Raible Designs

Farewell to the 2009-2010 Ski Season

The 2009-2010 Ski Season ended for me last weekend. This was mostly due to the fact that Winter Park and Copper closed and that's where I have my ski pass at. I'm writing this post to reflect upon what a great ski season it was. I skipped writing a similar post in 2009, mostly because I was basking in the Florida sun at a helluva wedding on the last ski weekend. 2008's season was the last one I wrote about, and I managed to get 21 days in that year.

This season, I managed to get in 25 days, my most ever in a season! Not only that, but I got to watch Jack ski like a madman, enjoy a fantastic weekend with friends in Jackson Hole and perform The Trifecta. As a parent, I feel like a lot of hard work and persistence has finally paid off. Jack can now get on and off the lift by himself and Abbie hit her first jump (catching 2-3 feet of air) in the terrain park. Yes, I'm a proud papa.

Personally, I was able to complete several top-to-bottom runs (without stopping) at Mary Jane. This was a goal last year that I was never able to accomplish. This feat requires you to be in good shape and have some eloquence in your skiing style. I thank my good friend Matt Good for his tips on how to ski bumps more smoothly, exerting less energy. The one thing I failed to pull off was a helicopter, even though I tried twice. Oh well, I'll get it next year.

Thanks to all my skiing friends for the good times and to Winter Park, Mary Jane, Copper Mountain, Steamboat and Jackson Hole for the wonderful slopes. Can't wait to do it again next year.

My Sister's Fabulous Wedding

Last week, my kids and I flew to Chelan, Washington for my sister's wedding. Unfortunately, I had to work most of the week, but I woke up early and actually had a very productive week. My sister hooked us up with an awesome 3-bedroom condo on Lake Chelan and I thoroughly enjoyed my new office and its view. The bonus of getting up early was finishing early.

I think the best way to describe the fun I had at Kalin's wedding is by posting the speech I wrote for the ceremony and showing you some pictures from the event.

If you'd like to see more pictures from Kalin's Wedding, please see Kalin's Fabulous Wedding on Flickr.

My Summer Vacation in Montana

As an adult, I've often reflected upon my childhood and one of my favorite times of the year: Summer Vacation. The feeling that fills your mind and body on that last hour of school before summer break is simply awesome. I don't know when I began longing for that feeling again, but I'm pleased to say I enjoyed it again this year. I took an entire month off from "working" and enjoyed a proper summer vacation at my family's cabin in Montana.

My plan to take a month off began formulating years ago when we'd drive to the cabin for the 4th and only spend a few days before driving back. The trip was never long enough.

I started talking about spending all of July at The Cabin a couple years ago, but never committed to it. My opportunity finally came last December when Julie asked me if she could take the kids to Florida for 3 weeks for Christmas. I quickly realized that, as a kid, 3 weeks in Florida was an awesome opportunity and agreed to give up my time with them. However, I also realized I could get some negotiating power from the agreement and said "only if I can take them to the cabin for 3 weeks next summer".

For regular readers, you know the rest of the story. My Dad flew to Denver for Father's Day Weekend, stayed the following week and then we embarked on our journey to Montana on Monday, June 29th. The first week was great and we had tons of fun during the rest of July. Here's a list of some highlights:

• Running a 5K while Abbie and Jack ran the 1 mile "fun run" with my Mom. It was Abbie's first race and she got 1st place with a time of 11:05.
  
• Hiking to Holland Falls.
  

  
• Picking Huckleberries.
• Greeting my sister after she rode her motorcycle for 13 hours in the rain.
• Spending my birthday at Big Sky Waterslides, something I used to do every year for my birthday.
• Golfing with my family in Columbia Falls.
  
• Building a set of bunkbeds for the kids.
  
• Rides on "Rocket" (4 wheeler) with the kids, especially when Jack would say "go as fast as Rocket can go".
• Golfing with my good friend Owen in Seeley Lake.
  
• Prepping and pouring the floor on the New Cabin.
  

