2012 Highlights

I usually don't write about an entire year like this, but 2012 turned out to be such an unusual year. So many things happened that spanned the entire spectrum, from incredible, exciting adventures, to really scary and life threatening events. So with that, here are my 2012 highlights, fun stuff first:

10th Anniversary in Belize

The year started off with a bang when my wife and I took off for a 10 day Ultimate Kayaking Adventure in Belize for our 10 year anniversary. It was an extremely adventurous trip for my wife… swimming through an ancient Mayan cave, kayaking for miles around remote islands, dropping in on 15 foot waterfalls in a raft, and sitting in the front seat of an airplane… but for me, my highlights were catching a bat with a butterfly net, back-flipping off of 15 foot waterfalls, opening a coconut with a machete, and spearing a lion fish! Basically, stuff you don’t get to do while working behind a desk every day.

Downhill Mountain Bike Racing

I’ve been riding mountain bikes for many years now, but I made my first attempt at downhill racing by entering the Fontana race series in the beginner class and did surprisingly well! I ended up taking 1st place at the Fontana City Nationals. Cool, huh?

Paddle Boarding in Mammoth

Besides getting our camper out of storage only to find it full of black widow spiders, we had our usual fun in Mammoth this year! Our local friends let us borrow their paddle board over at June Lake, our favorite spot. Not a huge deal, but it was our first time paddle boarding.

Wake Boarding in Havasu

Another first for me was wake boarding. The first day I had the hardest time standing up. So that night I hunkered down, did some research and found some good tips on YouTube. The next day was a success! I’d really like to try this again, but would need a good solid weekend to master it. I have no photos, but you're not missing anything... it wasn't very impressive. The rest of the weekend was filled with tubing and jet skiing.

Bagging Mt. Whitney

I’ve wanted to do this for many years, and the opportunity came up when some guys from church organized it. I signed up right away, of course, and opted for the two day version, only because I didn’t know how my body would react above 14,000 feet. In the months preceding, I also did some killer training hikes like Santiago Peak (5,689'), Bonanza Peak in Nevada (10,397'), San Gorgonio (11,501'), and finally the highest summit of the contiguous United States, Mt. Whitney (14,505').

Spinning on my Head… Again!

So, the best opening line to this story is that I was flown into Cleveland to breakdance at the House of Blues. And it’s true! The Progressive Arts Alliance put together a show to honor my old break dancing crew, Project 5 with Grandmaster Flash as the headliner. They also put together an amazing documentary about us, and I just found out it was accepted to show in the Cleveland International Film Festival which will take place in April 2013. So I practiced for a couple months, re-learning the headspin because that was my specialty back when I was 13. I took Tricia with me and showed her the old stomping grounds, and she got to witness me break dancing on stage in front of hundreds of people at the House of Blues. Even the mayor of Cleveland declared August 11, 2012 "Project 5 Day!" Out of all of things I did this year, this was probably the best experience, mainly because it was a once in a lifetime type of event. It was especially great seeing and reuniting with my bros who I haven’t seen in almost 30 years. I just can’t get over the fact that I’m 42 and still able to spin on my head! How crazy is that?

9th Annual Tour de Corona

Every year I host a big mountain bike ride here in Corona and this year, for some reason, was the best one yet. We had a great turnout, a really fun ride, some good UFC fights and decent game of Texas Hold’em, which is also new for me this year. I can’t wait to see what next year brings, because no matter how challenging I make the ride, my crazy friends still show up every year!

Skin Cancer
That’s right, I had a little scare in the beginning of the year with some basal cell carcinoma in my right ear. I’ve always been pretty good about putting sun block on my ears, but never thought about putting it on the inner portions. That’s where it got me, on the inner-upper part, that is in fact in direct line of sight for the sun. So, they scooped it out and graphed me with some synthetic cow skin, and now I’m known as Mr. Sunblock!

Toni’s Survival
Even scarier, my sister Toni has been battling cancer that is much more severe, Ewings Sarcoma. On one of her last chemotherapy treatments, a nurse made a mistake and connected the wrong bag to her port. Toni actually went into cardiac arrest for about 5 minutes before they brought her back to life (CPR saves lives!) She’s still slowly recuperating from that and by God’s grace getting stronger every day. She is my true inspiration.

Work
This year has been pretty exciting at work too. For the last 2 1/2 years, I've been working on a huge website redesign project and this year some of it started to roll out. You can see some of the new pages, including the home page, at Chase.com.

Here's to another adventurous year!