So I ran into Kristy Hawkins today as she’s doing Nationals this weekend and while we had our planning meeting for the magazine tonight we perused her site and found this old shot from a year ago at Nationals in Dallas. Funny how I am wearing the exact same shirt and pants in the shot – how sad…

So in Spain, I really only had one day to chill and one of the athletes from the competition, Jayne Pickering from Australia hung out on the beach with myself and our mutual friend John Plummer.

Of course we had to take one pic and I was forced to flex my measly bicep… that and my miserable non-tan make me look pretty sad…

Just got back to the states and I started noticing my own “american” accent after being around only one other American and lots of folks who spoke english with varying accents. It was weird b/c I actually became conscious of my accent and it sounded weird when I heard it on a video clip.

It was a cool trip overall but a bit tiring – it’s always nice to see familiar faces though such as Heidrun and many others. I’m already looking forward to next year’s show and want to pick up a little bit of some other languages to help the communications flow.

This shot came about when Quincy Taylor (left) was hanging out at the pool waiting for someone else after competing at the Europa Super Show (where he qualified for the O) and he was checking out Jody May who I was shooting with.

Quincy is one of the biggest male bodybuilders around and Jody is a National level heavyweight and good friend so it was nice to grab them together.

One bender in Seattle after the Emerald Cup, Steve Saylor and I ended up dropping Quincy off at the airport after everyone else was too cracked out to do so (and we were pretty damn cracked out ourselves).

I can’t believe that I got all excited when I saw Slater at the USAs in Vegas in the lobby. My friend Carla Sanchez and her team were taking a photo with him. I’ve seen like every episode of Saved by the Bell and so it was surreal seeing him at the show.