  
• Fishing with my Dad in "Joe's Jungle" and installing a new window in the cabin afterward.
  
• Teaching Abbie and Jack how to shoot a gun (a .22 pistol) for the first time.
• Getting my next gig.
• Traveling to Idaho for Clint and Autumn's Wedding Reception (they got married last December in Costa Rica).
  
• Seeing Abbie get all googly-eyed over an older boy in Idaho.
  
• Staying up to watch the sunrise in Idaho.
• Milling D Logs for the kids' Treehouse.
  
• Making it from The Cabin to Denver in 13 hours with only one speeding ticket.

More than anything, it was great to spend so much time with my parents and children. The Cabin is a very special place to me and I'm proud I can take my city-slicker kids to let them experience the outdoors and live like I did growing up. In the city, they always have an adult nearby and are never left on their own for long. They wear helmets when they ride their bikes in the alley, even though they have training wheels on and couldn't fall over if they tried.

In Montana, the rules all change.

In Montana, the adults worked on the New Cabin and the kids were left to occupy themselves. Their imaginations ran wild and they played with each other for hours every day. They made me see and remember one of my favorite things about childhood - infinite possibilities. As I kid, I was a dreamer and used to think that anything was possible in the world (flying, teleporting, you name it). I'm happy to see that Abbie and Jack believe that anything is possible too.

A week ago, I returned to Denver after driving almost 4000 miles in 30 days. I feel refreshed after so much time off. I've got my goals and ambitions in line for the rest of the year and I'm looking forward to writing more, smiling more and doing great things for my new client. Over the next several months, I'll continue to work with GWT and even have plans to talk at The Rich Web Experience in December. When I travel for work, I'll be in Boston and Cupertino. Hopefully I'll see some of you along the way.

As usual, you can see all my pictures from the past few weeks in my Montana 2009: Weeks 2-4 set on Flickr.

Ryan and Breanne's Wedding in Playa del Carmen

Despite the warnings about Swine Flu, two weeks ago I flew to Cancun for my good friends' Ryan and Breanne's wedding. I didn't get much sleep the night before, but managed to get a good nap on the plane. We arrived in Cancun around 2:00pm and begin enjoying the beautiful weather of Mexico. We took a shuttle from CUN to the all-inclusive Paraiso Maya. Thanks to Swine Flu, we got upgraded twice and ended up paying $110/night for a place that's normally $450/night.

My two favorite parts of the trip were 1) the people and 2) the place. There was around 15 of us, many of which have been good friends since college. We stayed at the Paraiso Maya, which was a very nice hotel with beautiful pools, elaborate buffets and awesome beach access. We had a ton of fun at the pool bar, playing water basketball, jet skiing and playing beach volleyball. The dinners at the Steakhouses were great and The Galaxy (Star War themed) club created many good memories. It's great to travel with that many people, especially when the beer is flowing for (what seems like) free and you're partying with old friends.

My third favorite part of the trip was watching the Nuggets vs. Lakers games. We watched 3 games in the resort's "Sports Bar" and had a blast doing it. Since we had a couple Lakers' fans in the mix, it made things interesting.

We spent 3 days at the pool and on the beach before the wedding happened on Saturday. It was a very cool ceremony and we enjoyed a Mariachi band for a good hour afterward. I've definitely become a big fan of beach weddings in the last 6 months.

After 5 days in Playa del Carmen, my buddy (Kevin Navarro) and I spent 2 days at The Westin in Cancun. This was a very nice resort; especially since we had an ocean-front room.

I had so much fun on this trip, I've been inspired to learn Spanish. I don't know when I'll carve out the time to do it, but I know I'll return to Mexico several times, so the sooner the better.

To see all my pictures from this trip, see my Mexico 2009 Collection on Flickr.

Jason and Holly's Wedding was a blast!

