Let me explain.

Around dinner time on Valentine’s Day, after a couple glasses of wine, I got the bright idea to change my relationship status from blank (the boy and I aren’t Facebook official) to engaged. Within seconds, I’m not kidding, SECONDS, there were 14 likes and a handful of comments. This was going to be awesome or horrible.

I don’t comment. I just stare in disbelief at my phone as it explodes and the battery starts to drain because of all the Facebook notifications.

We go out to dinner, and my friend Brandi is in town from Florida. We’re celebrating her first skydive, and it turns out that she has a ring on from her mom. A cool little “quarter carat for a quarter life” gift, and I ask her if I can borrow it. Barry and I take a cheesy ass picture with our hands all intertwined in newly-fake-engaged bliss and post it. If you had been at the table with us, you’d know that we are peeing our pants and the boy is convulsing because he’s laughing so hard as he’s kissing my cheek.

Hysterical laughter happening here. I can't even stand it.

We go through the rest of the meal enjoying each other’s company, and see a car with a Nevada license plate parked next to us. So we take another picture by the license plate. More comments. More likes. People asking if we’re going to Vegas.

LET'S DO THIS!

At this point I just want to call the whole thing off. I have cold feet about our fake engagement. I feel bad that so many people are happy and celebrating something that we just don’t plan on doing.

Here’s the thing. My parents are happily married. They have been for 30+ years. All I’ve ever wanted is to have the kind of love that they have. They’re best friends, lovers, and amazing parents. My one goal in life, despite what I’ve wanted for myself professionally, is to find a love like they have.

And I have found that kind of love.

The boy is everything I could want in a boyfriend/husband/partner/best friend (or whatever label you want to put on it). He is my best friend, my rock, my knight in shining armor, all of that. And we’ve talked about it. If he wanted to ask me to marry him, I’d say yes. And that he could throw a life saver or an onion ring on my finger and I’d be just fine with that. I’ve known that since we first started dating. But we also talked about how we don’t need the whole procedure to make this work. He can sign my logbook and that’s as official as I need it to be.

Now that is my kind of ring!

I’m not opposed to it in the sense that I think marriage is a joke, necessarily, I’ll give the marriage thing the benefit of the doubt on this one (that really is a different conversation for another day). I appreciate couples that have amazing relationships, and I know a lot of people who are, or appear to be, happy in their marriages. I’ve also seen the act of getting married ruin a perfectly good non-married relationship. Like a switch goes on and everything changes. That’s how it was with the boy’s first marriage. He’s experienced it first hand. And to be honest with you, I think the reason we work, the reason we’re so good together and so happy and so sparkly and unicorn-ey and amazing together is because we don’t label it. For the sake of talking, yes, he’s my boyfriend. But seriously, guys, we’ve already talked about being married. We’re kind of already married in our heads, in that we’re totally and completely batshit crazy in love with each other and committed to making that work.

I’m not interested in taking the chance of something going horribly wrong if we made it legally legit. I’m usually not afraid of change, in fact, I’m a huge advocate for change, but in this case, if it ain’t broke (and it isn’t), I don’t want to “fix” it. We have an incredible relationship, and if you have met us and seen us together, you probably want to puke in your mouth because we’re ridiculously adorable together.

And that’s just it. To us, the marriage thing is just a label. A piece of paper. I don’t want to piss anyone off because they think I’m mocking people who get all excited about marriage and the ceremony and everything that comes with it. But, I also feel like I’m being judged because we are perfectly happy together without rings and certificates and ceremonies.

I realize I’m an odd duck. I’ve never visualized my perfect dream wedding. I’ve always said if I get married, it will be on a beach or outside somewhere and people better not be dressing up because I sure as shit won’t be wearing a dress. I don’t want to have kids and I don’t hear my biological clock ticking loudly in the background of this happy relationship I’m in. I’m strange. So be it.

I also know that things change. Sometimes, out of nowhere, people who have been together for awhile with no intention of marrying get married. I’m not saying it won’t happen someday. I also know that I’ve cried wolf on getting engaged so if it ever DOES happen, there will be five people that give a shit and the rest of you will think I’m joking again. And while I’d love to think that everyone would be happy and excited and show that enthusiasm for us if that’s the route we ended up taking, I know that the Great Valentine’s Day Hoax of 2012 has ruined that reaction for a lot of people. I get it.

