Shawn Cheatham

After a few days of monkeying around with this site, I had to unplug and get back to my center. I’m weird that way…anytime there’s a new project I bury myself in the weeds only to resurface a while later wondering what I missed. So what have I been doing with myself?

First, I spent a ridiculous amount of time studying for my NASM certification. After finishing the book and all quiz/test materials I figured I had better put it down for a bit and let it simmer. Earlier this week I went back to it and was pleasantly surprised that a lot of what I learned is still fresh in my mind. In the next week or so I’m going to apply what I’ve learned by assessing and planning a training plan for Rina. She’s pretty stoked to put some rigor around her workouts, so it should be fun.

While wrapping up the NASM study, I decided to apply for a job at a neighborhood outdoor store. With 6yrs of bike shop experience and a year of outdoor retail while in high school/college, it was no surprise that they brought me into the fold. Thus far it’s everything I knew it would be and was looking for…fun, entertaining and at times quite mind numbing. I’m not complaining though, after 7yrs working for software companies where 70-80hrs weeks were the average and middle of the night conference calls were the norm, I’m okay with talking about merino wool vs. cotton and whether to go with an 800 or 1500 cubic inch backpack for that trip to Russia.

I don’t know whether it was our stolen Harley, quitting my job, training for the Accenture (Chicago) Triathlon, playing with the idea of a career change or the recent rain storms in Chi-town…but the other day Rina and I decided it was time to take a trip. Iceland, although a current hot spot, was quickly ruled out due to prices and in the end we bought tickets to Costa Rica. As is typical with Rina and I, we decided on a whim and will figure the rest out later. Now comes the pre-fun part…planning and buying gear!!! Working in an outdoor/travel store makes outfitting pretty easy…but then comes the technology:) Last night we picked up the Canon HV20 camcorder, yet another impulse buy driven mainly by a sub-project of this site (more about that later). The Canon Hv20 got a solid review from www.thetechguylab.com, a podcast I listen to regularly and everything else I could find made it the logical choice. Now we’ll have a couple months to play with it and hopefully get some good footage in Costa Rica.

That’s if for me today…