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.