AV-015 Blowdown

Monday night people from Florida to Canada got an interesting view as our Centaur upper stage completed it's first orbit after a launch two hours prior. After the Centaur separates from the payload, extra fuel is jettisoned at the end of the mission. We empty all of the hydrogen and oxygen so that the Centaur does not turn into a space bomb if it is struck by a meteor. The space explosion itself wouldn't be so bad, but it would make thousands of little pieces of space debris that could interfere with operational satellites.

Colonoscopy

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures or a video to include with this post.

I had my colon examined today. The actual examination was slightly uncomfortable, but painless. The hard part for me was cleaning everything out the night before. It really reminded me of travelling. The preliminary diagnosis is irritable bowel syndrome likely caused by an infection I picked up who knows where. My stomach hasn't been quite right for a few years now and I have mostly just tolerated it. This has given me some really good shit stories, but I finally decided to have it checked out. Apparently, colonoscopies are all the rage these days. I also had some blood work done to see if I am allergic to gluten and I am not eating dairy for two weeks.

This Hubble image is of two merging galaxies. The shapes of both galaxies have been distorted by their gravitational interaction with one another. Interacting galaxies often exhibit high rates of star formation. This particular merging galaxy is in the constellation Leo approximately 300 million light-years away from Earth. Click on the image to see a big view.

Image Credit: NASA

Bryson, Mel's godbrother, wanted his picture on the internet.

Happy Thanksgiving

Patrick and Maranda join us a Barley's Taproom in Rutherfordton aka 'Roughton'

I am in North Carolina and man do I love the South. The only drawback, nobody can understand a single thing I am saying. I talk and folks just scrunch up their faces and say, 'Whut?' Mel and I drove out here in a single push. It took us over 25 hours. I know it seems crazy, but we actually had a really great time doing it. We listened to music, talked about fun stuff, saw some country we had never seen before and generally enjoyed ourselves. That said, we are flying next time.

Mel's mom, June, had no idea we were coming and it was pretty fun to surprise her. She was totally floored when we showed up Thursday morning. Since we neglected to tell her we were coming, we couldn't very well expect her to cook for us, so I made a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. Y'all would a been real proud o me. It is hard to cook a 5 course meal in someone else's kitchen with limited preparation. We had a turkey, stuffin, gravy, mashed taters, cranberry, grean beans, squash and a spinach salad. No mac-n-chz til Friday, when we ate another Thanksgiving at Mel's grandmothers.

Old Crow Medicine Show

If you ever get a chance to see OCMS live, DO IT! Their albums are pretty darn good, but they absolutely rock at a live show. We had a full tilt hoedown at the Boulder Theatre last night. Whiskey, criminally awesome bluegrass, front-row dancing, disintegrating fiddle bows, lots of hollerin', and the beautiful people of Boulder were just a few of the things that made last night so special.

Delta IV Heavy

We are launching a pretty cool rocket tomorrow night. The 230 ft tall Delta IV Heavy is basically three hydrogen boosters strapped together for a total thrust of nearly 2,000,000 lbs at liftoff. Despite the two million pounds of thrust, the thrust ratio is only 1.2:1 making this heavy pretty slow off the pad. That should give plenty of time to check out the three massive pillars of flame. This will be the most spectacular night launch since Saturn V launched Apollo 17 in 1972.

The massive rocket scheduled for liftoff from Cape Canaveral's Complex 37 at 8:39 p.m. EST. The evening's launch window will extend 122 minutes to 10:41 p.m. EST. You can view the launch here.

Tahoe

Lou and Jaz invited us to join them in Tahoe when we last saw them at Graham and Greta's wedding and we readily accepted. Jasmine's family has a time-share in Tahoe and uses it as a good excuse to escape the beginnings of the cold Alaskan winter. Melanie is the Crocs account manager for California and was extended the offer to use one of here co-workers condos at Tahoe for the weekend. My reaction to this news was, "Cool, maybe we should make sure both condos are at least in the same town, Tahoe is a pretty big lake." To make a long story short, the two houses ended up being two blocks apart in Incline Village at the North end of the lake.

Thursday evening Mel, Alison, Sean and I flew to Reno where we rented a car, a first for me, and drove to Incline village to meet up with Louie and Jasmine. One thing led to another, and before we knew it, it was 4am and there were a lot of empty bottles of wine. Jasmine's parents own a winery in Alaska so we had an ample supply all weekend.

