Kendall Card 2.0

I was in downtown Salt Lake City today working at my client’s office (Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau) and went out to lunch with a Shawn, Kaitlyn and Larry. I’d never eaten at Lamb’s Grill Cafe, founded in 1919 by George Lamb. They even use the same recipe for the complimentary bread that George used when he opened the place. It’s an old style cafe with pretty good food and an amazing Chocolate Mouse desert that was very rich.

As we headed out to lunch Shawn grabbed his Flip Ultra Video camera, a really cool little gizmo that not only takes internet ready video but has an easy USB plugin built in along with some basic video mix software. Here’s the result of flipn’ in Salt Lake.

When you register for an event, it’s customary to know if you’re “in” or not within a week or so. Given technology and the many database and excel programs, you might even squeeze the process of determining whose “in” to a few hours, or a day at most. If you’re really antsy and have to know in real time then Active.com is brilliant. But nearly 4 weeks?!?!?!

After last year’s race, it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to the April 22 registration date. I was up during the night, waiting for it to go live on their website, which is a slick flash based site. (www.lotojaclassic.com). Late night e-mails, text messages and IM’s were passed around, waiting to know. I hit the sack late and woke up early and then the text came through from Jason – “Registration is up!”

Since then, radio silence.

Is this another counting of the ballets? Am I sensing a Florida style ballot dispute? Is there an 89 year old grandma who is counting the registration by hand and rolling the dice for each registration, going best of seven to determine if you’re in?

I’ve heard nothing. No updates, no “shove off mate, you’re not in“, no “congratulations you made it“, not even a “all operators are currently busy, your wait is estimated to be 19 days” – NOTHING!

Training for a race that I have no clue if I’ll be riding is a buzz kill. When it comes down to it, a race is a business and businesses have customers who, unless the rules of business have changed, they need to take care of.

C’mon Lotoja, customer service applies to all businesses. Step up your game.

Update:  I heard from them and I’m in!  Let the games begin!

I was lucky enough to teach a blog class today for the Park City Board of Realtors. This was the second class I taught.  The first was, for lack of better definition – Blogging 101.  It was more conceptual, the “why” and a few pieces of “how” to wrtie, what to write, etc.

This class, Blogging 102, was more nuts and bolts.  We looked at the various dashboards (Blogspot, TypePad, WordPress).  This post is part of the course “posting images”.

This is how excited they looked.

Summer is right around the corner and aside from the many things that this annual event brings the one thing I am most looking forward to is the opportunity to ride my bike to work. Wait a sec, I work in the office which is next to the kitchen, across from the bedroom, around the corner from the laundry closet, next….you get the picture.

BUT, the news that we (Base Camp Communications) are getting an office in Park City just hit the wires. So, I’ll be back to more of a commute than the 20 steps or so I shuffle each morning. This means I have a choice – Auto or Bike?

I love to pass on the auto as much as possible. When biking into Park City the traffic on Highway 224 is often at a stand still or moving very slow. It’s rather ironic that we experience daily traffic jams in this little mountain town. When this happens, I take incredible enjoyment from passing as many autos as I can while riding my bike. It’s one of those ego flexing moments, somehow making me feel superior. Yes, childish emotions but nevertheless enjoyable.

I take comfort in knowing I’m not the only one…

Marketing is different these days. The more I think about it, it’s story telling really. Tell the right story to the audience, one they want to hear. One they will enjoy hearing.

The video I was working on with Piton Productions for our client Gregory is done. It’s not your typical climbing video – fast cuts, strong hip-hop tunes, etc. But like Joe says in the video, the life he is living right now is “really peaceful, mellow…it’s like this totally different pace than I’m used to” so I think it fits.

Personally, I dig the final edit. But my opinion doesn’t really matter that much. The hope is that in someway you, a climber, backcountry skier, hiker, adventurer will think something like “Hey, that’s cool. Imagine that, Gregory Backpacks making a cool little climbing vid about their boy Joe Kinder.” Or something like that.

Well, you like? you no like? Let me know.

YouTube version if you’re a Tuber.

I’ve never met Karl Meltzer but used to trail run with a running partner of his, Scott Mason, who would tell me tales of running with Karl. I never grew tired of hearing the stories of Karl’s running.

When it comes to the world of tough trail runners, Karl is tops. Not doubt about it. At the age of 40 he’s still crushing it and will attempt to run the entire length of the Appalachian Trail, all 2,174 miles, in just under 48 days.

The running begins on August 5, 2008. Watch him run at WheresKarl.com

Took McKinley skiing this past week to Deer Valley. Not that it was anything out of the ordinary but then again, it was. After an early morning ski tour on Mt. Aire with friends I came home, got a couple things off my plate and went and pulled McKinley out of school to ski the rest of the day at Deer Valley.

After years of begging, my parents plunked down for some used gear and a night lesson at Sundance that my dad took me to. I remember that night like it was yesterday. That night a fire was lit inside me.  All I wanted to do from that night forth was to ski.

As my passion for skiing grew he was always there to push me along and support me. We’ve only skied a couple times together and as a kid taking me out of school to ski was something I always wished he could have done, but he didn’t ski so much and we weren’t nearly as fortunate when I was growing up. Either way, taking McKinley to Deer Valley today felt like coming full circle.