This past weekend, I experienced an incredible 4 days in West Palm Beach, Florida. When Julie and I got married there in April 2000, we had so much fun that we always wanted to do it again. We had a lot of good friends and family fly in for the wedding. If you've ever experienced a beach holiday with many good friends, you'll know what I'm talking about. Julie is Holly's sister and Jason (her new husband) is one of my fraternity brothers. That means I knew both sides of the wedding party and it very much resembled the reunion we always wanted.

I flew down on Thursday morning after a little bit of oversleeping. Because I flew into Orlando, I had to rent a car and drive 2 hours to West Palm. This wasn't so bad since I got hooked up with a convertible and it was a beautiful 80°F on the drive. That night, I picked up Abbie and Jack from "Grammy's" house and they spent the night with me in my hotel.

The next morning, we woke up and headed to Sailfish for a ride on a friend's boat. After a couple hours on the intercostal, we played in the pool, enjoyed the sun and started getting ready for the Rehearsal Dinner.

During the Rehearsal Dinner, a friend (Navarro) and I were bartenders while Abbie was in charge of making sure everyone's drinks were full. Below are some of my favorite pictures from Friday night.

After the rehearsal dinner, the party crowd headed to Rum Bar and had lots of laughs and played many games of "hook". On the wedding day (Saturday), we took another boat ride, hung out on the beach and enjoyed a beautiful ceremony on the beach.

The rest of the night was spent dancing and enjoying everyone's company. The party didn't end that night though. Sunday, Holly and Julie's mom had a brunch at her house where we all laid by the pool, played with the kids and sipped on many cold drinks. At sunset, we walked down to the beach so Mr. and Mrs. Harris could get some sand from their ceremony location.

It was a spectacular weekend with lots of good friends and a ton of great memories. Congratulations Jason and Holly!

For more pictures, see Flickr or Facebook.

Epic Weekend at Silverton Mountain

This past weekend, I joined some of my best friends for a weekend of skiing at Silverton Mountain and Wolf Creek in south central Colorado. Most of the guys went last year and I knew I had to go this year after hearing about their thigh-deep powder experience.

The trip started out kinda rocky when we left on Friday afternoon. There were 3 different cars that drove and we were the last ones to leave Denver. We took my car, but I had a friend drive since I'd had a late night on Thursday night. About 2 hours into the trip, one of our friends called us to warn us about the speeding tickets the other cars had gotten. In fact, one of the guys had gotten two! I handed the phone to the driver so he could find out where, but he had to cut the conversation short as the police car's lights started flashing in the rear-view mirror. If only they'd called us 5 minutes earlier!

After the speeding ticket delay, we pulled into Pagosa Hot Springs around 11. With 18 soaking pools, this turned out to be the perfect place to stay.

On Saturday morning, we woke up at 5 and drove 2 hours to Silverton Mountain. I didn't know what to expect at first. I had it in my mind that we'd be hiking for 5 hours and get one run in the entire day. I was pleasantly surprised to find you 1) ride the lift up and 2) hike to your run. We had a guide named "Ronbo" and our first hike took 1.5 hours. It was very steep and steep like a ladder in some sections. The White Wave run was awesome in the middle, but somewhat skied off at the top. The powder was around boot-deep and the weather was beautiful.

After a 2nd run and a much shorter hike, 5 of us decided we had to take the leap and do a heli-drop. We rode to the top of the lift, got picked up by the chopper and rode for about 2 minutes to a neighboring peak. This was by far the best run of the day and one of my favorite ski experiences of my life.

We figured we couldn't top heli-skiing, so 3 of us called it a day around 3 o'clock. We did 3 runs all day and we were exhausted. A couple guys took a 4th run and the guys that didn't do heli-skiing got 5 runs in. A 2-hour drive back, some fireworks in Durango and a night of soaking at Pagosa Springs made us all very happy campers.

On Sunday, we woke up and headed to Wolf Creek for a few hours. It was Local Appreciation Day and tickets were a mere $31! We did some hiking, found some powder and enjoyed some of the best skiing weather of the year. We hopped in the car around 2, kept the cruise control on 5-over-the-speed-limit and made it home in time to catch the Super Bowl (thanks to my DVR).

