I am in disbelief as to how awesome today was. 14″ or so super dry powder last night, yes actual powder on Mt. Hood, and gorgeous sunny skies over Meadows. Face shots all day all over the place. 14k feet of vert in 14 runs; last two runs of the day were Private Reserve and Heather.

Midweek skiing is fantastic. Nailed 17 runs in just under three hours with Jason and Amanda. Mercury off Shooting Star had some great snow, and Heather was a blast.

Percent of average precipitation in the Western US since July. This looks somewhat bleak. (via Miles)

Tonight’s lineup. This is just one reason why I love my life.

A collection of amazing timelapse scenes from around Oregon. (via Michelle)

The course was spectacular. Sweet Home is a gorgeous area to begin with. The race started with an open water swim in Foster Lake with the temperature at 70 degrees. Our bike segment then journeyed through pretty stellar countryside with only a few minimal hills. The run finished up with a quick out and back near the lake.

What I did right:

• Trained properly. I’ve been running or swimming up to six days a week for the past several months, regularly far exceeding the distances on the course. Both of those segments were a piece of cake.
• Hydrated and fed myself well. Not perfectly, but good enough that I didn’t feel like throwing up, have low energy, etc. I ate a big dinner Saturday night so I wasn’t starving when I woke up, and fueled myself with Gatorade and Gu before and during the race.
• Paced myself. In a race, it’s very easy to get caught up in the energy of the moment and push yourself as hard as you can out of the gate. This generally leads to burn out. I had the mindset that all I wanted to do was finish the race, and it made things much less stressful. I also wanted to make sure I could
• Sprinted the finish. Not many others could say that about their finish…

What I need to do better next time:

• Swim in a straight line. This was my first open water swim so I won’t be too hard on myself, but I lost momentum a few times when I veered off course. They even had to send a jet ski after me once to get me back on course.
• Train on my bike. Biking was the most difficult segment, and it wasn’t made any easier by the fact that I hadn’t ridden my bike for almost a year.
• Fix my bike or ride a road bike. I have a Novara Buzz urban bike I had shipped back from NYC. Last night, when putting it back together, I discovered the front fork was bent in such a way I couldn’t get the wheel back on. After fixing that with a vise grip, I thought I was back in business. As it turns out, both rims were also bent in such a fashion that the back wheel had a significant wobble and both had the disc brakes partially engaged for the entire segment. No coasting made biking exceptionally painful and slow.
• Push myself harder. Now that I’ve finished my first, I know what it’s like to complete the entire race. I should focus on improving my time a bit.

This triathlon was an incredibly enjoyable event for me. I’m looking forward to another (half Ironman, possibly?) when the season starts again.

A picture perfect Three Sisters sunset on the drive to Cove Palisades.

Just over a year ago, I decided to pack up almost everything I own and move to the big city. I had just received an offer from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism to work as their digital media manager, the perfect opportunity to hack at both education and journalism. Plus, New York is the nexus of what’s happening with media and technology. So I made the plunge.

And it’s been a really fun ride. The gig at the J-School fit like a glove, and NYC is one of the most vibrant cities on earth. At the J-School, I was given tremendous freedom to explore what’s important for moving journalism education forward. On a daily basis, I’ve done everything from server administration to development to frontend design and implementation to working with students to teaching workshops and classes. Being able to develop a broad range of skills and stretch my mind in different ways is one of the things I value most. Working at the J-School has provided that pleasure.

It’s time to move on to what’s next. On the 30th, I’m flying out of NYC on a one-way ticket. I’m an Oregonian at heart, and need quick access to my outdoors. August 1st, I start a new gig with Automattic’s VIP/media services team, joining awesome and super smart people like Mo, Raanan and others I haven’t had the pleasure of chatting with yet. VIP/media services works with large-scale publishers of all types using WordPress in a variety of ways. I think it’ll be a wonderful fit; most of the work is very similar to what we did with CoPress, but with a bigger playing field. I’m hoping there’s a lot of time for product development too.

Oh yeah, the other big reason for the switch: Michelle is moving to Spain for a year. She’ll be teaching English in the small town of Toro. I don’t think I’ll be there the entire time, visas are hard to come by, but I’m definitely going to visit for extended periods of time. Considering Automattic is a globally distributed company, I’m super tempted to live and work in a new country every month.

To CUNY, one final thought: your competition isn’t NYU or Columbia, it’s Skillshare and General Assembly. Education is being atomized just like news has been atomized; the time-based degree is just as outdated as the article. Like newspapers, you’ll have to radically reinvent your production methodologies to create information products that are relevant and useful to a now perpetually-changing society. The investments you make into your students is your greatest asset; they can become your best teachers, and it’s your charter to make that happen.

Programming notes:

• I’m offloading a lot of the large stuff I bought when I came to the city. Take a look and help me find a good home for all of it. Furniture to be posted tonight or tomorrow.
• I’ll be in Boston July 22nd through 24th for WordCamp so this coming weekend is my last weekend in the city. Michelle and I plan to whoop and holler it up.
• I’m looking for people to live with in either Portland or Eugene. Ideally, I’d like a kickass place I’ll be at for at least a few years. I enjoy cooking (or grilling) for everyone regularly, like nice stuff, and keep things relatively clean. Let me know if you know of anything.