Aside from falling in love with the place, Deer Valley had little jumps everywhere that McKinley honed in on like a heat seeking missle. I snapped a photo of him in action:

It’s so very cool to see my son develop a love for skiing. And it’s even cooler to see him making parallel turns down steeper slopes and keeping up with me as I ski my own pace. This year has been his year indeed and ripping up Deer Valley from one end to the other was a great way to showcase his skill.

Finding ourselves on the Empire lift at closing time (3pm), being the end of the season and since we have season passes at Park City we broke the rules and ducked over to PCMR to finish out the day skiing more tree stashes of powder (Deer Valley was also a gold mine for untracked powder in the trees). The first thing after doing so McKinley said “Dad, Snowboarders!!”. The joy of being a skier at Deer Valley.

After a few runs at PCMR on McConkey’s, Pioneer and a home run down his favorite black at PCMR we took a ride on the mountain roller coaster. I HIGHLY recommend this ride – it’s a bit pricey but what a blast we had riding it together.

McKinley’s reaction after the roller coaster ride

As we rode the town bus from PCMR back to Deer Valley I struck up a conversation with the young man sitting in front of us. He asked if we were here on vacation to which I replied that we lived local. He asked if McKinley was out of school today to which I replied that I had pulled him from school to get one last powder day while the lifts were running.

He turned to McKinley and said, “You’re one lucky kid. Your dad is one cool dad.” If you say so…

My little brother in law is fast. Super fast. Funny thing was, I never realized this as he was growing up. He was this skinny little kid (still is ultra skinny) that bounced off the walls and when he wanted to speak had to pump up the volume to get anyone to hear him. That is, because there are 11 kids in the family and being the youngest is a challenging spot to be in when you want to be heard.

Anyway, like his older sister Cynthia (my wife) and his brother Mark, Matt decided to run Cross Country in High School. And run he did. During his senior year he placed in the top 3 at state in Cross Country as well as the 1 and 2 mile distances in track.

I experienced his running speed when last summer during the Burley Spudman Triathlon after putting a solid lead on him during the swim and bike he came blazing past me somewhere around mile 5 in the run. I didn’t have a chance as he went on to post the second fastest run time of the day.

High School (and me) behind him he’s running at Utah Valley University. So when my mother in law sent this story about his recent run I knew I needed to give “little Matty” a shout out. Props to you brother!

Matt ran the 1500-meter race (1600 meters = one mile) at BYU on April 4th and Jenilyn, Angela, and I went down to watch. It was Matt’s first Outdoor Track Meet as a college student and he had no idea how well he would do. Matt was running near the end of the pack as he came around the last corner on the last lap and I was thinking, “Come on, Matt. Don’t come in last place.”

All of a sudden, he kicked into top gear and started passing runners like they were standing still. I had been cheering for him each time he came around the track, but this time I could only stand there with my mouth open. It was amazing. His legs were stretching out twice as far as any other runner and he looked like he was just gliding along. I was standing near the start of the straightaway and Jenilyn & Angela were at the finish line.

There was a BYU guy running way out in head of the pack and he was half way down the straightaway before Matt even came around the corner. Jenilyn said that the UVU teammates and fans were going crazy and yelling, “Go, Matt GO!” while the BYU fans were screaming, “He’s coming. He’s COMING!” The BYU guy gave it all he had and beat Matt by a freckle.

The announcer yelled, “MATT REEVES from UVU just gave a tremendous push at the end and nearly ran down the first-place runner!!” Then he got around to announcing the name of the first-place guy. It seemed that everyone was cheering for Matt and everyone was screaming. You don’t see that very often with someone running flat-out sprinter pace at the end of an almost mile run and coming from nearly last place to nearly first in just a few seconds time. It was so cool. Even Matt was enthusiastic! He said, “That was exciting. I didn’t know I could do that.”

— photo by MARIO RUIZ of the Daily Herald

It’s no secret that I love to ski. But I really love to ski when the season is winding down.

Attention turns to biking and running, golf courses open up around the valley, lifts run nearly empty if they run at all, walk on trams at the bird until Memorial Day, backcountry shots that are typically tracked out by 10am on most powder days remain untracked, mountain ridge lines become silent, and ski parnters that I often miss hooking up with during the core part of the winter seem to come out of the woodwork. I think a lot of the latter has to do with the lack of people skiing, so the few that remain seem to gravitate to each other.

So it was yesterday when my good friend Matt Rink dropped me an e-mail and urged to me take the afternoon off to get a Dusk Patrol in that it would be our first outing of the season. Desination? A shot in Little Cottonwood Canyon called Scotty’s Bowl that I’ve wanted to ski for years, but have never gotten around to it, always opting for other spots in LCC when I make the drive over there. My desire to ski it has become such common knowledge among friends that Matt and some others have coined it “Powstash Bowl”.

It was only right that I would get it this good my first time. And no a track to be seen all the way to the bottom. Here’s a teaser photo: (click it to see the larger image)

The entire story is on FeedTheHabit.com with some photos on Ski Utah’s blog

–photo by Matt Rink

A couple weeks ago I found myself headed to Hurricane, Utah and from there on to Vegas. The purpose? Filming Gregory climbing athlete Joe Kinder along the way in order to create a video that we could use to brand Joe as a Gregory athlete as well as something that would virally spread throughout the climbing community. Since Gregory is really a peripheral brand in the climbing world, we have to come up with something that is unique. We’re thinking it’ll work.

The final video of our 3 day journey to Vegas isn’t complete, but Derek from Piton Productions threw together this little clip. We used a remote control helicopter to film the car chase segment along with some climbing too.