We Had a Birthday Bash

We had a white trash party. It was really fun. Our friends took it seriously and dressed up and brought over a lot of bad beer that we'll never drink. I said some funny things about our friends on Facebook. Adults should have dress up parties more often. They make us feel young and remind us to not take our lives so seriously. No that Jarred and I do...but we have our moments. Some funny memories of the party that were not captured in photos:

1. Our friend Heather decided to buy really cheap fake nails and wear them. She did not realize they didn't come with glue so she used Scotch tape. Then she learned that it was hard to drive with the nails. Then at our party, they started to fall off and we kept finding them on the floor, couch, table.

2. Marie wore really heinous g-string underwear to compliment her Tinkerbell pajama pants. Talk about paying attention to detail.

3. Terry didn't even have to shop for his outfit. He had an Aerosmith tee-shirt, a Nascar hat and a snowmobile jacket in his closet...all of which he bought to wear somewhere seriously at one time.

4. Fart machines only work well at quiet parties. I acquired a fart machine from a friend at the barn and I was all excited to use it. Jarred and I planted it on the couch but no one heard it, or if they did they were able to ignore the sounds. Bummer. I'm going to use it at school tomorrow.

5. Our friend Steve, who had just been in a pretty bad bicycle accident, actually scheduled his dentist apt. for his new tooth until after our party. What dedication.

We're super lucky to have found a great group of friends. It took awhile and living in North Bonneville didn't help. We love that they're always up for adventure- whether it be on bike, skis, in the bowling alley or at our house.

Climb a Little Dine a Little

In keeping with the tradition of being...well...non-traditional, Jarred and I decided that the add on in our house- the one we had to totally remodel this summer- needed to be more than just a dining room. When we first looked at the house, Jarred thought (out loud as he often does) "This would make a great climbing room." I initially poo-pooed the idea in a temporary attempt to be conventional and grown-up. But as we started to rebuild the room, the idea grew on me. Since we'd lived in the house for a year before tearing the room down, I'd come to realize how little we actually use the room. We'd dine there when we had friends over but the kitchen seemed to be a better gathering place. So up went the plywood walls. We finally got enough holds to put a few routes up and realized we're so out of shape, we can only make it around the room once before resting, so maybe it's a good idea that we only have a few holds right now. For those of you who cringe at our un-conventionality, no worries- the room still holds a dining room table for grown-up parties and such.

MEXICO PART DOS

Let me open by saying that Blogger seems to be a seriously lacking program. It's not intuitive and you can't move things easily, so, if the format or layout seem odd, it's because I became tired of the ridiculous nuances of the evil Blogger.






































From top left: Typical town on our journey from Rio Micos to Rio Alseseca; how many times do you see this, cops on trikes and vatos on choppers; typical roadside lunch stop complete with dogs kicking around; when was the last time livestock roamed the street outside your lunch stop restaraunt; how many seat belt tickets do you suppose an American popo could write these guys, seems to me like a good use of resources to keep packing 'em in (I think they were working in the sugar cane fields); these roadside temples seemed fairly common but this one was particularly large and well kempt.




Here's the cafeteria at AdventuRec. We could eat here, buffet style, for 80 pesos per meal, not bad, but we often chose to either cook or eat in town to save money or get more local flavor. Check out the palm roof, pretty legit. Everything down there was open air. We had windows and/or screens, but I didn't see a single room that was completely closed to the outdoors. We slept in a dorm style room, bunks, two to a room, pretty spacious really. I think it cost us 100 pesos per person per night. This seemed great since it rained the first night we arrived and didn't get nice again 'til 4 days later. We were stoked to have a roof over our heads, a safe place to park the car (we didn't even take the keys out of the ignition at night), somewhat reliable showers (everyone seemed to get to know a particular shower then stuck with that one for the duration), and a reliable staff who we came to know and rely upon. The owners are from Spain but live full time on the compound. They had a gate that was locked each night at dark and a gate keeper who had to let you in if you came in after dark. I guess this kept things safer. I would recommend this place to anyone staying near Tlapacoyan. It's clean and the staff is super nice. I did happen to see a huge hairy spider, a huge non-hairy spider, and a few roaches, definitely not in the PNW anymore.

