Quick Update

I'm in the Hong Kong airport and have about ten minutes before I board my flight.  Here are a few pictures.  

Will and friends in their Batman costumes.

Jen did a triathlon last weekend in Shanghai.  She got 2nd place!!!  awesome!  great job Jen.  She was very excited to get back to competition after a few years of having babies.  

June somehow strategically got a Cheerio on each cheek.

Me and Will in Taiwan.  You can see that he has two full hands of french fries.

June on the phone in Taiwan.

We visited the home of Elder Ruan (8th quorum of Seventy).  I taught and baptized his nephew Roger during my mission.  Many of you have met Roger.  In the photo is also Roger's mom.  Was great to see them again.

Will and June in front of the Grand Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan

I got 3rd place in the final Shanghai series race Individual Time Trial.  The winner was a pro from France, not sure why he was there but he was only a few seconds ahead of me and my teammate Simon!  I finished the Shanghai series overall in 4th place after 8 races.

The was the "iGrow" machine that I saw in a store in Hong Kong.  It is supposed to make your hair grow.  It's been a couple of weeks and none grew...

Jen and the kids head back to Utah tomorrow for six weeks.  Will miss them dearly but so glad we have Skype and phones.  It will be great for the kids to experience their first Halloween and first Thanksgiving.  We are all REALLY looking forward to Thanksgiving in the US.  We've talked about coming out to it for a couple of years and finally this year it worked out and we are thrilled about it.

Sri Lanka, Thailand and more

I'm sitting in the Bangkok airport right now watching Bill Clinton's speech at the DNC.  He sure gives a good speech but....on to more important things.  We've been busy recently.  Last week I made my first trip to Sri Lanka for a few days.  Very interesting.  I've been in Thailand this week and both trips have been a big success.  

Below is Will on his bike wearing his Tour de France shirt.  He loves his bike.

Jen signed Will up for gymnastics and soccer.  Below is a picture from Will's first gymnastics class.  

This is a picture from the bike race I did in northern China a few weeks ago.  It was about an hour from the Russian boarder!  it was a 50km race around a lake.  The winning prize for the race was a $3,200 new bike and the team classification prize was a $300 helmet.  I had a good day and won the overall and our team won the team classification!  Perfect timing as we had just started looking at bikes for Jen.  Because the bike was provided by Specialized they were nice enough to let me change the style and size to fit Jen.  Now Jen is all set with all the gear :)

Here is June just being happy!

Will showing off his new hat!

Jen's new bike!  black and pink!

Jen and her new biking gang.  They all just got their bikes and are ready to tackle this new sport.

Here is a picture in Shanghai from last weekend.  We went to this cool rooftop place on the Bund for a friend's 50th birthday.  

 This is a picture of the coast of the capital city of Sri Lanka.

This is Miss Sri Lanka at our Nordictrack brand launch there.  She is our new brand ambassador in Sri Lanka.

Things have been going well for us.  June is starting to speak a few simple words and running all over. We are now getting ready for Will's 3rd birthday next week.  Not sure yet what we will do but it's hard to believe that he's 3!  

Tour de France

 

This is the route of the race that we rode.  Plenty of mountains to climb. 

The blog is not cooperating and I can't get the pictures and text to line up where I want them.  Oh well. It is what it is.  Where to start this post?  Probably with a big thanks to Jen.  She is awesome.  The past two weeks I've done things that have previously just been a dream.  A big thanks to her for letting me come and fulfill this dream.  There have been a few nightmares along the way in this trip but you have to take the good with the bad.  There really is no way to do a proper blog post for this trip but I'll try to give some highlights.  

I've been in France for two weeks.  My Aussie cycling buddy Gus and I decided last year that we really wanted to go watch the Tour de France.  Something I've always wanted to do.  It turned out that I had meetings for work in France starting the day after the Tour so it worked out perfectly to come before and follow the race.  

