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Name: Jeff Ballinger

Born September, 1960

Family: My wife Mary is a writer and Online college professor, and our 17-year-old daughter Rachel is a senior at SLO HS. She wants to be a politician, and a rare one at that - one who is honest. My dad still lives in Atascadero, where we moved in 1971 from Orange County. My mother bravely battled liver cancer but died in October 2005. She grew up on a farm in Kansas and walked 3 miles every school day to a one-room schoolhouse - no lie, I've seen it. My sister Marcia lives in SLO and has a daughter and one son, and my brother David died of AIDS in 1987. My parents adopted all three of us at birth and gave us a life that really couldn't be better.

Occupation: Reporter for The Tribune

Past Occupations: Track coach, pedicab driver, limousine driver, bar bouncer, high school English teacher

School(s):Atascadero High School 1978, Fresno State BA in English 1982, UCLA teaching credential 1986

Current Hometown: San Luis Obispo, CA

Past Hometowns: Atascadero; St. Albans, Vermont; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco; Belmont Shore and West LA
What do you enjoy about Team Kman: It's great to stay in touch with Keith - we played a lot of basketball together in the '70s and I've got stories for those of you who know him only as a tri-athlete and as K-Man (he was probably the best b-baller to ever play at AHS) - and it's great to make some new friends who share my interest in cycling and living a fit life.
Other interests/hobbies: I'm a newspaper man, so keeping up on news and politics of course, photography, spending time with Mary and Rachel, traveling, and watching movies.
Favorite Place(s): Yosemite National Park, Paris, New York City, the Grand Canyon, San Francisco, Vermont in the fall, the desert in the spring
A Goal(s): losing weight and getting stronger so I can keep up with the peleton on the hills.
Brag Box:•••Some young whippersnapper just smashed my 28-year-old record at Atascadero High School - the single-game rushing record of 280 yards. Tidwell is his name, and he went 352 yards! I say it was "my" record, but it was the entire team's to be truthful. I had a great line of all seniors and all friends.
•••As a 10-year-old, I won the 180 meter dash age-group championship of Orange County. The first, and about the last, big race I ever won.
•••Those moments of glory are a much smaller source of pride than my wife and daughter. Rachel will be off to college next year, probably at Tufts or Georgetown or maybe even Stanford. She's got a great future and her mother did a great job raising her through some tough times by herself for several years. Amazing women in my life. Don't know how I got so lucky.
Cool Tidbits..
1. As a track coach, my only real strength was recognizing runners' stengths. Kim Toney's father and I felt she would make a better middle distance runner than a sprinter when she was a freshman. We convinced the coach to let her try the 800 meters. She later won the state title in that event twice and won some Pac 10 titles as well.
2. My father retired at 42 from the building business and we had two parents at home for about half the years I was growing up. We were very lucky indeed. We weren't spoiled, though. Somehow my parents found a good balance.
3. Mary and I want to live in Paris some day. It will happen. C'est vrai.
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