At this point I would usually say what we did each day, but all of our days in Tahoe were basically the same. We slept in until 8 because we stayed up way too late the night before. Ate a giant brunch. This was followed by an fairly successful attempt to be active. Post activity, we ate a giant and excellent dinner then stayed up way too late playing cards and talking. Highlights, I won $40 off the Ducks and lost it playing Blackjack. Mel and I climbed an excellent route at Lovers Leap with Mel and I swapping trad leads for the first time. Skinny-dipping in the lake was definitely a highlight with almost everyone joining in the fun.

New Car

So, Mel and I decided to get a new car. After much debate, I wanted a Mini for my commute, we decided on a Subaru Impreza. We got a white '99 that is great shape and quite fun to drive. Well, after a week, I have already crashed it. Yep, I was in my first automobile accident ever, unless you count those times when Phil was driving, or that time I drove my dad's truck through the neighbor's fence and busted open that yellowjacket nest. Anyway, It was my first collision with another vehicle at highway speeds. I was on my way to work Thursday morning and using one of the rare passing lanes on 93 when this black Audi TT passed on the right going like 87.24 mph. Since the passing lane had already ended, the Audi merged in front of the Toyota truck I was following. The Toyota had to lock up his wheels to keep from colliding with the Audi and that sucked for me. I swerved into the empty oncoming passing lane to keep from rear-ending the Toyota, which was great except for the oncoming traffic and the fact that the Toyota chased me over there and hit me anyway. The Audi started to pull over, then flipped us off and sped away. Colorado plate 070-EBB. I am fine and the new Subi did surprisingly well. A new front quarterpanel and two new passenger side doors and it will be good as new. I wonder what would have happened in a Mini?

Great American Beer Fest

This is from last weekend. It was my birthday and I wanted to go to the GABF. It was pretty darn cool. They had thousands of beers on tap and thousands of people there to enjoy them. The only drawback was the scarcity of brewers to talk to. Mostly the beer was just served by blokes that had no knowledge of the beer they were serving.

Awesome day

Last Saturday I had the most fun I have had in a very long time. I woke up early and headed to the famous Gore canyon on the Colorado for some good class V boating. Gore is basically Colorado's only late season class V and attracts boaters from all over the state. Dana and some friends drove up from Durango for the fun. We had one raft of 6 and about a dozen kayakers along for the fun. The crux of the run is definitely the 3 mile flatwater paddle into the canyon, but once that was out of the way the fun began in earnest with half a dozen quality drops. One of the kayakers, Maria, proved herself to be quite hard when she broke her finger in one of the first class Vs. She didn't swim, just flipped and mashed her finger on a rock. Once she rolled up she realized that another boater (not with our group) was swimming and helped him to shore. Afer the rescue effort Maria gritted her teeth, buddy taped her finger, and paddled the other burl. I was impressed.

After some beers at the take-out, consumed from booties for some, I hit the road to meet up with Mel at Red Rocks. For those of you that are unfamiliar, Red Rocks is one of those super famous venues that artists love. This often means a great performance. Couple that with the fact that we were there to see The Flaming Lips and I knew we were in for an incredible evening. It turns out that I was right. It was everything I expected and way more. Definitely the coolest show ever. Very visually stimulating and they played a great set. For those of you unfamiliar with the music of The Flaming Lips, I have included a song.

Pikes Peak Marathon

A while back Josh suggested an interesting adventure and I readily agreed, mostly because it sounded like a fair bit of suffering would be involved. Josh's proposal was to hike/run the Barr trail (7,000+ ft. of vertical in 13 miles - one way) to the summit of Pikes Peak. The trail was actually quite beautiful and made for a good day out.

My prediction of suffering was fairly accurate. I am accustomed to early starts of the three to four AM variety, but 1:30, that's pushing it. I developed a cool new technique for sleeping while hiking. I call it "sleepwalking." Once I woke up my body performed fairly well until the next day when it refused to move. Maybe I am getting old or maybe I am out of shape, but I can't remember the last time I was this sore. Josh is largely unaffected by the effort and seems to be quite amused by my robot-esque shuffling about the house.

The highlight for me definitely came on the descent when we decided to run the first six miles back to the car. We randomly picked the same day for our outing as the Pikes Peak Challenge, which only ascends the peak. Not only was running down the trail really fun, everyone coming up thought Josh and I were really hardcore for running back down.

