Vegas!!!

I'm In the Las Vegas airport coming back from an incredible weekend. I went down to see a girl I met in Fiji. We had a crazy time, as with any trip there were some setbacks. I missed my flight down, so had to pay for another ticket the next morning, we bought cirque du soleil tickets for the wrong week, and I lost a chunk of money playing blackjack at the $50 minimum bet table, oops!

But we had some really good times as well. We lived it up at a big hotel on the strip and I felt like a baller cruising around in my 2013 mustang convertible rental. Partying all night to Calvin Harris at XS nightclub was incredible! I even got out bouldering at Red Rocks today despite a brutal hangover and 100 degree temps. The Kraft boulders are really good, I got shut down on anything remotely difficult. But it was good to check it out.

It's going to be strange going back to normal life after this. I'm seriously considering flying back down this weekend again. I don't think it would be good for my bank account though.

Fiji

Fiji felt like a totally different world. I just spent one night on the main island then caught an hour long boat ride out to Mana Island, and small remote island where I spent the rest of my time. I made the right choice heading to Mana, I met some very cool people. All the other backpackers had been travelling for months if not years so they were shocked that I was only travelling for three weeks. I don't know why I didn't go for longer. I made the most of my time though.

A typical day for me went something like this: Wake up at first light and go for a walk/run on the beach for an hour or so with whatever stray dogs wanted to join me. Back to the resort for breakfast. Get my scuba gear set up and on the boat. Go on my first dive at 8:30. Get back change tanks and head out on my second dive at 10:30. Back for lunch. Then in the afternoons walk out to a remote beach with friends. Watch the sun set around 6pm. Back to the hostel for dinner then drinking games with the other backpackers til late. It was a good life.

The scuba diving there was amazing, amongst the best I've done anywhere. The soft coral was incredible, and the sites were teeming with fish, I also saw eels, manta rays and lots of sharks. Each site was different, it never got boring. I did 10 dives total in 6 days bringing my total to around 80 I think. I can't emphasise how much I loved it. I decided I want to pursue my divemaster certification so I can do this and get paid for it during the summers, that way I can stay out places like this for longer. I'm already thinking about where I want to go during my two weeks over Christmas break and next summer. I'm so glad I went on this trip, it was exactly what I needed. Now I better get in to the gym to get back in shape.

This is what a typical afternoon was like, the beaches were amazing and we had them all to ourselves.

Ratu Kini's the resort/hostel where I stayed

Getting ready to enter into another world.

The sunrise on my last morning in Fiji. I made it all the way around the island along the beach in about 2 hours.

It's the water

My last sunset, back on the main island.

New Zealand

I've been back from my trip to New Zealand and Fiji for a couple of days now, I'm excited to get back to teaching, but I'm very sad to be finished with such an amazing trip. The three weeks were action packed, its so hard to summarize everything in a couple of paragraphs, but I'll try. Here's what I got up to in New Zealand.

The trip started out great, Anthony took me to some of his favorite spots around where he lives. I loved surfing on the Tasman Sea at Raglan, it was really hard because of the choppy seas, and I almost got dragged out by the rip tide at one point, but it was a lot of fun. The mountain biking in the redwoods at Rotorua, was also spectacular, nice long runs in a sub-tropical rain forest. A few days in our house got broken in to while we were out for lunch, they took my new iPhone amongst other things, it was a bummer but we tried to forget about it by heading up to Auckland. I went out two nights in Auckland which was really fun, on the second night Melody hitchhiked out to meet up with me. It was great to reconnect with her over a few pints and swap stories from the last few months. The next morning Ant and I caught an early flight down to the South Island.

We spent five days in Queenstown, a popular backpackers/skiers town. We would ski during the day at the different resorts in the area during the days, and partied at night. We had some bad luck down there, I lost my new jacket with my digital camera in the pocket so don't have many photos. One night Ant partied a little too hard and ended up in the hospital. And the day before we were set to drive up to Christchurch we lost our rental car keys on the slopes somewhere. It meant we couldn't climb at Castle Hill, and we were looking at a big bill for a replacement key and new flights, but luckily someone found them just in time so we were able to do the 6 hour drive at dawn to catch our flights back.

