Baby elephant

On Saturday Mindy, Jeff, Megan and I hopped on our motorbikes and cruised up to MaeSa elephant camp. O.k... so there are moral issues with some of the elephant camps, and I haven't quite figured out what is considered a good elephant camp and what is considered bad, but I feel like I need to see some different ones in order to form an opinion. The main jist of elephant camps is that elephants used to be used for logging in thailand. Now they aren't so much. However elephants live to be 60-70 years old and eat 250 kilos of food a day. Therefore, once they became obsolete in the logging industry, people had to figure out how to afford to feed them. Thus the elephant camp was born. Some elephant camps have the elephants doing tricks and taking people on rides (the MaeSa elephant camp is like this) while others just provide a nice home and rely on fundraising to pay for the elephants (we will visit this type later). Either way, the elephants (and their "controllers"- elephants and controllers generally work together for life) are taken care of.
So we watched the show along with 200 other tourists (mostly thai tourists). Elephants picked up logs, painted pictures, plated soccer, danced to their own harmonica music, threw darts, and massaged a guy. You can also buy a bunch of bananas and sugar cane to feed to the elephants which is pretty fun because they gently take the food out of your hand with their trunks and then somehow manage feed themselves one banana at a time while keeping the others in their trunk. While you are focussed on the elephants in front of you, another elephant may sneak up behind you (you can't at all hear or feel them coming), tap you on the shoulder and either walk by you or give a snuggle. It feels weird to submit to such a large creature, but when are surrounded by about 5 of them, you kind of just let go.

After sipping some coconut juice, we were preparing to leave (along with the other 196 tourists), when I saw a small sign for elephant nursery. We decided to follow the sign around the corner and up a road and across a field and through the jungle until we found a pen with a mother and a baby. A sign said that the baby was born in March and that was about it. No sign saying don't play with elephant. Nothing about baby elephants are dangerous. Nothing about playing with the elephant is encouraged. There really wasn't much information at all. Being americans, we obviously assume that if something is dangerous, then there will be multiple indications all around to stay away, because if something goes wrong, we can sue the property owners. Therefore, lack of signage means everything is safe. We though about this for a moment, decided to slowly approach the baby (we had just been hugged by 10,000 pound elephants so a mere 1000 pound creature couldn't possibly hurt us) and with time we became a little more brave.
This elephant (its name is BoomSerm) was truly magical. We stayed there for about an hour playing the little guy. Here is a movie of the playing:

I have to run off to thai class, but I'll put some photos up soon.
Marshall

I love my neighborhood

Moving to a foreign country is kind of like being an infant (or so I think). The littlest achievements seem so big.

Wednesday nights find Megan out of town for the night and me all alone in the big city. (So I'm not alone, there are lots of people to hang out with but I chose to take a lone evening). On a street about a block from us, there are food stalls lined up either side. Most thai people get take away from these stalls, although many of the vendors have set up a table or two behind their place to sit and eat. I'm a little shy to stop and eat because it can be hard to figure out what it is that each stall serves. However, I haven't really found anything I don't like to eat (except maybe that chicken foot floating in my bowl of soup the other day) so I decided to just try whatever this particular stall has. The guys was really nice, told me to sit down and brought me a plate of rice with some of the best chicken that chickens can make sitting on top. As I'm eating an older woman sitting next to me figure out somehow that I'm not thai and kind of keeps looking over at me. So I say hi. She says hi and then starts asking me various questions in English. I try to answer in Thai (although I don't really know enough yet to answer much) and soon we are talking. She just finished taking a course in English from the British consulate and really wants to practice her english. So here I am, sitting at a food stall in my neighborhood, talking to my neighbor and feeling like I belong here.

After a while, I leave the stall still feeling a bit hungry so I go to another stall that is only take away and order some Kale type thing, rice, and some amazing chile sauce all in thai. The woman serving it up smiles and waits patiently as I try to speak thai, and sure enough, I get what I thought I was going to get. I'm pretty much feeling like the man.

This must be how infants feel the first time they learn to communicate exactly what they want.

Oh yeah, and I can read again. The thai letters are starting to make sense. It may take me about 30 seconds to sound out words, and I have no idea what the words mean once I say them, but at least I can read again. Maybe I'm progressing to the feeling a 5 year old gets.

And here are some cute dogs on a rack.

Marshall

We live here

From the same set of photos as the last one.
The smog doesn't seem so bad when you are living in it.

Weather Forcast in Chiang Mai

I saw this in a local magazine the other day:

It stopped raing on October 12. Since then, the temperatures have been warmer than usual with average highs around 28 to 32 [celcius]. It will cool off more in December with the lowest highs (20-25) in early january. It will rain for 5 days between December 20 and the New Year due to winds from Burma. After that it will not rain until April.

Bikes!

Since I didn't take any pictures, you'll have to imagine it. We pull up to a market about 10 km out of town. From the distance you can sort of hear a buzzing sound and when we round the corner, there it is. I would guess around 300 motorbikes all lined up, people milling about, revving this engine and that engine, exhaust wafting out the edges of the building and 3 americans with eyes wide open and insecure looks on their faces. We came to buy motorbikes. Fortunately, we were with Boom, a friend of a friend. Boom is a petit thai woman, who speaks english perfectly accept for her british accent. Boom doesn't necessarily know much about the honda dream or the suzuki crash, but it is safe to say that she know more than we do. She certainly knows more about how the market works and explained that the prices you see are only the starting point, but not to expect to bargain down too much.
Megan was the first to find a bike she loved. She test rode it. I test rode it. Boom negotiated a good price (around 19,000 baht ~500 dollars). Jeff found a sweet ride for 14,000 baht. Now it was up to me. For some reason, I was stuck on getting a 125cc bike (sort of the top end for engine size around here) while Jeff and megan settled for 110 cc. There is a price jump and a significant decrease in number of bikes available when buying a 125cc. I test rode a few. One made a weird clicking sound, another had bad transmission, another stalled frequently. There was one that seemed just right. It was built in 2546 (that is thai calendar for 3 years ago), has 10,000 km on it and seemed zippy. The front brakes didn't work too well but that can be fixed cheaply (about 6 dollars for new brakes it turns out), so I took the plunge and just bought it. We were able to bargain down the price 1000 baht (30 dollars) -yippee- and payed 24,000 for it. I took it to the Honda dealer, they told me it was still under warranty- yippee- gave it a free tune up, changed the oil and now I sure hope it will run well for the year.

