Well folks, by the team you read this, my hinney will be planted firmly in a chair at the Arizona School of Real Estate and Business.

Real Estate is something that has deeply interested me for years. When I was 21, I managed to buy a townhome down in Tucson with no income, and a smidge under $4000 that I had scrounged up (Big shout out to Ma and Pa King for Co-signing!). For the next few years, I would live in one of the bedrooms and rent the other two out to pay my mortgage. I managed to pull this off, fairly successfully in my mind, for a bit over two years. In those two years, a long list of friends, family, and cyclists, called 2664 W. Avenida Azahar home, and in doing so kept my mortgage paid.

Always had a head for wheeling and dealing…

It was the thrill of hunting for a property, finding it and signing the papers, the pride of ownership, and then the excitement of selling and seeing first hand the modern marvel more commonly known as “appreciation”.

Fast forward several years to this Monday and I’ve finally taken the initiative to pursue this interest of mine. For the next three weeks, I’ll attend 90 hours of real estate licensing classes. The school offers several convenient program formats and I picked the three week course because it will fit in quite nicely with my training schedule and personal life. After the courses, a few tests will need to be passed before I can drive down to the Arizona Department of Real Estate and apply for a license.

I’ll keep you people updated on my progress as we get further into things.

Cheers.

Categories: Daily Jibber Jabber.
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I was.

So I staggered my way over to my brothers site to check up on what he’s been up to…

It all started as a quick sketch with a BIC pen on white computer paper…

Then, with a bit of magic (and some serious drawing skills), it’s became this…

I bet you wish you could draw like that? I do. Growing up, you should have seen what he could do to a restaurants kids menu with a few crayons. In fact, he still does.

Read the rest of the good word HERE.

See you.

Categories: Daily Jibber Jabber.
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At the bigger Tours in the US, they hand out a nightly communique. Communique is more or less the sophisticated French way of saying “sheet with riders results on it”. However, it also contains neat little relegations and violations… Sometimes these can be quite entertaing to read.

Such as this sweet one from Johan Bruneel. I snapped a photo of it for you people. Go ahead, click on the tiny thumbnail… don’t be scared.

Buckle up!

Categories: Daily Jibber Jabber.
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Hey Folks.

I’m back. Jeez… I know, it’s been over a week since we last talked… my apologies. It was a busy week to say the least. I had hoped to give you guys nightly updates from the Tour de Georgia, but man… after racing, cleaning up, eating dinner, stretching, get a massage, calling Suzanne and having a nightly team meeting… well, as you’ve noticed, it just didn’t happen.

But, lets put that behind us, because I’m back and I have a lengthy up date for y’all (I picked that lingo up in the South).

As I typically do, I will neglect a fair amount of the racing chitter-chatter and instead give you some behind the scenes talk. Like 3 videos from before stage 2… You see, there were five of us riders, and Thomas the soigneur, heading down from the 12th floor of our hotel. We were on our way to the van to climb in and head to the start line. The elevator on the 12th floor was taking it’s sweet time, so we decided to catch a ride down the service elevator with a hotel employee that had just walked by…

Keep in mind, and I will remind you on the video, a “short-cut” is defined as “the longest distance between two points”…

Video One: A choice encounter with a long lost King man…

Video Two: “No, hopefully it won’t go anywhere”, said the man standing safely on the other side of the door.

Video Three: Freedom at last…

A weekend prior to this, at the U.S. Open in Virginia, Trent and I hopped a ride down on the service elevator… This time, the guest elevator was horrendously slow, so we decided to walk down a few flights of stairs. However, for some reason the stairs stopped at the 2nd floor. Hm?… So we waited some more for the elevator, which like I said was “horrendously slow”… so we strolled through an unmarked door that looked like it was meant for official hotel employees only. On the other side of the door was a wooden service elevator. So we took it down to the 1st floor… however… it opened up right, smack dab, in the back of the restaurant’s kitchen. So there, Trent and I were, standing fully kitted up, with our day bags filled with cycling gear, in the middle of the hotel’s kitchen. You should have seen everyone’s faces as we strolled through there asking which way to go to get to the lobby. Eventually, we found it.

Alright, no more elevator talk. But just remember to always practice safe elevator skills… or you might get stuck.

For me, the high point of the week was winning this bad boy…

Stage Two Most Aggressive Jersey.

That day, I went fishing for the early break… and caught it. This is what it looked like for about 160 out of 217 kilometers of rolling roads and a block headwind… Me, Garrett Peltonen (Priority Health), and Glen Chadwick (Navigators Insurance).

