Disneyland Day 2

Day 2 at Disneyland started with a shorter walk to "Downtown" Disney and a ride on the monorail,

 After going on a Finding Nemo submarine ride Dylan got picked to participate in a Padowan training "class" to learn the Jedi arts.

 At some point one of the children up on stage had a breakdown and Dylan was move up, front and center,

After they were done with some training they each had to face off against Darth Vader, this is pretty hilarious as Dylan's lightsaber fails,

Next we headed for lunch in Mickey's Toontown where there are a bunch of playground like areas for the kids, 

 And of course a city hall since it is a "Town"

Eventually Pluto emerged from City Hall to greet his fans, most notably, Uncle Chris.

 The rain kicked up again in the afternoon and we spent some time cowering under an overhang around a food booth before all the "Big Kids" got to leave the little ones and go on the Star Tours "ride". Ride being generous in that it is more of a moving room that does not go anywhere and a big 3D screen. R2D2 was there,

 as was C3P0,

and us "Big Kids"

 It was pretty cool. Amazing how something that barely moves can feel so real.

Eventually the rain subsided and 

we headed to Disney California Adventure and headed to Radiator Springs. Really looks just like in the movie,

 There were some "stars" out to take pictures with,

And Mater has his own ride with Dylan and my parents enjoyed.

Big Basin State Park

After spending the night at the Davenport Roadhouse, we had a nice breakfast in their restaurant. Linda tried something new, wheat berries, kind of interesting, crunchy. Then we collected our leftovers from their refrigerator and headed off to Big Basin State Park to see some HUGE redwoods. After the long hike the day before for Dylan we decided to start out with a short loop, though it turned out to be longer than we were told. Here Linda and Dylan are dwarfed by some large trees. 

 Moss and lichen enjoy their own climate on the north side of the trees.

 Crazy bark, I can't help but think about climbing holds when I see stuff like this.

 Dylan and I in front of another tree.

 Looking up through the "Chimney Tree", the entire center is burned out and yet it is still alive and growing.

 The tallest tree in the park, the "Mother of the Forest", of course the widest is called the "Father"

It is always so impressive to be in a true old growth area with the enormous trees towering above you.

Dylan did catch himself...

Lots of Photos

So a lot of pictures, first ones from the camera then from my phone.

For this years Intel GPTW event at Cliff's amusement park, Linda again got extra tickets so that "uncle Chris" and family could join us. Trinity driving Dylan, 

 Dylan flying a plane,

 Dylan and I on the little "teacups",

 For the 4th of July we headed to Austin to visit Linda's family, also Brian, Dylan's cousin had his birthday the weekend after so we were there for that as well. We met up with Thu, Nat and Noah to climb at THEIR crag. Dylan had a blast playing around with Noah and for much of the day they did not require any supervision,

 Thus pulling some hard moves on a 5.13

 We've been climbing at the Dungeon, outside of Los Alamos, a lot lately since it has a really nice setting for kids. Here Dylan relaxes in the Daddy chair,

 and putting his Monster Trucks through their paces,

 I took Dylan for a hike on the Crest Trail in the Sandias this past week. Here he is, about to disturb the wilderness,

 Having a snack at a nice overlook 5,000 feet above the city, (don't worry he is not as close to the edge as he looks)

 Ok, now to phone photos.

A day at the Dungeon with Matty Moore who is holding another friends young son,

 Los Alamos was burned pretty bad in the Las Conchas fire last year leaving the approach trail to the Dungeon looking like this,

 And naturally we had a fire break out in the Bosque, the heavily treed area along the Rio Grande river, last month sometime. This is a shot from the aquarium parking lot about an hour after it started. Luckily no homes were lost and it was controlled pretty quickly. We got lucky with the wind direction.

 Seeing the thermostat reading in the mid to high eighties even with the windows open and fans on finally got me to hook up our swamp cooler.

 Dylan swimmimg in his cousins new pool,

 How much stuff can you fit in a Prius, two bike boxes and a bike on top, yes the hatch closed, though the back seats were folded down.

 Hard to argue with the gas milage,

 This past weekend we headed to Upper East Fork in the Jemez Mountains and naturally, hiked out in the rain at the end of the day.

A video of Dylan playing with a blow up hammer that "uncle" Chris? won at Cliff's when we were over there for dinner and watching the final Time Trial of Le Tour De France.

Annular Eclipse and busy Weekend

This was a busy weekend here for us. We headed to El Rito to do some climbing on Saturday with Jodi and her daughter Livia as well as Greg and Magdel and their 2 kids. It was my first time climbing in about 5 weeks, since I crashed on my long board and and scrapped up my forearm and hip (bruised as well, this seems like it is going to continue to be an issue for another month or more). Anyway I was predictably out of shape and got super pumped and almost pitched off the top of a couple of routes that I normally run laps on. Once at the top of a climb after clipping the anchor I dropped back exhausted into my harness, not a good move when you have a bruised hip, and immediately jumped back on to readjust.

Later we set up a rope swing at the base of Bolting Barbie for the kids. Magdel and Greg's two thought it was better than anything they had ever done and threw fits when their turns were over, sorry about that guys. Her Livia helps Dylan out with the swing and yes there is usually a Barbie doll hanging out around the route.

