Thanks for the reminder that I've been ignoring this page for a while John. 8-)

The last week or two have been craziness followed by boredom, which is nice because it gives you a chance to catch up on sleep.

Two weeks ago was my 30th birthday. Besides the depressing fact of having to mourn the loss of my 20's, it was pretty good. A bunch of us got together at Josh and Andrea's house for a cookout and beverages, and a mellow fun evening was had by all. Julie got me a portable disc golf basket for my birthday, so now for all of those times when I'm driving along and say "Wow, that would make for some really good disc golf holes over there" I can stop and actually find out if I'm right or not.

Last weekend was the Tyrol Basin Ski Patrol banquet, which in and of itself was quite fun. Good food, good drinks. I got recognized for my work training the patrol candidates in the Outdoor Emergency Care class, and also was elected to an at-large position on the TBSP board, so a rather eventful night for me there. Of course, this was after a too eventful morning. I don't like starting my day (ok, it was around noon, but it was still close to the start of my day!) with calls from the Mequon Police Department. It seems that since my parents were in Atlanta, Nick's girlfriend Angie decided to stay the night, when she left that morning, that was the last anyone had seen her up to the point of the call to me from the PD. This was noticed of course, because her sister was getting married, and she was standing up in the wedding. When she didn't show up for hair appointments or anything else, that's when the PD got called in. After they talked to Nick in the morning, then he was nowhere to be found. So, I had about a half dozen calls from them throughout the day, and had to give them permission to break into my parents house to see if there was a crime scene. What fun. Very long story short, I got a call right before I had to go to the banquet from the PD saying that she and Nick showed up, both looking ok, and she said that she went for a walk and got lost. For 7 hours. And missed her sister's wedding. But that's all. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. *shaking head* Anyways, they're both ok, which is the important thing for this story.

So now we have the aforementioned banquet, and yea it was good.

At 11:30 we leave the banquet and are heading home, and when we get to an area of North Rd. that is well known for being a more difficult area to navigate, due to a steep hump of a hill. After you crest the hill and start heading down, the road takes a sharp left. Well, we see a car parked at the side of the road...and a first year patroller that we know sitting in the field behind it...and behind him a flipped car. Yup. The day from hell that couldn't possibly have anything more f'ed up happen, just found a way to get worse. The driver of the car normally took a different way to and from Tyrol, and so didn't know about that turn. He was stone cold sober and wasn't speeding, but he just couldn't react in time, and his 6 month old Subaru Outback went off the side of the road and flipped after it hit a ditch. It slid a good 50 feet or so off the side of the road. The only plus of the story: everyone was ok. 4 of the 5 were wearing seatbelts, and the worst injury was a cut wrist that may have had some glass in it. We pulled out Josh's buttpack and got her bandaged up, and then sat back and waited for yet another contact with the cops. For variety this time it was sherrifs! It was freezing out that night, so we crammed everyone into a couple of cars and waited for the tow. The car was a total loss. All the glass broke, and the roof buckled in a bit. Which in a way was reassuring for us, since we drive an Outback. If we were to get in a crash, the car may not survive, but it looks like our chances would be pretty good!

On Sunday I slept. 8-)