Jeepers Creepers

View from the summit of Little Bear. On the right is Blanca and the left is Ellingwood. We traversed all the ridges connecting the peaks and the shadow delineated ridge descending left from Ellingwood.

Three day weekends are great! This time all the roomies plus a random guy, that I think Josh works with, headed down to the Sangre de Cristo range for some backpacking and peak bagging. The backpacking was less than spectacular. The valley we hiked into was beautiful, but we hiked in along "the toughest 4WD road in Colorado." The jeepers really weren't very annoying, but their presence definitely detracted from the wilderness feel of the place. The road/trail into the valley was heinous to hike because of all the boulders strewn about and I kept finding myself thinking, "I can't believe that people drive up this." Not the greatest hiking thought. We did get free cookies though.


Ridge leading up to Blanca.

Climbing on Saturday made the weekend. Josh and I headed out early to climb three fourteeners in a day. A nice class IV route lead to the top of Little Bear. Then we followed a mile long knife edge ridge to the top of Blanca, where we met Ashley and Ryan (the random guy). Ryan joined us for Ellingwood and the descent down the equally precipitous SW ridge back to camp. Meanwhile Mel had a nice ride with some friendly jeepers and hung out with her dog. Back at camp we enjoyed the numerous bottles of wine and beers we had slogged up to camp.


Little Bear Peak with Crater Lake in the foreground.

Date Nite

The Kitchen's wonderful mussels.

Mel and I have started going out to dinner every Thursday. Boulder has an amazing restaurant scene and being new to town we wanted a good excuse to check out some new places. We have been doing this for about a month now and last night we finally made it to The Kitchen. This place is amazing. Apparently Organic magazine voted it one of the 10 best restaurants in America. We were equally impressed. It was definitely one of the best meals I have had in my life. We started the evening with the mussels and a bottle of Côtes du Rhône Rosé. Mel enjoyed the grilled Hawaiian Ahi and I had some amazing scallops for dinner. We finished off with a chocolate torte that surpassed my mom's and Mel tried the 20 year tawny port. I was the driver and elected not to go for dessert wine, instead a nice espresso finished well with the amazing chocolate. I think y'all should come to Boulder so we can go do fun active stuff by day and eat scrumptious food in the evenings.

The Coon

I woke up at 4am this morning, which is not entirely unusual. Today Mel woke me up with an alarmed sounding "KEITH!!!" I immediately assumed the naked kung-fu position on the bed prepared for all-out burglar self-defense. Meanwhile, it sounds as if Cota has the burglar by the jugular in the living room. There is definitely a fight going on out there. Mel is out of the bedroom and I follow behind turning out all the lights she just turned on. I come into the dining room to find Cota in a standoff with a big ol' raccoon next to his food bowl. Food is spread everywhere and it is obvious that Cota and the coon had just been going at it pretty seriously. I wish I had seen and taken video of Cota attacking the raccoon to try and protect his food. Next, Mel grabbed the dog and I watched dumbly as the devious animal retreated out the hole in the screen door. I'm really happy it was a raccoon and not a skunk. That would have sucked.

First Launch

Delta II rocket lifts off carrying Phoenix Mars explorer

This morning ULA launched their first rocket since I started there on Monday. The Delta II rocket left Cape Canaveral carrying the Phoenix Mars Explorer. The mission is to land near the North Pole of Mars and look for water ice below the soil. The Phoenix is scheduled to land on Mars in May of next year. It will survive there for the Martian summer before it freezes in a solid shell of carbon-dioxide ice during the brutal winter.

The first week of work was pretty slow, but now I am moved in and have stuff set up. The highlight was taking a two day class on the Atlas V rocket. I learned lots of neat stuff like; the Atlas V 551 generates the power of 13 Hoover dams for the 4 minutes following takeoff. Unfortunately, I can't share most of the cool stuff I learn at work, because my blog is public and some N. Korean rocket scientist could be reading.

First Day!

I had my first day of work yesterday. It was pretty uneventful. I spent all morning in a new-hire orientation and the afternoon was filled with meeting co-workers and trying to log on to my computer. They left a hyphen out of my password. The rest of the week I will be taking the "Atlas Rocket Familiarization Course." Just like being a student, except I get paid. Cool.

