According to the mile markers lining the highway I'm currently 18 miles into Kansas, driving eastwardly home for the holidays. Unlike our forefathers, Lewis and Clark, I have the benefit of the Kansas Tourism Welcoming Committee at the highway visitors' center and their FREE coffee complemented deliciously with sugar and non-dairy creamer to fuel me through the next 450 miles of Kansas. That and my friends Burl Ives, Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin to sing my Christmas favorites!After three failed goodbyes, I finally bid Garrett an official adios before shipping out of Colorado this morning. Boulder has been a great home for the past quarter year, but I'm headed home to New Hampshire for the holidays and moving to Europe soon afterwards for camp as well as the foreseeable future. So now a quick recap of random and various happenings of late. I'm writing this on my trustworthy iPhone, which is often anything but trustworthy when it comes to writing lengthy blog posts, so hopefully this works.(I just published this blog and see thar pictures go in opposite order. So when I say "first" you simply look at the last picture, an so forth. You're smart. You'll figure it out.)The first picture is of the Thanksgiving fowl, or "bird" to the layman. No those aren't tumors on the 22lb bird; it is Thanksgiving tradition that my uncle BBQs the turkey on the grill with sausage (or in this year's case, dangerously spicy pepperoni) attached. It is both unique and awesome. My folks and Robbie came out for the holiday which was excellent since I don't see them nearly enough as is, and we had a superb Thanskgiving.Next I was sent over to Europe for the Cervelo TestTeam's first round of meetings. Meet the team, meet the staff, meet the sponsors, and figure out what we're all about. To be brief, I'm incredibly excited about basically everything related to the team and all that I have in store in 2009! On top of that, I got my eyebrows trimmed and was on the receiving end of a makeup artists handiwork, as seen in the second picture. Having never gone through with either or these adventures, I rather enjoyed them both. I don't think the picture shows it, but homeboy Carlos is on my left getting the same royal treatment. Welcome to the big show!That was a whirlwind trip and I got home to CO to a blizzard, or at least it felt that way. In truth we only got 2" of snow, but to land at the Denver airport and see their entire snow cleanup crew in full force is really something to behold. But a half week later we did get hammered with snow for a full 8" or so. Two days later I was riding my mountain bike up Switzerland Trail to Gold Hill as you can see in the 4th picture. It's a pretty amazing ride to climb up this gnarly jeep trail seemingly in the middle of nowhere... and it's even cooler to go down!And my last picture is of me crammed into my car. I spent the better part of all day yesterday packing my VeeDub with seemingly everything I own to trek east. It wouldn't have been so difficult except that I acquired not one but TWO bike boxes in recent weeks and there's no place for them except inside the car. Oh well, I made it work. Amazingly.And on that note, byebye.