If you're in shape and are an expert skier, I highly recommend you take a trip to Silverton Mountain. It's truly epic.

For more pictures from this trip, see my Silverton 2009 set on Flickr.

Traveling to Tahoe without a Driver's License

This past weekend, I had quite the adventure traveling to Lake Tahoe. On Thursday night, I flew into Denver from LA and had a busy night tidying up loose ends. After 3 hours of sleep and a late start, I was on my way to DIA early Friday morning. As I was approaching the parking garage, the lights went on in my review mirror.

When the cop asked me for my license and registration, I opened my wallet and felt my heart sink.

My driver's license was missing.

I quickly realized I left it in my pants the night before and explained this to the officer. Luckily, I found my birth certificate in my car's console and was able to show him that. He still wasn't convinced. Then he looked at my coat and said "What about your ski pass?" It had a picture on it and seemed to satisfy his identification criteria.

The cop then asked me why I was speeding (63 in a 45) and I politely explained my flight was departing in 30 minutes and I was hoping to make it. He said, "You won't make it. They won't let you check-in." I said I checked in online. He seemed to know this might work and quickly filled out the rest of my ticket. At this point, I didn't think it was possible to make my flight. I felt defeated and dreaded waiting all day until the next Frontier flight to Sacramento.

I arrived at the counter (to check-in my skis) 20 minutes before the flight was scheduled for departure. Frontier was awesome - they checked in my bags and sent me on my way as fast as they could. TSA wasn't too bad; I just had to go through the extra screening. Of course, I had to run all the way through Terminal A to make my flight on time.

While taxiing to the runway, I reflected on how awesome it was that I was utterly defeated 30 minutes prior and how the good people of Frontier Airlines made it all possible. Of course, when I arrived in Sacramento, my adventures continued with late baggage and rental car issues.

The good news is it all worked out in the end and I had a great weekend of skiing at Heavenly and Kirkwood. The snow wasn't great, but we skied in t-shirts all weekend. The Tahoe Trip seems to have become an annual tradition. Next year I'll make sure and bring my license.

Happy Birthday Mom!

For the last couple weeks, I've been enjoying a great Christmas vacation in Oregon with most of my family. Abbie and Jack didn't join me, but they got to spend 3 weeks in West Palm Beach, Florida. Poor kids.

I made sure the end of my vacation would land on a very special person's birthday. My Mom. Not only is my mom one of the coolest people in the world, she also has an excellent job title: Burn Boss. Growing up in Montana, I was always proud that Barb Raible was my mom. She was famous for her kindness in the Swan Valley. I hope she's always famous for her story about nailing a bear's nuts to a tree.

My mom is a Montana Native who wasn't afraid to raise her kids in the backwoods at her family's homestead. It sounds like a crazy idea to me, but she made it happen - cooking over a wood stove every day and working at the Swan Valley Ranger Station to make ends meet. She was responsible for getting us out of Montana and onto Oregon. She went back to school in her early 40s, got a degree in Forestry from the University of Montana and moved the whole family to Oregon for a job with the BLM.

I moved to Oregon on June 14, 1990 driving a '73 Plymouth Duster with a homemade International trailer in tow. We certainly looked like we were from Montana when we rolled into town. We moved into a house on Felony Flats. My sister and I got jobs at McDonald's (Dad's advice) and started school at North Salem High school in the fall. I met many good friends at North Salem - Jess, Matt, Clint and Michelle becoming favorites over the years.

For New Years, Jess, Clint and I rented a condo in Bend, Oregon. Matt joined us on Friday after most of us experienced an Epic Powder Day at Mt. Bachelor. It was the first time we'd all been together in 9 years. We had a blast.

This vacation in Oregon has been very special to me. I've reunited with many old friends, enjoyed 2 epic powder days and had a great time with my Mom, Dad, Sister and her fiancé Mya.

