Looking ahead to 2012

We are a couple of weeks in to the year 2012 and as I watch the Denver Broncos sadly behead the New England Patriots, I figured it was a good time to reflect on the year ahead. 2012 is shaping up to be a pretty exciting year in our house...here are some highlights:

1. Getting Healthy! My family (well, all of the adults) have pledge to lose 10% of our body weight this year...now this will be especially tough for me (see #3 below), but we are all excited to get active and and fit in 2012. Jason and I like to save our small bills and coins for a "special" purchase from time to time. Our most recent was the treadmill featured on the top of this blog. No excuses!

2. Moving! Jason and I were fortunate enough to sell his PA rowhouse at the end of 2011 and are so relieved to be down to just my MN townhouse and our rental in CO. However, we are moving north, closer to Denver in April - for a variety of reasons but mostly to be closer to my job. I am already dreading the packing!

3. Baby Bryant! Yes, it's true that the middle of July will bring a bouncing baby Bryant into our family. We are so excited and are praying for a healthy, uneventful pregnancy over the next few months.

4. Olympics! Jason has the amazing opportunity to attend the Olympics in London as a member of USA Wrestling. While I am a bit nervous about being home with a brand new baby by myself, this is just too incredible of an opportunity to pass up. Go USA!!!

So...as you can tell, 2012 promises to be another action-packed fun year in our household. Here's to a happy healthy 2012 to you and your families.

So it's been a while

JB here ... I recall Abby telling me just this week that someone was telling her she needed to update her blog more frequently. Well, allow me to oblige.

As some of the cousins, in-laws, etc. from the Minnesota side of the family have asked - am I ever home?

Yes, I'm home quite a bit, it's just the weekends that have me on the road. This year, being an Olympic year, it will probably get worse. My boss told me earlier to prepare for the busiest year of my life. Somewhat prophetic if you ask me. I've already crossed Premier Executive status on United. I've been to New York City four times in the past calendar year, which is two more times than I'd been in my entire life combined. I bug Abby to death with the constant Foursquare updates on my phone. But now we even get United miles for me checking in.

This weekend, I have no travel. Whew. But here's what I've got in store:
Dec. 15-18: Arlington, Texas
Dec. 23-27: Minnesota for Christmas
Dec. 27-31: Chicago, Ill. (Evanston, actually)
Jan. 6-9: Springfield, Ill.
January 10-16: Hampton, Va. (Work trip, but it takes me back home)
January 20-21: Event in Colorado Springs
January 28: Event in Colorado Springs
February 2-4: Event in Colorado Springs
February 5: Another unrelated event in Colorado Springs (TV)
TWO WEEKS OF NO TRAVEL!
February 23-26: Yet another event in Colorado Springs
February 29-March5: Des Moines & Waterloo, Iowa. (NAIA Nationals)
March 8-12: La Crosse, Wis. (Division III Nationals)
March 13-18: St. Louis, Mo. (Division I Nationals)
March 22-26: Orlando, Fla. (Olympic Qualifier)
March 29-April 1: Cedar Falls, Iowa (Last Chance Olympic Qualifier)
WEEK OF NO TRAVEL
April 19-22: Iowa City, Iowa (Olympic Trials)

Whew ... so there you have it. I'm a bit of a road warrior.

And to make up for lost time, here's a blog I wrote about the Rodeo for my work's blog site:

“It’s bulls and blood, it’s dust and mud. It’s the roar of a Sunday crowd. It’s the white in his knuckles, the gold in the buckle, he’ll win the next go ‘round. It’s boots and chaps, it’s cowboy hats, it’s spurs and lattigo. It’s the ropes and the reigns and the joy and the pain and they call the thing rodeo.” – Rodeo, By Garth Brooks.

While Las Vegas may be a city that never sleeps, it’s also a venerable sports mecca. The first weekend in December has long been the host of the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational.

Wrestling isn’t alone in Vegas. Amidst the neon lights, card tables and dashed dreams of many a gambler, there’s an oddly disproportionate number of boots and chaps and cowboy hats, even in this part of the country.