In other news, the tumultuous tour has concluded and I have chosen my favorite crash. Casar (the guy in white) went on to get the stage win from this break away of four. Check it out:

Old Friends

For the past week my old friends Kelly and Jason have been visiting from Seattle. This was the first significant chance we have had to spend time together since before Korea. We picked up right where we left off and had a great time. We went rafting, hiking, biking, tubing, climbing and rounded out the indoor time with watching the tour, eating, playing cards and joking around. Pretty fun stuff. I picked up a bit of a stomach bug last Saturday along with some heat exhaustion, but seem to be doing better now.

One more week until I start work. I am super excited.

backpackin'

Colorado has beautiful places too.

Mel and I went backpacking this past weekend. Mel was pretty much shocked when I asked her if she wanted to go. Usually I suggest a boating trip or some climbing, but this weekend it sounded like fun to get out and see if there are mines in the wilderness areas too. I am pleased to report that we did not see a single mine in the Holy Cross wilderness. We did see tons of beautiful alpine lakes, granite peaks, and big fat marmots. Cota was especially fond of the big fat marmots. We passed the time drinking Oregon Pinot, eating stinky cheese and swimming in the lakes, it was totally relaxing.

On the return trip I came to the conclusion that resort towns are a lot like casinos. They have all the glitz and glam and each town has it's own theme just like the casinos. Replace the tables with some chairlifts, horseback-riding and whitewater rafting and you are almost there. The only discernable difference I can make out is while Vegas gives away free lodging to encourage people to come, resort towns sell realestate for absurd prices so people feel obligated to come and spend money more often.

Month Off

I got a job offer from United Launch Alliance. ULA is a newly-formed joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing that is in the business of launching rockets. I will be a Dynamics and Controls Engineer on the Atlas V project. My official job title is super awesome, "Mechanical Engineer II" I am so excited about this and can't wait for my start date on July 30th. In the mean time, I plan to fully enjoy my unemployment for one last month. The generous signing bonus supplied by ULA should make that all the easier. The term, "It's not rocket science" no longer applies.

Upper Animas

Yesterday, Mel and I had the chance to run one of the top whitewater rivers in the world with friend Dana Kopf and many others. We had a big trip with three rafts and 8 kayaks. I unfortunately managed to forget the camera, so there are no photos, but suffice it to say we had a wonderful time with beautiful weather and classic boating. The gorge is granite, unspoiled except by a narrow gauge railroad, and surrounded by 4,000m peaks. We even extended the trip by running the Rockwood Box, a seldom rafted class V gorge that may be the most spectacular portion of the trip. Rockwood was the only place our group experienced any carnage with one kayaker taking a swim in Mandatory Thrashing. The trip concludes with a mile-long uphill hike, especially fun with rafts.

Arkansas

Flat water in Brown's Canyon.


Big Horn Sheep.

Melanie's Aunt and Uncle are in town for a few days, so we went rafting on the Arkansas. The river has a reputation for being the busiest and most commercialized in the world, but we were pleasantly surprised to find Brown's Canyon relatively unoccupied on a June Sunday. Despite the sparse humanoid population, we still managed to have a user conflict. A ghetto-fabulous raft pulled into our lunch beach and asked if they could share. I was about to point out the vacant beach just downstream when Karen (Mel's aunt) busted out the Southern hospitality and told them it would be no problem at all. This didn't bother me in the slightest until the rest of their party landed on our beach. They had four rafts and numerous kayaks, about 30 people including some yelling children. I took a cue from my mom, and told the leader that we were misinformed as to the size of their party and no longer wished to share our lunch beach. After some smart remarks, rude comments, and lots of stink eye they moved on downstream. Even so, I was totally impressed by the Ark's great scenery and top-notch rapids. Monday, we moved a bit further upstream and made a couple of laps on the Numbers section. Again, I was pleased by some great read-and-run class IV.

The highlight of the trip for me was seeing 12 yr. old Dane Jackson and 13 yr. old Jason Craig tear it up in the Salida play park. These kids are some of the best playboaters I have ever seen. They were throwing down loops three at a time and doing some crazy stuff I had never seen before. What a good life, sponsored kayaker at age 12.

Recent Events

I realize that I have not been doing a particularly good job of updating my blog lately. I have neither been too busy, nor lacked in exciting adventures. I have two roommates that blog and hang out with me. Three posts about climbing a mountain in a dress is a little excessive in my book.

