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. :)