I know! I know! The blog has been a bit empty the past couple of weeks. I swear it's not (only) because I'm being lazy. Two circumstances caused the lack of updates.

1. I took the second half of February off from traveling, so I haven't had much to write about. Well, at least nothing that has much to do with sports.
2. March started with a bang. Unfortunately, I can't report on the trip I took this past week. It was, without a doubt, one of the coolest trips I've taken since I started covering action sports six years ago. Unfortunately, until later this year, it is top secret. I signed an NDA—you know, those agreements folks sign before hanging with Britney or attending a party at Paris Hilton's mansion—that says I can't write about my experience until September 2009. I promise it will be worth the wait.

So cryptic, right?

Next week, I'm heading to St. Augustine, Florida, to report a story on 18-year-old motocross racer Ashley Fiolek. Last year, Fiolek won the WMA (Women's Motocross Association) title in her rookie season. Last month, she became the first woman ever signed to a factory deal. (She rides for Honda Red Bull.) Fiolek is perhaps the most talented and promising female motocross rider ever. And she is deaf. The story will be out in May, just before the start of the 2009 WMA season. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, check out this week's Action Sports Report on ETM.com. I caught up with freestyle skier Kristi Leskinen, who is holding her own slopestyle contest for female skiers and snowboarders at Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, her hometown.

This week, I flew down to St. Augustine, Florida, to interview 18-year-old Ashley Fiolek, one of the coolest young athletes I've met in a long time. I don't want to spoil the story, which will be out in The Mag in May, but it was fascinating learning how Fiolek, who was born profoundly deaf, adapted to a sport so dominated by sound. And she didn't just adapt. She became the best female motocross racer in the country—before graduating from high school.

We spent the day at her St. Augustine home, where she lives with her mom and little brother Kicker and then hit the local track so I could watch her ride. Fiolek may be the size of an Olympic gymnast (Nastia Liukin is an inch taller!), but she looks a heck of a lot bigger hitting tabletop jumps and throwing dirt as she's tackling the corners. She looks minature, however, when she is simply sitting on the bike. It swallows her whole.

JOHN AND JIMMY GETTING THE SHOT. JOHN AND I LAST WORKED TOGETHER IN GITMO AND JIMMY APPARENTLY THROWS THE BEST 80'S PARTIES IN ORLANDO ...

THE GAL CAN RIDE (EVEN ON A TRACK THAT HADN'T BEEN WATERED SINCE THE 80'S) ...

HANGING WITH MY NEW FAVORITE DIRTBIKE RACER (MAN, SHE'S TEENY) ...

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Also, speaking of amazing people, last week was also St. Patrick's Day. In honor of said holiday, a foundation called St. Baldrick's holds head shavings around the country to raise money and awareness for children's cancer research. Volunteers pledge to shave their heads, and then raise money via donations. The weekend before St. Patty's Day, the volunteers gather at one of the official St. Baldrick's locations and, one by one, have their mops buzzed away.

Two of my friends, Tammy and JT, were part of this selfless group of folks. They drove to San Francisco to turn in their nearly $4,000 in donations and rid themselves of every hair on their heads. Pretty freaking awesome. Tammy, it turns out, looks dang good in a blue wig. Demi, eat your heart out.

TAMMY AND JT, POST DO-GOODING ...

Last week was a mixed bag. Personally, it was a great week. I spent a week locked away in a cabin in Whistler with seven friends. We rode Whistler and Blackcomb five days in a row (I have to admit to a Blackcomb bias) and did very little work. Tough week to beat.

While in Vancouver, I also had two of the best meals I have had in a very long time. The first, on Friday night, at Boneta was healthy and creative and unlike anything you'd find on most menus in the States. The second, on Saturday, was at Bin 941, an equally creative and fantastic tapas restaurant downtown. I also had a Sweet 16 cupcake at Original Cupcakes, the best bakery in town. (You might remember reading about OC cupcakes here at AR.com. They were the subject of Eric Adelson's first installment of his semi-semi-irregular guest blog Eric's Eats.)

Good riding, good friends, good food. As a vacation goes, it doesn't get much better. (And I can't wait to return for a month next February. Vancouver 2010, here I come!)

Professionally, however, last week was a downer. First, on my weekly ESPNTheMag.com blog, I wrote about yet another action sports athlete—this time, 18-year-old snowboarder Jamie Anderson—with a ruptured spleen. It's a serious, rare injury in most sports, but in action sports, it seems to happen a few times a year. Fortunately, after a week in the ICU at Bennington Medical Center in Vermont, Jamie was sent home without having to undergo a splenectomy and with 1/3 of her spleen still fully functioning. She'll be out for three months, but ready to return to snowboarding in time for summer training in July.

Then, on Thursday, I got a call from my friend Kristi, a professional skier, informing me that big-mountain ski pioneer Shane McConkey had been killed in a BASE-skiing accident in Italy. Shane was originally from Vancouver, and the news hit many people in the area hard. Ski lift operators at the mountain wrote good-bye notes to him on their white boards on Friday and every paper in town made mention of his death, and more importantly, of his life. Shane was 39 years old, a husband to wife Sherry and a father to three-year-old Ayla. He was one of the most well-liked and well-respected skiers in the world, and just a hoot to be around.

Today, I wrote about Shane for ESPNthemag.com. We also republished a piece from EXPN Magazine I did with him three years ago, when he first started ski-BASEing regularly. It was eerie to re-read the transcript from that interview, which talked so much about death, but also about life. It seems more fitting when writing about the death of someone like Shane to talk about life. He was a true pioneer and a visionary and few people lived their lives more fully. Which makes his absence seem like so much more of a loss.