So, or those of you who ARE friends with one or both of us on Facebook and were part of the whole thing, I apologize if us posting that we were engaged and then saying we weren’t offended you in some way. My friend Becky is pretty wise, and when I asked her why it would piss people off, she laid it out pretty clearly for me:

People who love and care about you guys see you two always talking about/showing how happy you are together. People want to believe that love stories like yours end in marriage. And when you post that you’re engaged and don’t make it obvious that it’s a joke right away and people get all excited for you and then you’re all like “jk weirdos, obviously you dont’ know us at all” it makes people 1. feel stupid 2. feel angry that you take the issue of engagement/marriage as such a joke when many of them believe in it strongly and 3. feel annoyed that you guys think it’s funny that people “don’t know you very well”

I did the same thing on April Fool’s Day and nobody was pissed when it wasn’t true. So I’m all “why the hell is everyone mad because it’s on Valentine’s Day – you know he wouldn’t propose on Valentine’s Day.” Becky pointed out that April Fools was obvious (okay, but honestly, him proposing at all is more likely on April Fool’s than Valentine’s Day but I digress) and that this was after we moved to Elsinore.

…and you were still happy and sparkly back then, but it wasn’t like the gold medal glitter shower celebration parade from the unicorn and teddy bear happiness olympics you seem to be living now. For those playing along at home, it seems like maybe you guys finally feel “settled” somewhere. So i can see how many feel it is a reasonable next step.

Touche, Becky, touche.

At the end of the day, I know this: I love him very, very, very much. More than I’ve ever thought I was capable of loving. I love our friends that know us and know that it was fake and laughed about it because they know us very, very well. I apologize to our friends that didn’t know it was a joke, got excited, and then probably felt like we were complete assholes for claiming “you should have known better.” I love my parents for understanding our relationship and not pressuring us to get married and squeeze out some grandchildren. They know that’s not how we roll.

Love is a funny thing. And it’s most certainly different for everyone who experiences it. And while our fairytale may not end the way little girls all over the world dream of, I certainly couldn’t have dreamed up a better life for myself, or for us.

For the married peeps out there, are we total assholes? What is the secret to making your marriage work? For the non-wed folks out there, or people in happy relationships with no desire to marry, same question – what do you do to keep things working and amazing?

And how many of you have de-friended me on Facebook because of this? Be honest.

So, a few weeks ago, at Entrepreneur Magazine’s Growth Conference in Long Beach, I did exactly what I feared at my first agency job: a blanket pitch. To an editor for the magazine. In her face. Except this time I was pitching the only client that I’d ever know inside and out: I pitched my business. In three minutes. To someone I’ve never met.

I was in line with several hundred of my newest friends, a bunch of entrepreneurs just trying to get their shot at being covered by the magazine. For some, this would mean product sales. For others, it would mean exposure to a gigantic audience. For me, it was an exercise that led me to kinda sorta figure out what the hell I’m doing with 3Ring Media.

The man in front of me in line asked me what I do.

“3Ring Media is a marketing firm (me) that helps adventure sports companies with online marketing. Essentially, I help these peeps figure out how to be awesome online. Most of them are already awesome in the offline world, but they have no clue how to tackle online marketing.”

Sounds pretty good, right? No? Okay fine, I need to work on that. 

He asked me how many active skydivers there are. Last I heard, the USPA has some 30,000 active peeps paying dues, and that number doesn’t really seem to grow all that much, from what I gather. People decide to get out of the sport and they seem to be replaced with new, younger jumpers. But what he said next blew my mind.

“How many of those 30,000 members own their own company? Could you be helping skydivers with their marketing for their small business?”

DING DING DING DING DING

Yes, I could. And really, I am. He put the words in my mouth. I help Blue Skies Magazine, started by skydivers, by contributing content and offering marketing advice every once in awhile. I help CONFLO, a BASE-jumper founded clothing company, get closer and closer to their mission of being the Billabong or Quicksilver of the air sports world. I am helping my fellow jumpers market their businesses. I knew what I did and I know how I do it, but I had never put it into those words before.

