So...I live in Colorado now.

Hey everybody!

For some reason, I just haven't been able to muster up the "I've moved to Colorado" blog until now. Actually, even now, it's proving trickier to write than I'd imagined...no thanks to the fact that I've taken yet another multi-month hiatus from the blogging world. If you enjoy my blog, I do apologize. I just want to make sure this remains a privilege, not an obligation.

On September 6, it rained all day in Nashville. I spent most of that morning pacing, waiting for a guy to come buy my old motorcycle so I could hit the road. I thought he'd be there around nine or ten in the morning, but he didn't end up getting there till one. Most of my things were either packed or sold at that point, so I had nothing to do but get impatient.

What do you do in the final moments of living in a place where you've lived for the last 12 years? Honestly, I think you just get overwhelmed. I was leaving something far too vast for me to process, on the way to something that was also far to vast for me to process...talk about a mind-job.



As soon as that guy showed up, I helped him load the motorcycle, and I jumped in my Jeep to tow a u-haul (that I was pretty sure was WELL over weight capacity) about 1200 miles to my new home. I was rather nervous that my Jeep wasn't actually going to make it here, so I'd already planned contingencies for what I'd do if/when it broke down in the middle of Kansas. By the way, one gains about 3,000' of elevation travelling from the east side of Kansas to the west side. Not as flat as you might have imagined.

I slept in the back seat of my car at a rest stop in Topeka, KS that night for a few hours, woke up with the sun and pressed on. The Jeep, the U-haul and I did a 20-hour drive in a span of about 25-hours total. Hellboy (my Jeep) never balked for a second. Real trooper. I started my new job at Fleet Feet Sports in Boulder two days later, and have been working there since then.

I'll give more details about CO later. For now, I'll say this. I'm lucky to have always had family to lean on when moving to a new place. I'm living with my uncle, aunt and cousins until I get my feet on the ground, and they continue to take good care of me. I'm very thankful to have a job, and one I enjoy as much as Fleet Feet. Good people are everywhere, they're just not always easy to find...fortunately, that wasn't my lot here. I've already found people to spend time around who make me smile, and that's valuable.

Nashville friends, know this: Good friends can NEVER be replaced. I've had a few very sad and melancholy days here thinking about how I miss you guys. I am REALLY thankful to already have been visited by a few of you. I don't know when I'll be able to make it back for a visit, but I sure hope it's soon. In the meantime, my bed is all yours if you'd like to come for a visit. I've been looking for an excuse to sleep on the porch anyway. 8)

Hey Jealousy

Ironically, I heard that song yesterday, and hated it just as I've always done.

I'm jealous today because I read my friend Sarah Brown's blog earlier, and she's headed to Tahoe to go skiing this week. Many southerners have to specify that as "snow skiing," but everywhere else, it's just "skiing."

Anyway, Sarah expressed some insecurities about her skiing abilities...well, this one's for you, Sarah.

A few years back, I was visiting my Uncle and his family out in Colorado and we decided to hit the slopes at Winter Park. I'm a pretty competent snowboarder. I'm not afraid to hit the double diamonds and hammer them out. I'm a far, FAR cry from that mutant Shaun White, but I do like to try and hit the jumps when I can.

There were about 10 of us who went up there together for the day, so we all went to our favorite parts of the mountain and agreed to meet for lunch at noon or something.

For most snowboarders, the mogul field is a nightmare. For me, however, it is a smorgasbord of jump after jump after jump...and I LOVE IT! I found a huge field of moguls that ended in a big powdery section with a sweet jump in the middle of it and dug in.

Perhaps I'll venture a bit more honesty about my snowboarding capacities: I can carve and go fast for days...no problem. I LOVE jumps, but the truth is that I get to snowboard so little that my landings are often a textbook definition of "tumultuous."

I spent the WHOLE morning riding through that mogul field over and over...run after run. I would just go as fast as I could through them until I simply couldn't control myself anymore. Then, I'd crash hard and smash into the next few moguls with whatever body part gravity hated most at the moment. At the end of the mogul field, I'd stand for a second so my eyes would uncross, then head full-speed toward the big jump to attempt some trick that I didn't have a chance in the world at landing.

Lunchtime rolled around, and I was giddy. I dragged myself into the lodge to meet my crew for some nourishment. My uncle said, "Hey Graham, give me your backpack. I put the bread and pretzels in there." I sheepishly handed him my backpack...which I had been wearing for the WHOLE morning crash session. After opening it, he just smiled and looked at me with incredulity asking, "Man, what the hell were you doing?!?" The whole loaf of bread was flat as a board, and the whole bag of pretzels had been reduced to crumbs too small to see with a microscope.

Fortunately, those guys have come to expect a certain degree of crazy from me, so we all had a laugh about it. You guessed it. I went right back out and did the same thing all afternoon.

Anyway...not sure what you should take from this. Go for it? Falling is more fun than not? Don't volunteer to take the bread and pretzels if you treat yourself as a human crash-test-dummy?

Whatever. Have fun Sarah - do some shredding for me!