So now I am officially here. We have a home, I have a motorbike, I have a membership at the climbing wall, I can count to one million in Thai, and I have had a stomach bug. In fact, just now I'm feeling even more committed because as I write this, I'm on Skype with Verizon Wireless trying to disconnect my US cell phone. So far I have been on the line 20 minutes trying to do this. Why does it take so long? For all the hassle of trying to figure out the cell phone over here, it does seem like the systems are way easier with much less need for crazy call centers.

As it turns out, Jeff took some photos with his new fancy cell phone. Pretty hot.

Marshall

A place to live

House shopping was a bit tiring. From what we could gather, the way to rent an apartment or house here is to walk around a neighborhood we might want to live in and if we see a phone number (we can at least recognize numbers if not any other writing) and the front, then it is probably for rent. Since we have our handy dandy cell phones (I still have no idea when they might stop working) we can call the number from right there and hope that the person on the other end speaks some english. In this fashion we found a few homes and condos and became depressed at the quality. After days of this, I saw a phone number on a fence post (no, I didn't want to live on a fence post) and called it. This turned out to be a real estate agent named Nid who took us to a house that was under construction but probably 3000 square feet (too big) and another way out in the country side that was built by a scottish man. This was an awesome house, but the daily commute would have been about 1/2 hour. However, it would be the perfect place for a writer looking for a secluded beautiful place in the country side. If anyone wants to give up their day job and write, let me know. So the real estate agent thing didn't work.
After some frustration, Megan and plopped ourselves down in a wawee coffee (kind of like starbucks but much more thai), drank something that tasted like a meted frappacino, got way too cracked out on coffee and opened a local publication for expats called City LIfe. We found an add for something that seemed too good to be true called the number and found the cutest house in Chiang Mai. It is in the old part of town, down a quite secluded street, owned by an english teacher named Suwy, and cost about 200 dollars per month.

Here is a photo of our kitchen. Yeah it is simple, but this is the way it works. When we looked at places, none of them had kitchens. People simply eat out for every meal. At first this sounds cool, but sometimes, I just want to scramble up some eggs for breakfast.

In order to cook, we needed to buy a wok and some ingredients. So we took a trip to the day market and had an adventures buying some goods. Here are some photos of said market, I like how this lady is surrounded by vegetables. She must climb in at 8 am and not leave until 5. She looks quite at home in her vegies.


So today we go motorcycle shopping at some used motorcycle market. We hear we can get a pretty nice ride for around 500 dollars. Hopefully this is the case. The good news is that there are cheap mechanics everywhere, the bad news is that I have no idea how to look at the motorcycles around here and tell if they are good or bad. We have a thai woman coming with us which is helpful. Hopefully we end up with something sweet.

Oh yeah, and I got sick about 5 days ago which is fine. I knew it was going to happen and I might as well get it out of the way.

Marshall

My Skype Number

206-973-7890

Through the miracles of modern technology one can call this number from any phone and talk to me in Thailand. If I'm not online (which I probably won't be) you can leave a voice mail that I will get next time I get online. Try it, it will be fun to here your voice.

Another option is to go to Skype.com, download the client software and call me (my skype name is mabalick) using your computer. This works well too and allows me to video conference with you. Once I get an apartment I can give you a tour of it using my camera. The catch is that we have to be online at the same time to chat (obviously) and with a 15 hour time difference, this might take some orchestration, but can be done for sure.

I think I got a cell phone in Thailand

There are experiences when you travel that can frustrate you, but while in the midst of them you have to remember that this is why you chose to live overseas- to experience new things and to feel like a gumby.
On our first day here, Megan, Jeff and I went cell phone shopping. After asking around we figured the best place to buy them is at the mall. The mall is a masterpiece of American Culture plopped right down into the middle of Thai bedlam: Sizzler, KFC, McDonalds, Mr. Bun, and 65 cell phone stores. How do you choose which store to go to when the options abound? You go to the one place that looks like it might speak english, of course. We went to the DTAC store (DTAC is one of three telecommunications companies in Thailand), found a woman who spoke some english and spent the next 1 1/2 hours trying to figure out what we were buying. We chose some phones- that part was easy- but then had to pick out a SIM card and a plan. We had heard that there was a plan that allowed me and Megan to talk for free so we asked the woman if this is possible and in response we heard the word "buffet." Buffet? No we don't all you can eat, we just want to talk to each other and then pay whatever it costs for everyone else. "Promotion Buffet!" O.k.... so if we get promotion buffet, then we are good to go. We understood that we had to buy a 300 Baht (Baht is the thai currency) card to activate it. O.k.... I think we should do that? The phones came out of the wrappers, the SIM cards were inserted into the phones and then special numbers were called to activate Promotion Buffet. Great. We were all done. We were grabbing our bags to leave and then I thought to ask how we regenerate our 300 Baht. "No, you don't have 300 baht at all," was the response. " It costs you 300 Baht per month just to activate Promotion Buffet." So now I understood that we had to pay 300 baht per month to talk to megan for free and that I still had to put more money into the account in order to talk to anyone else. I just got a big smile from the sales person in response. Smiles are great, but they aren't too helpful when trying to figure things out. At this point I had to remind myself that I am the one who doesn't speak any Thai, that I am the one who can't make any sense out of the Thai Smile Happy Promotion cell phone programs and that this woman is doing better with me than I would do with her if the roles were reversed.
We left, understanding only that I can make a cell phone call, and I figure I will continue to make cell phone calls until my phone doesn't work anymore and then I will go to the DTAC office and ask how to make it work. It isn't really my style to not understand the subtleties of how something works, but I think I'm going to have to get used to it while I'm over here.

Obviously my life has changed quite a bit since the last post. I seem to remember that Smith was cold, then it got hot, then it rained and we climbed a lot. We traveled back up to Seattle for a few days, packed out lives up into a duffel bag and then jumped an airplane for Thailand. We sat on airplanes for about 30 hours total and arrived in Chaing Mai feeling tired and excited about what is to come. After eating some delicious thai food, we went and got one hour foot massages (for 5 dollars) and then fell fast asleep. The next day we got cell phones (I think) and started searching for apartments. I won't go into too much detail, but most "apartments" are 5 meter by 8 meter boxes with windows at one end and no kitchen. The good news: they cost around 125 dollars per month. The bad news: from what we can tell, this style apartment is pretty much all there is. We checked out a lot of apartments and seem to find the same wherever we go. I'm sure we haven't seen everything yet, but hopefully we can find something a little more livable then a box. On Tuesday, we are going apartment (or maybe house) hunting with Josh who speaks thai and understands how it all works. Perhaps I'll know more by then.