One of our main objective was to ride in the Etape du Tour race.  This is where they let amateurs race one of the stages that the pros will ride a few days later.  The route that we did is nicknamed the "circle of death" by the pros - for good reason.  It is 201km (130ish miles) with about 15,000 vertical feet of climbing over four mountain passes.  over 8,000 riders set out to tackle the stage.  Shortly after starting the rain started coming down and as we climbed up the mountains the temp dropped and we entered the clouds.  At the top of the first mountain pass it was 45 degrees, we were socking wet and the fog was so thick you could hardly see.  With the rain and wet roads and the cliffs on the side of the road it made the descents very scary - especially since the decent was so cold it was unreal. I've never been so cold and miserable.  The shivering was uncontrollable and the temptation to stop was great.  Many did.  Of the 8,000 + riders that went to France to race only about 3,800 finished!  It was the hardest day I've had on a bike.  After every climb we were dreading the descents.  We finished in 9 hours and then after warming up reflected on what we had accomplished.  A blog post is not sufficient to describe the day and the experience.  As miserable as it was it was an epic and unforgettable day.  

The following week it was one bad hotel after another, and one night of sleeping in the car - long story!, as we traveled around Southern France through the Pyrenees mountains following the Tour.  On the race rest day we drove down to the beach in Spain which was awesome.  We then headed up to Paris and toured around the city for a day or so and then watched the final stage. The whole experience was just awesome.  

While Gus and I were riding our bikes around France Jen was touring Beijing with her sister and her mom.  They came over to China while I was gone.  Her mom stayed for several days and her sister stayed for 11 days.  They had a great time and Jen really enjoyed spending time with her mom and sister.      

 The Col du Tourmalet was the biggest and most famous climb that we did during our race.  A few days after our race the pros came through the same route and we rode our bikes up before them and took some pics. 

 This is on the top of the Tourmalet.  Amazing scenery and a very blue sky.

 Eiffel Tower - after seeing all of the buildings in Asia this was a bit of a let down.  But considering when this was built it is a very impressive structure.  Gus is a builder so he explained to me just how incredible of a project it would have been to build it.

 The Louvre.  Didn't go in.  Biggest museum in the world.  I'll go inside next time with Jen.

 This is the beach in San Sebastian, Spain.  Really beautiful with great water.  I went for a mile swim while Gus did 2.5 miles!  He's getting ready for the Ironman in Canada next month.

For the final stage of the Tour we had some VIP passes, courtesy of my company's partnership with the Tour organizer, so we got to so to a very nice lunch on the Champs Elyesee and then one of the Tour hostess girls held up this sign and guided us to the VIP grandstands at the finish line.  It was about a 20 min walk where she held up the sign the whole time as we followed.  There were surprisingly very few grandstands for spectators, just a few hundred seats.  The rest of the fans lined the course on the side of the road.

Now I'm really excited to get back to China.  Most days I skype with Jen and the kids.  Will is a handful and June is getting more and more vocal and is no longer a little baby but is a full blown toddler now.  They are so fun to skype with.  It's very late, off to bed.

Long Time No See

To say that it has been a while since our last blogpost is a gross understatement.  It's been a very long time. My VPN doesn't work like it used to so today is actually the first time I've been on blogs in months. I'm in Japan at the moment and thought I'd do a quick post to try to keep somewhat of a journal of our past five months.  

This is the family at Moganshan, about 3 hours drive from Shanghai in the mountains in the bamboo forests.  It was tomb sweeping festival (Chinese memorial day) so we took advantage of the three days off and went to the mountains with to other families.  

Happy June.  She loves to smile.

Me and some friends out for a ride in Moganshan.  Rode about 110 miles through the mountains, on purpose.  Great fun.

My new bike.  This is the bike that one of the pro teams, Saxo Bank, uses for the Tour de France.  Specialized, bike company, has a racing team in China that they've asked me to be on.  They sponsored me a bike and gear so it was an easy choice to say yes.  The first race of the season was this past weekend.  I got 10th place, 1st foreigner, in the Elite race (yes, there were more than 10 people in the race).

In January over Chinese New Year we took the family to Hawaii to meet up with our great friends Tyler and Sarah. My mom came to spend time with us, help with the kids, and help Jen with the kids on the flight back to SLC - I had to go directly back to China while they enjoyed a few weeks in the US.  This picture is on the top of a volcano, Mt Haleakala (sp?).  Tyler and I thought it would be a good idea to ride bike up the volcano.  It goes from sea level to over 10,000 ft in 36 miles.  Mom followed me up in the car and drove me down.  This was an amazing ride.  Longest climb I've ever done with amazing scenery.  Took 3hr45min.  Was a great accomplishment but was very tired at the top!

