I’ve been working in Casper for four days. Progress has been slow but steady.  I decided to repaint the boat because we were removing much of the interior anyway and it may be my only chance to get to some sections that will ultimately be covered.  Painting is a bigger job than I thought, due to several factors, the most significant of which is bad Jaouen karma. I’m my own worst enemy on this type of project.  The bad thing is that I inherited the karma from my dad, so we spend about 60% of our time fixing mistakes or looking for stuff that we’ve lost in our “workshop” i.e. my dad’s garage.  Here are some pics:

Before

Boat Before

After

Partially painted...

Still partially painted...

We have big plans for the interior. The gunwales and interior trim will be the same dark brown as the floor. All of the interior cabinets and seating will be birch, which is light colored and should contrast nicely with the darker trim.  Lots of storage and seating for four are in the plan.  This boat is a monster, so it will be interesting to see how much water it displaces.  We may be pushing it across the shallow sections of the Middle Fork of The Snake this summer.  That’s ok though, since it has truck bed liner on the bottom.

The title of this post implies that I will explain why it’s so hard to be me, having all of the expectations of awesome to live up to. Not so, although I was admonished twice last week for not doing enough to make awesome stuff happen (noted).

Instead, this post is dedicated to the venerable, Pdoo. Pdoo’s life is the recipe for awesome. He’s a lawyer at a highly respected law firm in Aspen. He spends lunch breaks skiing or throwing flies at hungry trout. He enjoys the beauty of the summers in the Roaring Fork Valley and he hob-nobs with the rich, famous and beautiful in the winter. Yet, somehow, he’s been able to dodge the awesome bullet for several years with his unique lack of mojo, money and height. There’s little I can do since I can’t give him advice on girls (neither of us have been on a date in our adult lives), YOA is hogging my scarce funds and I don’t have an Rx for human growth hormone. Frankly, I feel for the kid. Enough, that I’m going to throw him a bone and publish the following email I received from him on Monday:

Got a Year of Awesome story for you. If goes as follows:

I took last Monday off from work to ski with “Lawyer Girl”. We went to a popular apres-ski place because we saw all the bitches from the cast of VH1’s Secrets of Aspen (the worst show ever produced). Still not the awesome part. I walked in with my ski boots and did a huge slip and fall on the floor (which is waxed like a bowling-alley lane). Crashed into some hot, blond, famous girl’s (not sure who she was) table, literally almost knocking her out of her chair.

I’m thinking, I’m surrounded by beautiful women, I’ve been a part of the greatest, most embarrassing “Hey, Dick!” in “Hey, Dick!” history with Allison at your wedding and no one has yet to yell that at me, and . . . now here is the awesome part, Jamie Lynn Sigler (Yes. That is right. Tony Soprano’s daughter) is pointing and giggling at me. I’m thinking the following: She dates a guy fatter, lazier, et al. than me (although with much more money), but basically I know she likes short, fat, goofy guys, so with utter confidence, while still laying on my ass, I point to Ms. Sigler Soprano and say, “Just act casual.”

Both Lawyer Girl and the hot waitress said that they were impressed at how well I played the situation off.

Maybe I’m not awesome, but this story is.

Pdoo's Would-Be Girlfriend and His Hero (ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

Pdoo may be onto something here...

I’m working on the boat this week. Sanding right now, which is so fun that I’m thinking about quitting and instead having a huge YOA/Boat bonfire at the ranch.  I’ll post pics if any of them show progress.  My dad has been very helpful.  He isn’t doing anything until I’m done sanding, cleaning and painting the boat i.e. the shitty parts.  Good for the old fart.  I guess he’s learned something over the last 60 years, just not how to use a mobile phone.

I rode Elk Meadow to the top of Bergen Peak this morning on hard pack snow.  It was pretty awesome and pretty tough.  My ride report is here (MTBR).

