So I'm sitting here in the lodge at Alpine Meadows as my boy is skiing with his team.  As the two photos above might suggest, the mullet is gone.  Which can only mean my season is over.  My aspirations of coming back from my calf injury is all but a distant memory now.  I probably could have pulled off getting my leg back in order and developing a little fitness between now and January 9th, but the reality is that it would have taken a monumental effort that would have encroached on fatherly obligations regarding skiing and racing for the boy.  The boy has a race on the January 10th so flying to Texas and back and getting him to his race would have had me turning myself into a pretzel.  I was pretty depressed all week about having to give up the ghost, but it's been both an incredibly great year and ultimately my most frustrating. 

But the reality is, that I started racing cross as a bridge to get me through the fall and into the ski season and now that it's here, I have a lot of good skiing in my future and that makes the pain of calling it a cross season ebb just a bit.  And on a positive note, I learned a ton from my injury and I know what I need to do between now and my next race to prevent something like this from happening again.  Brightness in the future to be true.

Would have preferred to have let the mullet grow out a few more weeks but when people about town are starting to ask, "what's up with John's mullet?" (ahem...Courtney Dettlinger), it's probably time for it to hit the floor.

Hope you are well.  With this new found blogging habit, maybe we should reach in to the mailbag tomorrow and answer a bunch of letters I've gotten over the past week.

Hope you are well and be nice to one another.

Kindly,

Johnny GoneFast