This is a cabana at AdventuRec. It's nicer than the hostel dorm rooms and twice the price, but still cheap compared to what this awesome little place would cost in a resort town! These were private with showers, decks, the works!

This hole was evocative of the Alseseca. Dan's line (yellow boat) was perfect, Corey's line (green boat) while only being 12" - 18" to the left, put him in a recirculating hole that he was not going to get out of, hence the last picture of the green boat getting hammered and nearly sunk. Needless to say the boat needed a rope, consequently so did Corey, to get away from the lower hole that was slowly sucking him in. I was taking pictures with the rope nearby as I watched him slowly get pulled backward. I swapped camera for rope and yanked him out. Pretty funny really. The picture lower right is just another fun waterfall/slide, very common on the Alseseca. It's a great run comprised of basalt geology and dirty water. As you can see in the lower left picture with the bottles in the eddy. This eddy was just to the side of where I pulled Corey out of the water. Definitely not water you want going in your throat, nose, or ears. It's really too bad the locals don't show the environment more respect as the area in which they live is simply beautiful. The town image below was a small village that was above the run we did, called the Roadside run since it's along the road the whole way, although you almost never notice the road because the whitewater keeps your attention peaked around every corner. The village was really kind of quaint and turned out to be the gateway to the much bigger more serious section of the Alseseca, The Big Banana.

MEXICO...a paddling trip to a new place

We've all heard about Mexico since we were little. There are so many Mexicans who make their way up here we don't feel as though Mexico is that far away, like maybe it's not that different than here, where we live day in and out. But that's very wrong. Mexico: so near in miles, yet so very different in so many ways.

Typical small town. This was the first place we rolled through that we actually stopped and bought some food and took a minute or two to check the place out. We definitely garnered a lot of stares from the locals but everyone seemed nice.

Buying water and talking about the fact that we don't want to pay extra for the plastic jug. We ended up dumping the water directly into our jug and giving the plastic container back to avoid paying a deposit. Notice the nice truck. This was typical in Mexico, that the locals had way nicer cars than we did. Our van was pretty much the most ghetto rig we saw in Mexico. Which was good I suppose because people probably figured we didn't have anything worth taking.

We must have passed this truck on the highway about 3 or 4 times. We'd pass him, then stop to do something, then pass again, then stop for food, then pass again. He was hauling two of the largest engines we'd ever seen, maybe locomotive engines??? Anyway, we were quick to learn that all cars and trucks in Mexico stink, especially the old one or big ones. They don't have the emission controls we do, so it's important to pass them quickly or the headache begins!

This was the first decent sized drop on the first river we paddled, the Salto. The water was low, normally this entire shelf is covered when the water level is good. We still had a great time, running this drop maybe 6 times in two complete runs of the river. The riverbed here was comprised of travertine, which seems to be some sort of limestone. Anyway, it makes for very large beautiful flat pools accentuated by various sized ledges. The stone is so grippy (much like coral) we could normally walk right up shallow waterslides to run them again.


This is the view from our first campsite. Pretty nice really, except for the fact that there was a shit ditch that we dubbed agua de bano, that ran between the bathroom and the bamboo grove that was about 20' from our camp. Corey, one of the Canadians on the trip, accidentally found this ditch with his foot the first night in the dark. He said it burned intensely until he rinsed it off in the river, maybe from excessive use of Drano or something. Needless to say, the plumbing left a little to be desired. I dug a hole and did my business in the trees.


Speaking of trees, this is the bamboo grove that was out of control due in part to the vast nutrients from the agua de bano. This also acted as a fence between our place and the neighbors. Check it out, there's actually barbed wire hidden in there, although I don't know why, the natural stuff was totally impenetrable by itself. Bamboo is awesome! This grove was about 50' tall.


