Story Time

I sent this email out to a few friends earlier today and it's just too funny not to share.

A few years ago, while living in Vail and working at the Cascade, I had the opportunity to take a guided snowshoe trip with my co-workers for two reasons. 1. To experience one of the many services we sell as an enhancement to corporate meetings and 2. to have a fun, team building experience outside of the office.

We went with Trailwise guides, a fantastic outfitter in Vail that leads hiking, biking, snowshoeing, and cross country skiing excursions. The entire hike was around 3-4 hours. As a note, at the beginning of the hike I had straight hair. As many of you know I have to work very hard for this and any bit of moisture is completely counterproductive to this process. With that said, throughout the entire hike, I got really sweaty. It looks cold, but with all the layers we had on, it was hot. THEN, about half way through the hike, I was completely doused with snow that randomly fell off of a tree and landed on my head.

Fast forward to the end of the hike, we all gather to take a picture at the top of Grouse Creek and the wind was out of control, but somehow, it only affected me.

Tom, the owner of Trailwise, sent us the picture the next day. It is quite possibly the WORST picture ever taken of me, fantastic of everyone else, but not of me. I seriously look like I just escaped from a psych ward. I threatened my co-workers that if this picture ever materialized again, I would be out for blood!

Well…Today I got this email below. Looks like Tom took it upon himself to use that fine picture for marketing on the Trailwise website. Awesome.

I now am laughing about it and thought it could brighten the day of some of my friends.
Enjoy.
SSF

From: Knight, Amanda
To: Foshee, Stacey
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 11:30 AM

Subject: We're famous!

http://www.trailwiseguides.com/groups/index.html
Scroll all the way to the bottom and there we are on our snowshoe adventure

Amanda Knight
Conference and Destination Event Manager
Vail Cascade Resort & Spa

TBF

For the first time in five years, I am having to miss the Telluride Bluegrass Festival! Each year when I lived in Vail, I would venture down to Telluride and morph into a hippie for 4 days. I loved every minute of it! The festival each year revolves around the Summer Solstice each year and was the reason that I fell in love with the town of Telluride. Sometimes I would camp and sometimes, I would stay at a hotel. Either way, I had a blast. On Friday, I received a call from Josh Flowers, a dear friend that I met in Buena Visa and would meet up with at the festival every year. He called to see if I was at the festival. It made me sad. I miss it. In honor of the TBF, I am going to count down some of my most favorite moments from past festivals.

Watching the full moon rise over the box valley in Telluride during TBF 2004. Alison Krauss was playing and once the moon had fully set over the mountain everyone in the crowd started howling. Weird to most people, but completely normal for the TBF festival.

Sharing a hotel room with Missy, Darin, Kayin (who was 7 months old), and Kihei (a precious Sheba Inu that loves to bark). Note: Our room had 1 double bed in it and was the size of a large walk in closet. I guess that’s what you get for an employee rate at a sister hotel during the most popular festivals of the summer.

Camping Back Country at 12,000 ft by Alta Lake with Orly, Lauren, Sean, Huey (the cutest Bernese Mountain dog on the planet), and Talyn (the cutest White Golden Retriever on the planet). From sharing a tent with Lauren, Huey, and Talyn to incorrectly singing Tim McGraw lyrics about Angry Little Piglets, I'm not sure when I've had a better time. Here's a not too shabby view from our campsite:

When attending the TBF, you cannot miss a large fenced off area of the festival dedicated to hula hooping. At first, you feel a little silly, but quickly are reminded of your childhood. Missy and Darren totally got into it with me. When we returned to Vail, I went over to the Lacy residence to hang out with Kayin and found Darren in the driveway making 15 hula hoops! From that point on, the hula hoops were brought out at any and every party at he Lacy's house!

Sam Bush. As I've mentioned before, I Heart Sam Bush. He plays every Saturday night of the festival, every year. Considered to be the Grandfather of the TBF, he never disappoints. NEVER.

My most favorite memory has to do with Josh Flowers. One year, after a horrible misunderstanding with a friend, I arrived down to TBF without a ticket. I arrived on Friday and was able to buy a ticket for that day. As I bought my ticket, I found out that Saturday and Sunday were both sold out. I went into the festival, found Josh, Colleen, and friends and immediately started asking around for anyone that had a spare ticket. Friday night, we didn't have luck hunting down a ticket, so I went back up to my hotel room for the night and made plans with Josh to go and look in the morning.

