Catching up...

It's been a while since I've posted, so here's a quick recap of what's up.

Active Athlete had our first company off-site meeting/retreat. We had this up near Lake Tahoe at Squaw Valley. It was amazing and very productive. It was great to meet some of my co-workers from other cities that, until now, I only had imaginary images of them...I was pretty close. The picture above is from the top of the mountain at about 8,200 ft, you can see Lake Tahoe over the first ridge - it was a full moon that night and was beautiful. Our days were jam-packed with meetings and the schedule also contained plenty of fun...from morning hikes to a pretty intense high ropes course. I really enjoyed the ropes course...there were three structures about 50 feet high and they were connected with various rope bridges. We paired up into groups of 3 (climber, belayer & back-up belayer). I don't have any pics of this yet, but I'll add them in as I receive them from co-workers (this pic was found on the web, but it is the Squaw Valley Ropes Course.) Seeing the slopes up there got me very charged up for this winter! I used to only be able to drive to Wisconsin and would hop on a plane to get to anything real...Tahoe is only about a 4 hour drive (barring no snowstorms on the way).

I was back home over Labor Day weekend. I'll be vague on this public blog, but I was home for a funeral. It's very hard to lose a loved one. Funerals bring many smiles as family really pulls together and it was amazing to see how many people were touched and loved by one person. It's strange and unfortunate that sometimes events like this are the rare occasions that families get together.

My sister is a bonified "yogi"...her move from Chicago to Seattle has treated her well. I've always been interested in yoga, but have never actually done more than attempt a yoga DVD. My other sister, my niece and I joined Gina for a Bikram Yoga class (hot yoga) while we were all in town. 90 minutes of contortionist-like moves in 104 degree heat (why 104 and not 105 beats me, but that's what they said) with high humidity. I've never sweat so much in my life. I did enjoy it though and will probably try harder to incorporate yoga into my training regimen...probably just regular yoga though (I moved out of the Midwest heat and humidity for a reason).
I've been off of the bike for quite a while now due to the company trip and the time I spent back in Chicago. I was able to get out for a great ride today with a great group of 5 buddies. I've been on Highway 1 a number of times, but not since Eric was out to visit. Highway 1 is an amazing ride. We went up to the 4-corners and then descended through Muir Woods to get to Hwy 1...from there we did some high tempo north to Stinson Beach and then doubled back to climb Panoramic (I think I saw a storm trooper in the woods) back up to Pan Toll. We ended the ride at Pancho's for some post ride burritos.