I love Photoshop, when I can figure it out. I chose 4 photos this morning and pushed a button and this was the result! It's not perfect, note the bottom middle, but it's pretty damn good. This is Salto Cascada, the culmination of our first river run. Corey and I actually boated into the last large blue pool on the top left of the photo to catch a glimpse over the edge. This 150' cascade has been run down the left, but the line looked heinous at best!!! It was beautiful to look at though. We had dinner at the restaurant that was on the banks of this awesome spectacle. We planned to stay the night but they said the cost was $100 USD per person per night, WHAT, I thought we were in Mexico. We went down the road to the Sun Dial and agua de bano and pitched our tents. There was also a platform here for jumping into the pool at the bottom. It was about 70' off the water, pretty cool! Restaurants in the states would never have stuff like that. The platform wasn't even roped off. We are so worried about liability that it seems to stifle our adventurous spirit if we're not careful. Go on, find a big cliff and jump off, it'll be liberating!


This was typical of the travertine rivers. We'd boat to the edge, if we couldn't see from our boats, we'd get out and stand at the lip and look for the deepest landings or best lines. Super low stress boating. Oh yeah, note the shorts and sun, in DECEMBER! We were all from the PNW so the weather shock was a welcome one!

How can a place so beautiful be so full of trash? Do they realize what they have?


This was the single biggest rapid on the Salto. It's called El Trampolin, not sure why. The water was low, the rapid was ok, the river was beautiful, we wanted something harder. We drove to the Rio Micos, but were met with more of the same. Low stress travertine, fun, but not amazing, although the accommodations were sweet, we only stayed for a night then saddled up the long drive south to the mecca that is the Rio Alseseca! Here are some photos from the drive to the Micos and a couple shots of the actual run. There is a 60' sloping waterfall at the put-in that would be good to go with more water...if only we had more water.

Harvesting sugar cane. They burn these fields after the harvest and a lot of soot and unburned cane floats around in the air for miles and miles, a bit of a nuisance really.


Horse hauling rural Mexican style. I knew Sarah would appreciate this picture. When driving through Mexico, or any country without good infrastructure, one must keep one's camera in one's lap, so as to not miss opportunities such as these.


Some parting shots. The two upper houses were in similar locations, but obviously very different places, nice and shitty right next door, weird. The two lower shots are from the Rio Micos, which is really just a downstream section of the Salto. An easy slide on the left and Dan putting in below the 60' monster on the right. The images below are of the pimp place we stayed right at the take out, best showers we had in Mexico! The guy working road construction was a random dude running a roller on the hot asphalt. He didn't seem to be enjoying life so we grabbed him, gave him a boat and took him down some rivers. His road crew wasn't too excited about this so we traded one of the Canadians for him. I wonder if the Canadian ever become a good roller operator. I also wonder if life really is a short bitch, HA!



I'm going to sign off for now. More to come later. This only covers the first few days of the trip. Sarah is testing out my newest purchase, Rosetta Stone, Spanish edition. I'm determined to not be el Estupido Americana. Although many of the Mexicans I met didn't speak a bit of English, I felt stupid for being in their country and stumbling with their language. Next time will be different. Stay tuned for more pictures and stories from my Mexican adventure.

Dogs

I know most of you are already dog lovers..some of you own packs of dogs. When I went to Sun Valley for Christmas I was a bit bummed to leave Gretta and Shuksan behind as it was CHRISTMAS and what abusive parent dumps their canine children on someone else for the holidays? I wasn't worried about missing dogs though, as Meg has two (Gully- black lab mix and Mavis- brindle pit mix) and she was house sitting for a family who had two more dogs (Buddy- three legged short hair- a crotchety version of Gretta, and Mazie- terrier mix in photo). The dogs were a source of entertainment all week and they reminded me how much happier people can be when they have pets. Meg works at the local animal shelter so she's privy to each dogs story (all three in this photo are from the shelter) and it continually amazes me that people don't treat animals with the same compassion they treat other humans. Gully came to the shelter because his owner was moving and just couldn't find an apartment that allowed dogs (would he/she have done this to a child- opps, can't find a place big enough, may as well put you on craigslist). Mazie was shot at because her owner had been breeding dogs and suddenly had too many and needed to downsize. Mavis wandered around the woods for weeks before someone brought her to the shelter. There are a ton of stories like these and I'm continuously baffled by humans and their attitude that everything is disposable and that the world exists to serve human needs.

