in Phoenix, AZ... But that wasn't it. Rajinder, lives in India.. Hillstation, India and was just returning to the USA for the first time since leaving the University nearly 8 years ago! Of all the places in the world.. Rajinder and Jack reunite in the Crown Jewel.
After chatting with Rajinder for some time we scored some free drinks from an older couple sitting next to us and managed to make it to our rooms around midnight, 4 hours before our wake up call was scheduled.

What a day.. and that was only day ONE.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Sifting through the past

Spent some time searching through photos of 2010 today. Seeing that I failed to produced more than two blog posts in 2010, I figured a little photo montage of sorts was in order to recap the year. So.. the year in photos:New addition to the household.. Nala, the lion cub
Trip to the first ever Wal Mart.. kinda cool
Snow trip #2 Salt Lake City, UT
Our new fleet.. 5 Ford Flexs and the new team truck
Trip to Portland to visit the little bro (Logan)
Viktor took home the win for us in Canada!
Sara and I taking our annual trip to Kona, HI15 Timex athletes raced Kona in 2010. Just wait till you see what we have in store for 2011

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Things to come.. shortly

Tired of your old Timex Body Link system? Me too...
We've been waiting for a few years now and I'm happy to announce it is finally here. Well, almost here.
The new Global Trainer from Timex is due out later this year and I can tell you this, it was worth the wait. Several of us had a chance to use this baby while skiing the slopes of Alta in Utah last week. Not only did the Global Trainer meet all my expectations, it surprised me with it's ease of use and even introduced me to some new features I had never seen before on a GPS watch.
More or less, you get what you'd expect from a Timex timepiece.. reliability, ease of use, great features, and a great looking watch.
You'll find this on the shelves of REI shortly and everywhere else in September. Unless of course you're a Timex athlete... ;)

Friday, November 20, 2009

Back home!

Although the traveling is great, I am very happy to be off the road for a few months. Of course, this is when the busy season starts. 
Stay tuned for Timex Team updates and other cool industry news.
Cheers!

Friday, November 6, 2009

Apple Holler

Last week Sara and I went on a little excursion to a local apple orchard, Apple Holler (AH). Located just outside of Milwaukee, AH is a full-on farm adventure land including a corn maze, pumpkin patch, enchanted forest, petting zoo, and of course... apples, lots of apples.  
For forty dollars we receive a large plastic bad, a map of the orchard, and permission to go have fun. 
As the time flew by, our bag filled up with Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Johnathan, Paula Red, and plenty of others I forget. After a few hours, our plastic bag evolved into a 40 pound weight.
All in all a great trip and some delightful souvenirs, about 50 of them. The only problem... we have 50 apples! 

Anyone want an apple?

Sunday, October 25, 2009

More bike porn

First off we have my IM Wisconsin "spotting" bike. Built by Ray Waxman, senior advanced concepts engineer at Trek, this bike is a 2009 update on the aluminum/carbon bike sold back in 1991. It may be hard to see in the picture but this bike is a full carbon 9.9 SSL hard tail frame with all Bontrager XXX components (including carbon wheels). This custom build is a one of a kind carbon belt drive... yes, that means NO CHAIN! The belt drive single speed is fed to a custom built Shimano XTR crank. The bike is finished with a Rock Shox SID Wold Cup shock custom painted to resemble the 1991 shock that came stock with the bike. In short, this bike is pure sex, if you're into one-off bikes. You will never see another one like this...
Next up is the new Speed Concept bike from Trek. Another bike you will not be seeing on the road (at least this year...). This is the brand new ride that will one day replace the Trek TTX. Ridden by Timex athlete, Mike Lavery at the Ironman World Champs. Mike just so happens to work at Trek as an engineer, maybe why he got one?? I don't have to say much about it, just look and drool.

Friday, October 23, 2009

It's almost November

Hard to believe the racing season is almost over. Ironman Florida and Clearwater are just a few weeks away and then Ironman Arizona closes out the season, for our athletes anyway.
If you would like to keep tabs on the Timex crew, here is who will be competing at the final three events...

Ironman Florida - Nov. 7
Pro:
Blake Becker
Tamara Kozulina
Gabriela Loskotova
AG:
Tim Hola

70.3 World Champs in Clearwater - Nov. 14
Pro:
Andrew Hodges
Kyle Marcotte
James Cotter
Lisa Mensink
Mary Beth Ellis
AG:
Bruce Gennari
Chris Thomas
Emily Herndon
Trista Francis
Christine Anderson

Ironman Arizona - Nov. 22
Pro:
Eric Bean
AG:
Barry Siff
Juli Fiocca
Jodi Thomson

Good luck everyone!