Also, my brother did some work on the blog today. Several changes that you won’t notice but a couple big ones that you will. First, the calendar works better now. Second, anytime anyone does something awesome and tweets about it, if they end the tweet with #YearOA, it will be picked up by the YOA twitter applet. YOA is going viral!

Last, my brother tested the twitter function with this, which is very awesome.

Dear Vail Resorts,

I’m writing to thank you for all that you have done to improve the skiing experience at Breckenridge.  My wife and I drove up on Saturday morning from Denver. We really enjoyed sitting in traffic for an hour on I-70 and another 40 minutes on highway 9, because it gave us a chance to take in the sights.  Really though, I shouldn’t be thanking you for that experience, since you can only really control what happens at the resort.

Luckily, when we arrived, the Gondola parking lot was full, so we got to park in the Gold Rush lot, which only cost $10.  From our car in the lot, we enjoyed the brisk 1 block morning walk to the bus stop.  We also enjoyed waiting 10 minutes for a bus to take us across the street to the gondola.

Pretty awesome that you installed this new gondola, it’s really nice that I no longer have the choice of starting my day at Peak 9.  The views from the gondola are amazing, especially all of the new $1000/sq. ft. condos you have built along the route, and they are selling so well!  I really feel like I’m getting a deal with the $10-$20 parking fee that is supposed to pay for the new gondola. Obviously, you built the gondola for the convenience of all of the people in the pay parking lot, not to increase the value of the properties that you are building on the gondola’s not-so-direct route to Peak 8.

Once at the base of Peak 8, I was glad that I could wait in line for 20 minutes for the Colorado Superchair.  Since there’s no good way to get to Peak 9 anymore, I’m thrilled that you elected to build the Imperial lift as a quad to service a small number of expert skiiers, instead of replacing Lift E, the double that is now the best route to Peak 9.

Finally, after an hour of hassle from the parking lot to the mountain, we were ready to ski.   Woohoo. Of course, the lift lines were brutally long because you restricted our passes for Vail and BC for the weekend so that the out-of-towners could enjoy fucking up alternating in the lift lines without having us there to “help” them.

When we were done with our day, I was pleased to learn that we would have to take two buses from Peak 9 to get back to our car.  Phew, for a second, I thought that I might not get to see every inch of the back roads of Breckenridge. Fortunately, there were not enough seats on the bus and you were kind enough to cram us in so tightly that an abrupt stop would have resulted in me, my wife and friends going through the windshield.  The view out of the front of the bus was outstanding and we kept our helmets and goggles on in case  we ended up going for an unplanned flight.

Actually, Vail Resorts, it stinks that we arrived early on Saturday.  Sunday morning was even more fun, because the pay lots were completely full so we got to park in the “free” lots on airport road.  You call these lots “free” but really you are paying us in the improved fitness that we will have after walking 3 blocks from our parking spot to the conveniently placed bus stop.  I know you are thinking, “wait, it’s at least four blocks to the bus stop”.  Not so, Vail Resorts, because, in your infinite wisdom, you were only running a small number of buses, so the line to get on a bus was at least 2 blocks long.  As a result, we didn’t have to walk nearly as far to get into line!  Very clever.

In summary, I would like you to know how grateful I am that you made all of these enhancements to our skiing experience.  We are sad that eventually you will have milked the resort for every conceivable real estate opportunity and you will sell the albatross skiing operations to someone who will have to vastly underfund it to make any money.  By then though, your stock will have gone through the roof, which is what all of us hoped would result from your custodian of our natural resource.

Thanks again,

Brant Jaouen

Before the Valentine’s Day movie debacle, I rode LOB in the snow on Friday. It was fantastic! Below are some pics from my cell phone (I need to get a better ride camera, I know).

