Viva La Mexico!!

I'm really behind. I don't know if I can catch up right now, but I'm going to see what I can get done before the sopa de pavo is done. We are now at El Potrero Chico, a climbing area about 12 miles northwest of Monterrey Mexico. Today we climbed a 7 pitch sport route called the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It was good and only took us about 3 hours so I think we are still in some shape from the Red, even though we've been doing a lot of drinking and eating since leaving there.

I'll start back at the Red. The last night we stayed at a place with a little more space and HOT SHOWERS. Lago Linda's is near the motherlode area and they not only have Internet, but 400 acres of land and very cozy treed campground plus the hot showers. It was a bit pricier at $5/person/night and a bit of a drive, but well worth it for our last night before taking off. We hung out with our friends Glen and Heather and made banana chocolate marshmallow mush in the campfire. We climbed with them the last day at the Muir Valley and then tried to get gator one last time, but Smith's was closed on Sundays.

We were off to Tulsa. Jay was in drive mode, but then we hit Ole Kantuckee diner instead of Fazoli's and we both went into food coma. It was an all you can eat home cookin' kind of place and even though we far from starved at Miguel's, we felt like we deserved a good meal before the long drive. I highly recommend stopping in if you are ever in Winchester, KY. So we drove, and we slept a bit, and then we drove some more. Jay’s friend, Sarah, was house sitting and had volunteered to take care of the Brutus for the week that we were in Cabo for my mom’s 60th b-day party. We showed up the evening of the 12th and Sarah took us to McNelly’s, a good old-fashioned brewpub, for dinner. They had excellent sweet potato fries and literally hundreds of beers. I was a little stressed about packing and running errands and doing mass amounts of laundry, so I feel like I was not very good company the whole time in Tulsa. Sarah was an AMAZING hostess and I wished we could have spent more time with her. She is thinking about going to PA school and is working on some pre-reqs and also coaching at a local high school. It seems that she and Jay hung out a good deal when he lived there because she seems to know him well. I enjoyed watching them interact. Sarah had let us use her car all day and we spent a lot of money on pimping the Rialta even further. We got two 6-volt batteries for the solar panel, which should allow us to be set for all energy from solar and a 3-inch memory foam for the bed. We also got to see Ray McCain, a climber friend that I knew from Cali. He took his son, Marley, to the climbing gym. The kid is two and a half years old and Ray had him hanging on the wall about seven feet up for a good thirty seconds or more. It was amazing. Kids are so strong. We had an early flight the next day, so we stayed at the place Sarah was watching and didn’t do too much.

Flew to Denver and caught up with Derek for the next leg of the journey. We had to go through LA even though it wasn’t written as such when we bought the flight. When we got to Cabo I thought a woman in line looked a lot like Sandra Bullock, but the guys were convinced she wouldn’t be waiting at the baggage claim getting her own luggage. I was pretty convinced and even if it wasn’t her it looked enough like her that I thought it would be fun to have a picture with Derek and Jay in the background as she walked by. They weren’t cooperating, but I took a picture as she walked by anyway and then all the guys in the taxi channel all started harassing her and even the guy with the “titty inspector” badge got a photo with her. She has a very small dog, other than that I was pretty impressed with her lack of “I’m better than you attitude”.

Cabo San Lucas! What a fantastic time with my family!! Derek and I had talks reminiscent of Norwich back porch days. Mom was treated like a queen by not one, but two locals. We ate and drank like only Americans can and we had a great celebration of my mom’s 60th birthday. Some highlights include a private dinner made for us in San Jose del Cabo at a place called Apostolis, manta rays launching themselves into the air and flapping their “wings”, Rogelio, Derek’s “cunado” at Marisol’s, Farkel, kayaking to the end of the land with Arturo and Nobos, Club cabo, and Buckeyes beating Michigan with margaritas instead of cheap beer. The one thing that I have to expand on now is Arturo. Derek and Jay and I met him on the beach our first day in Cabo San Lucas and got a good vibe from the start. We probably were drawn to him because he had a little black and white dog. We ended up scheduling a kayaking tour with him the day after the Michigan game and he offered to come pick us up at Club Cabo. The tour was fantastic, as was the taco lunch he took us to after the tour, and he even helped Jay and I out with a room for the next night (Derek and mom and Bob were leaving). If you ever go to Cabo San Lucas, look up Arturo. Bonus is that he speaks excellent English because he went to High School in Wisconsin.

