Long Road Home and Back Again

I have a HUGE hole in the Tontotrails Series, and there are some drafts written, somewhere, but not here.

Here´s what happened from March 08-Aug 08 in a nutshell..

1. Took Tonto on a major cross Mexico adventure through to Oxaca, the Sierra Nortes and back again. Lots of tails and history to tell. Lots of mtn biking and driving. Awesome trip.
2. Lived in the house in Sayulita for a few months to work on projects.
3. In early May high tailed it in Tonto north to Atlanta. Long drive with some interesting boondocking sites...my favorite was under a bridge in Texas.
4. Mid May - July Lobo was bunking with his buddy Bailey in Atlanta while we worked the Shimano Coasting Tour with a fully wrapped Taureg pulling a trailer of Coasting Bikes from Columbus to San Fran and then up to Seattle. Julie stayed a few extra days in Seattle to meet up with the Dixons and Sean Hartman and then a stop over for Sharon K´s bachelorette in Chicago. Good times.
5. July-August time on the East Coast with family and friends at Lake George and Salter´s Point. Wedding planning in full swing consuming a lot of time but getting things checked off the lists. Its going to be great Sept 12 09!
6. John and Lobo returned to NJ to work on the 3-family apartments and had quite the adventure with a flood and a fire in just one 24hr period. Learned a lot about getting rid of smoke damage and sanding floors the correct way!
7. Julie flew to Sayulita Aug 4th to start a job in the Costa Verde International School.


Will post some highlight photos soon!!

First Annual Plankerwanker Ball - Vail, CO

Another whirlwind trip by John and Julie: Skiing in Vail with perfect Colorado conditions, Plankerwanker Ball, fiance time with the family, spending time with friends, and a few quiet nights to recover.

Lucky for us we have some great friends in Sayulita who agreed to take in Lobo and Tonto. For the past ten days Lobo has become the unofficial mascot of the “Tropical House” restaurant run by our friend Michel and Tonto has found a perfect backyard of our friend Wyatt to rest in while we hit the slopes! That’s right! After a season off, and many months of torturing John with “but I have to go skiing this year..” we made a very special trip to Vail to spend time in the snow with family and friends. I could hardly sleep the first night wondering if a) I still had it in me b) my ‘new’ ankle would fit in the boot c) my fiancé would get lost on the mountain “accidentally”. So of course I was ready to go on day one as soon as I opened my eyes and Laura, John and I hit the slopes! IT WAS AWESOME! It all came back; how much I love to ski, carve turns, laugh with my sisters, do our favorite runs, and show off the cool spots on “our mountain”. Only this time I had a special someone to show around and he kept up! Of course we all know John is a terrific athlete, so I wasn’t too worried, but still, we all had a great time and crawled into the hot tub at the end of the day with a few more aches than we remembered from previous years.

The next day was a very special event so we were very happy to wake up to some sunny Colorado skies. With the amazing support of Kees’ friends we had a rendez-vous at the top of Vail mountain we called “the Plankerwanker Ball”. Complete with one-piece suits, St. Pats day costumes, a BBQ, funny-hippie ball games, a pic-nic table jump into the backbowls, a superb Plankerwanker trophy, and plenty of margaritas we had a full day of laughs. A lot of thanks goes out to Nick, Torrey, Will, Boyd, Tori, Brian, Will’s mom, everyone who showed up, and the B sisters. Elise is still doing the final tally, but I think we will be able to donate a nice amount to the effort to build a hut in Kees and Claires name in British Columbia where they enjoyed countless days of skinning and skiing and enjoying the outdoors together. We can’t wait for next year’s fun!

To add to the fun, John’s good friend Mark from Atlanta came to stay for a few days. He was such a positive person to have around and was just as eager as I was to hit the snow! Of course staying mountainside with anyone’s family could be tough, but then there is the hot tub and beers to “make it all better”. Another highlight of the trip was a special “off piste” route with the boys that ended up in Brian skiing on one tele-ski from about as far away from the base of the mountain as we could possibly get. People saw me skiing down with the ski on my back in a pack..looked up and then hardly saw Brian wiz by! He was amazing!

Finally at the end of the week, John and I had a few days in Vail to spend on our own, where we took some time to hike out to the memorial park in west vail, cruise around town and window drool, and just sit quietly. Thanks to Bob and Linda for letting us spend a few blissful days in their condo! We had a great time getting back to Sayulita because our good friends Suzy and Macy swooped by to pick us up on their way to the same plane! It was so great to travel with our buddies and sing songs, and get picked up by Tom and Carol in sunny Puerto Vallharta!