On Sunday I left home really early to head to Santa Fe to ride the Santa Fe Century. I made good time and with the early start it was a bit weird being out on the course with nobody around but still with all the aid stations set up and waiting. Towards the end I ran into a fair number of other riders since the end of the course is used as an out-and-back for shorter rides. I was finished and driving back to Albuquerque by noon, not too bad since I've not ridden more than about 50 miles since PBP in Auguat. Linda and Dylan spent the morning at the climbing gym and Explora!, a children's science museum. In the afternoon there were 2 rare events happening.

The first was Page and Anthony's wedding. Both of them have house sat for us and are good friends and great people. We could not be happier seeing the two of them exchange their vows. Here is Page being walked in by her dad Charlie.

 And the happy couple walking out after the ceremony.

 Dylan was well behaved for the most part through the ceremony and afterwards when we were hanging out with some fellow climbers waiting for the reception to start Dylan got his hands on a Canon, with a canon for a lens. He had a good time taking pictures of everything, all very zoomed in since it was a 70-300mm lens. Tim, the camera's owner keeping a close eye on proceedings.

After playing with the camera Dylan also helped put away the folding chairs. 

Dylan entertaining himself with the place settings.

 Dylan getting his mug in every shot possible then asking to see it immediately after, the sticking out the tung in a nice touch.

And stealing the bride after.

 Our Sunday ended looking at the sun. We had a good view of the horizon where the sun was going down from the synagog parking lot and several of the guests had either glass from welding glasses or the eclipse viewing glasses that were in short supply but given out for free around town during the last week. Pretty cool stuff, this annular eclipse, and how lucky for us that Albuquerque was right in the center of the viewing path. It took awhile for me to figure out how to get a photo of the sun and with sharing the glass and glasses it took a bit, but eventually... the moon moving over the sun,

 and the moon centered in the sun creating the "Ring of Fire" or the "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them..."

 OK so maybe it did not get dark, but if you looked at the thing without the special protection you'd be blind, not quite like disappearing but hey. I guess the last time this happened around here was 1994 so a pretty rare occurrence and one I'm glad I was able to see and share with Dylan and so many friends.

Coming back from CA

As many of you know, my parents home got burned in January 2011. They finally got trusses put up and it is almost dried in, only took 15 months.

 I'm always impressed with the food in the Oakland airport. Tasty tacos from near gate 29?, I think.

 On Friday we had a Stone Cup competition in the evening. Linda was climbing and I was working so Dylan hung out with the gyms C-team as they were out slack lining in front go the gym.

 The next day we ran a USA Climbing SCS competition. Here Curran gives the competitor intro.

Dylan also had testing for his orange belt. He did not behave during most of it and refused to pay attention, so he did not get to upgrade, he will get another chance though this week, I think. Here though he gets to "fight" off Sensei Anna.

The laughing is because Anna had told the kids to punch her just above her belt and of course Dylan goes for the middle of the chest the first time.

More of Dylan Fighting

More video from Dylan's sparring match.

There is only one other kid in the class close to his age so they are paired up pretty often, though, Brandon, has been doing karate a little longer and already had a colored belt when Dylan started. It is interesting watching the "older" kids, 5-7 years old, spar. They all seem to pull their punches, it is really hard to connect if you are backing away when you throw your punch. At this age it does not seem as though they could hurt each other with their fists, one of the kids was kicking pretty hard though.

Dylan Pulls Punches

Some video of Dylan's first sparing match in an informal class competition.

Nice day at the Zoo

The weather here has been crazy. On Monday or Sunday we had gusts of 75+mph in town and on Tuesday snow flurries. Today was 65-70 degrees and relatively calm, spring in New Mexico.

Today Dylan and I headed to the Zoo in the afternoon. We usually go in the mornings so it was different, including getting to see the polar bear feeding which was cool.

After the polar bears we checked out the seals and sea lions among other things.

Anyway, a nice day to be out. I have not been up to much outside of bolting a couple of routes, the latest being easier. I've been putting off the recovery from a slightly tweaked finger that happened while setting for the competition in Durango. So, I've not been climbing much and with the schizophrenic weather Lance and I have not been getting out to ride regularly, it's probably been 3 weeks since I've been on the bike. On the other hand I've started longboarding which is fun.

Chinese New Year, more than a bit late

We headed to Austin to celebrate Chinese New Year and Linda's mothers birthday. We also managed to get a day of climbing in at Flat Creek with Thu and Noah, then caught up with Matt, Katie and Tyler (their little one). Climbing went pretty well, Linda finally managed to do all the moves on Scapegoat without too much difficulty and I finally got back on and sent the only route I fell off of the first day I climbed there, Four Legs Good. We spent lots of time with Linda's family as well, having nice family meals and Dylan getting loads of attention from his cousins. Whenever the cousins are around we don't read him bed time stories because he wants one of them to do it. Here is Dylan being read too by Cady his youngest cousin on Linda's side, besides him of course, probably before we head out for dinner.

 Not sure what it was, but Dylan had a light allergic reaction to something.

 Avery was celebrating a winning basket in HORSE over cousin Brian in the living room and jumped off the sofa, landing on his hand and breaking it, Excessive Celebration.....

 The family at dinner for Chinese New Year.

Dylan dancing to the music in the car.