Here is a video of something that Dylan only did for about a week. I have no idea where he learned it, not school since he had not been but once for the previous 5 week so it must have been some adult.

Here are some shots from our stay in Austin, mostly stuff from Halloween since this was really Dylans first Halloween. He was too young and not walking yet last year. Here we are with a couple of the cousins, Brian and Cady on our way to a Halloween party at Cady's school.

As you can see Dylan was dressed as a Chinesse boy. Here he is diligently making a mask, marker in one hand and stickers in the other.

We did not really think about how cruel this costume could be. If you 've ever felt the fabric of this type of clothing you know that is is super slick. Here Dylan is longing to climb up the bouncy slide but keeps slipping back down. Eventually I helped him up a few times and he had a blast.

After the slide Dylan got snakes painted on his face, Cady had some face painting done earlier and Dylan was curious about it.

Here is the whole crew of cousins and a few friends that went trick or treating. Dylan who had never had candy was determined to get as much as possible and was the third to last person back out of the group.

And what Halloween post would be complete with out some gore. Lindas fingers with some sort of bite. This is actually about a week after she first noticed them and after the swelling became more localized in just her fingers, yes her whole hand swelled up. She has no idea where she got them but first noticed them the day she arrived in Austin so it was in the hotel in Louisville, the airplane, airport or in Austin at some point.Here is another scary sight for those climbers that are non parents, the crag nursery. On most days that Dylan was at the cliff in the Red River Gorge and Spain for that matter he was not the only child. We saw infants as young as 3 months out at the crag.

More about our trip to come soon.

Some Photos

Here are Doug and his girl friend Halina, you will notice the tan, not black pants that Doug is sporting.
Brian and Lahla (sp?) manhandling Dylan

Dylan saying hello to his B-Day dessertand the reaction to trying it.

Fall colors at the New River Gorge.

The New River Gorge bridge, the longest span single arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere, so they claim, 1700+ foot arch length. One day a year they close the bridge to traffic and let people walk out on it and base jump off and other such activities, thankfully this was the day before we arrived.Your choice of tasty local beverages when you are in Kentucky, Ale-8-one is basically ginger ale and not too bad, the beer, well I don't know about that.

Desperatly trying to up load images and the WiFi connection is terrible

Funny Video

Well, since we have been terrible about taking pictures on this trip, here is a funny clip of Dylan and one of his favoite foods.

What happens when he dose not get it fast enough and how happy he is when he has it. Guess what it is...

If you guessed BACON, you win, not that Linda is exactly proud of the fact that Dylan is all about BACON.

Dylan got over his fever after a few days and by the end of the week he was back to hanging out at the crag while we climbed with Chris.

Towards the end of our stay at the Red, Doug and Halina made it out from Chicago. Even though the weather was terrible and everyone that was going to come down with them bailed, they still made the trip to meet Dylan and see us. We had not seen Doug in at least 5 years so it was good to see him. For those of you that know Doug there is big news, both Linda and I made the same first comment upon seeing him, he wasa wearing pants...that were not black!!! Still had the black shirt and jacket though.

After the week at the New River Gorge in West Virginia with Chris we headed to Pikeville, KY. A friend of mine from college, Brian Sohn lives and teaches HS there. We got to see his house that he's been in for a few years and meet his fiance. We also go to enjoy some of his great cooking.

Right now we are in a hotel room in Louisville getting repacked so that Linda and Dylan are ready for their flight to Austin, TX tomorrow morning. They are both looking forward to seeing Linda's mom and all the cousins.

Dylan is SICK

So I'm sitting in the hotel room with Dylan while Linda is out climbing with Chris, which of course is what Linda was doing yesterday while I was out climbing.

Our last day at the Red Dylan was not himself, he just wanted to be held and that was pretty much it, so we called it a day quite early and headed back to the cabin so he could rest, this was Saturday. The next day we packed up and said good bye to Doug and Halina from Chicago and headed out to the New River Gorge in West Virginia. All Dylan did during the whole drive was to sleep. He had a tempurature of 103 as some point, I don't recall exactly when. We checked into our cabin out here and while it was in a bueatiful canyon with a creek nearby it was also old and quite drafty with only a fireplace for heat, so we checked out possibly loosing a $250 deposit and headed to town for a warmer place to stay. While I was checking with the first hotel we came to, Linda came charging in and reported that Dylan's temp had gone up to 105, (now Linda had him in the car asleep wrapped in a down jacket which I think played a roll in his temp being so high) so we headed to the emergency room in Oak Hill which is the closest hospital. We spent the next 3-4 hours in the hospital while they ran tests, took blood and put Dylan on an IV with some antibiotics.

So he does not have the flu, nor strep throut or an ear infection. It is likely just a bug that he needs to work through to get better. OH and the hospital was getting his temp at 103, not quite as scarry as 105.

Now it is Tuesday and he seems to be down around 100-101 which is good but still ery sluggish he has been napping for more than 3 hours already and is making no effort towards getting up. So we shall see.

It’s been awhile, OH well.

And I thought coming home for a few days would be relaxing and all. Instead we were constantly running around trying to get ready for our next trip while also trying to sleep off the jet lag from our previous trip.