I still have to talk about Thanksgiving. I'll update this in the next few days. :)

Winding down the Red.

It's Friday already!!! I can't believe we are leaving the Red in two days. There are still pages and pages of climbs in the guidebook that we haven't even touched! We will inevitably, have to come back.

The Internet connection has been a bit sketchy, so I'll try to get you updated this morning before the masses wake up. I think a good amount of people will be sleeping in due to the fact that a crew went to the distillery yesterday and the bourbon was flowing in Miguel's last night. We ate half a pizza with artichokes, avocados, roasted garlic, and mushrooms last night, and then hung out and played some cards and drank some bourbon and Milwaukee's Best with lime.

A couple that I met here 7 years ago, Glen and Heather, are here and we climbed at the same crag (Military wall) as them yesterday. It was chilly and we didn't get too much done, but both sent an 11b at the end of the day, which I had climbed the last time I was here. Glen and Heather were dancing up the hard stuff and humbling us with their bouldering strength. We also had them as well as Jeremy over for our first ever dinner party the night before last. We had purchased pounds of produce at the little Campton roadside produce stand and made up a hearty chicken stew. Jay was trying to replicate Shannon's but we didn't quite hit it for him. It was still great to have five people eating in the Rialta. Kim wasn't feeling up for the party and called it an early night. Glen and Heather have a trailer in Hueco tanks, TX and Glen is very into the solar power thing, so he and Jay chatted a lot about that. We had climbed that day, Wednesday, with Jeremy and Kim at Bob Marley wall, and Glen and Heather joined us there as well. There's an 11a there called Toker that requires us shorties to launch for the first hold. I think I have some video, and will upload it if I can.

Let's see, what else is going on? Rent still hasn't been paid, and what irks me the most about it is that I talked to Dale on Wednesday and he said it was deposited that day. I understand if they are having a hard time, being in jail and all, but don't LIE to me. Luckily the money isn't too big an issue this far into the trip, but I don't want to have to kick them out.

Our plan from here is to take off Sunday after climbing and head to Tulsa by late Monday. Jay's friend Sarah is going to keep the Brutus and the Rialta for us while we are whisked away to Mom's 60th b-day party in Cabo. I am so looking forward to drying out this poison ivy with a good sunburn! :) We'll probably bring climbing shoes and chalk bags in case there is a place we could boulder on the beach and keep our fingers strong. Next we head to South Padre island to meet up with my good friend (sister), Molly and her husband, brother and nephew for Thanksgiving. I'm so glad I'll get to spend the holiday with her. Tom is from Ohio too, so we will make some buckeyes! Then it's off to Potrero Chico, which is mulitpitch sport climbing and hopefully working on our Spanish skills. Some good friends are joining us down there for a week, so that will prove to be as good or better than the Red!

This place has been so hospitable it’s going to be hard to leave, but we have so many good things to look forward to!! Life is SO good.

Quince problems, poison ivy, pizza points, and pumpkins!

