Thursday, January 29, 2009

Cheerio Martin Schaedel


Its hard to believe - it sunk in - then it didn't sink in. Its almost like its a bad joke that Martin is playing, except given all the information thats coming out of LA County and Santa Monica -its unfortunately true.

My friend, and colleague for the last few years, Martin Schaedel died in a horrific plane crash at Santa Monica airport yesterday.
I'd spoken to Martin yesterday afternoon - he was pumped about going flying again. He'd taken a lesson on Tuesday and given his sinuses a workout when they pulled 2.5G - so was looking forward to going up in an old military 2 seater.

Martin liked to do things differently - he wasnt content to sit on the couch and waste his life away. If he was on the couch it was with either or both of his beloved laptops constantly wired in, networking away - his favorite pastime.

His tall tails were legendary - but what was more remarkable was that some of them were true. The photo is from an after-event party in Miami, after the Victoria's Secret show. I refused to believe Martin was there, unless he produced proof.

He knew a tremendous number of people - and could strike up a conversation with just about anyone in record time.

Farewell Martin....I'll try and ski 'properly' this weekend...just for you

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Looking out the window

So, after last years epic amount of travelling - to and from Dallas 400 times (at least it felt like it), this year I've decided to stay put for a while in Durango. Of course, saying that, we were all over in Scotland for Xmas and missed the huge dump of powder up at DMR.

Talking of DMR, they teamed up with Frontier Airlines this year to try and entice people to get on flights to Durango, and come skiing. Some pretty good deals - however, this morning Frontier took out a half page ad in the Durango Herald with the details on their latest fare sale. $59 one way blah blah blah.

Good news is though, that they have a $51 one way fare up to Denver - where was this fare when the football season was in swing ?

Some pretty good deals over to California at the moment - flights to San Jose are running around $250. Its tempting to go see the Tour of California for a couple of days and drag Spinny over too. He's from around there so no need to get a GPS to navigate - ha! - we'd still manage to get lost, we couldn't even get out of San Jose airport in Costa Rica last year.

Talking of cycling, need to get back on the bike and shed a few pounds - was looking at the photos from Tour de Georgia the other day - that was a good trip - perfect weather - and I was fit enough to almost hammer Carl up Lookout Mountain. Time to get back in shape - pity the weather wont co-operate...Pity also there is no Tour de Georgia this year, they should really do a time trial around and up Brasstown Bald when they bring it back next year so the excitement lasts for a few hours on the climb up. It was pretty intense in 2007 - and having the riders come by at 1-2 min intervals would be pretty cool.

Anyways - enough daydreaming back to work...