How to plan your weekend — at work

If you spend your Monday mornings at work drooling over weekend photos and answering comments about your adventures on Facebook, read on.

You have the skills to ride or hike or climb your way through the weekend. But you need the skills to relive last weekend’s adventures, plan next weekend’s and keep your job, too. Master all three with these tips for the office-bound adventurer:

1 Adjust your monitor

If you upload photos and browse trip reports on 14ers.com at work — and you know you do — turn your computer monitor away from your door. This might mean an ergonomic loss at your desk, but that’s what your chiropractor is for. That, and your habit of wrecking both your mountain bike and your body every weekend. (You say “body parts heal, bike parts are expensive,” but when will you live it?!?)

Work in an open space, no walls or doors? Get a promotion.

2 Show your work

Between posting your weekend photos on Facebook and Flickr, check work e-mail. Have goals: Aim for replying to three e-mails before noon. Also aim to caption all of your photos before noon.

At least one e-mail should go to your boss as evidence of work done. And at least one photo should show you doing something bad-ass as evidence of your weekend bad-assery (the memory of which helps you get through the day under those soul-sucking office lights).

3 Be quick

Inevitably, your boss is going to walk in on you drooling over a video on Mountains and Water or looking up snow conditions for a couloir. Have a work-related application open and master the art of switching to it quickly.

PC users: Alt + Tab switches to another program.

Mac users: Command + Tab

Non-computer-users: N/A…but dude, how do you get stoked for some weekend gnar-gnar without a midday YouTube bike-porn fix?!?

4 Be in guilt-free denial

If you’re caught on No. 3 and weren’t quick, act normal. Why feel guilty anyway? Of course you can reserve a campsite, write a trip report, chat with a friend about riding Winter Park AND get work done.

Keep telling yourself (and others) how good you are at multitasking. Just like that person you saw texting while riding a bike this morning … who flew through a red light.

Oops.

5 Actually work

Get a few things done today, slacker, so you don’t lose your job. If you lose your job, you won’t have money for buying new gear or driving to Durango. But you’ll have lots of spare time on your hands. Hrm.

Maybe having a job is overrated. And you surely wouldn’t be the only over-educated skier/climber/paddler dirtbagging out of a truck in Colorado this summer…