Anyway, life is good. I take Cota on a kick-ass hike every day and ride my bike a lot. Baking cookies has slowed down since the students have left town and I have redoubled my efforts to find a good engineering job. I have quite a few great prospects right now so hopefully something will pan out.

On Monday the whole city came out for the Bolder Boulder. This is the biggest 10k race in the world with over 50,000 runners. I thought it was a really impressive event. There are bands playing all along the course and I rode my bike around to see Mel at various points along the course. My favorite stop was next to a band of middle school boys. It was an interesting study in what happens if you give a 14 year old boy an electric guitar and thousands of screaming fans. The middle schoolers had great taste in music, covering Metallica, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Kiss, GnR, and Ozzy Osbourne.
The middle schoolers play some GnR.

Jake was in town for a day last week on his way to New York. It was great to see him and we did some awesome backcountry skiing in Rocky Mountain NP. I have been continuing my exploration of Colorado's rivers and creeks.
Jake and Mel ready to make some turns.

Piedra

Dana takes a look at Eye of the Needle on the Piedra.

Dough Boy

I got a job. I'm a baker at Boulder Baked. It's a small family owned bakery on University Hill that specializes in cookies, brownies, cakes and other yummy stuff for stoned, drunk college students. They are open from 6pm 'til 2am, which is good for me because I don't have to get up at 4am to make cookies. I get to do it during the normal daytime.

Cross Mountain Gorge

The entrance to Cross Mountain Gorge

Over the weekend Mel and I drove out to North-West Colorado to check out the Yampa River. The Yampa is a tributary of the Green, which eventually joins the Colorado. It's a tranquil river flowing placidly through high-desert valleys until it reaches the Cross Mountains. It then changes abruptly in character and slices a two-thousand foot gorge straight through the range. This makes for a nice five mile section of boating.

We ran this section on Saturday and all was uneventful, except for a little swim Mel took in the very last rapid. We then hiked over the top of the crest back to the truck. On the hike we surprised some elk that were bedded down in the juniper and spruce trees. We also got to peer over the canyon rim and see the gorge in it's entirety. We also saw tons of fox, antelope, deer, and rabbits. Cota was a big fan of chasing the rabbits.

It's boatin' season!

Ski Binding Story

Melanie's friend Kelly is visiting from North Carolina this weekend and since I am such an awesome boyfriend I agreed to drive Kelly up to the mountain on Thursday and ski for a bit. We had a great time in the sun and spring conditions. Then, this really interesting thing happened. Something I have never seen or heard of. If Kelly were not there to witness this event nobody would believe me.

The Story:
I was just skiing along, making beautiful tele turns, when this guy comes flying past me. He was totally out of control, in that half tuck position, sort of making turns. Anyway, you get the picture. I didn't see him crash, although I wish I had. It would have been entertaining and it would make this story even better. I stop and he is slightly up-hill from me lying face down in the snow. He slowly gets up, slightly dazed and I realize that one of his skis is nowhere to be seen. I turn to Kelly and ask her if she sees this guy's other ski. We don't see it and we can see for quite a ways. I notice that the guy is ski/hop/flailing toward us on his one remaining ski, when he asks, "Hey man, can I get some help?" I tentatively give a positive reply expecting to be engaged in a search for the missing ski until all the snow melts. He then busts out with, "You gotta get this binding out of my ass!" Whoa, that was out of left field. Sure enough, when he turns around, he has a ski binding dangling from the seat of his ski pants. I extracted it. When this guy fell he completely ripped his binding off his ski and the brake punctured his ski pants and two layers of underwear then re-traced it's path in complete fish-hook fashion. I really wish I had a picture. It was amazing!

Back to Oregon

Graham on Thursday night


Jake, Garrett and Lisa shortly before I joined them and we sank the canoe.

Mel and I returned to Oregon over the weekend. The excuse, Graham and Greta's wedding. I flew in Thursday evening just in time for some bachelor party schenanigans in downtown Portland. We got Graham pretty drunk (see photo). The wedding itself was successful as well, although Greta looked pretty shocked when the pastor started talking about Jesus. Some good dancing followed with cameo appearances by Jaz & Lou up from California plus Garrett and Lisa down form Montana. Phil will be pleased to know that Molly caught the bouquet. Later in the evening; Brian Melvin (Graham's little brother) cut his face badly on a broken wine bottle, Jake stole the golf cart for a little drunken joyriding, and 4 of us sank the canoe in the pond with all our dress clothes on.

