Happy Holidays

This dispatch is coming to you straight from jolly ol' England, my most current temporary residence. I'm just kickin' it here with the family, you know partying it up with real adults in an civilized manner and enjoying the delightfully short daylight hours, brief periods of sun, a heated house, company of the family and some home cookin'. You're allowed to be jealous of the slow cooked chipolte pork I had for second dinner last night.

Boom got the what and now for the how (check out that assonance haha).

Since the last post I have been hanging around Durango working at the Rec. Center, thankfully last week I got in about 30 hours of work which was definitely nice for two reasons. The first being the obvious cash money and the second being the consumption of my free time. Turns out being unemployed, at least for me, is really hard. I find myself with far more hours in the day than I know what to do with especially with most of the friends around being in school or working more than I was. Luckily the weather was nice so I was able to occupy some of that time with bike rides and solo missions to the local crag, turns out East Animas (one of the local climbing areas) is great for rope soloing (being safe-ish while climbing alone). That all being said I was ready for some 'work'.

I left Durango on the 19th to join the family for some holiday festivities expecting to join them on the 20th however Mother N ('N' stands for nature) had other plans and hit DIA with some colder weather in the morning delayed flights ya dee ya da and so I missed my connection from DIA to Newark and thus my flight from there to England. So, after standing in a customer service line and on hold for a few hours I managed to catch another flight to NYC and got to spend the next day exploring the city before flying on. Turns out that city is pretty rad...maybe the coolest city I've been to. I must admit, while not a city person, I think I could pretty happily live in that city for a bit. While I was there I walked up and down 6th & 7th Ave and checked out the squares and Central Park and tried to find McSorleys Pub as per a few recommendations, however no luck with the pub and I just wound up walking in circles for a few hours...which was still pretty cool.

After that stuff I caught my flight cruised across the pond, was met by my mom and eldest little sister and then went to York with my sister (who is studying archeology at the University there) and got to assemble a few skeletons from the late middle ages and scope out their joints for signs of arthritis, which is what Tat is studying for her Sr. Sem paper.

Looking forward to more home cooking and heading to the Isle of Skye in/off the coast of Scotland in a few days.

Icicle on my van doesn't know which way is up

view from the hotel room

some of Central Park

Some one else was taking a picture so I thought I'd copy them

Funny how plans change...

I'm back once again from the desert as plans have a way of unexpectedly changing. Turns out the North Rim of the Black Canyon is closed seasonally, starting weeks ago. Good thing I have friends that do their research! So instead of toodling around on the walls of the Black Canyon Bryce, Jane, John and I cruised out to the desert for a few more days of climbing/mountain biking while the weather out there is still so unseasonably warm. Saturday Jane and I did Sunflower tower, the last of the Bridger Jacks summits that I had not yet climbed, needless to say I was pretty stoked on that!

Sunday, I woke up to the sun lighting the Bridger Jacks as the moon slipped behind them with a light frost on my bag and stuff strewn about me only to realize how stoked I was to be there then. After gulping down some coffee and breakfast in a leisurely manner we cruised on up to Reservoir wall to climb in the shade...obviously it's always hot in the desert. There we climbed a little bit and hung out in the awesome openness of the desert annnd Jane earned herself a shout out for the most stuck knee in a wide crack. After all that we wound up waiting for 45 minutes in the dark waiting for Bryce and John to return, naturally the whole while complaining of this, that and my hunger only to be extremely suprised in the best way possible by a delivery of Milt's fries and a burger from those guys, gee wilikers (sp?) I've got some great friends!

Now I'm back in Durango attempting to turn the mundane into meaningful tasks to occupy my time before work.  As a result I've come across a couple videos that really strike a chord, one of which was made by a friend and another was shown at the 5 points film festival in Carbondale this year. If you have some free time or want an excuse to make some free time, they're worth checking out.A Love Affair is the one made by a friend and the other is The Ten Things from Jeremy Collins.