New Years Eve

Yes, I know today is New Years Day, but I'm doing my New Years Eve post today, get over it!  (I'll have a New Years post later tonight, Alex had a major milestone today and I'm eager to celebrate it!)

2013 has been a great year for the Lake clan.  We started the year with Elyse gestating my progeny, and I'm happy to say that both Elyse and Alex are now separate entities and both are happy and healthy.  

Elyse (the geologist) made the decision to trade in her hardhat, work boots and soil sampling in exchange for burp clothes, nursing tops and, well, soil sampling :)  I have to say, I am very happy and proud of my wife for the amount of effort and care she has taken to be Alex's primary provider.  It is not easy as any parent knows and Elyse is handing it with grace (and sleep deprived comedy - well comedy for me anyway).

Alex has made the co-sleeper his home for the last four and a half months.  This is a contraption that attaches to the bad so our little man can sleep with us, but not with us.

As of late Alex has been just barely fitting in his co-sleeper which would be fine but he had also taken to rolling and kicking around all night (he always did that, but now it's more aggressive and there is not enough room for him to do it).  Elyse and I are discussing upgrading him to his pack and play for night time  sleeping, that way he has more room to thrash about.

Additionally on the baby front, I found this series of baby development videos:

2 month development
4 month development

6 month development

I found them to be quite informative as we have been reading a lot, but everyone is so afraid to tell you where your child should be for fear of hurting your feelings.

I'm happy to say that Alex is progressing nicely along with the typical development for his age - YAY!
Additionally, it is sometimes hard to watch the typical child - Owen as it is kind of sad to see his lack of development.

Ok, back to what is really important - ME!

As some of you may know I have been trying to get back into some form of health and fitness (my standards for myself are rather high) by doing Crossfit 4-5 days a week.  I started doing Crossfit (Barracks) in March 2013 to lose the 20 lbs that I had gained through Elyse's pregnancy and my general lack of giving a f()ck while living in Oceanside for a year.   What ended up happening was that I stayed the same weight, got a heck of a lot stronger and reshaped my body a little.  In addition to that I have been working on my flexibility ( I was epicly tight in my hips and hamstrings) and have gotten to the point where I can deadlift, and overhead squat with proper range of motion (this is key to avoiding back and shoulder injuries).  It literally took my 6 months of easy working out and "mobility" (a fancy word for stretching) before I had the flexibility necessary to perform the major barbell movements (squat, clean, snatch, deadlift).

I have also started playing Ping Pong again (I've been playing with my brother since I was a kid, and have played on and off throughout my adulthood at random bars or table tennis clubs).  I found out that San Diego has one of the largest Table Tennis clubs in the country (SDTTA).  Now compared to these folks, I'm definitely bush league (some of the members compete at the National level), but I have a lot of fun and I've been getting better.

XXXV

Ok, I know, totally pathetic.  I'm sorry to all my followers that it has taken me this long to add a new post.  (Yes, both of you).

So here goes, December 30, 2013, I'll be 35 in less than a week and reading through my old posts I realize that my life is significantly different now than it was then.  I don't mountain bike near as often as I used to, I haven't snowboarded in two years, it's been 5.5 years since Ironman Lake Placid.  I lost a lot of my residual fitness in grad school and I've basically been just maintaining my lack of fitness for the last few years (which doesn't sound to great, but it's better than the alternative of getting old and fat).

Oh yeah, and Elyse and I have not only been married, but she has given me a male heir.  Alexander Jackson Lake, he is a little fireball of energy, he is mini-me, and I love it.  He is going to drive me crazy which is exactly the karma that I deserve for driving my parents crazy all those years ago.

Pictures you ask?  No.  There will be no pictures today.  Christ people I haven't posted in 3 years, you really think I'm gonna go all out and post pictures?

But I am planning on doing a little three month health and fitness challenge in which I will be starting on Jan 1.  I will be cleaning up my diet and going Paleo, going to Crossfit (go Barracks!) 4-5 days a week and playing ping-p....ahem... Table Tennis 1-2 times a week, along with some weekend active things like hiking and what not.  My goal is to get as fit as possible for our snowboard trip to Big Bear where I will be testing my body by attempting to not kill my old, rusty self on the slopes.

Anyway, stay tuned for health and fitness updates.  Before photos taken on Jan 1st (cringe).

Wario Kart!!

Well, not much else has gone on in my life since my last post, late nights troubleshooting robot code and making circuits (PCB's and pretending to be an EE).

Robot Mario Kart Race was today, and our robot, Wario bullied the other robots into submission. We had some navigational problems today that were fine two days ago, but what can you do.

Stay tuned for pics and videos.

Robotics!!

Ok, not much time to post, just wanted to upload some pics and a quick movie of our robot so far.

You can hear our professor saying "Oh Hell Yeah" at the end :)

Olympic Fever!!

Ok, so I've been watching a lot of the Olympics, guilty as charged. The fact is, I LOVE the Olympics. I'm particularly fond of the Summer Olympics, but the Winter Olympics have secured a small part of my heart.

How crazy was that Snowboard-X course. Professional snowboarders falling left and right. Damn that course must have been icy. That course looked so fun I wanted to jump out there and give it a run. I better start training for 2014!!