The highlight of the trip home was spending time with family and friends. I visited professors at OSU and spent some quality time with my grandparents and brother. It was a great trip and made me miss Oregon, although my allergies were happy to get on the plane.

No Job Yet

Looking North toward Dinosaur Mountain and the Third Flatiron.


Corey placing some gear in the sweet finger crack.

The approach to this climb is easy, just roll out of bed, pull on your shoes and walk half an hour to the crag. No driving. I can't say enough about how nice it is to hike directly to the crag. Best of all, it is far from being the only climb within easy hiking distance from our front door. Hundreds of cool routes and boulder problems await.

View of Bear Mountain from our back porch.

We finally got around to replacing our stolen camera, and it turns out that our timing was perfect because Sony just came out with a new version of our old camera. It appears that they just put our old one in the shrinker and made the new DSC-W55. There is also less shutter lag and better low-light performance (The plague of all point and shoot digitals). I'm once again impressed by the rapid advancement of technology and can't wait to start taking pictures again.

I was importing all of my photos into Aperture today and came across this old image of Garrett, Eileen, Bryan and myself running Husum Falls on the White Salmon. I used some of my new photo editing capabilities to clean it up a bit.

I don't like looking for jobs. I have found a couple that I want and applied, but I have to wait for interviews. In the meantime, nothing else sounds quite right. Oh well, I will find something soon.

Netflix

I know this is super dorky, but if you have Netflix and want to see what movies I am currently watching/enjoying click here.

Movin'

After just a week in Boulder it is time to move. Josh and Ashley's landlord is selling so we needed to find a new place. The new place is a giant two story that is pretty nice and in a great location so we are pretty excited. The new address is to the right.

Boulder, CO

Quite a bit has changed in the past ten days. Mel and I returned from Central America, concluding an awesome trip. We recommend Guatemala above all others for prospective Central America travelers. Our three days back in Corvallis were spent unpacking, repacking, visiting, and celebrating the holidays with a belated gift exchange. Jake, Molly and my family we expected to see, but Renae was also in town for a couple of days. She even took a couple hours out of her busy schedule to go for a road ride with me.

After three days in Corvallis it was time for two days of driving, the direction, East. We spent the night in Salt Lake with Brad and his wife Molly, whom it was great to finally meet. Desiree is currently swinging chairs at Alta and made the trip down canyon to meet us for an excellent Mexican dinner. In the morning we continued on to Josh and Ashley's in Boulder. Near a gas station, a grumpy old dude yelled at Mel for having Cota off leash in an abandoned construction site. He even called her a "Jackass." Cota was never more than 4 feet from Mel.

Josh and Ashley have a great room for us on the lower level of their house. It's a big room with a pair of South facing windows. Since we have been here there has been a lot of visiting, unpacking, and skiing, but not a lot of job hunting. Today that is all going to change. I am going to cut my hair and polish up the resume. It's time to find a job.

Buena Vista in Antigua

Ignacio Perez Borrell

Last night Mel and I had the pleasure of seeing Buena Vista de Corazon in Antigua. The link to Buena Vista Social Club is the 64 year old Cubano, Ignacio Perez Borrell, who was a drummer in the original ¨Club.¨ He was accompanied by a keyboard, guitar, bongos, and a backup vocalist. Really nice to see the drum kit moved up front and an old dude rocking out with amazing style.

Tikal

Definitely a highlight of the whole Central America trip. We woke at 3am in order to climb Temple IV (highest one) in time to see first daylight wake up the jungle. It was pretty cool to hear the howler monkeys and papagayos make their first calls of the day. The place where we watched first light was about 40m shy of the top, which was covered with scaffolding for restoration, so I took the opportunity to duck some ropes, climb some ladders, and scamper up some sketchy exposed scaffolding to the highest point for miles around. It was really awesome! I would like to note that it was closed for safety reasons and not because my presence would cause any undue damage to the temple structure.

In short, the whole place is amazing! We stayed until 5pm, which was well after the majority of the other tourists had departed, so we had the place to ourselves in the late afternoon. We saw coati and grey fox, plus numerous really cool bird species. I am fascinated by Mayan astronomy and math and my imagination ran amok trying to imagine what the place was like 2000 years ago.