After having this mini-epiphany, I read over the guidelines for the pitch the editor session. Everyone will get three minutes. You should talk about yourself, your business, and consider the following questions to keep your pitch on-target:

• What do you think is interesting or newsworthy about your company? Explain briefly.
• What key challenges or obstacles did you overcome while starting/growing your company? Explain briefly.
• Do you use any innovative or unusual marketing or sales strategies, financing strategies or management techniques?
• Have you developed an innovative product, service or technology?
• Is there a specific marketing/sales strategy, financing strategy or management technique that has greatly helped your business’s growth?

I guess I should have known better that this wouldn’t be a conversation – but I figured the bullet points were items I should have in mind for when my time came – perhaps the editor would be asking me questions and I’d be answering them, like more of an interview than anything else. I’m awesome at interviews, so I’m pumped. I’m thinking I’m going to nail this. I envision sitting on the couch at home and getting an email from Entrepreneur Magazine about how they need me to fly to wherever they’re based they can have a photo shoot with me for the cover of an upcoming issue – with 3Ring featured as an awesome business.

What actually happened was pretty much the exact opposite of nailing it.

I was totally out of my element, I was stumbling and rambling and I KNEW it. It’s like I was having an out of body experience, sitting next to the editor and watching myself look like an unprepared idiot. This version of pitching was totally outside of my comfort zone. I don’t believe in elevator pitches, at least not for what I do. My business is me. I’m what you get when we work together. I don’t have some product that I’m trying to sell, essentially, I’m selling a relationship with me and building trust that you know that I know what I’m talking about.

That said, I treat business (and life in general, really) similar to how I treat a cocktail party – I start a conversation with someone, ask them about who they are, where they’re from, what they do, all that, THEN talk about myself if they’re interested in hearing it. I’ve never just walked into a room and been like “HEY I’M SYDNEY AND 3RING MEDIA IS MY BUSINESS AND I’M HERE TO TELL YOU ALL ABOUT IT!”

Even though I totally fumbled around to make myself and 3Ring sound interesting, it was a great exercise. I learned a bit more about what 3Ring is shaping up to be, and also learned that this kind of conference is nowhere near what I’m used to. It just goes to show what an echo chamber we’re in when we’re talking to marketing/PR/social media types. When you’re used to talking to everyone about what you do and every person you’re talking to is also in the same industry, they totally get it, and they realize how important PR/Marketing/social is to business. When you’re talking to someone who has no clue how social media works and doesn’t have a clue how to get started with marketing, you really have to bring it back and explain it as if they have no clue what you’re talking about… because they don’t.

As awkward as I felt, I’m actually looking forward to the next opportunity I have to go to a conference like this.

After a skydive, we debrief and there’s a structure to it. State some things you liked about the skydive, and things you could improve upon and HOW. To start with “I sucked at ______” isn’t proper format, and my coach would slap me on the wrist if I didn’t debrief this experience properly. If you’ll notice, the title says “I suck at pitching” – which is bad debriefing form. So, to not totally rob myself of a proper debrief:

Things I liked: I loved finally seeing Erika Napoletano speak. She lit up my life and the room and I SO wish I could be at SXSW for her book launch. I liked catching up with Jason Falls and learning more about how he’s working on his book tour and what that all entails. I liked being outside of my comfort zone.

What I didn’t like: I didn’t like fumbling around during the pitch. I can improve upon this by practicing this kind of pitch so I know how to do it when I need to do it. Though I don’t prefer this method of talking about my business, I understand certain circumstances call for it, and I want to be totally fucking awesome at it when that happens next.

If you’re an entrepreneur, how do you pitch your business? Have you ever been to a similar conference? Do you have any tips for how to pitch if starting a conversation isn’t an option?

One of the boy’s students, Katherine, is the executive chef at some super sweet restaurant in San Diego, so when I got the notification that she commented, I was super pumped. “Build your own pizza” was one of a handful of her suggestions. If you know the boy and I, you know that we already rock the pizza scene pretty hard. Our buddy DK said “tacos and margaritas”. We were “eh” about both. Then the boy remembered some ridiculously awesome taco pizza that he made once after having it in New York somewhere, with seasoned beef and ricotta cheese. My ears perked up at ricotta cheese.

Monterey Jack, Ricotta, Spicy Ass Salsa

So, not really having a recipe, we totally winged it. And it turned out ridiculously delicious. You know how ricotta gets a little crispy on the outside and all creamy and orgasmic on the inside? That totally happened with this pizza. We haven’t ventured into making our own dough yet, but we do buy fresh dough from the grocery store, local market, or a little pizza joint, depending on where we’re making the pizza (home, Austin, Illinois, etc).