Back up on the North Island I rented a car and drove out see Melody again. she was wwoofing at a very hippie farm on the Coromandel Peninsula. It was cool seeing what see does there, I really admire her courage to go off on her adventure. We had a great time together. We checked out the area around her farm, surfed on some much more friendly waves on the East Coast, and hiked up to the Pinnacles hut in Coromandel Forest Park. I made it back down the next day to catch my flight to Fiji. I've got to say I was very impressed with New Zealand. I just wish I had more photos, here are some from my iPhone before it got stolen and a couple from a disposable camera I bought later.

Getting ready to go surfing at Raglan

Ant taking a break from mountain biking.

Relaxing in a natural hot spring after mountain biking.

Mel and I wet but happy after surfing.

Melody and another friend Ffion at The Pinnacles.

Stoked for my Big Trip

I leave on my New Zealand/Fiji trip in a couple of hours, and I so excited!

In the last few weeks I haven't done too much climbing. I've been getting in to other things, preparing for this trip and making the most of the nice weather. I went scuba diving with Tony in the Sound, mountain biking with Chas and Tyler, fishing with a bunch of guys for Chas' bachelor party. Anthony a good friend from Scotland visited recently which was a lot of fun. I've even started running regularly, I feel in great shape, and its helped me shed 9 pounds in the last two months. Here are some photo's of what I've been up to recently.

I got out climbing at Nevermind with Chas and Tyler, I repeated a bunch of stuff.

Tyler and Chas cruised the classic Steep Street, and the both came close on Culture Shock.

Getting ready to go spearfishing!

No cabezon or crab, but it was still a fun dive.

It took some goading to do this jump, but it was worth it.

Salmon fishing off the coast on a charter boat.

Fishing for rockfish at the Westport jetty.

In New Zealand I'm visting Anthony who lives there now. We're adventuring around the North Island, skiing, surfing and mountain biking before flying down to the South Island for more skiing and partying. I'm hoping to boulder at the awesome Castle Hill, its somewhere I've wanted to climb at for a while, and the friction should be awesome right now. I'm also looking forward to seeing my friend Melody who is on the North Island. After a couple of weeks there, I'm flying up to Fiji for a week. I think I'm the most excited for this part of the trip. I booked a week at this dive resort including 10 dives. The area is world famous for diving, there's tons of different dive sites, from wrecks to shark dives, and soft coral, all with 100ft+ visibility this time of year! I'm really excited just to be around the traveller/backpacker scene, its been too long since I've done a trip like this. Hopefully I'll be able to update my blog mid-trip through my iPhone, I'll definitely be taking lots of photos. Well I better get on my way to the airport.

Dominic in the Dominican

I'm back from a two week visit to the Dominican Republic. It was quite a shock to go from snow and rain here in Olympia, to the sun and heat of Santo Domingo. It was really interesting visiting such a different city, but it seemed to me such a chaotic place. Driving around was scary, the drivers pay little attention to the rules of the road. I was wondering how there weren't more traffic accidents, then one night we were hit twice, and a couple of days later we witnessed the aftermath of a terrible accident where are car was wrecked so bad it was split clean in two 50 yards apart, and the drivers dead body was lying in the middle of the road for everyone to see.

I do bring back a lot of good memories though. Scuba diving with my dad was really fun, the water was probably the warmest I've dove in. And I played a lot of beach volleyball at a resort we stayed at for a few days, which was awesome, I really wish the weather was good here for beach volleyball. My sisters wedding (which was the main reason I was over there) was beautiful, she looked great in her wedding dress.