I’m also putting a shot of my Superfly with the new carbon bar and grips added. I absolutely love Oury grips. They have been around since I was in junior high and I’ve put them on every bike I’ve owned since. They are $10, comfortable and they come in a zillion colors. They aren’t very durable, but for $10, you can replace them and add some different colors to your bike every once-in-awhile. The fixie guys love them. Salvagetti bike shop on Platte Street keeps an awesome selection of colors, including the limited edition “Soft Green” which matches the grreen color on my Superfly very well. Red and white will also end up on this bike at some point. You will also notice the orange version on my 575.

Bridge on Bear Trail

The Wall. Walked up. Stupidly tried to ride down and fell.

A Superfly in its natural habitat.

I turned around here, just a few hundred yards from the road.

Superfly and Yeti defying gravity.

If you have been around me over the last four days, you have heard me tirelessly ranting about how Valentine’s Day is a devastating tragedy for the film medium. I am lost for words to describe just how terrible. But, I’ll give it a shot…

Not only is Valentine’s Day and ensemble cast, it’s an ensemble of atrocious plot lines. I’ll take you on a brief tour so that you don’t have to sit through the 125 minutes of pain:

Jessica Alba’s character is engaged to Ashton Kucher’s character. His friends think she’s not right for him, but he’s a sensitive florist and knows all about romance. Their engagement lasts only a short time and then Ashton spends the rest of the movie being overly sad and overyly mad at his friends for not telling him that Alba is a bum. He’s a florist though, so we get to follow the crazy life and antics of a florist on Valentine’s Day. Kill me.

Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper sit next to each other on a plane for most of the movie. Julia’s character is coming home from an untold war zone where she is a Captain in the Army. Yes, Julia Roberts, Army Captain. I could stop here, but I wouldn’t get to the part where Bradley Cooper hits on her the entire plane ride and then *spoiler alert* terns out to be a wealthy homosexual. Meanwhile, Julia inexplicably only has one day of leave to see her “man”, who turns out to be her 10 year old son, played by Bryce Robinson. Mind blowing plot twists riddle the movie.

Erstwhile, Eric Dane (McSteamy) plays a football player who is obviously supposed to be Brett Favre, and appropriately turns out to be Bradley Cooper’s gay partner. Yep, this movie has a homo Brett Favre. I actually like this part of the movie, although we don’t really get to know Dane’s character long enough to be surprised when he turns out to like dudes. In fact, this is a legitimate criticism of the character development in the entire movie, we never get to know the characters well enough to find the lame plot twists interesting.

Dane’s publicist in the movie is played by the other hot Jessica, Biel. She’s a workaholic who falls in love with a local sports reporter played by Jamie Foxx. The chemistry here was actually pretty good, but the plot line was entirely predicable i.e. just when you give up on love, Jamie Foxx shows up and you are head-over-heels. Foxx is too confident on-screen to play the “number 2″ reporter at the local station but I can’t really complain because Foxx and Biel work pretty well against the shitacular backdrop of the rest of the performances.

Jennifer Garner’s character thinks she has the bees knees with Patrick Dempsey (McDreamy) who plays the exact same doctor character that we suffer through in Grey’s Anatomy. Too bad Dempsey’s character is married and is cheating on his wife with Garner. Garner refuses to believe it when her best friend, Kucher, tells her he delivered flowers to Dempsey’s wife. This plot line makes almost no sense. Garner flies somewhere to surprise Dempsey on V-day, but he’s not there, as Kucher warned. Garner gets back from her trip and realizes that her ideal partner is Kucher who has been there all along. Shocking!

Finally, we get to my favorite hottie, Anne Hathaway, and shitty Topher Grace (That 70’s Show, Spiderman 3). Now, I have to say to start, that Anne is on my list of favorite chicks because she is hot and also because she has a history of dating fat, douchy, investment types. Since I fit that profile nicely, I find her to be highly accessible. Between my first and third marriages (both to Mindy), I plan on targeting Anne.