Shallots, garlic, tomato, spicy ass ground beef.

Just whip it all up according to the recipe below, and it should turn out looking a little something like this:

Roasty toasty tomato on top there. Ricotta is just barely crusty. So. Good.

So, what are you guys up to for the Super Bowl? Last year, Hulu had all the ads online after they aired and we watched the ads in bed, sans football. If you’re going to a party, bring that Spinachy Garlicky Artichokey Super Bowl Dip. Your friends will thank you. They’ll smell like garlic for two days after consuming it, but they’ll thank you.

Then everyone tried it. One by one, they were all “yes, this is terrible, nobody else should try it” – they were on to my strategy. And then most of it disappeared. I took home the leftovers and had some for a snack and put some of it with some pasta shells and used it as a sauce. Gooey. Delicious. You’re welcome.

So, I don’t really give a shit about the Super Bowl but I know a metric asston of people are probably looking for the best recipe for a Super Bowl Spinach Artichoke Dip so, hopefully this one delivers. Of course it will. Sorry I didn’t get more pictures, we were borderline disgusting with how we tackled the dip last night (see what I did there?). I’d love to have  a shot of the dip on the crostini I served it with but that just wasn’t happening.

If you need a spinachy, garlicky, artichokey dip recipe for your Super Bowl party, this is the ticket. And if you have any leftover, which is highly unlikely, you can eat it as dip (again) or throw it in a bowl with some pasta and call it a day. What I can tell you is that you will be welcomed with oohs, ahs, and applause at any party you bring this to, regardless of whether or not it’s revolving around football and advertising.

And? Double bonus? No mayo up in here. Light sour cream. 1/3 Less Fat Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Part skim mozzerella. Fresh spinach. Delicious artichoke hearts. The recipe I adapted this from says it’s only 135 calories per 1/2 cup and that’s with twice as much cream cheese as I used. Yes, I was shopping and didn’t realize that cream cheese blocks aren’t like butter blocks. I thought there were two blocks of cream cheese in a box and there was only one, so I used half as much cream cheese as what the original called for.

The recipe below is the one I actually made. You can find the one I adapted it from here.

Again, you’re welcome.

Now, I guess I should preface “skinny asparagus” with a story. Back in the day, I was a bartender at Charley’s Steak House in Tampa, Florida. It was a DiRona award-winning restaurant, one of the top ten independently-owned steakhouses in the nation, blah blah blah. We had asparagus. And it was huge. I’m talking asparagus that was as thick as a Crayola marker sometimes. Think about it. That’s a big stalk of asparagus. It was perfect for grilling because you know those suckers weren’t going anywhere. So a lot of “normal” asparagus looks very skinny to me.

On with it, yes?

So I find this asparagus that isn’t suitable for grilling because it’s so skinny. The boy and I were a bit on the lazy side yesterday and didn’t feel like going to the actual grocery store after going to the market. So I started poking around the cabinet and found enough to go with for a delicious dinner: some leftover feta cheese in the fridge, a boat load of garlic (always), some lemon peel (left over from the freshly juiced margaritas we had just made), basil, and a mostly-full box of linguine. Bam. Happening.

I chopped up some basil and garlic and poured olive oil over it. A little infusing action happening. Then I took a knife and sliced off some of the lemon zest from the peel that was leftover. I chopped that up really fine and threw it in a skillet with a little bit of olive oil as well. Water is in the process of boiling. Over super low heat, I heat up the lemon zest and the olive oil. Smelling good up in here.

I took about half of the rubber-banded bundle of asparagus and chopped it up in to bite-size pieces, like this:

Stinky pee is worth it, ya'll.

Then once I throw the pasta in the water, I add the asparagus and 4 cloves of sliced garlic (you’ve caught on by now that I have an unhealthy obsession with garlic, right? Okay great.) and let it cook a little bit. We’re going for bright green and “tender” not “mushy” here.

Once the pasta is done, I strain it and throw it in a bowl. Then add the asparagus and garlic combo to the bowl. Then grab that delicious basil-garlic-EVOO mixture and pour that into the bowl as I’m tossing it. A few twists of black pepper and continue to toss. Go easy on the oil mixture at first, you don’t want the pasta to be sloppy oily, but nicely coated. Or maybe you do like sloppy oily. Then go for it. Top with crushed red pepper flakes and feta cheese. I used some of the garlic and herb Athenos variety, but you can do whatever you want there.

