Winter Blast! Arctic Plunge!

The worst thing about being in Seattle during an unusually snowy winter is the morons on the local news.  I don't mean the folks who think they can drive a tour bus filled with kids down a steep, icy hill -- they're dumb too -- but rather the local news broadcasters.

Good lord, you'd think we were dropped into the 7th frozen circle of hell, to listen to these people.

Still, there's about 4 inches of snow on the ground here and it's been much colder in the city than it usually is, so things have been largely shut down for the last week.  Johanna, Andreas and Margo (Anastasia's parents and aunt) have been with us for a week, after 3 weeks in Bothell with Alex, and they've been more or less housebound.  Margo's been glued to any weather report she can find, so she's probably the target audience for local weather forecasters.  I keep threatening to take her for a drive, but have yet to follow through :).

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A Yucatan Movie

What did we uncover in the jungles of southern Mexico?

What indeed...  See for yourself:



The Ruins (right-click to save)

A Yucatan Birthday 12/3-12/7

Last year in early December, Anastasia was travelling by herself in Uganda and Guinea, having a lonely dinner on her birthday while I crawled around on my hands on knees in the basement, vacuuming up flood waters from a brutal early season rainstorm.

Winter Pineapple 5k, November 16, 2008

http://www.winterpineappleclassic.com

A 5k "fun run" for charity, complete with costumes and tomfoolery.

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Texts around 11/4

Mostly for posterity, I decided to put down the series of text messages that flew around right around election day.  It was a beautiful day, long awaited...

Can I just say that I love this guy? Come on, 11/4.

Enchantments - October 18-19, 2008

What better remedy for obsessive refreshing of FiveThirtyEight.com than a weekend in the mountains with good friends and too much alcohol?  With pre-election chicanery driving me slowly mad, we finally managed to pull together our long-planned weekend in the Enchantments, a series of alpine lakes and peaks in the Stuart Range outside of Leavenworth.

Colchuck Balanced Rock, West Face - September 6, 2008

[singlepic=599,320,240,,right]The West face of Colchuck Balanced Rock rises like a tombstone from the slopes above Colchuck Lake.  The weather-beaten rock and crumbling, complex ridgelines of nearby Dragontail Peak stand in stark contrast to the sheer white face 2500 feet above the cold green water below.  Prominent on that face is a long, clean corner of perfect granite, capped by an enormous roof -- the crux pitch of the West Face route, the long obsession of BJ and a classic Cascade testpiece.

Anastasia in South Africa: August 19-24, 2008

I was back in South Africa. This time it was not in search of penguins (though, it should always be, shouldn't it?) but to learn more about rabies. After landing in Johannesburg, I had a 2 hour drive up to Pretoria for the night. I fell asleep at 7pm in an effort to be alert enough to start my crazy whirlwind roadtrip through Kwa-Zulu Natal for the next 5 days with a selection of rabies experts. After a 5 hour drive to Pietermaritzburg, we settled in for the night at the Alberts Falls game reserve.

Botswana: August 24-29, 2008

The rabies adventure continued to Botswana though, this time, with not as much running around. I was able to get a really good feel for the country and I loved it. The people are wonderful and friendly and the sunsets are spectacular. We visited Gaborone's museum of natural history, a local village and a nearby game reserve. Every place we went welcomed us with incredible hospitality and a lot of ululating (not the same as uvulating for those of you at Icefall last March!). There was much singing and dancing and I must say that Botswanans might love to dance almost as much as Greeks do.

Reynolds Peak Shenanigans

It was Friday afternoon and the van was loaded and ready to go.  Anastasia and I were waiting for Jeffrey when I discovered the drip-drip of coolant making a small puddle under the motor.  Fuck.  Here's Jeffrey.  Could we all pile in his tiny pickup truck?  Not likely -- we have lots of gear and he's 8 feet tall.