Best family outing - toss up between Yellowstone and Goblin Valley/Little Wildhorse Canyon/Calf Creek Falls trips. Best family adventure year yet, and those outings were easily the overall highlights of the year.
Most fun races - in order of rank: CX races, Adventure race, then 12 hours of Mesa Verde.
Best performance - I didn't have one that went well enough to qualify - but Annie's Mtn bike leg at the adventure race and her cyclocross season most certainly do.
Most painful mistake/lesson - Eating a stupid lite breakfast (as in 1 pack of instant cream of wheat stupid)at Park City Point to Point and getting into a fuel hole too deep to get out of early in the day. Lesson - by the time it hit me and I realized the problem, it was too late to get it fixed. Better to stay well ahead/overdo it on the fueling, than risk getting anywhere near a deficit. Close second is thinking I could run a half marathon on the back end of a half iron man distance tri more or less cold turkey and be ok. This actually hurt worse than the PCP2P situation, but the suffering lasted only about an hour vs. a whole bunch more than an hour at the bike race.
Favorite race - Iron Horse Classic
Favorite new race - had to create a seperate category as favorite race was a draw between the Iron Horse and the Moab Adventure Race with Annie, so we'll call the Moab Adventure Race the favorite new race due mainly to partnering up with my wife for it. 12 hours of Mesa Verde get's honorable mention for favorite new race in 2010.
Monopoly Adventures:
First year I've indulged in what we'll call borderline fanatical behavior - Did some sniffing around about good, stable, and promising places to live and give my kids a good launching pad into their adult lives in a favorable environment to reap what they choose to sow......... outside the US. I'll call this fanatical behavior because I'm a fairly optimistic guy, and think we've got a good chance of things working out ok here in the good ol' US of A - but... certain views and attitudes that seem to have come to the surface during this cycle in numbers I was nieve to bothered me enough that we started to think as deep as plan E and plan F and put some non-local locales on a short list of places that might be favorable in case the preferred place we've planted roots for said lauch pad becomes a less favorable option at some point. No, I'm not calling for John Galt to come and get me and the clan, and that's why we'll call this fanatical behavior, but if it reached that, I've got specific dirt, in a specific valley well clear of the blast zone on the radar.
Top biz enjoyment - seeing some of the high pucker factor decisions made back at the real scary part of this cycle working out ok. These were all relatively small in regards to capital outlay, but did it's intended job of limiting/eliminating damage taken during the initial violence in which the bottom fell out of everything back in 08', so far at least... with an emphasis on so far...
Top biz frustration - aside from going through the weird burnout/funk that seemed to hit 85% of the workforce - mine was spending a significant amount of time doing DD on potential business acquisitions (non bank related) only to not find the right one to pull the trigger on. Not certain that I wasn't just a little late to the game and maybe missed a period of once in a lifetime type opportunities in this regard - but not certain all the opportunities have been missed yet either. Have a few friends who swung at a few pitches we saw and hope they prove me to be a little gunshy, and that they hit it out of the park. Continuing to keep the ear to the tracks in this regard, but maybe not as intensly in the new year as we think we can get back to growing the biz I babysit at the bank, which makes the day job a little more stimulating and fun than the mind numbing water treading it's been through this recession. Close second here is the larger(relative term)investment in the commercial RE project that still looks to be a ways out from getting unsideways. Still thinking we may be able to make it work out real well, but the holding period is, and will continue to be for a while, longer than I'd prefer. Also dealing with some misjudgements on some competencies I thought we had in the group/management that have taken more time/attention than the passive investor position I intended my role to be. Valuable learning going on though, but it's the kind a guy bitches about until your done with it.
Overall the year felt more exhausting than I think it actually was, which I'll attribute primarily to that weird workforce funk I mentioned - weird in that during a period where a guy was happy to have a job, there sure were a lot of us who went through a phase of hating them. And aside from the abnormal amount of time spent in the burnout cave, have to call it a fine year of health and happiness, one we'll look back on as a good one.
8 comments:
"call borderline fanatical behavior . . ."
um. wow. call ted kazynski. i hear he has a cabin to rent.
Good one Dug. I can't beleive Butte didnt make a best of list for something! Come on man. I hear ya on the Burnout. Here's to a more prosperous 2011!
Well, if we're roping the likes of Kazynski into the mix then yes, maybe I should have also inserted the "relative" qualifier into the ditching out of the US scenario. But, for a pretty simple minded guy that thinks the Glen Beck's of the world are as full of sh*&^y hot air as a bag of farts and also that the poor neighbor shouldn't accept a cent of a handout from the rich neighbor, unless it's the rich neighbor himself opting to hand it out, it felt relatively fanatical to be considering a scenario where the three years olds best shot could be somewhere else by the time he's ready to fire.
Nate - Butte was weird for me - not a highlight, not a debacle, just one of those days. Think Sam has some stronger feelings towards Butte.
So wait, you've found another country, where you're eligible to work, where the economic prospects are better than they are here, whose tax regime is less progressive than ours, but whose economy won't be taken down if ours goes completely tets up? No wonder you're keeping it a secret.
i'm with mark. TELL US WHERE IT IS! suncrest bros before hos.
In between Vancouver Island, and mainland BC there are thousands of little islands. I explored a few of them, and if anything is off the grid, they are.
Just ask all the pot farmers that live on them.
Mark - if a certain way of thinking that popped up in numbers during this cycle were to take hold, then yes, better situations out there. But, as mentioned, don't think the looters get hold.
Dug - one is south, in fact, a topic of discussion on the way back from the Whole Enchilada, you'd probably guessed that. The other is east or west, depending on which way you head out.
Adam - those islands sound cool. My relative fanaticism didn't reach fever pitch as to look to get off any grids yet. Maybe as fun, but not as anti establishment.
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