Why I Love Sun Valley

I admit I suffer from "the grass is always greener" syndrome. When we left Sun Valley and moved back to Washington, I thought I'd squelched the problem, after all, we were moving to the green state. But for nearly two years after moving back to Washington, I threatened to move back to Sun Valley (Jarred threatened to stay in Washington- I guess he won) having realized the grass IS NOT always greener and there really are special places. Since leaving Idaho, we've spent most summers in Sun Valley, so I feel like I get my fix. After not visiting this summer, I decided winter was a great time to go... I could enjoy the sun and snow. I didn't get to enjoy the snow, as the valley was plagued by weird weather just like the rest of the northwest, but I was reminded of why the grass really is greener over there.
1. Sun. Humans need sun, it makes us happy. It was sunny all but one of the days I visited and I found myself gravitating towards the sun and outdoors. It needs to be sunnier in Washington. I don't know why I live here sometimes....oh wait- the summers are pretty cool. The winters suck ass.
2. My friends. I've moved a ton in my life and I've tried to keep in touch with friends after leaving an area. I'm grateful for all of the people I've met and places I've lived but I've come to realize that my best friends live in Sun Valley. They're not the friends I need to talk to everyday but I find that I have the most in common with these people and they're the people I really love to spend time with and they're from all walks of life.
3. Snobs. So I don't really appreciate the 1% who build 15,000 sq. ft. houses but I do appreciate the thought that goes into the homes and land in the area. Sure, a lot of it is totally impractical (the valley is in the desert- no need for acres of green) but I love that people (even if they're paid to) care about their surroundings (or are willing to pay high taxes so the city can care for their surroundings). The whole time I visited, I didn't see a single blow up Christmas decoration in a single yard. I saw lots of cool Christmas lights in trees but no cheesy Santa or a fat snowman.
4. Nobody walks their dogs on leash. Everywhere we took Meghan's dogs...off leash and those who were also walking their dogs...off leash. I'm always the one who has their dogs off leash here and I get all sorts of evil stares from suburbanites who thrive in controlled environments.
5. BLM land. Lots of it- and if it's not BLM it's owned by someone in California who doesn't care if people hike on their land.
6. Big Box Stores- or lack there-of. I remember living in Sun Valley and making the trek to Twin Falls to shop because we were too poor to shop in the valley, but there's something to be said about being able to operate on a day to day basis without seeing a Target or Wal-Mart.
7. Everyone is in shape. That's partly because they're rich and have oodles of time to work out, but whatever- at least they care about being in shape. Even the "not in shape" people, are in shape.
8. The conscientious people. Yes, rich assholes live in the valley but nowhere else is there a dog hiking program at the animal shelter, or a horse rescue where the horses are not taken from their owners but instead the owners are offered resources so they can become better owners. Yes this takes money but at least those with money are doing something good with their loot.
9. Less people.
Don't get me wrong, I love Washington but it's hard to love Washington in the winter and Sun Valley will always be that place where the grass is greener.

Where the Heck Did Fall Go?

Is this what it's like when you get old? There you are enjoying summer, or fall, or winter and BAM! all of a sudden an entire season went by before your eyes, and the next thing you know, you're older and your body doesn't work like it used to but it seemed like yesterday you felt so young? And the BAM- you're dead. I remember being young and it felt like eons before Christmas would come around. Now I'm old and BAM!

Looking back, it's hard to remember what we did this fall... we went to Bend biking, we painted our house until it was too cold and dark to paint, we rode our bikes locally....I went to OKC...and BAM. Here it is, four days until Christmas and my least favorite day of the year (yet my most favorite because the days only get longer from here on out). I guess I'd better start making the most of my days before it's all over and BAM! I can't remember where winter went.