This is us in Hawaii watching the whales.  Will is taking the picture - j/k.  He was asleep in the car.  At this look-out spot there was a family speaking Shanghainese (yes, that is a language and it's very different from Chinese).  They were pretty surprised when I spoke to them in Chinese and asked what part of Shanghai they were from.  Pretty funny.  We took turns taking pictures of each other's families.

My favorite food!

My favorite little girl!  June and I at Moganshan enjoying the nice spring weather.

In March I did my first 70.3 Ironman Triathlon race in Singapore.  It was quite the challenge.  The temp was 95 with 98 percent humidity.  Heat index was at 104. Makes for a long day... I finished in one piece and had a great experience. This race had 1,600 competitors from 63 different countries.  A group of us from Shanghai went to the race.  This picture is the ocean harbor where we swam 1.2 miles before biking 56 miles and running 13.1 miles.  Those are all cargo ships in the distance.

This is the transition area with everyones bikes in Singapore.  

I took this picture this weekend inside our complex.  Looks like someone wanted to get away from the big city and go on a camping trip - with 50,000 people looking out their apartment windows at them...

Will fell asleep sitting up.  He's getting so big.  

Jen standing next to tree in full spring blossom in our complex.

For my birthday Jen got me a massage table.  Now we don't even leave the house to get a massage.  We call them and they come in and work on Jen then work on me.  Then we fold up the table and they go.  It's fantastic!

This looks like an aquarium but it's actually a restaurant.  I ate here a few hours ago.  That lady is taking our order.  We had squid, first half raw and then they took the 2nd half to cook it tempura style.  We had blowfish, which can only be prepared by a master chief that knows how to kill it properly so that the poison in it doesn't taint the meet and kill you.  We also had lots of raw fish and a bit of cooked steak.  Regular surf and turf.

There are a few highlights from the past 5 months.  Hopefully we can post more

Seoul Food

I just got back from Seoul, Korea last night.  Seoul Food is just awesome.  Time didn't permit this trip to go to a local Korean bbq house which was too bad.  They are great.  You sit on the floor, which is heated, and you bbq up tons of yummy meats and then eat them with rice and an onslaught of little side dishes like kimchi.  I was able to eat a meal of the short ribs with rice which is one of my favorites.  It's funny now because most of my favorite dishes or meals are from Japan, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan or China.  Interesting how food choices change.  Living overseas I think has really expanded our food horizons.  I didn't realize this until my sisters last trip here when we asked her what she wanted to eat (Thai, Greek, Indian, Japanese, Korean etc) and she replied that she hadn't eaten any of them.  We then made it our mission to expose her to all of our favorite foods and to our joy she liked most of them.

I didn't intend to talk all about food in the blog post but food is usually on my mind.  I love to eat!

This morning we had our branch Christmas party.  It was a big breakfast that had a Polar Express theme to it.  The kids loved it and there were a couple hundred people there.  (Our branch now has about 220+ every week!).  After the breakfast I went with the youth to do a service project.  They saved up their money to buy gifts that we were going to deliver to a local children's hospital.  It was previously arranged and when we got there we quickly realized that they weren't taking us to the area that we wanted to go to.  They had taken us to the VIP ward where there was only 4 kids that weren't even all locals.  This was not what we had intended.  So we left that ward and walked into the cardiac ward.  As I entered it was obvious that it was not the VIP section.  The staff didn't speak English, their uniforms weren't as nice, there were no private rooms but instead 3-4 kids per room and it just wasn't nearly as nice as the other area.  I went to the nurses desk and told them we had about 15 foreign youth that had prepared gifts for the kids and asked if we could come and distribute them.  She happily agreed so we brought the youth in and started delivering the gifts.  Christmas obviously doesn't mean anything to the people we visited but the spirit of Christmas was ever present as the families of these little kids just lit up with joy and appreciation.  The youngest kid I saw was 2 months old and the oldest was about ten.  All of the families I spoke with were from the country side all over China that had come to Shanghai for the better medical care.  These were kids with heart problems.  There was one boy that didn't have a family there with him.  He was so excited as we gave him a teddy bear that was bigger than he was.  It was hard knowing that he was alone.  The nurses said his parents had dropped him off and came in sometimes to see him.  They are probably working hard to pay the medical bills.

I was worried we wouldn't have enough gifts for the whole floor of 40 kids.  Turns out we did have enough and like the fish and the loaves there were still a lot of gifts left so we went to the next floor up and had just enough for the 40 kids on that floor.  We were one gift short so one of the leaders went down to the car to get an extra gift and brought it back up to the last little kid.

