Cool & the Gang

Last Friday Laura and I went to see the legendary band " Cool & the Gang". OK maybe not legendary but they had some great hits:

Get Down on It

Celebration

Fresh

Too Hot

Jungle Boogie

Ladies Night

The show was at a fairly small local club, I was surprised that they would play at such a small venue; sounds like times have been better for the band. Anyway it was a good time and the jams were funky.

President's Day Weekend

I know that I'm back tracking, but I have to make up for the past. This was a fun weekend, and I have to post it even though it was a month ago.

We headed up to Salt Lake on Friday after work. For some reason I really like this drive; it's about 6 hours but feels like 3. We got to Laura's sisters house around 11:00 and stayed up talking until 12:30. The next morning I woke up early and met up with my buddy Matt Gover. We did some ice climbing down in Santaquin Canyon; I hadn't done this for a while and it was a blast (OK, it scared me but I hadn't done it for 4 to 5 years).

This is a 2 pitch climb that we did called Squashhead. It's a classic in Santaquin Canyon.

Saturday afternoon I jammed up to Ogden to see my little sister's basketball game. They beat Sacramento; it was good to see my little sis, mom, and Eric.

The next day I went with Matt down to the San Rafel Swell. This is a awesome place basically in the middle of nowhere. This is home to some of the best desert crack climbing in the west. The whole place is a maze of slot canyons, and sweet desert scenery.

These are few photos of Matt climbing at the first
spot.











There was only one guy from our group that attempted this climb, it looked pretty burly.




The rest of the weekend was spent with Laura's family. She has 3 nephews, 2 of which we played with in the snow. Man they have a lot of energy. The drive back from Salt Lake was pretty hairy. It was a blizzard all the way from SLC past Cedar City. Finally halfway between Cedar and St. George it cleared up. We must had counted 10 cars that had slid off the highway.

Being in Salt Lake made me realize how much I missed it. There is such good access to tons of outdoor sports that I love. But as with many things there are seasons in a person's life and right now Las Vegas is the place I need to be. I did make a promise to Matt to get up to Utah a little more this year and I look forward to it.

Official Race Times

Yes my wife is faster than me. This is one of those small reasons that I chose her, she is always outdoing me.

Laura Time 2:07:33 Pace 8:30 mins. / mile


Ben Time 2:20:57 Pace 10:46 mins. / mile


She's going to have to train harder, I'm only getting faster and I plan on at least keeping up with her in the San Diego Marathon.

Six Tunnels Half Marathon

This was a big weekend for the Harbers. It was our first race of many planned this summer. Saturday morning we drove out to Lake Mead for an 8:00 start. It was nice to start in the morning but it wasn't long until it was in the 90s.

The course was staged on an old decommissioned Union Pacific railroad track. We ran through six tunnels where they had to cut through solid rock for the original track (hence the name of the race). The race then continued through the middle of the desert, and at this point it was blazing hot. The course turned into and old fire road that was sand a loose gravel. This made it pretty tough not to mention the 2 mile stretch that was uphill. Laura and I both said that we were glad we didn't notice how steep the course was until the way down. I'm just happy that I heard from many different people that it was a hard course, it kicked my butt.

I will now reveal my race strategy. Laura thinks it's because I got to the start line late, but I say it was purely strategic. I started at the very end of the pack, there might have been 10 people behind me. My start was slow so that I could warm up, and I had to let the pack thin out. After about 20 minutes. I picked up the pace and immediately started passing people that had started too fast. It easy to start too fast when your excited for the race. Because I had started in the rear, all I did the whole race was pass people. This was purely mental for me, every time I passed someone it was as thought I took their soul (Ha Ha) and their energy.

Laura and I both finished faster than we had planned. I will have the official finish times by tomorrow.

We recommend everyone find something to train for otherwise it's hard to get out and exercise. Only 2 1/2 months to the San Diego Marathon!

Back in the Saddle

I realize that I haven't posted anything for a long while. I had a good friend say that he was constantly checking the blog and that he was disappointed not to see anything new. I then received a threat that if I didn't at least make an effort he would remove me from his favorites list. So here you go, I'm going forward with a new commitment to post at least once a week.

Hello San Diego

Last Sunday I headed down to sunny San Diego for the Crittenden Mortgage Broker Conference. On the way down I took the I-5 south a little too far south and almost ended up in Mexico, unfortunately Jordan wasn't up for Tijuana. The opening on Monday was very interesting, only about 200 guys, but most were very legitimate. Even though most of them were legit, it was so funny to hear them brag about the deals they had done; probably a lot like old men talking about their last fishing trip. I did expect it to be bigger but after talking with some of the guys I was not disappointed, we will definitely get some good business from this conference.

Just a quick interesting fact from the world renowned news anchor Ron Burgandy, "San Diego is originally translated as meaning The Whales Vagina." I bet most of you didn't know that.

Chicago/London Trip

The last few weeks have been a blur. Tuesday (9/26) morning I flew out to Chicago for the start of a week long business trip. The city was great, unfortunately I only spent about two days there. The short time in Chicago was to attend "The Money Show" where the focus was networking with registered investment advisers. Despite the short time I did get to check out down town, and sample the deep dish pizza.

The following day we packed up the display booth and shipped off to London. The flight was about 8 hours, and not too bad. We were welcomed to London with rain and bad food. That afternoon we set-up our booth for "The World Money Show." This was Diamond Bay Investments first international showing. The investors (as always) had very interesting questions that made the days go quick. The Brits were extremely opinionated, and had a lot to say about the US. I felt that we had a good response, but many were hesitant about the US real estate market. The spin that UK news reporters put on US news way out there.

This was a shot from the London Eye, it's a huge Farris wheel with capsuls you ride in. Over 400' tall.

The biggest disappointment was the food. I couldn't even find decent fish-&-chips. We didn't have a ton of time but still managed to check out a few sites...Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, The London Eye, and Buckingham Palace. Lucky for Laura I had time to stop at "Harrods" (huge British department store).

After four days in London it was time to head back, this was the part that I dreaded. It was pretty much was the worst thing I have every done. After siting on the runway for 2 1/2 hours the plane finally took off. Because we were late taking off I missed the connection in Chicago. I wasn't able to get out until the next morning, so 24 hours of return travel turned into 36. I was glad to be home, and to see my cute little wife.