The next morning, Josh and I got up and headed down on the gondola to search yet again. After about 2 frustrating hours of roaming the streets of Telluride like panhandlers we decided to head back up the gondola to the hotel. I had pretty much given up hope on getting into the festival.

Quick note on the set up of Telluride: Half of the town is located on top of the mountain, known as Mountain Village. The only way to access this on foot is to take the free Gondola system. It's a unique feature of Telluride that makes it an unspoiled ski town and a fantastic picture of public transportation at its best.

Josh and I hadn't seen each other since the year before, so in catching up, we weren't paying attention to our surroundings, and overshot the gondola by about 6 blocks.

Quick note on Josh Flowers: The craziest things happen to this guy. I have never met someone with better luck or the instant ability to make a lifelong friend.

When we realize that we were not going the right direction, Josh looks at me and says, "Wouldn't it be crazy if we found a ticket, just because we weren't paying attention to where we were going?"

At this point, I was so discouraged with the situation that I replied, "Do not say that! Why would you want to get my hopes up! Let's just get back up the mountain."

Not being one to lose hope, Josh pointed at a guy about 25 yards away and said, "That guy right there has your ticket."

I was just downright frustrated at this point. How dare he get my hopes up! Josh approached the man, introduced himself, and told him of our dilemma. As it would turn out, our new friend Dan, from Phoenix, had an extra ticket! I literally stood there with my jaw on the ground. I told him of Josh's picking him out of the crowd and my desperation to get into the festival. Apparently, Dan's wife had planned on coming to the festival, but at the last minute came down with strep throat.

Earlier that day, I had pulled $400 out of the ATM to pay for the ticket.

I met up with Dan to actually get the ticket at 1pm outside of the festival gates. As I went to pull for my wallet to pay Dan for the ticket, he stopped me, handed me the ticket, and let me know my money was not good. He told me he was doing his good deed for the day and it would honor him and his wife to give me the ticket. I was floored. I had never experienced such generosity from a total stranger. This was the moment I fell in love with Telluride. The experience of being in that town brings out the best in people. It made for such a great festival. By far, it was the best experience I had through the years at TBF.

I Hate Being Responsible.

Today I went online to Ticketmaster to buy concert tickets to one of my favorite bands. I logged on about 5 minutes prior to the pre-sale starting and kept refreshing my browser until tickets went on sale. I ended up with (2) 3rd row seats, but when I got to the checkout page to pay, it totalled more than $360! After watching the ticketmaster timer tick down to 30 seconds and wrestling with spending THAT much on tickets, I let them go. I used to think that you had officially become a grown up when you spend birthday money on bills. I think this situation is an official benchmark as well. Sad day.

We Should Travel to Gadsden more Often!

Last night I traveled to Gadsden with a friend and co-worker, Shannon. Quick info about Shannon...She is originally from Tuscaloosa, she moved to Orlando to work for Disney after college, she moved back to the Salty about the same time I did, and she is a HUGE Sister Hazel Fan. Living in Florida, she was able to see them play quite frequently. Shannon is to Sister Hazel, as I am to Patty Griffin.


Shannon had approached me early last week to see if I would go with her to Riverfest in Gadsden to see SH play. I declined, as I was planning on heading down to Beeej's loft to see a concert. As the week went on the offer got more appealing. The final offer on table included Shannon driving to and from the concert and paying for my ticket, dinner, and drinks in the show (*Kind of...we'll get to that in a second). I have decided to post a DO and DON'T list for all of you that ever plan on heading to Riverfest in Gadsden and to highlight the evening.


DO make sure to pick up the correct directions to Riverfest off of the printer at work. Otherwise, you will be given directions to Greystone to visit a client and your co-worker will be following directions to Gadsden. (iPhone to the rescue, without one wrong turn.)


DON'T forget your rain gear. Luckily, Shannon had a medium sized umbrella in her car that she didn't care if it didn't make it back to the car with us.


DO remember to get cash from the ATM, as Gadsden does not have the capabilities to run phone lines to the middle of parking lots by the river. Shannon was shocked by this. Apparently, Disney has the capabilities to run phone lines for Scuba Divers to swipe credit cards 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. As a seasoned Festavarian, I brought extra cash and my all expense paid trip to Gadsden turned into a trip that was fully funded by yours truly.*


DON'T forget your lawn chairs or you'll have to go MacGyver on the umbrella you brought in and have to rip it apart for the fabric to sit on.


DO make friends with the locals around you on the front row. They'll defend you when the Etowah County police threaten to arrest you because you are not sitting in lawn chairs and look like you snuck up to the front between the opening and closing bands.