Me and my big sister Luisa



And I even managed to get some climbing in there as well. I met up with some Dominican climbers and they showed me the local crag, which was actually really sweet. It was a short steep limestone cliff stacked with stalactites, tufas, and pockets galore. It was tough climbing in the heat and humidity, but I managed to get up a bunch of 5.10's and 11's. A big thank you to the Santo Domingo climbing community for showing me around. If anyone is looking for information about the climbing there, look up the dominicanclimbing yahoo group and they will take care of you. Unfortunately I broke my camera early in the trip so not much photos, you'll just have to use your imagination.

Weekend in San Francisco

Laura and I had a great relaxing weekend down in San Francisco visiting her sister Erin, and Ben. We packed a lot in to a little amount of time. The highlights for me were visiting the California Academy of Sciences, which was really interesting, I could have spent a lot more time there. Playing squash was a lot of fun, Laura and I are complete beginners but it was still fun playing against each other, if there were courts in Olympia I would definitely consider taking it up. We played board games accompanied by some delicious home made food, including spring rolls, and home made guiness-chocolate ice cream. Here is a photo of the four of us at the California Academy of Sciences.

Thanks Erin and Ben for showing us around, its always a lot of fun whenever we visit. For now its back to the books, I've got to get a lot of work done before another climbing trip this weekend.

Colombia Video

I was looking through my Colombia photos and couldn't help but laugh when I watched this video clip. Its a little video I took of me, my brother, my sister and my little cousin Nicholas playing about in the pool in Colombia. One of those priceless moments where I was glad I had my camera out!

Christmas in Colombia

Happy 2010 everyone! I'm back in Olympia after spending 2 weeks on a family holiday in Colombia. I would have written a blog earlier or while I was there, but my USB cable for my camera along with a few other things were stolen from our house there. It was a minor setback on what was otherwise a very fun trip. My parents and my sister are there for 3 months and my brother and I flew down from opposite ends of the US so we could all spend Christmas together. It was the first time we've all been together in Colombia, and I think the longest in almost 20 years, since my brother left Scotland, that we've all been together. Here are some photos with captions that will give you an idea of what I got up to down there.

Me walking back from the new swimming pool that was built 5 minutes up the road. It was in the 90's (35 Celsius) everyday, so it was nice to jump in the pool or go to the beach to cool down.

On one of the first days there we met all the kids in the village during their Christmas party, my mum volunteers at the school teaching English, she's behind all the kids.
Me at Taganga beach, its a smaller beach just north of town where my dad and I went diving. For some reason all the American and European tourists come here, but you wont see them anywhere else.
Me and my brother would go up to the village at nights and play pool. We played this weird form of billiards where you use the 3 ball as the cue ball, and the balls were set up along the cushion on the outside of the table. Rickie would always beat me.

Troucou-Trou the dog was still hanging around the house, despite no one living there for months. He looked pretty skinny and scabby, but after a couple of weeks of eating our leftovers he's looking a lot healthier.

Here a photo of me with my brother and sister and my cousins who I met for the first time. Gloria in the middle is my oldest cousin, she is the oldest of 12 in her family. And my cousins Pao and Kike who are my age, and my mum in the background.

Although I didn't climb the whole time I still got plenty of exercise, here I'm playing in a tree with Nicholas, my cousin Gloria's grandson, he's 4.

Nicholas and I would play in the river, but there had been a 4 month drought so the river was way lower than it was last year. It finally rained about a week into my stay there.
My brother and sister and I on Christmas Eve, here they celebrate it on the night of the 24th.
There wasn't much Christmas decorations compared to in the states, but I saw this Santa Claus near the mall.
One of our neighbors is rearing pigs, they are the cutest. Don't get fooled by my clothing its still really hot, I just had to wear jeans cause in the movie theatre where we were heading they blast the air conditioning.
Rickie, Nicholas and I at Rodadero beach, a very popular beach.

The old folks relaxing in the shade at the beach.

An underwater photo of Rickie Luisa and Me.

