Sally got a job as a swimming teacher for infants. She is really enjoying it apart from the fact her uniform is a swim suit! Ha! She is working really hard at the gym these days and right now she is injury free. At the start of 2008 I finally convinced Sally to try cycling on the road and she got into it. We bought her a nice bike in time for her first long distance event and now I can't stop her. Sally spent most of the summer riding with friends and doing centuries (100 mi) and metric centuries(100km). As it gets colder and darker here she is spending time indoors on our rollers. I took some good video footage...  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7222265588346158082

Henry started pre-school (kinder) this Fall.  He is 3 and will be 4 in December. He loves school and made friends easily. The academic part is not coming naturally to him but he's got the play time part down. Well he can write his name and spell it out loud and he recognized letters now. He can count to twenty if he's playing hide-and-seek but not under any other circumetances. He's so cute the teachers have to adore him anyway. Henry is riding his little bike with training wheels, he's doing well in swimming and enjoying it. He pretty much doesn't stop moving fromt he time he wakes up in the morning to the time he lies down at night - very active and a LOT of energy. His blonde hair is starting to darken now and he's he's invited 3 or 4 of friends over for his 4th birthday in December for a Spiderman/Batman/Superman party. Next year he think will be a Pirate party.

Polly is doing awsome in school. She is 7 in  December and in 1st grade now. Academically she is scoring at late 2nd grade level and her teacher loves her. However at home all she talks about is chasing boys at recess!! We were not expecting that in 1st grade. Over the summer she swam in the local swimming league again for the team at our gym and she did very well - she loves the water. Into the Fall she decided to join the USA Swim league to represent the same team in the under 8's. She's only competed in one meet so far and she was quite sick unfortunately (it turned out to be Pneumonia!) but she still managed to come first in her 25 yard backstroke heat. She is still enjoying gymnastics and she completed the Mt Diablo Challenge with me for the third year in a row this year and we got our best time 1 hour 42 minutes (or thereabouts) - there is a photo of us on our facebook site (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=959581&id=705473887&ref=mf).

Also on Facebook I put up photos of my Aconcagua trip (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=42817&id=705473887&ref=mf). Yes, we went to Argentina as a team of 4 - unassisted. Tom summited but James and I turned around at about 21,500', 1500' from the summit. I have been thinking about the advantages of the guided trips and I think the key is being fed a yummy breakfast and dinner (and not having to hump all that gear up to 19,000' for the high camp). Instead, being unassisted, we were pretty tired by summjit day and I was having trouble eating anything. You can see the edema in my face on one photo i took in the tent at 19000'. I hated the taste of all my food by then. On that trip I came home at 157 lbs and that was after I'd spent days recovering in Mendoza eating goat, lamb, beef and everything else I could get my greedy hands. Thats about 13 lbs lighter than what I started at on that trip.

Transitioning from that expedition into my racing season was very difficult because I had lost so much cycling condition so once again I had a pretty poor year of bike racing, with my best being an 11th at Orosi Road Race and a 19th at Panoche Valley Road Race. I'm still avoiding criteriums and I seem to do quite well in climbing races with downhill/flat finishes. I usually get dropped on the climbs so a climb at the finish line is bad for me. Next year will be my year! I am training much smarter in the off-season now getting ready for next year and Sally got me some coaching for my birthday which is really helping. I also joined a big well funded team sponsered by Wells Fargo (www.c4racing.org) so I will have some team mates to work with now.

I'm still working at Zeiss. I took a sideways move into the Chief Architect position. It's pretty good, i now have no direct reports so i don't do performance reviews or hiring. But I get to lead the design of all the cool new products we work on. The down side is more exposure to the company politics. I am enjoying flexible working hours and fitting in my training during the week.