A Month in Chamonix

On July 29, 2022, I arrived in Chamonix to meet my friends Mike and Usha to spend an entire month with them to experience life in this beautiful area. Yes, the primary focus is in participating and completing UTMB, but beyond the trails and training, we hope to really enjoy everything we can – food, drink, culture, sights, etc.

I’m arriving in perhaps the best running fitness ever. Unfortunately, I’m nursing a sprained ankle (from last week) back to health. The trails here being quite technical will be a concern. Chris has me taking it really easy this first week, starting with easy hikes.

The biggest challenge for me is fitting work into my schedule. The company I work for is California based but I work with folks on the East Coast as well. We’ll be 9 hours ahead, so starting my work days at 2pm local time till 10pm is what I’ll look to do. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?

This isn’t the beginning!

Way back in 2008, I started a couple blogs under velowoo* and gadgettraveler where I shared my experiences, trends, tips, news in cycling as well as travel and related gadgets/tech. This was pre-iPhone and smartphones as we know them today, as well as pre-Twitter, Instagram etc. Info became so pervasive that it was impossible to keep up and the posts aged pretty quickly. That, and it took a lot of time to maintain when it no longer was part of my job to understand blogs and online media.

This time around, I hope to share my experiences but less coverage on things you can find elsewhere on the Internet. From time to time, I may do product reviews or cover events, but not on a regular basis. We’ll see how it goes…

*I forgot to renew the domain and it was quickly snatched up. Though not purely a cyclist anymore, it bums me out to lose a valuable domain name.