We tried to take a photo of everyone on a timer, but Troucou wouldn't stay still. In this photo is another new cousin of mine Nelson in orange and my uncle Moises next to him.

A nice family photo. Thanks Mum, Dad, Luisa, and Rickie for such a great Christmas!

Little Si-ne Die Weekend

I know, lame blog title, I was trying to come up with a witty way of combining Little Si and Sine Die (last day of legislative session).
Anyway, I just had a pretty awesome weekend. The weekend started with my last day of work at the House of Representatives on Friday. I was sad to be leaving cause I had such a fun time working there, and learned a lot. Working on an appropriations committee really gave me an insight into how the budget process works. I would have blogged more about my work, but my position was non-partisan and I was privy to confidential information, so I thought I'd better not. One thing that impressed me a lot with was just how hard working the legislators and staff are, I would often arrive into work at 8am to find fiscal staff asleep in their offices after working all-nighters. I think they get a bad reputation in the media, but in reality they are some of the hardest working people I've come across. Saying my goodbyes on Friday was sad, but I also felt excited to be moving on. On Friday, I also submitted my Masters in Teaching application to Evergreen. I am hopeful that I will be accepted starting this fall, and I'm really excited to go back to school and look forward to being a teacher. Thank you very much to those of you who have helped me with the application and support.

Friday night we went out and celebrated Arts Walk in downtown Olympia. It was a really good vibe and the weather was beautiful. We saw lots of different performances and exhibitions. Even the lobby of our apartment complex was an art gallery for the night, which was really cool. Nights like these I really love living in downtown Olympia. The highlight of the night was definitely dancing at The Loft with friends to Laura's old time music band 'The Grizzle Grazzle Tune Snugglers', they were awesome.

On Saturday I got an early start and went climbing with Micah and Mika at Little Si. The crag was really dry and cool (maybe a little too cool). Micah made amends for his actions earlier this week and returned some draws. Read here to get the full story. I felt good to be doing longer routes, I managed to repeat a lot of classics from 11b-12a without too much effort which is promissing for the summer ahead, my endurance can only improve from here. Micah and I got on Dairy Freeze, an overlooked 12b on the left hand side. I had tried it a couple of years ago, but didn't remember much other than it felt really hard at the time and that I had really weird beta. It took me a couple of goes to remember my beta for the crux, which is hard, so now I think I can get it if I go back again. Micah finished it off which was a good morale boost for him. We returned to Oly in high spirits and met up with friends at a Mead tasting party.

Sunday I woke up with a nasty Mead hangover. Nevertheless it was a beautiful day outside, BBQ weather. I went over to Jeremy's BBQ first and had some awesome ribs, then Ian's BBQ and filled up on steak, mmm. Then as the evening approached I walked up to the Capitol Campus in search of some Sine Die parties. The mood at the Capitol wasn't good though, they had managed to negotiate a compromise on the Budget which many thought would need a special session, but some other important bills like the renewable energy bill and budget bond bill were stalling cause they didn't have the votes. Governor Gregoire is holding a press conference today to announce if there will be a special session, it looks likely since these are important bills. Its really too bad after seeing all the hard work the fiscal staff put in to be able to finish in time, they deserve a break more than anyone. I'm glad to be done now though, I have a lot more free time now and the weather looks good, which can only mean one thing, lots of climbing, so watch this space!