We also met a bunch of great climber/ ex- peace corp/ nice folks at a party last night. It seems like we will make some great friends here and have plenty of people to hang out with.

In short, I am super excited to be here, Thailand is hot, cell phone plans are confusing, don't ride bicycles in Thailand at night time on busy streets when you don't have a light on your bicycle (it took us literally 15 minutes to cross a street- and that was probably one of the most dangerous things I have ever done in my life), the people here are great, and life is good.

Marshall

It got even colder at Smith

8 degrees Fahrenheit to be exact. It sort of froze everything.

Fortunately, we stayed on our friends' floor those two nights... not that the van wouldn't have kept us warm, but going to the bathroom in the middle of the night wouldn't have been too enjoyable. However, it was generally sunny during the day so the temps would warm up a little. In fact, I think I may have taken off my down coat when I climbed yesterday, but only while I was climbing.
Then the clouds moved in. We heard the pitter-patter of rain on the van last night which encouraged us to sleep in until 9, read harry potter out loud, watch an episode of Alias, and finally break camp at 12:30. That pretty much turned today into a rest day. I went for a jog around Smith (stared at the backbone of the monkey in awe) and here I am in front of a computer at the local Yerba Mate cafe, Santiagos. What sucks is that the forecast for the next week or so is "mostly cloudy with a chance of rain." This is the fall smith that we know so well: wear your down, climb on cold rock, send lots of projects because the rock is super tacky, use heater packs in your chalk bag, hope it doesn't rain or snow, and admit that summer really is over.

That would be a major bummer if we weren't headed to Thailand in 2 weeks!

Below are some links to photos from last weekend. We had a large posse from Seattle come down and siege trout creek. Now... I have to admit that I am currently not so fond of crack climbing, but I had a good old time hanging out with the folks for a weekend. Tim even has some photos of me taking a few falls on Latest Rage at smith. I was trying to get used to falling again, and heh, I might as well have tim take pictures while I do it.

Tim Matsui's photos

Andreas' photos

That's about it for now. Hopefully the weather stays climbable.

It's cold at Smith

However, the temps are pretty much perfect for climbing. 60 degrees during the day and around 25 at night. It is that rare time when you can climb in the sun or the shade.

The days usually consist of waking up when the sun hits the van (around 7:30 or 8), making coffee, read for a bit, make breakfast, drive to the park, climb, drive back to the grasslands, make yummy food (so far we have created pasta with cream sauce and brocolli, sloppy joe corn bread pizza, quesidillas, maple glazed chicken over lemon rice, and something else I can't remember). Then we watch some Alias on Megan's computer, maybe read some more and fall fast asleep.

For the weekend we had a bunch of people from Seattle come down and we sieged climbing spots at Smith. On Saturday it was shipwreck gully (I think I climbed everysingle pitch there, including flight of the killer skud buster missiles or something like that).
On Sunday we took over the pure palm area at the lower gorge. Fortunately for the rest of the climbing community, no one else was there. It was quite a posse.

In other news, Megan is feeling better although her stomach still cramps and her blood pressure is too high, but mentally she is more content. We are trying to eat low sodium, but it can be tricky. We just aren't used to think about salt.


Since it is a rest day, we are in a Yerba Mate cafe in Redmond, OR, drinking Mate and surfing the web. Megan snapped this photo of me focussing on the computer.
So that is it from smith for now. Give a call if you are coming over.

Marshall

Directions to Trout Creek

Here are the directions to Trout Creek. Again, we will be there the weekend of the 28th and 29th (arriving the evening of the 27th).

A link to google map page is : http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&z=13&ll=44.819351,-121.087017&spn=0.055403,0.112095&t=h&om=1 The campground is the green spot in the middle of the frame.

DIRECTIONS TO TROUT CREEK CAMPGROUND

Hwy 26 east over Hood. As you cross the Deschuttes River in Warm Springs start paying attention!! As you drive out of the canyon and top out on the mesa……

Turn LEFT on Gumwood
Take your first RIGHT on Deschuttes and go to the end
Turn RIGHT on Juniper and go to the end of the mesa
Drop down the Gateway grade into the town of Gateway
Take your first LEFT on Clemens..take this dirt road all the way to the camp ground!!
All said, it takes around 20 minutes from the turn off of the highway to the campground.

We are going to try and get sites #1 and #2 which are some of the first ones you come to from the road. You won’t miss us.

A reboot to the system

Sometimes it just needs to happen. Things get too cluttered. You have too many applications open. All your memory is allocated. You need to just force a shutdown, and then bring it all back up online slowly.
This is what we needed to do.
After returning from Europe we landed in Denver and slept at our good buddy's, Jeffy Poodle's, house in Boulder. Megan was still feeling quite strange from whatever type of bug or whatever she came down with in Croatia or Greece. Her heart rate wasn't up, per se, but she felt like her heart was beating to harshly, like it wanted to pump a lot of blood without raising it's rate. We went to a clinic in Boulder and when they took her blood pressure, it was 190/ 120. This is way too high for someone her age. The doctor did an EKG (which looked normal) prescribed some blood pressure medicine, and said: I have no idea what is going on. Word of advice, if you have no idea what is going wrong, don't go home and research you symptoms on the internet. Most likely, you will finish this experience quite sure that you have some sort of life ending disease. So, with anxieties mounting, we went back to the clinic to see what more could be done and met with another doctor. She listened quite well, but only brought up worst case scenarios of what this could be.
Well... I was getting a little stir crazy sitting around in Boulder (although I can certainly think of worse places to sit around), so I developed a plan with Megan to hit the road and make our way to Oregon where there are hospitals near buy and more importantly, Smith Rocks is near by. We spent a night in Maple Canyon hoping to get a day of climbing in. We woke to better than perfect conditions (fall had moved in and it was gorgeous), but Megan was feeling light headed, so we headed down towards the local clinic. Once arriving there she felt better, but rather that going back up, we thought it best to just keep moving towards home. In fact, the more we thought about it, the better it sounded for us to go to Seattle, seek medical attention there, and force a reboot. This is what we did.
Megan has since seen a doc in Seattle, she has had many tests run on her (we got to see her heart valves working with an EchoCardioGraph), and of course, we still have no idea why her blood pressure is high. However, she is feeling better, and so today we head to smith. Hopefully this is the best plan of action, but after relaxing at the parent's house and getting recentered, we feel like it is time to go climbing (can you tell I'm excited?).
We head off today. If anyone is coming down, let me know, and we'll be happy to cook you dinner. Also, we are planning to be at Trout Creek for 2 days of the best camping and straight up crack climbing in the Northwest during the weekend of October 28 and 29. If you want to come email Gavin (gavin @ purdyassociates.com) and he will give out all the directions on how to get there. This is sort of an obscure crag, but the climbing is excellent and we'll have the perfect guide, Gavin, there for the weekend. He even has a mega rack stashed up at the crag (for some of the climbs, you need 10 of one size piece).