Shanghai is a city that is all about making money and getting ahead.  The people can be cold, short tempered, and selfish.  When people do something nice for someone else here they are often looked at as crazy.  Everyone is always in such a hurry.  Today for a few short minutes we were able to spend time with these humble families from the country side that were so thankful to have visitors and gifts.  They were parents that just wanted their kids to get better.  It was very refreshing to be around them.  It is true that when we give service we gain much more than we give.  We weren't able to tell the hospital that we were a church organization or discuss the true meaning of Christmas with any of them but I think that the spirit of Christ that surrounds the Christmas season was there and overcame any language or political/religious barriers.

Post from Shanghai

I'm back in Shanghai for a few days.  We are enjoying some of the last great weather of the season.  The weather was great this weekend but we know it won't last too long.  I was in Beijing last week and it was below freezing and the damp cold winter of Shanghai is just around the corner. 

 Recently two-time Ironman World Champion Chris "Macca" McCormack came to Shanghai.  It was arranged that I got to go do a training ride and run with him.  After the workout he and I went to Starbucks and chatted for about an hour and we arranged to send a treadmill to his house in Sydney, Australia to help him train for the London Olympics.  The treadmill was delivered a couple days later.  He loves the product and we've kept in contact and in a couple of weeks he'll be coming to Utah to have meetings with us on how to work together.  I'll have to find the link to the youtube video that shows us riding our bikes in Shanghai, he had a film crew following him.

This is a recent picture from the Bund in Shanghai.  We live about ten minutes from here.  Does this make you want to come visit us?  We welcome visitors!

Lately everyone says that June looks like me and Will looks like Jen.  You decide.  

June just started rolling over and Will is loving doing puzzles and throwing things from our 6th floor balcony, Jen's cell phone was the latest victim to go off.  We had a special lock installed yesterday so he can't get on the balcony any more.  He continues to get funny looks from people when he starts speaking Chinese to people.  It's pretty funny.  For now he still prefers Chinese to English.

Here Will and June pose for a pic in their jammies.  Will is getting so tall and June is growing very big cheeks.

My vpn just stopped working for a few minutes so I'm having to redo this blog post as it was deleted.  Very annoying.  Anyway, these pictures are from a bike race I went and did last weekend.  It was in a small town about 4 hours drive outside of Shanghai.  My friend Jeff and I went and did it.  We thought it was going to just be a small little event but we were wrong.  At the starting line there was an hour long opening ceremony complete with a big stage, dancers, kung fu performances and speeches from government officials and of course big fireworks.  In front of the stage they had a sign with each team name that the team was supposed to line up behind.  Our team, Slice, was originally on the far side but when we lined up they quickly moved us to front and center.  Then at the starting line they also made us be at the front and center for the cameras so it appeared to be an "international" event.  At the finish line they also had a big stage, dancers, fireworks etc.   Just after I finished a local TV crew came to interview me.  After a few questions they turned off the camera and told me what they wanted me to say.  Then turned it back on so they could get footage of me saying that it was such a great event and a nice area and that I would want to tell my friends about this place.  The scenery was in fact very beautiful.  The picture of the lake was outside my hotel room window.  Hotel probably isn't' the right word, hostel would be more accurate.  A steal plank would have been softer than the bed they had there.  

Jen wanted to put on a Turkey Trot 1 mile race this year.  We got started too late so the event so couldn't come together in time.  Next year we will prepare.  Jen still wanted to run though to see how fast she could run a mile.  She ran a 6:09 without a problem.  Congrats Jen!  great job.  Post pregnancy 5 months and her fitness is gradually coming back.  

Thanksgiving was this week.  This is always one of the few times that I feel a bit homesick.  Nothing beats Thanksgiving at my Aunt Kathy's.  It was a regular work day here but I did take off a couple hours early.  Jen made vegetarian chile....she redeemed herself with two pies - pumpkin and banana cream that were good.  She didn't appreciate when I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures once the table was set.  the other dish you see is mashed sweet potato.  On Saturday we got together with several other friends and had a big proper thanksgiving spread, but again - not Kathy's spread.  Maybe next year we will come back for this holiday.  It's one of our favorites.  

This is a picture from the starting line of Ironman Taiwan.  Jen and I went to this beach a few years ago and we love it there.  I thought this was a great picture.