Colombia

I´m in Colombia right now on a non-climbing (although I did take my climbing shoes just in case, but so far I haven´t found any big enough rocks) vacation. I´m visiting my parents who have a house out here in Santa Marta and are here for 3 months during the winter. I´m having a great time, I´ve been here for a week and a half and have a few days left, though I wish I had longer. My parents´property in up in the hills, so its not quite as hot as in the city (but its still in the 90s every day), it feels very tropical up here. There are all sorts of tropical plants on their property ranging from banana and lime trees to cocoa and cotton. They also have an acre or two of rainforest-type jungle with a river running through it, its really wild! Its also been great spending time with some of my relatives on my mum´s side, my aunt mariaeugenia and my uncle moises and his family. But by far my favourite thing I´ve done here is to go scuba divivng with my dad. We´ve both got our advanced open water qualifications and have logged over 50 dives each, but it had been almost 8 years since the last time I went scuba diving. I don´t why I haven´t been in so long, becasue I loved it! Its an awesome feeling to be totally weightless under water and to be able to explore in 3D. The visibility was great and there was really interesting coral teeming with all kinds of tropical fish. I loved every minute of it! We are going again on Monday, and I can hardly wait!

Here are some photos of Colombia I´ve taken so far.

A common sight here is to see carts pulled by horses or donkeys, they sell fresh fruit and vegetables for cheap. Here my mum and dad get a dozen oranges for only 40 cents.

This is my dads house after he put on a new door, my mums house is much nicer.

Me and my dad on the boat about to go diving. Don´t be fooled by the rock in the background I checked it out and its crumbly.A walk up the road from our place is ´Agua Viva´ and ecological park that has a lot of the local wildlife (in cages) and jungle, it was a really cool place, and the guide helped us identify a lot of the plants we have growing on our property.A Cayman at Agua Viva.

Election Night

The view from our apartment of Downtown Olympia a few days before the election

Nov 4^th was the longest awaited day of the year for me. The excitement had been building up for weeks here in Olympia, days before the election the streets below our building were bustling with campaigners and Obama supporters waving their signs. We got tickets for the Thurston County Democrats election party that was to be held at The Vault, a nightclub just a block away from our place. But when it came down to it, we decided nachos and beer at our friend Micah’s house would be more fun. We headed over to his place around 5pm PST when the first states were starting to be called for Obama and McCain. I was really surprised how early in the night the news channels called each state. Even swing states like Ohio were called for Obama with only 13% of the votes in. This was the first sign for how the rest of the night was going to turn out. In between watching the results come in we also tuned into Comedy Central to watch Indecision 08 with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, which was great for comic relief and their sketch about the Bradley Effect was hilarious. At 8 o’clock when the polls in California, Oregon, and Washington closed, the presidency was called for Obama. I thought it would be a lot closer and would take until later in the night until we would know for sure, but McCain’s concessionary speech shortly afterwards made it official. Nevertheless I stayed up late channel surfing watching all the results come in.

Obama’s acceptance speech was one of the most powerful I have ever witnessed. I felt like he was talking to me personally when he thanked his supporters for helping him get to where he is. I really believe that the American people got behind Obama like no other presidential candidate has achieved previously. I first started following Barack’s career when I read his books back in 06, before he announced his plans to run for president. I felt a personal connection with him, being raised in mixed race family, and being an American living outside of the US. I thought it was great to have a politician that was so honest and open about his past and his personal philosophies. I knew then that I wanted to support him in any way I could. I’m one of the many Obama supporters who gave what they could to support his campaign. I donated $5 dollars back when he was a long shot candidate at a time when he really needed the funds. When the caucuses came to Washington State earlier this year, I volunteered to be the precinct caucus chair, and the Obama precinct captain, where I gave a speech on behalf of Obama. It was re-affirming to meet other people in my neighborhood who were equally as excited about him, and to hear their personal stories of how they are affected by his candidacy. In my precinct we won delegates 6-1 against Clinton, even higher than the state average. That was the week that the caucuses turned in favor of Obama.

Traveling through Europe over the summer I got a first hand view of how other parts of the world viewed our election. I met a store owner in Greece who didn’t know any English, but recognized us as Americans and gave us the thumbs up and said Obama! Obama! Throughout our time in France and the UK you could pick up a paper and read the hype about Obama, it seemed at times like they were more excited about Obama than we are here. Its going to take a lot of work to re-build our relationships with other nations around the world but I’m confident that Obama is the man to do it. I’m really optimistic about the next 4 years, and the way it’s looking now, it’s hard to imagine he won’t get re-elected again in 2012.

