PO-lice & Summer

Posted on April 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 am by Robbie

Last Friday at about 6:30 in the AM i was headin to work, mindin my business, coasting down the mountain that is Parley’s Summit at a brisk 80 MPH when at the minute at the bottom of the hill I saw Mr. Utah Highway Patrol.  Of course I braked and of course I was late on doing so, I knew immediately this guy got me.  He pulled me over just past the Lambs Canyon exit and came up to my window, here is our conversation:

Me:  Good morning sir

Officer: Hello, do you know how fast you were going?

Me: Uhmm, no I’m not too sure, going down these huge hills sometimes throws me off on my speed ya know? Sometimes I end up going faster than I think I am.

Officer: Are you just visiting or do you live here? (As I still have my MI license plate)

Me: No, I live here, I just got a job in Draper.

Officer: So you live in Park City?

Me: Yes

Officer: How long have you lived here?

Me: Just a couple weeks (if you count 7 months a couple weeks)

Officer: Ok, I’m gonna run your license I’ll be right back

–one minute later–

Officer: Alright, slow it down a bit ok?

Me: For sure, thank you very much

Officer: Have a good one!

If you know me and my history of getting pulled over, this is just one more reason for you to hate me.  I’m ok with it though!  This is about the, oh I don’t know, 4th or 5th time I’ve been pulled over for speeding and avoided a ticket (never got one ever!)  Obviously, this made for a very enjoyable Friday.

Summer is just around the corner and I cannot wait.  Warmth is returning, well, slowly and I’ve already begun planning my summer events.  I’m looking to go to Bear Lake in June to camp, some people call this the “Caribbean of the Rockies.”  The lake is the deepest lake in Utah/Idaho (as it straddles the border) and the water color is that of the Caribbean.  I hear nothing but great things about it!  I also procured my plane ticket for Michigan the other day so I’m all set for July 17-27 (arriving at 3 pm on a Thursday).  I cannot wait! 

Along with all the summer vacations there are a slew of concerts coming in Utah that I’m excited for, although, probably won’t be able to afford to go to.  311, Jack Johnson, John Mayer, and Dave Matthews are among a few.  I may go to DMB, alone, as Bill thinks he will be out of town at that time.  Going to a concert alone will suck, but I really wanna see DMB in Utah.

Anyway, thats about it for now, hump day is half over and the weekend is in site, stay up kids.

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My Death Bed

Posted on April 18th, 2008 at 3:15 pm by Robbie

As some of you I have been pretty sick the past week here.  It started last Thursday with a sore throat upon waking up in the morning and by Friday it was a full fledged sickness.  I’d describe it best as an upper respitory infection, although, it probably wasn’t that severe (even though at times I thought it was).  Ya know, I’m not gonna lie, I can deal with a cold, runny nose, even a cough that brings up all kinds of lovely lung cookies.  But do not, I repeat, DO NOT take a man’s sense of taste away from him!  I can’t remember the last time I actually couldn’t taste food due to being sick and I hope it never happens again.  I went three and a half days without tasting anything which really made my days unfulfilling, I mean, without tasting food it’s almost like, whats the point of eating?  Well, obviously nutritional value is needed daily but man, it sucked!  Finally, this afternoon I got my first whiff of tuna and my fruit smoothie after working out and man was it delightful!

The weather here in Park City the past few weeks has been pretty random.  On Monday it was 80 degrees, on Tuesday and Wednesday we had a blizzard and now today (Friday) it’s back up to 65 and sunny.  Anyway, since Monday was just absolutely gorgeous I decided that it was quite necessary to take a hike in a new location (yes, even though I was sick as hell).  I decided that I would check out Lambs Canyon.  Lambs Canyon is about 8 miles from my house heading west down I-80 and its probably the smallest canyon in all of Utah but it is pretty remote and not a lot of people go in there so I figured what the hell right?  Of course I brought the camera to take some pics, you can find those in the photo album under The RAN3 Experience\2008\Lambs Canyon.

That’s about all I have for now, other than the fact that I would really appreciate the Tigers turning around their season and the Red Wings actually not losing in the first round of the playoffs but that’s another post.  Maybe if I get bored tomorrow we can discuss some of those antics!  Check out the new pics in the photo album!

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NCAA and Summer

Posted on March 25th, 2008 at 6:09 pm by Robbie

Who would have thought the Michigan State Spartans would actually get some consistency and win out the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament?  Not me and I’m an alumni that wants nothing more than Drew Neitzel to get as far humanly possible in his last run at the NCAA.  Taking on Memphis won’t be easy, but hey, MSU SHOULD have beat UCLA (#1 at the time) back at the beginning of the season but ended up shooting themselves in the foot a few times.  If they can stay our of foul trouble, keep up a good pace to the game, and make foul shots (because Memphis is the worst free throw team in the NCAA) then this could be a very close and exciting game!  Go State!

At work I started an NCAA pool all via ESPN.com.  It’s 10 to play, winner take all.  I started soliciting co-workers about this a little too late, like 2 days before the first game so there are only 4 of us playing.  Whatever, I’ll take a +30 dollar win (I’m currently tied for first).  Hopefully I can pull out the victory.

 This past weekend I got a Bluetooth wireless headset, to be specific, the Jawbone.  This thing is intense.  It has some crazy military grade noise cancelling technology and it’s rated the best Bluetooth device on the market right now.  It uses the vibrations in your jaw to notice when you’re talking and to cancel background noise.  It’s about $130 bucks if you buy directly from the company but I ordered one through amazon.com for about 80 bucks, not to mention PGP picked up the tab!  I love gadgets, but I love free gadgets even more.