While we were exploring the temples, just Mel and I, we were spotted by a tour group. One of the tourists inquired of her guide in a loud republican accent, ¨Who are they?¨And upon finding out that we were simply people, ¨It´s amazing that you can just walk around here like it´s your own back-yard.¨ I find this perspective both humorous and also really interesting. It is pretty wicked that you can just wander around such an archaeological gem at will, It is also quite American to consider that all such access should be restricted.

Good News

I got an unexpected bit of news in my mailbox this week. It seems that on Nov, 21 Jake Adams and Becca Cooper in one boat and Melanie Love and myself in the other made the first raft descent of ¨Opal Creek.¨ Another crew ran it a few weeks later and posted this report. If you have good class IV raft skills and don't mind a little hike to the put-in, then I highly recommend this raftable classic.

Chilled Out

For our last week in Guatemala we have settled into quite a nice little eco-cabaña dealio on the Rio Cahaboñ. It is really relaxing with caves nearby and loads of tubing to be done on the river. I can participate in one of my favorite past-times, sitting in a hammock and watching the river flow by. Oceans are cool, but I love rivers. Wish I could post a picture.

Next we are off to the famous Tikal.

I didn´t know what day it was...

So I forgot Mel´s birthday. My excuse: I haven´t seen a calendar in two months and I thought it was the next day. Oops, at least I had a present, sort of. How I manage to hang out with someone as extraordinary as Melanie is beyond me.

Travelling is going quite well, although I must admit that I am ready to return to the states and get life in Colorado started up. I tried to explain this to United and they said, "That will be $600 please." Arrgh. At least we are having a great time. Currently we are heading north through El Salvador. Today we went on a wild goose chase to try and find an awesome beach recommended by Eric Eldon. Either we found another beach by the same name or it has seriously degenerated in the past few years. Tomorrow we are headed back to Guatemala, which happens to be our most favoritest country in all of Central America.

This whole lack of photos thing really makes my blog boring! damn thieves!

Movin´

The cat is officially out of the bag (who would ever put a cat in a bag anyway?) Mel and I are moving to Boulder, Colorado when we return to the states in February! I am going to attempt to get and keep a real job, for at least a couple of months.

7 weeks later

We have now been cruising around down here for 7 weeks and it is starting to feel like this is the way life is supposed to be. Getting a job is really going to be a wake up call. Yesterday we said bye to Lou and Jaz and headed to the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, which seems to be a mellower beach version of Guatemala. We plan to be here for a few days before heading to Isla Ometepe in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua. We are currently really excited about checking out a new country, since Panama (Really pretty, but lacks good food, beer, wildlife, and culture)was not quite what we expected.

It was really nice to re-visit Costa Rica, but we did have a bit of bad luck there with busses and theft. Our camera and my cool new shoulder bag were stolen from the foyer of a hostel with Lou Jaz and I standing right there! And, we kept encountering full busses and others that took longer than expected so we missed connections. On the up-side, we did see massive lava avalanches rip down the side of volcan Arenal under starry night skies. It was really cool!

I now have no money and everyone is inviting me on cool trips, Josh wants me to go skiing in Alaska, Dana wants me to run the Grand Canyon (in January) and Futalafu, and Kyle wants me to kayak to Cuba. Someone should pay me to have fun, travel the world, write about it, and take pictures with the camera I don´t have.

Happy New Year!

They have big fireworks in Panama, rockets nearly as big as me that have lots of pretty colors. The five of us got a little tipsy on a sparsly inhabited island on the Pacific side of Panama and stayed up dancing. It was fun.

¨Near death¨ may be a slight exaggeration, but it was scary. Yesterday we went snorkeling on a distant island. It was quite a long ride out in the crappiest boat I have ever had the pleasure of using. During the ride, Jasmine queried the captain, ¨Does it ever get rough?¨ and he replied that it could get bumpy when the wind comes from the north. Sure enough, on the return trip there was a healthy breeze from the north. The swells increased to about four feet and started breaking over the bow. Normally I would not sweat class III, but the integrity of the craft and the length of the swim made me nervous. There is no way we could swim to shore before dark. Then the boat started breaking. Everything was out of our control, so all we could do is hang on, clinch our jaws and get well hydrated for the impending swim. We made it although my jaw is still a bit sore.