So... to drag out the analogy too far... hopefully we are clean of viruses and we can keep our desktop clear of clutter for the next couple of weeks at Smith.

Marshall

The drippy kitties- a week in Greece

As we travelled through Europe, we became accustomed to cats everywhere. Most of them are feral, many are cute, and megan tried to make friends with almost all of them. All of them except a certain type of kitty that we encountered on Ithaka in Greece. This type we named the "drippy kitty." We were enjoying a meal in the picturesque town of Frikas (supposedly named because the people in this town are "frika" which stands for freak or horrible). At the table were a bunch of friends from Seattle: Leah, her dad Mark, Austin, Becky, Ian, Megan and myself. Of course the cats are combing around our feet looking for any scraps that we might drop. In a close by flower box a little kitty was snuggled up enjoying the afternoon rays. To get a better shot at the sun, he moved his head a little and exposed the nastiest lesion running the length of the underside of his neck. It was way too gross to look at, but it was one of those things that made it hard to divert your eyes. Ian, who was sitting next to me was wondering why I was so distracted and started to look in the direction of the kitty. I told him not to, but it was too late and he let out a growl as he saw the mutilated kitty. We then noticed that other kitties around the table had this defect. We started to loose out appetite, but the yumminess of the cheese pie, the spinach pie, the perfect tzaziki, the tender calamari, the baked lamb, and the chicken souvlaki kept us going. Without too much incident, I noticed that Austin was standing in the mediterranean, (which was right next to the table) kind of splashing his feet around. We asked him what he was doing and he replied "oh just walking in the water." He was trying to save us from the horrible truth: One of the cats (which looked like it was about to die that evening) had dripped on Austin's foot. I'll let you figure out where the drip came from, but needless to say, Austin didn't feel like eating anymore. We never did see anymore drippy kitties after that, but when we cruised around as a pack on our scooters and dune buggy, we called ourselves the drippy kitty gang. Don't mess with us or we'll ruin your appetite.
Ithaka is the land of Odysseus. In theory (it depends on whose theory you look at) it is the beginning and the end of Homer's Odyssey. Either way, It has been inhabited for a very long time. We went for some hikes while we were there and would stumble across an ancient village from the 16th century (now in ruins), but you could sort of get a feel for what the town was like. Of course, there are places all over the island named for things in The Odyssey. Who knows if they really are, but it is cool to imagine it. Here is a photo of Megan and Becky in front of the Cave of the Nymphs. This is supposed to be where Odysseus hid his treasures while he went and took care of (killed) all of the suitors who were after his wife. We walked around the archaeological site of what was Odysseus' palace. We swam on beaches which I'm sure Odysseus swam on. We saw dogs that must be descendants of Odysseus' dogs. And then there were the goats. For those of you who don't know, I sort of have a goat obsession. At some point in my life, I will have a goat farm in Utah because I think they are just the coolest creatures. Ithaka is covered with goats. They are everywhere and it makes me quite happy to be around them.
Who were the people we were with? The story goes like this. Our friend from Seattle, Leah Kiveat, has a family house on Ithaka. Her grandparents bought a piece of property on Ithaka back in the 60s when they were on a Pan Am world tour. I think it cost them something like 500 dollars. When Leah's Dad started to get close to retiring, her decided it would be nice to build a house on the property. When he looked into building on their land, he discovered that since there is one olive tree on the property Ithaka law states that you can only build a 300 square meter cottage on the property. That is just too small for the Kiveats (if you know the Kiveats, you will certainly understand). So they worked with a Ithakan architect to find another piece of property on the island. They ended up with a piece of land in the town of Vathi. This land is on a very steep hillside. Ithaka building code is very strict. In order to build you have to start all the way down at bedrock (In 1953 there was an earthquake that destroyed the entire island, so now everything has to be earthquake proof). You also have to build x amount of meters above the road. The Kiveat's property is on a very steep hill. Therefore, the house is three stories tall. Since they wanted to have a house that had a largish single floor plan, they ended up with a structure that is enormous. The bottom two floor aren't finished (the kids will inherit these floors to finish as they will). Leah was planning a small trip to Ithaka, and in typical Leah style, she started to invite all of her friends. Soon there were 7 of us heading to Ithaka to enjoy blue waters, white churches, lots of old stuff and a good dosage of Leah's cooking.
Besides Megan having some sort of stomach bug (more on that later) it was a great week with great friends.

Eventually our week was up. So we got up at 5 am to catch yet another ferry (if I don't take another ferry for a few years, that will be a o.k.). Drove the most exciting expressway ever towards athens (it is a two lane road that greeks drive like it were a four lane road- some sort of code involving blinkers and light flashing keeps you from slamming into the cars that are coming the opposite direction in your lane). Took a plane to london, spent a night in an airport shopping mall (thank god for overstuffed starbucks chairs) and then flew back to Denver to pick up our van and continue with our indulgent adventures.