Before the action got started in the Las Vegas Convention Center, nearly 18,000 rodeo fans packed the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas for the opening night of the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.

For those of you who didn’t grow up around ranchers, farmland or livestock of any kind, let me give you the neophyte version of what a rodeo is: A BLAST!

Didn’t expect that, did you? While I like to make light of my southern roots and my relatives twangy dialect, where I come from, rodeo isn’t a thing. We (myself not included) prefer things like NASCAR and … NASACAR. Out west, the dialects may be similar but the passion for the original extreme sport, rodeo, is mindblowing.

USA Wrestling hosted the Olympic Trials at the Thomas & Mack back in 2008. Boy, would we have loved to see the same type of crowd then as we did on day one (of ten) of the National Finals Rodeo.

It started out with pyrotechnics and renowned rodeo announcer Boyd Polhamus getting the crowd geared up. Polhamus also has a strong connection to wrestling. He was featured in a 2010 issue of USA Wrestler Magazine.

Polhamus is to rodeo what Ed Aliverti was to wrestling. The absolute master of ceremony. He and his sidekick announcer joke the riders and joke each other, providing an endless commentary to the events taking place on an arena floor covered with dirt.

As Craig Sesker and I watched on, we saw bareback bronco bucking, steer wrestling, barrel racing, calf roping and of course, everyone’s favorite, the bull riding.

As Craig scanned the start sheet, he noticed a few names with wrestling backgrounds, including a wrestler he did a feature on while he was working in Omaha, Steven Dent.

On this night, Dent would come away with over $10,000 by riding Nutrena’s Wise Guy (the horse’s name) to a third-place finish in Bareback Riding.

Cliches aside, this really WAS my first rodeo. It’s like going to the Super Bowl to watch your first football game or going to the Kentucky Derby to watch your first horse race – wait, I actually did that Derby thing a few years back.

But this rodeo was captivating. I looked around the arena, surveying opening night of a 10-day festival of belt buckles and 10-gallon hats. I looked up at the jumbotron above the dirt arena floor, only to see Wyoming head wrestling coach Mark Branch on screen enjoying the action.

A few sections over, USA Wrestling Executive Director Rich Bender and his wife were watching the action.

The rodeo production at this stage was nothing short of exceptional. Every rider, every chute, everything had music, a sponsor and excitement tied to it. Opening parades, pyrotechnics, hard rock music … and even some hip hop (yes, at a rodeo). This was a production the likes I’ve never seen with my own eyes, and it belonged to rodeo.

As Polhamus introduced each rider, some of the biggest ovations came when the women took the stage and went barrel racing. The top three ranked riders in the land were the last three to hit the dirt. First through third were decided by two hundreths of a second with Brittany Pozzi and Lindsay Sears tying with 14.03.

You have to remember, there’s 10 rounds. Ten days of action. Ten days to get in the money, which made every session worth attending. In two hours, I went from rodeo rookie to well, someone who truly enjoyed every second of the biggest sporting event Vegas would see that weekend, only it was the third most important to those of us there to watch wrestling.

While the rodeo did provide steer wrestling, the Cliff Keen Invitational and U.S. Freestyle Olympic Trials qualifier was our news – but no matter how great the wrestling was at the Convention Center, Vegas hosting the NFR was the highlight of the weekend.

If money was no object, every wrestling event would have the pomp and circumstance the rodeo does. Many duals and tournaments have it, but maybe someone should take the folks from the NCAA over to the NFR to get some ideas on how to spice up the sport even more.

Year One - 28 States, Hundreds of Flights and Thousands of Miles

Several people have suggested that Jason and I figure out how many miles we have traveled during our first year of marriage. We tried to do just that and I can't say for sure, but based on what we can remember and piece together from our airline accounts and Outlook calendars, between the two of us, we took somewhere between 100 and 200 flights (depends if you count "flights" or "segments") for a total of around 150,000 miles. That means that we could have circled the earth at its equator 6 times! We have also visited 28 states (that includes Washington DC) during this first year of marriage.

All in all, it's been a crazy year, but one filled with much love, laughter and fun...However, we hope that the we never rack up this many frequent flier miles in a single year again!