As much fun as I've had, I'm looking forward to getting back to Denver and hanging out with my kids. January 2009 is sure to be one for the books. I start a new gig at a new office tomorrow. On Wednesday, the kids return from Florida to a mountain of presents at my house. My parents are coming to town next weekend, followed by a trip to Tahoe and a weekend in Steamboat to finish out the month.

Yeah, 2009 is going to be a lot of fun. Maybe I'll see you on the slopes.

My Christmas Travel Adventure

I'm currently sitting at the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) waiting to board a flight to Portland (the real one, in Oregon). The flight is delayed an hour, but I'm confident it won't be cancelled and I'll arrive there later this evening. This is a story about my adventure getting to this point. It's not that exciting, but it certainly has the potential to become exciting. Hence the reason for this post.

Yesterday afternoon, I noticed the weather was getting kinda nasty in Oregon. Soon after, I talked with my Dad in Salem. He confirmed the bad weather and told me their power had been out for several hours. Then I noticed Patrick's tweet that he was having trouble getting from San Francisco to Portland.

This morning, I used KATU's Flight Status page and flightstats.com to setup text message alerts for my flight and the earlier one I was hoping to catch. At 9:49 this morning, I received a text message that my flight was cancelled. I realized this could be a very bad situation with everyone traveling for the holidays and began to think the worst. I knew it couldn't get much worse than renting a car and driving the from LA to Salem.

Yesterday afternoon, when I first suspected my flight might be cancelled, I called Alaska Air. It was busy. Today, I called them over 10 times with the same result. I called Orbitz (since I'd booked through them) and they couldn't help much either. While I was musing over how much fun my evening was going to be, a co-worker suggested I call American Express Travel. I'd used my Amex to buy my ticket, so it seemed like it might work.

Not only was Amex Travel extremely nice, but they were actually able to help me. The guy who helped me was named Tim and he said they had connections to a travel-agent-only line for Alaska. He said he'd call Alaska to find out what my situation was. He took my cell number and called me back in less than an hour. Unfortunately, I was in an important meeting and couldn't answer his call.

I didn't get a chance to call Tim back until I was on the way to the airport. This time I talked with Wendy from Marathon Travel. She had talked to Tim and while we were talking, she 1) booked me on the later flight at 8:40 and 2) sent me an e-mail with my confirmation number. She noted in her e-mail that it might not work:

If they give you any trouble or want to make you pay for the ticket, you may have to resort to your last option of renting a car and driving. I hope they cooperate and everything works out well for you. In any case have a safe journey and Happy Holidays.

Thanks to Wendy and especially Amex Travel for being so helpful. I never realized they had such good customer service. I'm very impressed.

The good news is everything did work out. Or at least it has so far. There's still quite a journey that has to take place. My sister drove from Chelan, WA to Salem, OR earlier today and it took her 3.5 hours to get from Portland to Salem (a 40 mile drive). Apparently, 6 inches of ice on the freeway can mess up traffic a bit.

I just got off the phone with my Dad where I gave him the good news (I'm coming) and bad news (please pick me up). There was no hesitation on his part and I'm hopeful that my bad-ass family won't let a little snow and ice get in their way. Now let's hope Alaska Air cooperates and holds up their end of the bargain.

Update: The rest of the trip was completed without a hitch. It took 3 hours for my sister and dad to drive to PDX and another 2 hours to get home. 6 inches of unplowed ice on I-5 was very interesting. We saw several rigs spin off the road in front of us. We made it safe and sound to Salem just after 3 AM.

Costa Rica was Awesome!

After entering The Golden Period almost two weeks ago, I boarded a flight bound for Costa Rica early on the morning of Thanksgiving. I knew Costa Rica was going to be a great time since good friends (the bride and groom, Autumn and Clint) and my parents were going.