And there you have it. It takes as long as it takes you to boil water and cook pasta. Seriously. So easy and so fast. Love it.

Up next: trying a variation of this with red quinoa. First time cooking quinoa. We’ll see how that goes!

While they do have an online presence, Blue Skies saves the good stuff for the magazine. You can (and should) subscribe here. Seriously – even if you aren’t a skydiver, the magazine will provide oodles of entertainment, if not for the pictures alone. Pinky swear.

The premise of my column? We’re following my journey through AFF and beyond. From “zero” to “hero” as Kolla described it. That being said, a lot of what you’re about to read is old news, as it’s the going back from when I started skydiving to present day. Also, keep in mind a lot of this is very much tongue-in-cheek (i.e. I don’t really think I’m the PR queen of the universe) and this is tailored to a skydiving audience, so if there are bits that don’t make sense, let me know in the comments and I’ll translate for you.

On with it, shall we?

The Beginning of the End of My Flourishing Career: From Cutaway to 3Ring 

Originally published in the September 2011 issue of Blue Skies Magazine. 

How do you cutaway once you’ve realized everything has pretty much gone to shit and your beloved canopy (or life, for that matter) is one big malfunction? As baby skydivers, we’re trained to look at the cutaway handle, then pull it, look at the reserve handle, then pull it, or some variation of that. The point is, it’s a very robotic thing once you actually do it in real life. However, if you’re cutting away like one of the Baldwin brothers, it’s a bit different. Some people just yank the handle and then don’t really know where the reserve is or what to do with it or how it works. Or in my case, you chop that bitch and the RSL does the rest.

This is the story of how I actually cut away. Fade to “cutaway” montage from the movie that said “cutaway” one too many times.

We left off at January 2nd, with me sitting on the bench near the swoop pond at Zhills, having just decided that I’m quitting my awesome job in Austin and going after this whole living the dream thing.

Well, let’s rewind for a second, shall we? Flashback to November, a balmy 70 degrees (compared to 30′s in Chicago) and I’m all sitting at my fancy ass computer at my superawesome agency job in Austin. I ordered my rig earlier in the season and it wasn’t ready by the time I left Chicago, so I had it delivered to the office, because I was living in this gigantic swanky ass apartment complex and I didn’t want it to get lost. Obviously. So my rig arrives and I call Doug, the DZO at CSC, and we shoot the shit for a bit, mostly me squealing about how pretty my rig is. I had been working with Doug since the middle of the summer, so once CSC shut down and Doug wasn’t as busy as he usually is in season, the emails started piling up.

So we’re on the phone and I’m giving him shit about how there’s a good chance I’m doing more work for him than I am my clients when he asked me how everything was going since the big move. I ramble on about how I’m working like a crazy person, billing 300 hours in November. For the record, 300 hours = 37.5 8-hour working days. In case you didn’t know this, there aren’t 37.5 8-hour working days in November, or any month on the planet Earth, but that’s what I was billing. I was used to jumping Friday at sunset, all day Saturday and Sunday and leaving the DZ for the city on Monday morning. I had been in Austin for six weeks and hadn’t jumped yet. Unacceptable.

Doug: “So, that’s not exactly what you signed up for, huh?”

Me: “Honestly, I’d rather just work with you full time, and come back in the spring when season starts and take care of all of your marketing and stuff.”

I said that. To Doug. Sitting at my desk at my shiny new job that I had been at for oh, maybe four weeks.

Doug said that was entirely possible.

I hang up with Doug and call the boy. He’s pumped. His wheels are turning. He thinks this could be a really great opportunity for me.

I hang up with him and call my parents. Mom and Dad listen and tell me to call them later when I get home. So I do. They think I’m insane. They say that there’s no way I’m ready for this and that I JUST got to Austin and I have an obligation to them and I should stay and that the skydiving industry isn’t a great place to start out on my own in the marketing world. My parents, who have never told me that I couldn’t do anything, think it’s probably the worst idea I’ve ever come up with in the history of ideas.

That was November. Bring it back to January and my dad has just told me I’d be stupid not to go with this plan.