Paradise in Croatia

We got off the ferry after taking an overnight from Italy, took a taxi to this small town that we couldn't pronounce, hiked around for a bit trying to find this guy who I had emailed before our trip, finally figured out where he was supposed to be, walked to 1 km or so along the Mediterranean when what should appear in front of our eyes but a paradise for climbers.
Limestone cliffs that rise about 40 meters out of a crystal blue sea with a natural port for swimming and a private beach to lounge around on between climbs. What could be better? How about the host of the climbing area offering us glasses of local red wine (he claims that it is the best in Croatia).
The name if the area is Sveta Nedjelja on the island of Hvar. In order to get there, you have to drive through a 1.5 km 1 lane tunnel with no lights in it. The woman at the information office told us that it is a "Croatian Style tunnel, different from any tunnel we have been in". She was right. Because of the tunnel and because it is fairly remote, there really isn't a lot happening in Sveta Nedjelja. There is a church. There are vineyards and olive trees galore. There is a grocery where you all the merchandise is behind the counter and you have to ask the grocer to get it down for you (this guy ended up giving us a ride back to the ferry after our stay. Here is a picture of Megan with him. There are a few apartments for tourists to stay (we rented a studio for 20 Euros a night). It is pretty darn sleepy.
Our days generally went like this: Wake up when we wake up (usually around 8 or 9), make some eggs and drink Croatian coffee. Walk up to the market to get a fresh loaf of bread for the day and some beers for the evening. At around 11 we would walk to the crag. If it was super hot (it usually was) we would jump into the Mediterranean for a swim before getting on the climbs. The climbs ranged in 15 meters to 40 meters in length and were rated somewhere between 5a and 8a (5.8 and 5.13). We mostly climbed stuff up to 6c or so. The rock was limestone with all types of features on it. Pockets, tufas, edges, razor sharp texture, overhanging and vertical. It was all bolted, sometimes closely bolted sometimes a little more sporting, but usually pretty safe. The biggest problem we had with the climbing is that we only has a 60 meter rope so we couldn't do all of the climbs. Many were 40 meters in length. So... After climbing and swimming and then climbing and swimming some more, we would get a glass of wine from Miro (the guy who owns the land and has done all the development- his website is cliffbase.com) and sit around to watch the sun set. We would then mosey back to apartment, make dinner, eat some chocolate, and then fall fast asleep. Pretty much a perfect day as far as I'm concerned.
We had one rest day so we decided to get a ride into Jelsa- a town on the other side of the tunnel with more varied types of food than we could find at the local grocer. We hitched with a couple from Austria that we befriended: Martin and Watraub. Here is a picture of them. These two took us under their wing the first couple of days and fed us full of cheese and wines from Austria. They were heading back home on our rest day so they gave us a one way ride into Jelsa. We had to figure out how to get back and we didn't really want to take a taxi again as that was kind of expensive. We heard rumors of a bus back to our small village, but as it turns out the bus is a school bus and won't let tourists on. We considered walking up and over the mountain that the tunnel cuts through but thought that might be a bit much with the groceries on our back. After studying a map of the island, we decided that we would take a bus towards Hvar City, ask the bus driver to drop us off at stop in the middle of nowhere and then hike the coast for 10k or so back to Sveta Nedjelja. This bus driver looked at like we were crazy when we asked him to drop us off in the said middle of nowhere, but he did it anyway and then we started hiking. It was pretty cool. We quickly stumbled across the world's smallest town that has no road going to it (only boat access). As we walked through what seemed to be a deserted town, I noticed an old man sitting in under the shade of some vines in front of what seemed to be a bar of sorts. We walked over towards the bar, and the guy woke up from his nap with a start. It kind of scared us a bit, but he insisted (in some form of German/ Italian/ Spanish/ Croatian that I could understand parts of) that we sit down and have a drink. After repeated attempts to convince him that I wanted a Pivo (beer) and that megan wanted red wine, he brought the drinks out and gave us a good smile, exposing the one tooth in his mouth. We told him we were walking to Sveta Nedjelja and he just about had a heart attack. Berge (mountains) are in the way and he didn't think it was a good idea. Well we drank our drinks made some more small talk about arrogant italians and then started on our way. He watched us hike out of town. It kind of felt like a western. 10km later and a most beautiful hike through olive trees, limestone crags, sea cliffs and small beaches we arrived home with a bag full of groceries and feeling pretty excited about our adventure.
So the week passed, the grocer gave us a ride to the ferry, we spent a day in Split (a most marvelous ancient city), we took an overnight ferry to Ancona, Italy then caught a 21 hour ferry to Patras Greece where we were scheduled to meet up with friends from Seattle. The ferry rides kind of sucked because we didn't have cabins so we did some quality floor sleeping. But hey, such is traveling. It was worth it to have been able to spend a week in paradise.

The end of Maple

Mt. Pleasant Utah is the local town where we go on rest days to do laundry, get groceries, and read books under a shade tree in the local park. A couple of years ago when we were there for the 4th of July we even has the pleasure of seeing an amateur rodeo where none of the cowboys could stay on the bull for 8 seconds. Since we missed the rodeo on this trip, we felt a little disconnected with local culture so we decided on night to stay in town a little late and taste the delights at the drive-in theater. I noticed that Monster House was playing, but I was going to go to the drive-in despite the movie. After all, it isn't about the movie, now is it? Much to our luck, Monster House had finished its run and Talladega Nights was playing. I had no idea what this movie was about, but it had to be better than Monster House. We pulled the van in, parked it sideways so we could lounge on the crash pad by the open side door and went to the snack bar and bought popcorn. We felt a little awkward at first since we were the only people in the lot that didn't have a huge pickup truck. What is the etiquette? Is it o.k. to drink beer? Is the sideways parked van blocking the view of others? Is it o.k. to get out and take photos of the van? We quickly relaxed when it became apparent that nobody cared a lick about what we did.
For those of you who haven't seen this movie, it is pretty damn funny. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the trucks running their engines during the movie, maybe it was the large extra butter popcorn that I consumed during the movie, but I laughed my ass off.


Other things that happened: we met tons of cool people. Here is a photo of Megan and I hanging out with Guy and Wendy. Wendy is from Santa Fe and takes long road trips with her dog, "Lolita, Lolita, Donde estas su pollo?" Lita for short. Wendy and I immediately became friends after I mentioned to her that I helped to start "Climbers for Kerry" and she gave me a big hug. Wendy is nursing an elbow injury, but that doesn't prevent her from climbing on 5.12s at maple. Pretty cool.

Guy travels in his truck 6 months of the year with his dog Mica (cute chocolate lab) and sent Millennium (14a) last week. He has the road trip life perfected. His rig is a custom made Truck topper that is quite well designed. On rest days, he gets a private study room at the college in Ephraim and turns it into an office. He's got it all ironed out.

