Rough start to the New Year

Happy New Year everyone.

After making it home from our trip to visit my parents in California for Christmas and the New Year we are now back in Albuquerque getting on with plans to replace our roof and getting things organized for our up coming trip to China.

Linda got a three month assignment in China to train the environmental staff at the Intel plant there. Should be an interesting trip, we will be right next door to North Korea, not really sure how I feel about that.

On another note, I got a call from my mom this afternoon and it seems as if the year is off to a rough start for the family. Here is a link to a Marin IJ article, you can see the west wall (or through it) of my parents house in the 4th and 5th pictures that are associated with the article. Thankfully they both got out and only one wall of the house was damaged, though with the bookshelf that was on that wall there were probably some items that will be difficult to replace if it is even possible.

4th of July and 1st Haircut

This last weekend we headed to the Dungeon with Scarlet. There were a whole bunch of folks from Albuquerque out there that we climbed with as well. Linda finally worked out a good sequence on the bottom of Moat Jump 5.12a with the help of Susana, and it seems as though she ought to be able to send it. I mostly ran laps on things since I've done most everything there, did three 5.13's after warming up. Dylan had fun as usual playing in the dirt and the stream. This time instead of using his harness we brought the real swing which he really enjoyed. Here he is being "watched" by one of the dogs for us.Dylan and I went to visit John and Carolyn last week before John left to guide in Europe for a month and a half. We hung out in Carolyn's personal training studio and climbed while Dylan got to use some of the training equipment, here he is on the rowing machine with John.
For the 4th of July weekend we headed to the Taos area to do some climbing. We met up with Betty and Eric. The Groth's where there as well, John, Liz and their girls Sarah and Michele. The girls were great playing with Dylan, her Dylan "belays" Michele (the younger of the two) while she pretends to climb.
The first day we climbed at Comales Canyon which is a fun crag with "vacation" grades (ie: they are easy).

Dylan is starting to get the hang of camping and is always excited to get into the tent, though he likes to run around and play without going to sleep until he is so tired that he drops mid-sentence. Here's Dylan getting ready for the sun to go down with Linda's headlamp.
The second day, after a very slow start and a kind of long drive we ended up at El Rito and got a few routes in before heading home. We just ran some laps on stuff on the Rad Wall.

Finally gave Dylan his first hair cut last week. Here is the "before" shot.....
and the "after"
We now have our little monk back.

Here is a video of Dylan singing a song about frogs, he misses a bit at the end but it is still pretty funny.

Weekend report 09-03-16

On Friday since the weather was bad Chris, Curran, Dylan and I headed over to John and Carolyn's house to climb on their wall. Carolyn has a really sweet personal training studio with a climbing wall so we spent about 2 hours having a good session. Dylan played with all the personal training equipment and John's dog, Soulame (sp?).

Here is a shot that Carolyn took with her phone of Dylan and Soulame playing with extra holds that are not on the wall yet.

Next is another phone shot of Dylan just hanging around, though after a couple times of hanging on till he lets go he realizes that falling is more fun and he just lets go right away. You can also see their wall, nice bulge out the center and curving slightly overhung walls on either side.

On Saturday Linda finally started to ride some longer distances, though only 35 miles this time. She commutes to work on her bike once or twice a week 15 miles each way, but if she wants to have fun on the Triple By-Pass in CO this July she needs to get some longer rides in. Otherwise 120 miles and 3 mountain passes is just not going to be enjoyable no matter how nice the weather and scenery.

Next up, they don't make stuff like they used to. Dylan sporting a 30 year old onesie, those of you who know how old I am , know what that means.

On Sunday I headed out to Socorro with Chris. We started at Spook Canyon where after warming up Chris dogged up Ride the Lightning 5.13- to hang draws and figure things out for me. Thanks to his work, he had already done the route several years ago, I was able to climb it on my first go. Then we headed over to North Wall which was pretty cold, but that was a good thing. We got on a route that Chris bolted about 7 years ago and has not been climbed yet. We both made good progress in 2 attempts each. I managed it with one fall and Chris with just a couple, so I'm optimistic that it will go down next time out.