For the rest of this column, head on over to BlueSkiesMag.com for the full shabang. 

While they do have an online presence, Blue Skies saves the good stuff for the magazine. You can (and should) subscribe here. Seriously – even if you aren’t a skydiver, the magazine will provide oodles of entertainment, if not for the pictures alone. Pinky swear.

The premise of my column? We’re following my journey through AFF and beyond. From “zero” to “hero” as Kolla described it. That being said, a lot of what you’re about to read is old news, as it’s the going back from when I started skydiving to present day. Also, keep in mind a lot of this is very much tongue-in-cheek (i.e. I don’t really think I’m the PR queen of the universe) and this is tailored to a skydiving audience, so if there are bits that don’t make sense, let me know in the comments and I’ll translate for you.

On with it, shall we?

The Beginning of the End of My Flourishing Career: Is it there? Square? Landable? 

Originally published in the August 2011 issue of Blue Skies Magazine. 

Remember that one time that skydiving changed my life, I started dating one of my instructors after I graduated, decided I wanted to move to Texas so I could get paid more and thus skydive more, declared my love for the state of Texas, then I decided I didn’t really love Texas all that much and at the ZHills New Years Boogie I decided to quit my job, start my own company and CSC was my first client and holy shit I’m running out of breath because this sentence is the longest sentence in the history of sentences? You don’t? Oh, well let me tell you all about THAT.

Where do I begin? Girl meets skydiving, skydiving changes girls life, girl meets instructor, girl starts dating instructor, girl wants to skydive all the time and chase the sunshine like all of her friends that skydive all the time.

I decided early that this whole “working-60-hours-a-week-and-getting-paid-peanuts” thing wasn’t for me. At least not working 60 hours doing PR in an environment that makes me dread getting out of bed in the morning. You can only write so many digital content calendars for that hot dog company that has a car shaped like a hot dog before you get tired of all the puns and late night crises when someone finds out that the processed meat isn’t all that tasty and blows up the Facebook page about it. See, people, getting paid to save the world one Facebook post or tweet at a time isn’t all fame, fortune and glamour.

So, right, working sucks. Isn’t that what we all discover after we discover how awesome skydiving is? I know I’m not the first Corporate America worker turned skydiving bum, but holy shit did my eyes open fast.

Fast forward to September, and we’re road tripping to SkyVenture Colorado for a tunnel camp. Five skydivers, packed in Robin, my Civic Hybrid, trucking it across the midwest to the majestic mountains in and around Denver, Colorado. Day one is full of hiking and non-tunnel activities, and we wrap up the day by me accidentally mentioning that I was hopefully interviewing for a job in Austin when we got back. See, the boy was scheduled to go to Spaceland in November and I had been talking to a certain agency in Austin since June and didn’t want him to think that I was looking to get a new job in Texas because he was going to be in Texas because I didn’t know if we were actually together let alone serious. So, I didn’t tell him about the interviews.

The morning of day two starts with the boy borderline screaming about his neck and how he needs to go to the hospital. Earlier in the season he had a whacker of an opening and had continued to jump on it all season long. Apparently 16 hours in a car and hiking led us to the tipping point, where the pain was so excruciating and he could barely walk. So I take him to a hospital in Parker, Colorado, and spend the rest of the trip there. He has surgery, all is well, we go home and I go to Austin for an interview. I get the job. I move to Austin at the end of October. Now the boy is out for six months to recover from the surgery so no jumping which sucks but is also awesome because he can come stay with me in Texas and then roam around Florida for a bit.

Between me moving to Austin around the end of October and season wrapping up at CSC, I don’t see the boy for almost a month. Which is like, a third of how long we’d been dating at that point. Surprisingly, it seems I’ve grown up a lot since the last time I dated someone and it all works out. I’m not a hot mess this time. Things are working out well, despite the fact that I’m not there with him or vice versa. He comes down around Thanksgiving, we tear it up in Austin for a month, and then we take Christmas-New Years off and galavant around Florida.

