While the mice were at play...

...the cat was at work! During Julianna and Amelia's two week vacation to California, I spent those two weeks in Colorado, Winter X 11. At this point - post Olympics - everybody knows Shaun White, aka "The Flyin' Tomato", and Seth Wescott , USA's gold medal winning athletes in Torino. Well, two weeks prior to the Olympics, ESPN held their annual Winter X Games in Aspen, CO. Fourteen Olympic athletes were at this year's Winter X, including notables Shaun White, Seth Wescott, and Kelly Clark. Lindsay Jacobellis was also to compete at X, but dropped from the competition minutes before the start of Boarder X... much to the chagrin of ESPN.

My job at X is to make sure everything pertaining to scoring the event is in place and accurately executed. This includes setting up the judge equipment for the half-pipe and slope style events (Shaun White took Winter X gold in both events), to building the course for Snowboarder Cross (Torino gold medal winner Seth Wescott finished 7th, not even making it to the final bracket of X). I make sure that the folks watching TV, and the fans in attendance, understand what's going on in each competition by providing athlete data, stats, and scores. All in all there were fourteen medal categories at this year's games - my company was responsible for scoring the competition of each and every one.

My crew consisted of twenty hardworking guys (and 1 girl!) who worked from 5:30am to 10:00pm each day - twelve days in a row. We put in all the timing lines for the X Course (Snowboarder Cross and Skier Cross). This means digging seven, yes, SEVEN, 2-foot wide, 60-feet long trenches. Inside each trench we place detectors that tell us the order in which athletes pass as well as their race time. Think Olympic downhill courses with six skiers on it at the SAME time.

The kicker is that only FOUR timing lines were needed - ESPN couldn't decide where they wanted them to be located. Each time we'd finish one, they'd change their mind. AGH!

Winter X 11 went really well for me and I'm proud of the job my team did. It was a lot of hard work and I missed my girls a whole lot. Despite the long hours, cold days, and distance from loved ones, we were able to have some fun out in Aspen, while hitting a home run.

I'm now in the process of getting ready for the NCAA Basketball Tournament - my next big event. My company scores every game, in the tournament of 64 teams, for CBS - providing all the statistically info for the TV graphics. I personally will be scoring games during the 1st/2nd rounds (Greensboro, NC), the Regionals (Washington, DC) and the Final Four (Indianapolis, IN).
Look for my blog posts after each weekend - keeping you up-to-date on how the Tar Heels, no, I mean how I'm doing, working the tournament and traveling the country.

For more X Games pictures, click here.