On Thursday night, I had a room booked at Villa Pacande. As they suggested on their website, I took an Orange cab (for $4, not $22 like the driver tried to tell me) to my hotel. 30 minutes later I ended up at the Hotel Pacande and quickly negotiated for another cab to the Villa Pacande. 30 minutes later, I was swinging in a hammock on my room's balcony. As you can see from the picture on the right, it was a pretty nice room. I enjoyed the sunset, tipped back a few cold ones and waited for my friends to arrive at 11. After they arrived, we stayed up until the wee hours of the morning and had a fun time sharing old memories.

On Friday, we boarded a private bus that transported us from the Villa to Hotel Esperanza. It was pretty nerve-racking watching our driver navigate the narrow roads at high speed for 5 hours. We safely arrived in Playa Carrillo on Friday afternoon and soon after walked 10 minutes to the local beach. As we were walking there, my parents showed up in their rental car (they'd been in Panama for the week). Soon after, we saw some monkeys in trees then ran for the beach and splashed around in the waves of the Pacific. We entered darkness to a beautiful sunset that evening.

On Saturday, I woke up early (6:30), went on a run with my mom (very hot when the wind disappeared), had a dip in the pool and enjoyed a delicious breakfast from Dennis, the host of Hotel Esperanza. I should probably talk about the hotel a bit since that was one of the best parts. Hotel Esperanza is owned by an American (Dennis) from Florida and he and his right-hand man (Erwin) provided some of the best service I've ever seen at a hotel. The hotel had 7 rooms, and our wedding party took up 6 of them. The bride and groom occupied one, I had one, the maid of honor (Angie) had one and the other 3 were occupied by parents (mine + parents of the bride and groom). We had the place all to ourselves and it was simply magnificent.

After breakfast, we headed down to Jesse's Gym for some surfing lessons. We were told to come back at 2:30 when the tide was good. We walked down the beach to Samara and had some lunch while we waited. After lunch, 5 of us got surfing lessons and had a blast. I'm definitely hooked on surfing now and hope to get some more practice in when I make trips out to LA this winter.

Sunday was the wedding day and we started things off by taking a horseback ride in the pouring rain. It was a warm rain, so the ride itself wasn't bad. The lack of views at the top of the mountain wasn't too great though.

For the wedding ceremony, all the guys traveled down to the local beach and built an altar. The ceremony was a couple hours later and we had a ball toasting, eating and dancing the night away. At the end of the night, after everyone else had crashed, Angie and I walked down to the beach with a bottle of wine and enjoyed a spectacular site: 15-20 boats that were glowing in the distance off the shore. Sure, it could've been the booze, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't.

On Monday morning, people started to head their different directions. Clint's parents were staying another week, so they rented a car and headed north. Clint and Autumn jumped on a bus to enjoy their honeymoon in many different parts of Costa Rica. Autumn's parents hopped on a shuttle to San Jose to catch a flight back home. The rest of us (my parents, Angie and I) stayed at Hotel Esparanza for one more night. Angie and I got massages, napped by the pool and enjoyed one last walk on the beach. Tuesday was spent driving back to San Jose. We dropped Angie off at Hotel Pacande and boarded a plane for Panama City.

After arriving in Panama City, we rented a car and drove to Ivan's Bed and Breakfast (highly recommended) for the night. On Wednesday morning, we toured the Miraflores Locks (part of the Panama Canal) and drove to our friends' house in El Valle. In El Valle, we talked, read, relaxed and watched it rain. A lot. It was a nice way to wind down the trip before flying back last Friday.

My favorite part of this vacation was enjoying the beautiful beaches with really cool people. Good friends are always fun to party with, especially when they bring along other good friends. I love destination weddings and I'm pumped to enjoy two more in 2009: one in West Palm Beach and one in Cancun.

It's a strange feeling being back in the snow after surfing last week. Hopefully I'll get over it soon. Skiing last weekend was good therapy. 5 more days before the end of the year and I should be fully recovered.

For more pictures from this trip, see my Costa Rica 2008 set on Flickr.