Palin Bingo

I was planning on keeping my blog strictly about climbing. But lets face it, that would be a bit dull, so I’d thought I’d spice it up with some other stuff like politics. Last night was the Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. We had listened on the radio to the first debate last week (we don’t have our TV hooked up to an antenna) which was fun, but we figured we needed to watch it on TV to get the full story. So Laura and I hopped on the bus over to the westside to watch it at the bar of our favorite restaurant The Iron Rabbit. They had a big screen TV up for the debate, and lots of drink specials during the debate. The ‘patriot shooters’ (red, white and blue shots) tempted me, but we figured a pitcher was more sensible. When we arrived there was an Obama volunteer who brought Palin Bingo. Palin Bingo is just what it sounds like, for a small donation to the Obama campaign we were given a sheet of paper with a matrix of Palin words or phrases that you cross off when she says them during the debate. Phrases like ‘hockey mom’ ‘pork barrel’ and ‘bridge to nowhere’. We would score off each one she says and try to make a line across the sheet like bingo. There were some giveaways like ‘maverick’ and ‘drill’ that she said straight away. It wasn’t too hard to play the game and listen at the same time, not that there was much that I heard from her that I didn’t expect.

The nice thing about watching the debate rather than just listening to it on the radio, was being able to see their body language and gestures. I felt that often Palin was quite rude when Biden was talking. Things like her reactions and her smirks while Biden was talking. Her eye rolling when she talked about government-run health care, and her winking into the camera felt plain creepy to me. The pressure was definitely on Palin for this debate, it was hers to loose. But I don’t think she lost the debate, but I don’t think she won over any undecided voters either though. Her performance was geared towards pleasing the republican base, which she did well. There were a couple of small slip ups that gave us a laugh in the bar. Like when she had trouble differentiating her stance on rights for same sex couples from Biden, and when she said ‘we need McCain to leave’ and quickly corrected herself, she meant to say ‘lead’. It was obvious that she had a lot preparation going into the debate, her answers to the questions sounded more like a practised speech she had memorized about subjects that were loosely related to the questions. Biden did well, but I think everyone expected him to. I felt he could have grilled Palin more directly, but the constraints of the debate didn’t allow for much rebuttal. I felt he could have been more aggressive when critising Palin’s stance on man-made global warming and other subjects where she is clearly mis-guided. At the end of the debate the buzz at the bar seemed to be frustration in Palins inability to answer the questions directly, I think also part of the frustration was because they were hoping she would mess up more than she did.

After the debate we walked across the street to Vic’s Pizza where we used some of our $40 gift certificate we won at the Scrabble tournament on Saturday (but that’s another story), and we listened to some of the post-debate reaction on our personal radio. At this time of night we normally listen to our favourite radio show TBTL with Luke Burbank on KIRO. Tonight it was bumper show, they still had TBTL but they were doing special debate coverage with Dave Ross, another of our favourite radio hosts. Once we were finished with our pizza and caught the bus back downtown, I was feeling fairly riled up or maybe I was still buzzing from the pitcher at the Iron Rabbit. I decided now was as good a time as ever to call in to KIRO for the first time. Somehow I managed to get through to Luke, I think it was casue I mentioned playing Palin Bingo in a bar. When I got on KIRO Luke kinda called me out on being a bit drunk, but I think it went pretty well. You can listen yourself here, scroll down to TBTL with Luke Burbank and I should feature in the 8-9 hour of the Oct 2nd show. I feel an obligation to go back to the Iron Rabbit to watch the next debate on Tuesday to report back to TBTL, but I think I might go to watch it at the bar at Quality Burrito, they’re serving tall cans of PBR for only $1! We’ll see…

Oh and in case your wondering, Laura won Palin Bingo with a straight of ‘Terrorists’ ‘Hockey Mom’ ‘Alaska’ and ‘Special Needs’.