We made it out to climb at the Upper East Fork one day while we were home. Fun to get on some more new routes without having to travel very far though I will quickly run out, there is a pretty hard bouldery project though that will take awhile to do. Anyway, we had a good time climbing with Curran, Anna, Sondra, Matt L, Doug, Lance and Sarah.

I then left on Monday morning to drive out to the Red River Gorge. Along the way I stopped at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch. It rained most of the night while I camped and most of the morning as well so I headed into town to eat breakfast then back up. It was obvious that I was not going to get to climb but I still wanted to check the area out. The climbing looked really fun, lots of routes and bouldering to be done. I also got to see a fair bit of wildlife while hiking around looking at the boulders. A really kind of spooky, big black snake, several stick insects that looked like copper pipe and walked like robots, they are so weird when they walk it looks very unnatural, a big fat millipede though not as big as the one previously pictured and a few other less interesting critters.

The next day I drove to Louisville to meet Linda and Dylan at the airport with 20 out of 22 hours of driving out of the way. We figured that a few hours on the plane versus 20 hours in the car was worth it. Did some grocery shopping in Lexington on our way out to the Red and made it out to the cabin that our friends from Austin had rented by about 7 that evening.

Our first day out we met up with a couple that had a kid that was almost 4 and did a few routes with them at Global Village which we had never been to. Kind of a nice cliff but where it really shines is in the 5.7 to 5.9 range with traditional routes, there are several harder routes including a rarely repeated 5.13 with absolutely no chalk on it. In fact the 2, 5.12’s had no chalk on them either. We did a 5.11 that was pretty fun though.

On our way out at the car we ran into another couple with a 20 month old or so. Marty was the mothers name and I noticed that they had Idaho plates. Turns out that they are from Rexburg which is where Kyle and Emily, who babysat Dylan one night in August so that Linda and I could go on a date, are from. Naturally they know them so we traded juicy gossip about them in the parking lot.

At the end of our trip to Spain Dylan took a spill while running around in the driveway in front of the Alburgue. Here is the result,
We spent the last couple of nights in a hotel in the town of Sant Bois outside of Barcelona but pretty close to the airport. The hotel was called El Castell, and as it sounds was built in or more likely on top of and old castle dating from the 9th century. The website, since I did not take any pictures is, http://www.elcastell.com/ , you should check it out.

We spent one day in Barcelona, again going to La Rambla for a couple of hours and checking out a free museum that is run by one of the local banks. On La Rambla we saw these guys….
Which lead to this reaction from Dylan,
Here are some shots of where we stayed, the building
Dylan with Beatrice that lived in the house next door and loved to come over and play with him in the evenings.
And a shot of the entire town,
Here is a view of Barcelona from the National Art Museum, which is pretty beautiful.
This struck me as interesting, something seems to have been lost in translation,

Now we have FASTER WIFI

We moved on from Rodellar and are now in a small town outside of Barcelona for a couple of nights before we fly out. The hotel we are is is an old castle that has been redone in a very modern way. The building was first built in 801 AD so there is quite the contrast with the modern art and furniture that is about.
I have no idea what is going on with the underlining.

The hotel has faster wifi that the Albergue did so I've loaded a bunch of photo that I'd meant to previously.

Here is a shot of someone on El Delfin in Las Vetanas.

Ah, the choices you have to make when in Europe, wine, climb, or chocolate yummyness.
Claude, Dylan and I in front of the castle at Alquezar.
Steve McClure, Mr 5.15a and 5.14 on-sight warming up on Toma Costanazo.
Dylan hanging out below the Aquest Any Si cliff, this cliff had the best spot for him to hang out so we spent an inordinate amount of time here. Linda even sent the cliffs namesake route, Aquest Any Si which is 5.12c after 5 tries. Way to go Linda, her hardest send to date.
Cobbled surface on the bridge at El Puente.
More to come tomorrow hopefully. We will be heading to Barcelona for the day. See so of you soon.

Resting and Stuff

Fig trees everywhere,
Toads on the road,
sweet wines
Sore skin and toes
Rest day time

The first of our 2 climbing days was good, I'd hung the draws on a 5.13d on our previous climbing day and managed to send the route, Claude tried a 5.13 that looked pretty good but decided he did not like it so much. Linda lead another 5.11+.

The second climbing day was pretty much junk for Claude and I. We are both feeling the effects of not having enough time to rest and at this point with so few days left it is unlikely that we will take the extra rest days needed since that would mean that we just stop climbing for the rest of the trip. Linda however got on a 5.12c on lead and did all the moves just fine with only a couple of hangs to work sections out. I think she can do it and so does she so we left draws up on that route, so that will be our focus on our next day out.

Dylan is learning to say please when he wants something, a little word that the school Claude works at pushes. He also said "Sorry Daddy" when he head butted my glasses by accident, so he is learning some nice things on the trip. His second 2 year molar is coming in and his third looks like itis about to break skin. We got some steroid cream for his rash, similar to hydrocortizon cream and that is pretty much gone and he seems sooo strong not, maybe I used a little too much... not really.

Sorry about the lack of pictures last time, they had been loading for an hour and were not done yet so I was over it, our wi-fi is incredibly slow though I think it is as much the computer since the others that have stayed here have had no issue with it. OK battery is dying so enough for now.