DON'T forget to have someone spell check your signs and collateral if you are a vendor. You'll just end up like this:

DO make friends with the band while they are waiting in line for the porta potty by shamelessly dropping a friend's name that you know photographed a band member's wedding, thus getting a star struck Shannon introduced to SH.

DO smile for the camera while watching SH play. Somewhere in Gadsden, Shannon and I made the 10 o'clock news.

DON'T let the rain scare you away. Embrace it, tough it out, then dance in it...even if you aren't waterproff.

Classic.

I've often been asked, "Fosh, If you had to do college all over again, would you still go to Samford?" While the jury is still out on that question (I'm thinking they're leaning towards yes), there are many instances during college (Faces 2001, anyone?) and post college that make my head fall and just start shaking. Today was another one of those days. Apparently this morning a gunman was spotted on campus by Campus Safety (no explanation needed, insert any and all Jerome Hiiiii stories here) and the entire campus was put on lockdown until 7:30am. Later on this afternoon, a press release was issued by Dr. Westmoreland...

Samford friends-
After an intense investigation, we have learned that there was no mystery gunman on the campus this morning. The safety officer who filed the initial report has admitted that the event did not happen. Appropriate disciplinary measures are being taken.
Even in light of this latest information, I remain grateful to our campus safety leadership and the Homewood police department for their superior efforts to ensure the well-being of our students and employees. Our people acted on the basis of information that they considered to be credible. We would never run the risk of placing lives in jeopardy by failing to respond to real or perceived threats.
I apologize to everyone concerned for the confusion that this episode has created, but I am grateful-beyond measure-that our people are safe.
Andy Westmoreland

If this isn't classic Samford, I'm not too sure what is.

Seriously, Who Does This Stuff Happen To?

Today is April 30. My car tag expires in the month of April. That meant that since I procrastinated all month long and didn't head down to the DMV during the middle of the month like I should have, I got to stand in a super long out the door long line. I ended up leaving work early and heading down about an hour before they closed. When I arrived I pulled into a parking space and saw 3 little black boys (ranging in ages from 6-8, I would guess) sitting in the back seat of the car next to me. The race of the little boys has nothing really to do with the story other than the fact that many of you know that I love black kids. I would want to adopt a baby one day that is of a different race. (Yes, this was covered in Stuff White People Like) I pull into the parking space, see the kids, and think to myself, "Those boys are so cute!" I get out of the car, smile, and say hello. They say hi back and bust out laughing. I think to myself, "Boys will be boys!" and head into the DMV. After standing in line for about 45 minutes, I exit the building head back to my car and find the side of my car full of spitballs!!!!! I muttered a few expletives under my breath and was livid for about 10 seconds, but then couldn't help but laugh hysterically. I was definitely the token dumb white girl for the day and they got me good!

Shake and Bake...It's Race weekend!

In case I forgot what state I currently reside in, the front page of the lifestyle section in the Birmingham News was a ridiculously funny reminder this morning. Below is an excerpt from Miss Manner's, ahem, I mean Miss Motorsport's take on etiquette during the races this weekend at the Talladega Super Speedway. How I love being back in the south!

"Dear Miss Motorsports: My new boyfriend is taking me to my first NASCAR race this weekend, and I want to make a good impression. Although I have never been to a race before, I think I know enough about racing to understand it is considered proper to boo Jeff Gordon, who my boyfriend calls a "pretty boy." My question is this, should Gordon smash his car into a wall and have to leave the race, is it OK to jump up and down and hoot and holler, just as long as he's not seriously injured? - All Revved Up in Roebuck

Dear Revved Up: Absolutely. Jeering Jeff Gordon is not only expected, but encouraged - especially at Talladega. However, should he actually win the race, throwing beer cans at his car as he circles the track is seriously frowned upon - even at Talladega."

"Dear Miss Motorsports: One of my best girlfriends has invited my husband and me to her wedding at their RV site outside the track on the day of the big race. Since we also will be going to the race, is it OK to wear my checkered-flag leather miniskirt to the ceremony? Or should I wear something less formal? - Fashion-Conscious in Fultondale

Dear Fashion-Conscious: Miss Motorsports says your skirt would be appropriate, with one caveat. Check with the bride first to make sure she and/or her bridesmaids will not be wearing their checkered-flag miniskirts, too. In that case, something more casual, such as a T-shirt-and-shorts ensemble featuring your favorite driver's number and color scheme, is perfectly acceptable."

For the rest of the article, click here.