The camp hosts, Charmaine, Bill and their daughter Risa are some of the sweetest people you'll ever meet. If only all camphosts could be so kind and loving. It makes the experience that much nicer to know that you are being protected and loved by great people.

So after sending some projects and not sending others we had to pack up and leave maple for Boulder, CO. The drive is 9 hours and it freakin' rained like crazy all the way through Colorado. The van, being the powerhouse that it is, kept a roaring 35 mph pace over some of the passes. Also, at elevations over 8000 feet, it emits a loud knocking sound. A bit to make me nervous. Needless to say, the drive sucked.

So here we are in Boulder, hanging out with our good friend Jeff and taking my 94 year old grandma on drives through the mountains. I don''t think she had left the old folks home for a couple of weeks so it was great to get her out. We got a little lost on dirt roads in the hills above boulder, megan got car sick in the back of the van, and that knocking sound kept coming back as I was trying to use the engine to brake the car on the super steep hills. It was an adventure, but my grandma sat there smiling the entire time. She is so incredibly cute!

On Tuesday morning we pack up and board an airplane for Rome, then Lake Como, then Hvar in Croatia, then Ithaca in Greece. I'll keep the updates coming from Europe.

Take care out there,
Marshall

Protests in Salt Lake City

On tuesday evening after the whole updog incident, I drove north to Salt Lake to pick up Megan. Of course, I paused slightly when driving through Orem to listen to the van and make sure she isn't breaking down. So far, so good.
You know how when you haven't taken a shower for a week and you don't really feel that dirty cause you are in the outdoors and dirt is everywhere, but then you go to the city and suddenly you feel like the stinkiest, dirtiest, little rug rat in the whole place? Well I felt like that when I walked into the Salt Lake airport. However, Megan still loved me and we were quite excited to see each other.
We spent the night in Salt Lake because, a) I didn't want to drive the road out to maple in the dark (I am so afraid of hitting a deer) and b) there was an anti-bush protest scheduled in Salt Lake city the next day.
"Anti-bush protest in Salt Lake?" you might ask. In fact, Salt Lake city is a fairly liberal town in the heart of the most conservative state in Utah. The mayor, Rocky Anderson, is this total progressive minded guy who decided, when Bush came to town to give a speech, to stage a counter protest right in front of the city hall. Ohhhhh the controversy. The Utah media has been going on for the last few weeks about how bad mannered Rocky is to mot make bush feel welcome. We have been hearing about how voicing opposition to the war is helping the terrorists. Voices have been heard, and this is my favorite, about how voicing dissent will squash our freedoms by not allowing the president to do his job.
So you bet you we went to the protest. From what I read, there were about 4,000 people there (although it seemed like less to me) and we sat through a lot of bad speakers and then heard from Rocky who gave a complete breakdown of Bush's faults and his illogical approach to war. It was a speech that got me riled up and can be found here: http://www.slcgov.com/mayor/speeches/2006%20speeches/SPdemonstration83006.pdf . And the local media is just pissed about the rude manners. Tee-hee-hee.
So now we are back at maple. We climbed yesterday (yes, Megan climbed a few pitches with her broken hand), resting today and then will climb through the weekend.
I hope everyone has a good weekend, and of course, I'd love to hear from you.

Oh, yeah, and here is a photo of me and Megan in the parking lot of Ken Garff Volkswagen in Orem. This is just before we got the bill for $1150. God bless the large flag and the shade it gave us.

Marshall

Up Dog

So I'm climbing up at the Pipe Dream with a guy named Guy. He in his 40's climbs 6 months a year and is working a 14a called Millenium. On this day, I was working out Beta on a 12c called orgasmo. Pretty fun climb climb with 3 distinct bouldery cruxes. I wish I could say it had rests in between the cruxes, but it doesn't really. Once I get the hard parts dialed, the redpoint crux will be fighting the burn on the 5.11 to the anchors. There is one notorius huge sloper cobble (think big brain hold in the gym) that you have to match on. Her name is Bertha. Bertha will spit me off.
I was in between burns, eating some nourishing Chef Bouyardee Ravioli (and kind of ashamed of it) when one of the people climbing up there, a woman from Boise, walks up to me and says "Are you eating up dog?" Now, i hadn't really spoken to this woman yet, so I was sort of caught off guard and a little ashamed of my ghetto snack, so I reply: "huh?" She repeats herself: "Is that up dog that you are eating?" I sit there and think for a minute and then reply: "What's up dog?" She looks at me in the eye, shrugs her shoulders and says: "Nothing, what's up with you, dog?" then walks away. I laughed pretty hard. All was friendly in the Pipe Dream for the rest of the day.

If I die tomorrow...

That is one of the questions that convinced me to take this trip. If I die tomorrow, am I doing today what I would want to be doing?

Maybe because there are no more mice, or maybe because Megan comes back tomorrow (I am quite excited for her return), or maybe because I have met some incredible people, or maybe because climbing in maple is so damn fun, but I woke up today feeling like I could answer yes to that question. Of course, don't take this too literal, but life is about as good as I can imagine right now. The only thing missing is my community of friends and family. Anyone want to come to maple?

Because I like it so much, I think I'll stay through labor day and then cruise to Boulder after sometime next week. Hopefully by them I can send the 6000 projects that I have at Maple. They are staring to get knocked down slowly, but it could take till next week to do them all.

Some of the people I have hung out with:
Amy and Kyle from Flagstaff. These two were camped across from me and I ended up climbing with them for two days. Amy is freshly pregnant, so she was redpointing on toprope which was driving her nuts, but she was still having a grand old time. Kyle finally did his 13a project in Box canyon and was super stoked. The energy was sarcastic, crass and supportive. Good people.
Dan, Josh and Kat. Josh is the guy who lives in Chiang Mai, Kat is his Thai partner and Dan is Josh's brother. I look forward to working and climbing with Josh and Kat in Thailand. Josh has a really cool approach to tourism and I feel like I can learn a lot about guiding, working with people and developing routes with him. Kat seems really cool and I can't wait to speak Thai so I can communicate with her better (although she speaks english quite well, but I's love to try to speak in Thai with her). Dan is a music producer and fun guy to be around.
Pablo from Provo. Pablo seems like the Provo version of "Coach." For those of you who don't know who coach is, well ask around and find out. Pablo and I shared some Olympia beers last night and chatted about this and that.
4 Mormon girls. These four mormon girls (one from Moroni, the tiny town close to Maple whose economy is strictly driven by turkey farming). They invited me over to their fire for Peach cobbler made in a dutch oven. I thought about bringing my 24 oz. Miller High life over with me, but left it in my van. No reason to make things uncomfortable. I heard some funny stories about growing up in Moroni and working part time in the turkey plant. Did you know that the necks that come with turkeys don't always belong to turkey you are eating? After a neck fight in the plant, they just have to pick up the necks and stuff them into some turkey.