Hathaway plays an assistant to the powerful athlete manager Paula Thomas (Queen Latifah). Let’s see, Anne Hathaway playing a personal assistant to a powerful woman…sound familiar? Crappy Topher works for the same company and they meet at work. Sparks fly, although you wouldn’t know it because these two have a Cruise-McGillis-like screen chemistry. Too bad Hathaway’s character moonlights as a phone sex operator. Latifah catches her doing her sex talk job at work and says it’s ok. Lots of times, bosses react this way to sexual deviance at work. Worse though, Topher finds out about Hathaway’s other career and dumps her. Topher Grace dumps Anne Hathaway because she works as a phone sex operator. Yea, that makes perfect sense.

Now, I have not dated in my adult life, but if I did, I’d be pretty psyched to find out that my girlfriend, Anne Hathaway, works in the adult entertainment business. Talk dirty to me Anne. My favorite dialog from this plot line is when Topher says, “I’d call you but I don’t think I can afford you.” F you Topher. Eventually, Topher’s character comes to his senses and they get back together to live happily ever after.

I won’t bore you with the other five plot lines that twist all of this crap together. Suffice to say, it’s retarded. The dialog is really the worst part of the movie, and it’s punishingly long. I’d love to see what ended up on the cutting room floor! I really wanted to like this movie, or at least be entertained. Ok, well, I was almost asked to leave the theater because I got the giggles during a montage of the loving couples toward the end, but laughing at the movie does not count as being entertained by the movie. Overall, it turned out to be a pretty miserable experience. For reference, I actually like romantic comedies. My favorite is The Wedding Date. Valentine’s Day makes The Wedding Date look like Citizen Kane. Do not see this movie, it is not awesome.

It’s Sunday and I’m pretty happy that it’s snowing. Two reasons: 1. The skiing stinks right now and we NEED the snow, and 2. I can barely walk after the YOA cycling team death march yesterday.

Adam and Ryan (YOA.com cycling team members) invited me to join them on a ride from downtown to the top of Lookout Mountain and back. I’ve done this ride with this crew before, so I knew what I was getting into. Unlike me, the rest of the YOA cycling team is pretty much ready for competition. To their credit, they took it easy on me for the first 30 minutes of our two hour ride. At some point just when we were getting into Golden, one or both of them decided it was time to put the hammer down. By the time we arrived at the base of Lookout, I already felt like I had a full workout. Good thing there was only 30 minutes of intense climbing ahead of me.

For some background, Lookout Mountain is home to an annual hill climb time trial during the first weekend of May. This race is going to be required material for the YOA team. My goal is to finish somewhere in the mid-twenties (minutes). Last year, my best times were in the high 27:00 to low 28:00 minute range. I rode it on Thursday and nearly died, posting a nearly 36 minute debacle. After the death march yesterday, I posted a slightly less deplorable time of 33:46 (lap 2 on the GPS data). I have a LONG way to go. And speaking of a long way to go, they picked up the pace on the way back to Denver. I’m glad it’s snowing.

Saturday death ride.
Thursday deplorable ride.

First, I’m sorry that I’ve been a crappy blogger this week.  I’ve not been home for most of it and thus not able to internetize my various activities.  This post will catch up:

Last weekend we skied at Keystone and Breckenridge with friends.  The weather was beautiful but the snow was terrible. Most people blamed global warming for the bad snow.  I blame my karma. Also, I tried to kill Mindy by suggesting that it was a good idea for her to take the snowcat with me up to the untracked terrain at the top of the mountain.  Here’s a pic of what I got her into (accidentally…):

Me in the darker green pants. Jason in the lighter green pants. Mindy taking a rest. Not pictured: Ryan (photographer) and Julie (already lost).