Also, how the heck do the mogul skiers have any semblance of knee's left? My knee typically hurts jogging and these machines are pumping their legs at ridiculous speeds. Respect!

I also enjoy the biathlon, man, I have a hard enough time trying to write when I'm hyped up on caffeine, but these guys can hold a steady rifle with a heart rate through the roof. Props!

Anyway all this excitement has come as a positive influence on me. I've cleaned off the old road bike and set to riding it on the trainer while watching the Olympics. Now I'll never be Lance Armstrong (and I like my nuts in pairs) but I do have a passion for cycling, and I'm thinking of doing some XC racing this summer. Yeah, I know, I never thought I'd ever XC race again. But come on, DHing doesn't really shed the pounds.

Also, I'm working on recruiting some bro's to accompany me on a 24 hour mtb race this summer, always been a goal of mine.

Women's Boarder-X tonight!! Go Lindsey J.!!

2010.

Well, it's now 2010. I'm watching the Olympics and I'm super stoked for the good ol' USofA. Funny to see people from all of my favorite places competing in the Winter Games (Tahoe City, Truckee, Breck, Vermont, YEAH!)

A brief update on my situation (no not the guy from the Jersey Shore). I;m getting my masters at CU, this will be a reality come December o-ten, and I'm super psyched to get that over with. Right now I'm taking one class, Mechatronics and Robotics, in which we design robots to compete against each other. In our case the class voted to make robots to play mario kart against each other. The robots need to be able to act on their own and make decisions because we program them and let them go. I am learning a ton, and looking forward to where this project takes me. I've been told it's the best ME class offered at CU.

On that note, I've decided to take only one class this semester to settle down and be able to have some semblance of a life this semester, as well as having to wait until the fall to get my last required class (an organizational snafu due to switching my major halfway through my masters)

Yesterday I grabbed the road bike down and cleaned all the bird poo off it (don't ask). Today I took the old lady for a 45 minute spin around the living room, actually, in one place in my living room, but come on, it's cold out there!! I think she's been on maybe two ride since her momentous journey around Lake Placid.

Here are some pics from some adventures we've been on in the last few months:

Here is our camp site in Colorado National Monument, cold but fun!!

View from our campsite:

A little off roadin:

A little Fruita action:

Colorado River in Moab.

Some Amasaback goodness:

That's it for now, sun just came out!!

-elake

I'm Back!!

Yes, I'm back, its been a while, maybe two years. It actually took me quite a bit of wrangling in the internets to get my account back, but alas the blooger is now back in the hands of its rightful owner.

I guess I'll start with a little piece on what I've been up to since my last post. Man, quite a lot actually. I'll give you the readers digest version:

I spent one more winter in Tahoe living it up, working at Alpine Meadow for one last season. That last winter I lived in a house with my buddy Jeff (read about Jeff above in my Heros post) and some new folks courtesy of craigslist, Elyse and Steve. Throughout the season we had many a guest resisdents, mainly Neil (300!!), Heidi, Jordan, Stephan, and Heather.

It was a great January, we moved into the house on January 3rd and on the 4th it started dumping, and dumping, it snowed the entire month of January. There was many a Munchkins run done during that month. Which was especially awesome for me because while I have always been fine with riding deep pow, I finally got good enough to traverse through the tight trees at high speed on skier tracks (which is the way to exit Munchkins). Yeah, that is kind of like the cross that snowboarders have to bear at Alpine Meadows, a total skiers mountain. Alpine really separates the snowboarding men from the boys, because you are always riding with skiers and they are always traversing to get the fresh, and you either have to learn quick, or you get left behind. Many a dedicated snowboarder has landed at Alpine Meadows and came away from it a skier.

Most of the rest of the season was fairly tame and not too many dumps so I spent the rest of the season working three jobs trying to stay afloat,

By February my charm had landed on Elyse and we started hanging out quite a bit. I take it she found my snowboarding lessons quite enchanting and the rest was history. We started dating and lasted through the winter. I knew I was going back to grad school at University of Colorado in the fall so we dicided to have as much fun as we could over the summer until then.

Elyse and I travelled cross country in the newly acquired 2001 Ford Escort (a total dream of a car with 19K miles on it courtesy of Nana Schaffer who can no longer drive and has no need for the car). It was a great trip, driving and camping and hanging out. We even got caught in a quick snow storm on I-70 just west of Golden, CO. It was probably the most memorable moment of the trip :)

We next spent a few weeks in Santa Barbara California hanging out with Elyse's family and witnessing a heat wave and the Gap Fire of 2008, right up in the hills of SB. I even decided to take my road bike up into the hills a few times to get ready for Ironman Lake Placid in July. After hanging in SB for a few weeks we decided to go to Guatemala and Belize for a few weeks before I went back to school. It was a cool trip, but unfortunately we hit Guatemala right as the rainy season began, and after getting wet wet wet we headed for Belize and the Caribbean Island of Key Caulker, a true tropical paradise. After all the best way to train for an Ironman is to go to a third world country and lounge around!!

To be continued because frankly, it's been a while since I've posted and I need to warm up to it :)