It looks like the snowboarding season is just about finished here in Utah.  It’s been in the 50/60s everyday for the past couple weeks in downtown Salt Lake City (40-50s in Park City).  I went snowboarding at Park City Ski Resort this past Saturday and the snow was horrible, icy and hard.  It was a pretty good season though, other than making me broke financially, it definitely stepped my snowboard game up.  No longer a beginner, you can call me a novice.  Next season I will def. look into getting a season pass for the Canyons.  Now I can start looking forward to camping in Utah!  So excited for summer.

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Bruised Behinds and All That Jazz

Posted on March 2nd, 2008 at 7:42 pm by Robbie

Last Wednesday, William and I decided to go to the Utah Jazz game, not because the Jazz are sweet but because they were playing the Pistons; and they are sweet.  We arrived at Energy Solutions in typical Detroiter fashion, buzzed and at half-time.  Upon entering we found out that Detroit was dominating and up by about 13 with a minute or so to go until the half, so we decided to do what all other smart kids who have been through college do; buy beers before the rush at half-time.  We eventually ended up going to our seats, which were in a corner area on the upper level, they weren’t horrible but not fantastic either.  As the game continued on we slowly watched Detroit unravel.  They basically decided to stop making shots and give up as the Utah Jazz ended up coming back and winning.  It sucked to see the Stones lose the one time I got to see them in Utah thus far but they really didn’t deserve to win.

On Friday, the Billster and I went night skiing/snowboarding at Brighton.  Brighton isn’t too bad, the runs aren’t as long as they are at the Canyons but Brighton does have a freestyle ski park and 2 half-pipes which of course we decided we would go in, more on this later.  We started by going up the lift for the skate park, we were determined to hit some jumps and grind off some pipes.  This place has some great ramps, real big ramps, the problem however is that the snow was incredibly compacted and icy.  Not really what I want to see when I’m flying down a mountain at 20 mph plus.  I decided to play it safe and avoid big jumps as I was uninterested in inflicting that sort of pain upon my backside.  Anyway, after a few runs and a few swigs of Jim Beam Black Label from my flask that Billy brought (to warm us up, obviously) I felt I was ready to go into the half-pipe.  Let me be the first to tell you, that going back and forth in the pipe is WAY harder than I ever imagined.  I mean really, its not easy.  Billy did manage to get enough speed to get up and do a 360 (from what he tells me, as I didn’t witness this event), but I really didn’t put too much effort into the whole thing.  I ended up making it through the whole night without falling and messing up my wrist more than it is, until I decided to walk back to my car that is.  Brighton lifts are at the top of a hill which goes down to the parking lot, so of course this hill is traveled heavily.  All this foot traffic causes the snow to mirror the texture of the snow on the mountain, compacted and icy.  I make it just about to the bottom of the hill and in one wrong step, BAM, it happend.  My feet flew out from under me, my body was flung into the air like a childs rag doll and I landed on my ass harder than ever.  So hard that people came rushing to me.  Seriously.  I definitely couldn’t move for a good minute, the pain was ridiculous.  Leave it to me to make it through a night of snowboarding, correction, snowboarding and taking shots of Jim Beam without falling but slipping on some stupid ice as I’m walking to the parking lot to leave.  I think my butt is bruised on the inside, like a deep tissue bruise and lest us not forget about my tail bone, which seems to have caught a large portion of the fall.  I won’t be moving well for a few days from this one.   

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Bless the Neighbors

Posted on February 11th, 2008 at 9:17 am by Robbie

Last week we had a few people renting the townhouse next door to ours and one evening I met 2 of the guys.  They told me they were leaving tomorrow in the morning and that they over-bought food/drink items and wondered if Billy and I would want there left overs.  Obviously I said yes, because who turns down free food/drink?  So the next afternoon when I returned home from work I got to my front porch and saw that many gifts were bestowed upon Billy and I.  Here is a list of what was left behind for us:

Really?  I couldn’t believe it, but definitely loved it.  It was tough to get all that beer in our fridge but don’t you worry, we certainly managed.

Last week was also the Cobra Starship concert at Club Sound in Salt Lake City.  I just recently got into Cobra, all thanks go to Mary J. for giving me the heads up on how awesome they are so when I heard they were coming to SLC I figured I’d go see how they perform the live show.  The concert was on Tuesday and almost immediately when Billy and I entered the club we knew we had to be some of the oldest people there.  C.S. definitely caters to the younger high school and early college crowd but thats okay because they put on an amazing show and I totally loved it.  Not only was their sound on point but the lead singer, Gabe, sounded awesome (even though he was sick as hell).  I took some video at the show which you can see below.

 This past weekend was the last weekend for the 100 dollar deal at the Canyon’s Resort so you know Billy and I had to go and get the best of that while we have it.  Since B.T. lost one of his ski’s a few weeks ago he decided to borrow one of his co-workers extra snowboards and go snowboarding.  He was a little rough at first but he had gone snowboarding about 10x prior to this so he eventually started to get the hang of it again, although much falling was done inbetween.  He took some video of me snowboarding down a straight away and I actually took a first person point of view of snowboarding down a mountain for shits and giggles (all video’s below). 

Video 1: Cobra Starship: The last half of “The City Is At War”
Video 2: Cobra Starship: Kiss My Sass
Video 3: Me snowboarding
Video 4: Me snowboarding with you (first person point of view)

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