We had coordinated a Freefall University trip to Skydive City in Zephyrhills for the New Years boogie. Seven 2010 grads and two instructors, rippin’ it up in the sunshine. My parents were coming out to watch the skydiving action and experience a day at the DZ after New Years. I was so pumped for them to finally see what all the fuss was about. The boy and I are walking around the trailer park at Z-Hills and he said “so, what do you think about getting a trailer and coming down here in November?” and I stopped and smiled. I had never been more excited to live in a trailer in my entire life. The thought was exhilarating. I had discussed an opportunity with the DZO at CSC to join the team and do the marketing and events, but had turned it down because I had let other people convince me I wasn’t ready. That I couldn’t handle being THE marketing department, that I wouldn’t have anyone to teach me anything, and that I wouldn’t learn as much as I would if I stayed at my agency job in Austin.

My parents show up on the 2nd, and after a tour of the place, introductions to my friends, and seeing a couple loads land, my dad pulls me aside.

I will never forget the scene. We’re sitting on the long bench sandwiched between the swoop pond and the spectator deck. It’s a bit cloudy, so I grounded myself because clouds make me nervous, and he’s just taking it all in. He turns to me, with a little bit of a misty eye and says:

“I finally get it. For the past six months all you’ve been talking about is skydiving, skydiving, skydiving. I totally get it. And you’d be stupid to not pursue that opportunity at CSC.”

And so it was. My “someday” plan was to quit my job, start my own company and take clients and spread the love and education that I have for all things geeky and social media and marketing. My “someday” plan was to work at the DZ, jump my ass off, learn as much as possible, get my coach rating, and eventually become an AFF instructor.

My “someday” plan went into effect on January 2nd, 2011. I started making plans on when to quit my job and how much money I’d need to survive. I started posting my furniture on Craigslist, looking for someone to sublet my apartment, and started to check out what I needed to do to start my own company so I could live life the way I wanted to live it.

Note: we paid for our juicer fair and square. Omega is not paying me to write this post. This is me, spewing mad love for my Omega VRT350HD since so many people have emailed and Facebooked me about what’s what and what kind of juicer they should get. 

I don’t know if it’s just because we’ve been juicing for a few months now or if it’s the new year or if I’ve always had a bunch of friends interested in juicing and just never realized it, but I’ve had an influx of emails and Facebook messages and tweets about which juicer to get and why we chose the one we did. I figured I’d write a post about why we went with the Omega VRT350HD over the others and talk a bit about the pros and cons of the juicer, now that we’re almost two months into this journey.

Why Did We Choose This Juicer?

When we got to Lake Elsinore, we met two fellow skydivers/staff members that would bring juice to work with them. They talked about it in the mornings and it was fascinating to me. I love juice but I’ve never enjoyed the store-bought stuff because it’s so processed or sugary or full of sodium. When I started changing my lifestyle in August, my doctor recommended a nutrition plan and said that if I ever found myself in a plateau, to do a day where I drink only juice or a day where I eat only protein, nothing else. This worked, and I’d do one protein-only day a week when I needed a metabolism boost. She recommended buying a juicer but I couldn’t justify it at the time, so I supplemented with Bolthouse Farms Carrot Juice, Green Goodness juice and the Vanilla Chai protein shakes.

Given the availability of fresh produce year round here, as well as knowing people (besides my doctor) who had juicers and swore by them, I started doing research. Both of my coworkers recommended a masticating juicer versus a centrifugal juicer, and that is where I started as a basis for the research.

When comparing a centrifugal juicer to a masticating juicer, there are a couple of variables to consider:

• Volume of juice produced
• Dry pulp vs. wet pulp
• Quality of juice produced
• Speed at which the juice is produced (Higher RPM = more heat)
• Noise level of the juicer
• Oxidation of the juice after it is made

We started watching videos, there is site called Discount Juicers and it is full of different information and their YouTube channel is full of comparison videos between different brands and styles of juicers. Some of them show how much volume can come from the same amount of produce using the different machines, and some of them just highlight how they work.

This is the video that got us interested in the Omega VRT350. It’s 30 minutes long, so it’s a bit extensive, but we watched several of these after watching Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. (In case the video doesn’t load below, click here to view it)

The juicer used in Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead is the Breville Juice Fountain. No doubt an awesome juicer, but after doing research so we didn’t go into the purchase blind, the quality of the juice, the yield and the dryness of the pulp was what sold us. We knew that this could potentially be a big investment, to add juicing to our lifestyle, and to dryer pulp = more juice = more bang for your buck. Obviously the difference isn’t THAT much, because John still lost a ton of weight and is super healthy now, but there are little nuances to what kind of juicer works for what you need it for.

