During a moment of what might be referred to as “incredible stupidity”, I agreed to take part in the annual Wasatch Front leg of the Ragnar Relay, otherwise known as the Wasatch Back. Upon first glance this may seem like an excellent way to get in shape for the summer, but after further inspection you’ll find that it’s most likely a death sentence for a lazy slug like myself. Considering the fact that the last real endurance training I’ve done was about 15 years ago, I’ve definitely got my work cut out for me. And as if that wasn’t enough, I had to go and drag my wife into this mess as well. I suppose this way we can at least die together though.

For those who are unfamiliar (don’t worry, I had no idea what this thing was when I agreed to it), it’s basically a race that makes you pray there will be someone waiting at the finish line with a gun for you to shoot yourself with. The race begins in Logan and then winds 190 miles up the backside of the Wasatch to end somewhere round about Park City (Course Map). The race takes the better part of 2 days and we’ll be running straight through the night. Each of the 12 team members gets 3 legs of the race for a total of around 15-20 miles and spends all of their non-running time packed into a couple minivans which follow whomever the current runner happens to be. Basically it’ll be 2 days of tired, cramped, smelly hell. Fun, huh?

This is a happy pre-death picture

Anyway, the main point of this post is to solicit support from our dear beloved readers. Emily and I have joined up with several friends from my new job to be on one of two “Cancer Teams” that will be running the race. The main difference between a regular team and a “Cancer Team” is that all of our entry fees will be going to the American Cancer Society. The only downside to this is that the entry fees/donations for the Cancer Teams are much steeper than are those of the regular teams and this is where you, my dear readers, come into the picture. Emily and I are humbly asking for your monetary support in the way of donations to the American Cancer Society as we train for this brutal ordeal. Please feel free to donate as much or as little as you can and be assured that all donations will go to the ACS in the form of one lump sum donation that will be put together by the members of our team. Emily and I will need to come up with $700 for our part of the donation so every little bit helps. The only thing we can offer in thanks is the hard work we’ll put into trying to survive this thing as well as a promise to have someone post pictures of our limp and lifeless bodies located wherever we happen to collapse between Logan and Park City. Thanks in advance for your support and prayers for our survival. We’ll need em.

Donate for Mike

Donate for Emily

Bus to Beelzebub Team Donation

Or you can donate via PayPal below and we will include your portion with our team donation.

This obviously isn’t me, but I wish it was. This guy is amazing! This has nothing to do with our family other than the fact that I thought it was cool.

So it’s been over a month since a posted last. Not because there hasn’t been anything happening, but because I’ve been lazy about posting. I’m not sure why it’s been so hard to post lately, but hopefully this will break my streak and get my butt back in gear. I’ve got some pictures and adventures that I’ll be posting over the next couple days so stay tuned.

So I had to have surgery on an infected tooth this week. The infection was the result of a root canal that took place some time ago, but the point of this post is that this is only the second time I’ve ever been “put under” and I’ve decided I don’t like it. This is mainly due to the fact that there are gaps in my memory where I know I was awake enough to be mobile, but I don’t remember anything about them. At the risk of sounding to presumptuous, I have to think that this must be what it’s like in the early stages of Alzheimer’s (I just watched an episode of Scientific American Frontiers about memory loss the other day, hence the reference).

It’s just weird to think that my brain was working enough to get me from the Doctors office to the car, but I honestly can’t remember getting to the car or even getting home for that matter. I do remember talking to the nurse briefly as I woke up after the surgery. She asked me if I felt ok and if I was prone to puking. I told her I felt fine and that I don’t puke too often. Then she helped me stand up to move to the recovery room, but I don’t remember walking down the hall. I only vaguely remember laying down on the bed, but then I don’t remember anything until Emily got out of the car to get the kids from my mom. After that, the next thing I remember was laying on the couch at home. I don’t really even remember getting out of the car and into the house. It’s quite disturbing to think that I was up and interacting with people, but that I’m unable to recall most of it.

Anyway, the surgery went ok and aside from a little swelling I feel pretty good. My jaw aches a little, but for the most part there hasn’t even been any pain. I just hope the fix sticks and I don’t have to have that tooth worked on ever again.

I found a site the other day which allows you to “tilt-shift” any photo. For those of you unfamiliar with tilt-shifting, it’s a photo manipulation technique which basically blurs the foreground and background of your photo and results in a “miniaturization” effect. It only really works on landscape type photos, but the effect is pretty nifty. For example, the picture below was taken from the the ski lift at Park City earlier this summer:

You can see the original picture here for comparison. And if you’d like to try this out on your own photos, you can visit the tiltshiftmaker here. Or if you’d just like to view all the crazy pictures other people have made, you can check out the flickr group here (beware that some of the pictures in that gallery didn’t work out so well).