Monday and Tuesday featured a couple of important developments.  First, I shot two geese at the ranch. Well, maybe “shot” is an aggresive term for what actually happened.  I was hunting with a buddy who I will call “Matt”. Together we shot three geese over two days of hunting.  Given the number of opportunities to kill, this was not a bad result.  The controversy comes into play when we attempt to assign credit to the murders.  The first encounter involved a group of geese that flew over our position while we were on the move.  Matt took three shots at one goose and ran out of ammo.  I took the fourth shot, which brought the goose down.  That’s right, four shots for one goose.  They’re tricky bastards.  In any event, the goose was clearly wounded by Matt’s onslaught, so I’m not sure that it is fair for me to take credit for the kill.  So, I’ll say that I killed half a goose.

1/2 Goose and 1/2 Hunting Dog.

On tuesday, Matt shot the first goose that flew by and gets full credit for the murder.  I was trying to get my shotgun off of my shoulder and fumbling with the two sets of gloves that I was wearing to keep my fingers warm enough to pull the trigger.  This kind of thing explains why Matt generally shoots about two to three times as many birds as I shoot.  I’m pretty much constantly fidgeting or fumbling with my shotgun while the geese are flying over.  The safety is also tough for me. It’s really more of a safety for the geese.

The second group of geese that flew over featured me shooting at one goose and completely missing.  Meanwhile, Matt shot twice at the same goose and failed to bring the goose down.  On the third attempt, Matt and I shot at the same goose at the same time.  When this happens, it’s very hard to tell that the other guy shot at the same time because you can really only hear your gun. Naturally, when the goose came plummeting to the earth, I fist-pumped and took full credit for the kill.  My feeling of triumph over an innocent animal only lasted as long as it took Matt to see my fist-pump and casually mention that he shot at the goose at the same time.  We had to figure out how to give credit for the kill.  On one hand, I was closer and I was feeling very confident that I killed the goose.  On the other hand, Matt was an Army Special Forces Green Beret for several years, including a stint at the Army’s elite Sniper School. Obviously, I took full credit for the kill. One and one-half geese for Brant, if any of you are keeping score at home. In any event, we have a lovely organic goose stew to enjoy for the next couple of weeks in the Jaouen house, here is the recipe:

1-2 Cups Each:

Carrots, Celery, Potatoes, Onion and anything else you like in crock pot stews – I used all organic.

4 Cups Water

1 can onion soup or cream of mushroom soup

2 Packets of Powdered Beef Stew Mix

2 Cubed Goose Breasts

Cook in crock pot on high for 6-8 hours.  Add 1 Cup Barley 1 hour before the crock pot is done.

All of this goose murder sounds awesome (it was) but it pales in comparison to the real reason for my visit to the ranch. I think it’s some sort of regression to childhood.  The Japanese believe that you revert to your childhood self as you get older (pissing your pants, people taking care of you, etc.). Instead of wearing a diapers everywhere (which would be pretty awesome), it appears that Matt has started buying life-sized versions of the toys he played with as a child.  Here is the msot recent development:

Life Sized Pierce Pumper Fire Truck with 50 foot ladder....awesome.

So, we spent much of our time driving around and messing around on the fire truck.  There are more cabinets, buttons, levers and knobs on this thing than a 747 cockpit.  In fact, it starts up like an airplane and even has cockpit headphones so that driver and passengers can hear each other over the massive thundering of the 600hp diesel engine sitting two feet behind the passenger compartment.

Ladder controls

Unfortunately, no actual fires were put out.  Matt has some good pics of me climbing the fully-extended 50 foot ladder.  Since I don’t have the pics, you will have to settle for this self-portrait I took halfway up a fire truck ladder, clinging on for dear life and trying not to show my gonzo Army goose killer friend just how terrified I am to be 25 feet off the ground. I wish I would have had said diapers.

Self-Portrait From 25 Feet Above Ground - Smile is hiding terror.

Wednesday featured a quick ride up Green Mountain.  It is still a bit muddy.  I rode the Yeti and found it to be slower than the Superfly.  I was thinking that I would post my time to prove how much faster the Superfly is, but there was too much mud for a fair test.  Even so, I think the Superfly was a solid two minutes better to the top, which is a ten percent improvement.