What I’ve been up to

First off, this is John (Jenna’s part-time web designer, part-time race crew, and full-time friend) writing this post not Jennifer.

I’ll be on the road with Jenna throughout her entire race and I plan on sending email updates once or twice each day. As well as updating the website with pictures and stories whenever possible.

If you would like to get these updates, let me know by sending me an email at jkinnicutt@gmail.com

That’s all for now,
John

Flew back from my work trip on Saturday morning,April 26th, and right back into winter. Arriving back at DIA, it was a direct contrast in weather from what I had just left five hours ago-70 and sunny to 30’s and cold! Grabbed bag, hit the road, and went directly to the Denver Zoo to meet up with Scott and his mom and her hubby, who were in town and staying at our place for the weekend. Couldn’t believe that we were walking around the zoo and it was blowing snow sideways one minute and then sunny the next. The cold did not seem to affect the zoo critters though, just the people silly enough to be walking around looking at them Next day, Scott and I rode in gym in the AM, then rode up to Morrison/Evergreen area to the Lair o’ the Bear to do some hiking with Kathy and Frank-not snowing today. Much better.

Mom Swaney gets credit for the fun candid shots that we didn’t know she was taking And the day after they flew back to Indiana, I got to have some really nice flowers on my office desk that made coworkers wish they had Mom Swaney  as mom in law

Nearly two months after our basement laundry line backed up which caused a cascade of events-tearing out baseboard, carpet, drywall-we are nearly  back to having a finished basement again.  Next week, we will be able to celebrate fact that the garage can potentially start to resemble a garage again instead of its present state as a storage area for scott’s gear and furniture from his place. can’t wait!   Thanks to Allstate and Disaster Restoration for at least trying to get this resolved quickly…even if it has been a long process..

Note to self. Do not plan work trip to meet key accounts during last six weeks of fiscal year for Oracle. Especially when have so much work to do. And especially do not plan trip without some contingency plan for freak technological incidents. Like laptop dying. And cell phone dying.

But with the work meetings over, it was Christina and Bill’s wedding day-held at the Westfields Marriott, which is more like a palace than a hotel. Or maybe more like  some of the  rooms in  the movie, Titanic. You get the idea. Really nice. Ceremony was outside so I could have more character building with the east coast pollen and allergies, but then moved into a ballroom sort of venue. Really nice wedding-Getting to watch one of my best girlfriends go through so many emotions before, during and after the ceremony was really powerful. So glad that I could share in her day!

Ok, so it sounds like excuses, but honest, I WAS tired from my climb efforts on Saturday (honest, I really DID ride much better on Saturday), and it WAS very windy. And, no matter what, SAS is a very strong rider. So anyway, headed out to do deer creek and then just see what other trouble we could get into. “Sure, let’s see where this road goes”, I heard myself saying, knowing full well, that if I were recalling correctly, that it wasn’t going to be pretty. However, also recognizing that I tend to have directional issues, I hoped I was recalling incorrectly that the road we were continuing to take would prove to be nothing but relentless pitch after pitch climbing with some significant grades. I was really glad I had done climbing the day before and even more glad that the wind was sucking my will to live. A bit of grumbling and a few curse words may have been uttered by my fellow rider, but we succeeded in getting a great ride in, even if it didn’t seem great during it.

Headed out for solo road ride-scott met up with buddies in boulder area to mtn bike so headed out and did typical climb up Deer Creek, god awful C470 trail that is a necessary evil at times to get to Morrison, and then up the climb to Evergreen.  Great day.

Shane Co. loves our past two Friday nites! A best friend/fiance who wants to wear his ring now so that others will know he is engaged is one of the best compliments to a relationship that I can think of. Post purchasing second round thing for SAS, we met up with my good girlfriend, Valeria and her hubby, John-they had just celebrated their 15th year anniversary and were super cute sharing their own stories from their early beginnings.

Much more low key get together than the first gathering at the Handlebar back on Feb 29th - but good folks were there (Tommy Guns, Daria, Caroline, SAS) Great to see friends! Laughed tons when the camera came out and the three gal hammed it up. Dar with that knife in the photo had us all dying with laughter!

If you wait until april 15th to do your state taxes (no biggie…can do them online with turbo tax and submit, right?) you will learn that colorado won’t let you submit online if you have something to amend. And yes, at 11 pm, there is a long line of traffic waiting to go thru the pseudo temporary drive thru at the one lone post office in highlands ranch that has been set up to accomodate all those bright people that waited until the last minute to do taxes. Note to self, don’t do that next year.

Not sure if this is a good or bad thing to be proud of the fact that I have been in colorado over a year and have not yet gone in Park Meadows mall. Not a huge mall fan. So SAS suggests going to the outlets at Castle Rock. I am a little leery that this will be the best choice of how to spend my saturday afternoon. But, dang, we had a good time. I was on a mission to find some “kick around” shoes-we ended up being “those shoppers” who go back several times to the “free samples” in one of those kitchen/gourmet food stores and then make the woman behind the counter in the perfume/cologne store that makes her spray nearly everything on the expansive shelf. (why would they have all the samples BEHIND the counter?  They are just asking for high maintenance shopping:)  Not sure how the entire afternoon passed so quickly, but it was dark when we were leaving and now snowing like crazy. We were really glad that we were wearing shorts.