It's been TEN MONTHS!

Soon we'll stop counting the months, but today is March 8, 2011. Two years ago, I hadn't even met the woman I would soon marry.

That's kind of trippy when you think about it. Two years ago, those of you that knew Abby probably wondered when she would "find the right guy," but that's just me speculating, but it's more on what I know about women (which isn't much) and when you're single and approaching 30.

About this time last year, my colleague and I were trekking across the midwest, covering four national wrestling tournaments in four weeks. We drove from Minnesota to Iowa to Texas to Missouri and back.

So while I was talking to Abby tonight while about to watch The Biggest Loser (my boy Rulon is on the show and I recently did an interview with Season 2 Matt Hoover) ... anyway, at this time two years ago, we were in the opening stages of the eHarmony communication.

On March 14, I got my first e-mail from Abby Los ... mainly because I was canceling my account because I was sick of bad dates and rejection notices. But as I drove across the midwest, we exchanged messages and upon arriving back in Minnesota, we set the date for our first meeting -- on my niece Alana's birthday -- March 25.

So when you think about it, March 25, 2009 doesn't seem like long ago, because it wasn't. Things are still fresh in my mind from the short, but enjoyable time I lived in Minnesota.

I talk to a lot of people who got married or have been dating people for a long time, only to get married and split within two years. One of my best friends dated and married a girl he met on the first day of college. They were together 6-7 years before actually tying the knot.

One thing Abby was very adamant about was not living together before marriage. In this society, that seemed strange, but I wasn't going to object. I mean, we didn't live that far away from one another (and boy how that changed!).

As you might be able to tell, I can ramble on about things unrelated to what I'd actually started talking about. All my blog posts here are along those lines. I haven't done the diagnosis, but Abby did -- she thinks I'm overly ADD. I don't see how she can ... SQUIRREL!

Okay, I threw that in there for effect.

Regardless, I guess I started this to explain how travel-centric our life is. I just got back from New Jersey/Pennsylvania on a wrestling trip. I covered three Division I conference tournaments, got snowed in at Bloomsburg, Pa., missed an early flight (which I rescheduled when I was driving), got in late on Monday, went to work today, only to fly out on Wednesday.

Abby will be joining me this weekend in La Crosse for the Division III wrestling championships, then I fly back on Monday, only to turn around and fly back to the east coast and cover the Division I Wrestling Championships on Tuesday.

When I get back, it'll be close to the two year mark of our first date.

A lot has happened in two years, well, not even. She's on the road during the week, but the next six weeks from a job standpoint will be absolutely brutal.

Cherish the little things.

JB

71 years old from the ankles down...

There are many things about our current crazy schedules that make me feel old...and as I (Abby) reflect on my recent GOLDEN birthday, I am reminded that I am, in fact, getting older. However, I have to say that there are some freeing things about being in my 30's.

I think the top thing I've noticed about myself at 31 is that I am OK with looking 71 years old from the ankle down. As you know, I travel a lot and by the end of a week when I started in Colorado, spent a few days in Tennessee, took a quick day trip to Minnesota and ended up back home in Colorado, I sometimes run out of clothes or socks by the end of the week. Plus all of the airport time really makes a girl assess her shoe choices! So I found myself last Friday with a limited sock/shoe choice in my suitcase and had to go into our Minneapolis Office for the day, before catching a flight home. I opted for the always versatile black pants, a pair of knee-high taupe nylon-socks and paired them with a practical patent leather Anne Klein loafer. I caught a glimpse of my feet sometime around 2:00 pm and just busted out laughing. I turned to my co-worker and asked her if she could just see my from the ankle down if she would think 31...or 71? The black pants/knee highs/loafers were NOT working in my favor from a fashion perspective and I have to admit the combination was reminiscent of a retirement home more so than a downtown Minneapolis Office building. Needless to say, I tossed the knee-highs and went sockless the rest of the evening...I guess it's proof that I still have some fashion dignity, even at the ripe old age of 31! But hey, part of getting older is knowing when to choose comfort over style and when not to, right?