Anyway, life is great. It will be even better tomorrow when Megan comes back, and wish you all were here.

Marshall

Mice, More Mice, Lots of Mice, No Mice

The final catch was up around 27 mice. I only killed 3 of them.

At the last post I was optimistic that I would be able to get all the mice that night. I had bought some nifty "live mice" traps and was sure I had what it took to eradicate the little guys. The live mice traps worked for crap, and I made some critical miscalculations. The first miscalculation was assuming that VW would make their camper vans mouse proof. Seems like a logical thing, eh? Turns out there are two vents in the back of the car under the bumper that mice can just run right in. VW claims that they are there to create a flow of air through the van, but I just want to say that the van probably has isn't so airtight that they need to put these in. After catching 8 mice, followed by 7 the next night, I figured out the vents and plugged them with a modified beer can (and mormons say that beer isn't good for anything). O.k. That should take care of it. Nope. I still caught 5 more that night. Unfortunately, I used these glue traps which are about the saddest thing you have ever seen. The mice run onto them get completely stuck in the glue and then struggle about getting even more stuck. It broke my heart to see the little guys with their faces and feet plastered to the glue and twitching about. The directions said you can free the mice if you pour oil on the glue and pry them loose. This I did (at 4 in the morning) and it wasn't a lot of fun. I hooked up with a guy, Joe, to climb one day and told him of my saga. He said that the mice were taking advantage of me and probably just running right back into the van (using some other way to get in besides the vents). He suggested keeping them in a container of sorts over night and then releasing them somewhere way far away. Duh! Why didn't I think of that. I caught 4 more that night and took them a few miles from the campground for humane release.
At this point, my miceatarian tendencies were starting to wane and I went and bought some traditional mousetraps. That night I set 4, went over to my neighbors site for dinner and when I came back, I found 2 dead buggers in the traps. I set them all again, went to bed and found one more dead guy in the morning. And guess what, last night I caught no mice! None. It was silent in the car. No more of the haunting scratching sound coming from all angles of the van. No more chewing sounds. No more false sounds of the "live traps" shutting closed. Nothing. So... does this mean the mice are gone? Does this mean that killing a few spread the word that I mean business and that they should stay away? Have I really sealed the van? Are my nights now going to be boring without mice to keep me entertained? Who knows, but I feel like I have learned a lot about mice, trapping mice, and killing mice in the last week.

Marshall

Of Mice and Maple

Furry creatures and big falls.

Some people find mice to be horrifying: Conjuring up images of satan and death. Other find them benign and even somewhat cute. After all, they are nature's vacuum cleaner. Previous to last night, I was always of the mindset of the latter. So they run around you stuff when you camp. So they may even run across my toes when I'm sleeping. Yeah.. they have huanta (sp?) virus, but just don't go sticking your head in mouse's poop and you'll be o.k.. Well, that was before I owned a small r.v. with lots cool places for mice to hide.

Let me go back to the days previous to catch you up on where I am. Skip this part if you don't really care about climbing.
On Saturday, I returned from Sacramento, hopes high that I'll be able to pick up the van and have no more car troubles. The pick up when flawlessly. Rather than go directly down to maple canyon, I decided I could use one more city night before heading off into the land with such names of towns as Mt. Pleasant, Nephi, Moroni, and Manti. I called my friend Dan Morris who is the brother of Josh Morris, the super cool guy who lives in Chiang Mai and has done most of the development of the climbing there. Rather responsibly, I might add, but more on that later.
Dan and I went out to his friend's converted warehouse space to a little party, drank 3.2 beer all night, never really got drunk and talked to some interesting people.
The next day found us in Maple where we climbed for 2 days. We spent the end of the second day at a place called the compound (sure wish I had a photo of it, but that will have to wait until megan returns). We both got worked on a pretty cool 12c called GunTower. It has a meaningful crux right at the end after pulling out what must be a 45 degree overhanging wall for about 8 or 9 bolts. Pretty stout but fun. The second day was spent futzing around on 11's of some sort or another and then ended up at the minimum crag where I got on a 12b called afterburner or something. On my second go, I got to the anchors without falling but then somehow just didn't see the finish jug and ended up pumping myself to oblivion trying to clip the anchors. I even tried grabbing the anchors, but by that point, I was too pumped to hand onto draws. I took the whip, and it was a pretty big one. The last piece was a good 6 feet below my feet. However, the route is long and overhanging, so the fall was fun and squishy. I suppose I could say I redpointed the climb and just decided to take the whip in celebration, but I feel like I'll need to go back and do it again soon.
Well... the night that Dan and Ryan stayed at the campsite, we made a fire, drank thai whiskey and stayed up a little too late. I had spaced out and left the van open for hours and hours while we joked away the evening. Additionally, I had opened the compartment next to the fridge to see into the inner working of the fridge to try to fix the damn thing and left it open. This grants access to any small fury creature to the unmentionable parts of the van. Places where only small critters can go (and perhaps die). I get the bed all ready, climb up and relax for a long peaceful slumber. Then I hear the little fellow (i was naive and thought there was just one). So, I think, I'll lure him out of the van's hiding spots with cheese curds. Then, and this is where the plan seemed to make sense at the time, will wait in the loft and when I see him, I'll throw my flip-flop at him and push him out the open side door and then my troubles will be over. I even brought a couple of flip flops up in the loft with me just in case I missed the first time. So there I am, 3 in the morning, headlamp pointing on the floor, my arm hanging out of the loft and I'm ready as I can be to push that little sucker right out the door. 15 minutes goes by and I finally see the champ, but he won't run over to the open door to get the cheese. 30 minutes in he runs to the cheese but I miss him. 45 minutes in, no sign of a mouse. 60 minutes in, I'm furious and have to finally give up. So, I think, I'll leave the side door open because maybe he'll want to go back to his family in the morning and just leave the van.
the next day dawns, I climb all day, say goodbye to Dan and Ryan and go back to the van to make a delicious meal of sausage, bell pepper and pace picante sauce all reduced and put over pasta. Yummy. It starts to get dark, and then I hear the mouse. He's still in the car, dammit. O.k. I can outsmart the mouse. I set up a large cutting board with the lid of my Dutch oven propped up with a rock attached to a string. I slide some peanut butter under the lid, crawl on the seat with my headlamp on and wait ever so quietly. After about a half hour he pokes his little head out of the refrigerator exit. My adrenaline starts to pump, he slowly makes his way under the lid, my muscles tighten and I pull the rock out swiftly catching the bugger under the lid. I let out a loud "Yes!" and dance a celebratory jig. I take the cutting board and lid, walk down the road some and release my rascally rodent into the wild (presumably to go off and be with his family- cute little guy).
Time for bed. No more mice. Life is good. Then... at about 3 in the morning I am woken to the sound of scratching around the car. There are more! I crawl out of the loft, set up the trap and crawl back up waiting for him to come around. Only five minutes this time and I pull out the rock and catch another one. No sooner do I release this one do I hear another one. O.k.- whatever, there are some mice in my car. The might leave some poop, they may even eat some food, but what happens if they die in the depths of the car, or have babies or never decide to leave. I start to explore various parts of the car and find a nest made of various packagings of my food. I go to the "secure" food compartment and find little holes in all the packaging. I've got to get these guys, no matter how many there are. I set the trap, climb back up and after 45 minutes of staring at the ground, I catch another one. I'm done for the night now. I don't care if there is another mouse, because tomorrow, I'm buying 10 mouse traps and setting them all around the car. I don't care about catching them live anymore. I want them gone!
For the rest of the night, I keep waking up to the sounds of scratching but choose to ignore it. I will kill them all tomorrow. They can only do so much damage in one night. Marshall: 3, Mice: 4 hours of my life.
I get up this morning to poop all around the van and drive to Mt Pleasant to buy mouse traps. However, once I'm at the store, my heart turns soft and I buy live traps. I sure hope they work. Wish me luck!