The price is high. We ended up choosing the VRT model over the Omega J8000-series because of the counter space issues. They’re essentially the same juicer but counter space is a hot commodity at our house.

A masticating juicer is also called a slow juicer. Slow juicing = more nutrients because it is squeezing the juice, not cutting it = lower RPM = less oxidizing = more nutrients. And it’s much more quiet than the centrifugal juicers. You can see in the video that a centrifugal juicer sounds like a blender. Not a huge deal, and we definitely didn’t weigh this heavily when deciding what to purchase, but if you have roommates that would be pissed if you were blending all the time, it might be a factor for you.

I think the only thing we would change is that it cleans itself. But, cleanup is done in 5 minutes or less. You disassemble it, rinse the parts, and there’s a brush that looks like an oversized toothbrush that comes with the machine to help clean the basket.

Some pro-tips for the Omega VRT350HD:

• It comes with two baskets that help filter the juice from the pulp. Use the basket with the smaller holes unless you like REALLY pulpy juice. If you don’t like pulp at all, you’ll need to filter it and your volume will decrease significantly. I consider the juice produced by this juicer to be a “well-bodied” juice – similar to the consistency of V8.
• To speed up cleaning time, fill up a glass of water and pour it through the juicer before you take it apart to clean it. It helps speed things up and clear some of the debris from the basket.
• Rotate greens, softer vegetables or fruits and harder vegetables or frutis to prevent the basket from clogging. For example, start with spinach, then do a cucumber, then a carrot, etc.

Things we’ve juiced & they juice well:

• Greens: Kale, spinach, chard, parsley, cilantro, romaine, etc
• Veggies: Carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes (a fruit?), parsnips, bell peppers, beets, jalapenos, serranos, garlic, zucchini, ginger
• Fruits: apples, oranges, grapefruit (a whole one is way too bitter for my taste), satsuma, lemons, limes, kiwi, pineapple, grapes, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries

Things you can’t juice: mango, avocado, banana. But, you can juice whatever you want to juice, then add the juice and the soft fruits to a blender and blend it up. But don’t put avocado or mango or banana in a juicer. We haven’t tried it but I hear it’s a disaster.

One of the biggest things I was concerned about was how everything would taste. This blog helped me figure out what the different flavor profiles are of various fruits and veggies. The formatting on Juicing for Health is enough to give you a headache, but you can cure that headache by clicking through the fruit juicing and veggie juicing links and seeing what the healing properties are of each on the right hand side of the screen. Pretty interesting stuff!

Now, if the peeps from Omega are listening, I definitely wouldn’t mind having a juicer to give away to someone…

Do you juice? What kind of juicer do you use? What are some of your favorite recipes?

This one has avocado instead of mayo – healthy fats. Red onion, celery, hard boiled egg… it’s all good up in here.

You can go all low carb on it but either mixing it in the packet (hard to do with lots of ingredients, so beware) or mixing it in a bowl then serving it in the avocado shell. Or make it a sandwich on some delicious hearty wheat bread. Or open face that mofo on a slice of Jesus Bread from Trader Joes (thank you, Nicole for letting me know about this amazing loaf of greatness and wonder).

This, my friends, is Jesus Bread.

It really is like Heaven.

The Cinnamon Raisin variety is great for breakfast. I digress. Just try some. It’s totally good for you. You can eat as much of it as you want because it’s a complete protein. YOU’RE WELCOME, WORLD. I’m like Nicole’s disciple, spreading the good word about all things Jesus Bread.

Without further delay, Avocado Tuna Salad aka Heaven in Disguise. Like how I worked the heaven reference? Between avocado and a slice of Jesus Bread, it really is pretty much the best thing you can do to tuna.

So, in an effort to actually follow through on the whole “writing about food more often” thing, I have made an effort to take pictures of the process. Sometimes I skip steps. Sometimes I only get pics of the finished product. Sometimes, well, it just doesn’t make it, and in that case, I probably won’t share it.

I’m just getting started, so be easy on me. I’m taking pics with my iPhone, I don’t know much about lighting, and sometimes some of this may look like a disaster. But, let’s party.

First up: roasted artichokes with a copious amount of garlic. The original recipe called for one clove in each artichoke. I did three. And I could have done more, because the garlic is so delightful once it’s all roasted up and silky and, yes. THAT.

Enjoy!