Yesterday was an interesting day to say the least. Jay and I decided to take a day to ourselves and went to an area called Muir Valley. It is a little off the beaten path and you can't hear any cars from in that Valley, which is not always standard around here with crags like Roadside and Military Wall. The drive to it goes up over a hill and I finally took the time to check my voicemail since I have no coverage here at Miguel's, but on the hill I do. I had 9 messages. Two were unfortunately from my neighbors back in Exeter alerting me that the Police were at my house (last weekend) and apparently there had been some domestic violence. NOT GOOD to say the least. I did talk to one of the tenants yesterday and she denies it, but her husband is still in jail and I have yet to get my November rent. Just proves that there is always something to stress out about. I've not let it get to me too much though, we'll be back there in less than two months and I'm sure we can work something out. If all goes to hell, I can cover the rent until then. I think my biggest concern is that they have children and I hate to think about how all this effects the kids. After spending about an hour on the phone with my tenant and my neighbor, we headed to the rocks and proceeded to have our best day yet. Jay, unfortunately, sliced his finger open in a crack early on, but I cleaned it out and taped it up and he climbed all afternoon on it anyway. We did a lot of hard routes and I was really happy with my climbing and we finished up just as the rain started. A good old fashioned Midwestern thunderstorm broke out and we got a little wet on our hike out, but it was beautiful and powerful and a great end to a fantastic day, all tenant issues aside. Jay and I are doing so well in our little confined space and we even ran the heater last night and watched a movie. Mmmm. Unemployment and adventure, what a life we have!

I am doomed to get poison oak and poison ivy for the rest of my life. I vividly remember my dad putting little cotton balls soaked with clorox on my legs as a child while sitting on the orange kitchen counter tops and not enjoying it but hoping that the itching might subside. For those of you who have never had it, be thankful, it itches like you wouldn't believe and it always seems to be worse in the middle of the night when all you want to do is sleep. Here at the Red I haven't been trying all that hard to avoid it, because Brutus doesn't avoid it, and I'm not going to avoid him completely, so what's the point? Also, I had it pretty bad in the spring and I usually stay somewhat immune for a while. Not the case this year. What's interesting is that I got a small spot of it one of the first days I was here on my left arm. The next day it developed into a larger spot on my left arm and another couple on my right arm... progressing in the same way that it had in the spring. It has continued to spread (to my hips another place that I wouldn't have likely been exposed and the same place it was in the spring), and tempting as the Clorox treatment is, I started a prednisone taper last night. Thankfully it was the first night in about five that I didn't wake up scratching incessantly. Bonus is that I woke up with lots of energy and cooked Jay pancakes with pear sauce, took out the trash, and now am updating the blog even though I should be totally drained from everything I climbed yesterday. Steroids baby, who needs meth? Hopefully when we leave here I will get to wash the Brutus and stop being exposed to the damn rhus toxicendron and maybe I'll be so lucky to get it again in the spring. I tried homeopathic rhus tox, no luck.

We devised a point system for the climbs we do to "earn" ourselves pizza and the local soda, Ale8one, a Kentucky ginger ale. The night before Halloween we had pizza, which we had earned, and then we had it again the day after Halloween, which we didn't earn but we got on credit from ourselves. After yesterday we made up for our credit pizza and then some, so we had pizza again last night and we still have some credit! Avocado and roasted garlic are some of our favorite toppings, but they have pasta, rice, portobella, jalepenos, artichokes, spicy sausage, bacon...I could go on. Stop by Miguel's for the pizza if you are ever in Slade, KY.



Halloween was a good time and it is the most I've ever seen Jay drink. He was actually being social and starting conversations! We did dress as Ninjas with our friends Jeremy and Kim and Jay even carved #5, our pumpkin Ninja. We laughed a lot and, although not too many other people were in costume, we made the best of things and even recruited our friend Zoe to dress as a Ninja and come to party with us. We had weapons (Jay's was a bow and arrow), and we even had some ninja skills, but I'm sure any true Ninjas would have been horrified at our display. One of the best happenings was Miguel's wife, Susan, could have sworn she knew who we were, but couldn't figure it out. She was a bit miffed but kept trying to discern who were by just our eyes. She was a bit freaked out and I heard her say several times, "there are ninjas out there". Hehe. Good stuff.