Love, Marshall

Plan C implemented

Megan and I spent the entire day in Orem (just outside of Provo- the most conservative city in the US- literally- 80% of provo voted for Bush). We walked around through many parking lots and 60s housing. We did manage to find a health food store and felt like we had found an oasis of non-mormons. Still couldn't find any coffee though. We went and saw "some pirate movie" as the woman at the ticket counter described Pirates of the Caribbean 2 at this funky community theater.
After the movie, we walked back to the dealership where they informed us that they had ordered the wrong part and that the van wasn't going to be done that day. Oh well. Time to implement plan C. I called my friend Heath in Salt Lake, he came and picked us up and we stayed at his place. I took megan to the airport this morning with heath's truck and then he took me to the airport on his lunch break. I think that Heath is one of the nicest people in the world. He really got us out of this bind.

So here I am in Sacramento, CA enduring a little heat and getting ready to do my last bit of work for quite a while. I fly back to Salt Lake tomorrow, go back to lovely Orem (I am missing it already), and then cruise to Maple for a week and a half of climbing adventures. Yippee.

In the future, I will post pictures, but Megan took the camera back east with her and we never got around to dumping the photos to my computer.

Marshall

The First Post- VW adventures

Aug 17, 2006- A bad day

Despite Dan being laid off from his job we had some bad news from our front, which makes Aug 17 a bad day:

So some news from our trip. The climbing was fun in maple and I am starting to feel strong again after only climbing for 3 days there. The plan was to to take Megan to the airport on wednesday night but as we were driving up to Salt Lake, I noticed the A/C in Marge (the van) wasn't working. I checked the fuses and sure enough, the fuse was out but when I tried to replace it, it just blew again. Oh well, I though, don't really need the A/C right now so we jumped back on the freeway and started driving. After about 15 minutes we heard a snap and then smelled burning rubber. The battery light came on and I pulled off the freeway instantly. I managed to drive the Van into an apartment complex parking lot (the power steering wasn't working). And turned it off. Upon inspection I was managed to pull the A/C, powersteering, alternator belt right out. It had snapped. What surprised my was how far we could drive the van on just the battery with no alternator. After some discussion Megan, we decided that this could be an epic fix on the van and megan called to reschedule her flight rather than leave me in Provo by myself with a broken car. I felt bad making her postpone her trip, but I kind of didn't want to be left alone out here in the heart of mormon country.
We grabbed a phone book and looked up foreign garages around where we were and saw that there is actually a volkswagon dealer about a mile from where we were parked. We decided to spend the night in the parking lot and then attempt to drive the van on the battery from where we were to the dealer. Kind of a sleepless night as I was running through all the scenarios in my mind as to what we would do if the battery ran out half way to the dealer on the busy street. "There is an extra battery in the back" I thought, "I could pull it out and use it to finish the voyage." Half way through the night, I heard a car pull up and park in front of our van. Then I saw a flashlight. I looked out through the window and saw a guy with a clamp about the clamp our tire. After I knocked on the window he told me I had to move my car because this lot is for tenants only (the lot was mostly empty). I told him the car was broken down and that we planned to move it in the morning, but he told me to move it now or it would be towed. So we got up and pushed the van to a safer spot. I was afraid to turn it on for fear of running the battery down and didn't want to commit to the trip to the dealer in the middle of the night just in case we couldn't make it. I figured it would be easier to tow the van in the morning rather than at 3 in the morning. So there was megan pushing the van across an empty parking lot to spot we were aloud to park in the middle of the night.
Finally morning came and it was time to drive the thing. We were both glued to the windshield, hearts pumping as we drove as quickly as possible and at as low as rpms as possible (so as not to use to many sparks), to the dealership up the road. We didn't say a word as we cruised up the road and then spotted the dealer. Without incident, we pulled into the dealer parking lot and breathed a sigh of relief at not having to wave down traffic while waiting for a tow truck.

So here we are at the VW dealer and I just got the estimate for the belt and the AC compressor (the compressor was seized up)- $1000. That sucks! We could maybe call around and see if we can get it done elsewhere, but here we are and so it goes.

Anyway, hopefully we can get the job done today so megan can make her 8 am flight tomorrow. If not, we'll come up with a plan C.