Well, I think that’s all for now. Plenty more happened during the week, but I’ll have to talk about it later. I have a few more pictures I’d like to post, so I’ll do my best to get around to it. As for me, it’s a down week on the bike. I’ll take a few days off to relax and enjoy myself before getting back to training by next week. The next big target on the racing schedule: Philly week.

Cheers.

Categories: Daily Jibber Jabber.
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The Jittery Joe’s “Trent Wilson Edition” Coffee Cup Sleeve…

There’s also a Cesar Grajales and Neil Shirley edition.

No Austin King edition though… I told them thanks but no thanks. I didn’t need a really cool little coffee cup sleeve with my face and results on it, being circulated at nearly 10 Jittery Joe’s for several weeks time, to feel better about myself and my riding abilities. I’m fully capable of continuing to provide top quality support work in complete and utter ambiguity. Actually it’s quieter that way.

In other news…

This a pretty entertaining video. I just finished watching it as I ate my morning bowl of cereal. Jimmy Kimmel (as a guest host on Larry King Live) roasts some woman for running a website that has a map that shows you where celebrities were last spotted and also runs false stories about them.

Folks… AKingsLife.com is founded upon the principles of honesty and integrity. Here at AKingsLife.com we never lie or make up fictitious stories about anyone or anything. Instead, we sit high upon a throne of the uptmost morals and standards. Thank you.

You know what, while I’m coming clean… they didn’t ask if I had wanted a coffee cup sleeve… Nope. Sorry for lying. Actually, they didn’t have to… because, um, unfortunately the printing press was struck with lightening and burned down in the middle of a ferocious winter time storm. Yeah, um, the printing press didn’t even stand a chance because of the hotness of the fire. Oh well, there’s always next year, right?

Here’s the video:

Later today, we leave for Peachtree City and the start of the Tour of Georgia. I’m going to do my best to keep you people informed of the in’s and out’s of a week long tour. Tell it like it is, and when I can’t properly tell you, I’ll show you (and the videos never lie people).

Take care.

Categories: Daily Jibber Jabber.
6 Comments »

Hey folks,

I’m back in the office after being “away” for a few days…

In those few days “away”, I pieced together some good stuff for you guys. By “away” I mean up in the Northern Georgia mountains doing some good training for the upcoming Tour of Georgia. For this trip, Neil Shirley, Trent Wilson, Evan Elken and I stayed at Tom Palmer’s mountain cabin at the very top of some mountain out in the middle of absolute nowhere. Tom is a great guy and very gracious supporter of the Jittery Joe’s Pro Cycling Team, who was very kind to hand over the keys to a couple of guys like us. (Just to set the record straight, we didn’t burn the place down). So… on Monday we loaded up into the team van and were off… destination: The North Georgia Mountains.

Trent and Evan had taken the time to go online and track out the directions to the cabin. You know folks… the problem with these online map and direction programs… sometimes they send you down dirt roads… I have some good footage of that for later. Anyways… after an hour and a half of driving we were up in the mountains and we stopped to use the restroom.

“Hm?, weird… Is that pollen in the air?”

Nope, it was snow… the same damn stuff that made for a hellish Saturday in Richmond. Well, it was back. Later on, it would be my 2nd ride in the snow in 3 days…

Here’s some video proof as I caught Trent when he walked out of the “servo” (Aussie for gas station):

We got back in the van and started driving. A few minutes later the directions took us off of a decent sized road and headed us down a not so decent sized road… that got smaller… and smaller… and then dirt… and then dirt and really small. A few minutes later, we were basically four wheeling in the large 18 passenger team van.

Those things are a bear to turn around in the middle of the forest… But finally, the road dead-ended into some sort of grassy area surrounded by a river and we were able to turn around. This is when Evan heroically took it upon himself to climb out of the van and guide us to safety… and then he cleared a large tree branch out of the way in one single swoop… and bravely forded a wild and untamed gushing river… and ran… and ran.

I know, I know, that sounds crazy… but you guys know me, come on now, a bit of respect… I get that kind of greatness on video. Always have and always will. Click play.

So… after all that we finally found our way to Tom’s cabin… but not after driving up the wrong dirt road where Trent peered into the wrong cabin’s windows to see if it was infact ours… which subsequently made the woman inside scream for her husband, who came out to see if we were up to no good, which we weren’t because we were just a little lost, who then after awhile calmed down enough to give us the proper directions we needed to finally find our place…

By the way, Neil just told me I should talk about him in this post. He said it would make for much better reading. Here’s Neil.

Alright, see you later.

Categories: Daily Jibber Jabber.
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