Here’s me blog on bert’s phone. Which admittedly looks more like a prototype teleportation/microwave device than a humble mobile. If he sends me a pic of this entry i’ll put it in the blog and before we know it we’ll have an infinite cat project type thing on our hands… Tonight: bbqing the steak before it goes off… mine’s going to be very well done, for a change. Then Da Vinci code at the cine. If it’s even twice as good as the book. It’ll still be complete pants…
This attempt at running from the top of the Grand Canyon’s North Rim to the South and back had been on the cards for the best part of a year and all my runs over the last year or three have kind of been leading up to this. Having to say goodbye to the best dog in the world, Atticus the day before almost made me cancel but you don’t get opportunities like this very often… Derek, Jon and I headed down from SLC around 3pm on Friday afternoon and set up our tents in the forest about 7 hours later just outside the National Park. Temperatures fell that night to 13F ( -10°C ) and none of us slept particularly well, we were up by 5am and drove to the Kaibob trailhead and changed into shorts and shirts and headlamps and started the descent in the cold and dark as the sun slowly rose. Starting a trailrun downhill is very different to the usual hard uphill and though I should probably have saved my energy, we got to the bottom in under 3 hours and it might be the best trail I’ve ever run, the going was soft and mostly wide enough to pass people okay, the views were magnificent and ever changing with the light and elevation, and the temperature was perfect and shaded all the way down. Any new trail is fun but I’d never been into the actual Grand Canyon before and the scale of everything is just ridiculous for a country lad like me. As good as it gets really.
After crossing the Colorado river and waiting for the mule train to go past delivering luggage and supplies to the folks staying at Phantom Ranch, Derek and I began the ascent, by this point it was getting hot. After getting about halfway up to the rim I wasn’t doing great and the temperature (it hit around 85F (30C)) and incline was only going to get worse. There was also the small matter of getting back the 18 odd miles to the North Rim, so I decided to give up on the R2R2R goal and just make sure I got back okay. Derek, who is made of sturdier stuff and has done this madness before, carried on and made it to the top (South Kaibob trailhead) while I waited down at Phantom Ranch and then we did the long ascent back to the car together. By the end of it I was pretty beaten up and limped over the finish line about half an hour after the sun had fully set and we made it to the Saloon in North Rim in time for Bright Angel IPAs before heading back to the tents. Maybe this time next year I can try again now I know better what is involved. A warmer sleeping bag is first on the list and more training on ascents in full sun/ heat. The full R2R2R that Derek did is 20,000 feet of ascent, 46 miles and I managed about 14,500 over 37 miles or so. It’s by far the furthest I’ve done in a day Map of the GPS recording (10 KM further that the 50K a fortnight ago) but I’m still a disappointed I didn’t do the full thing. Maybe next year. I should have a better phone by then too… these photos could have come out better, with such different light levels and the massive scale of everything it was hard to take decent shots but these give an idea. Photos of me courtesy of Derek. Decided not to include the one of me looking very pale post puke on the way up…
Unforgettable.
What do you reckon to this?
http://agaveweb.com/menu2.htm
It’ll have some rollover nonsense added at some stage. Like hover over the “contact” sign and a Mexican police car will appear and an alert box will take you to PayPal for 400 pesos…
Me Mum wants to see worms and tequila for some reason…
We had a nice old evening round Joop’s last night. Barbecue, guitar, office gossip, fine wines and house prices. Anyroad, went to town this morning to pick up tickets for star wars and sell some books and the streets were deserted ‘cos there was to be some parade or other. I wished I had my real camera with me, but I took a few snaps with me PDA. Sudarat and friends are coming round any second and I’m in charge of rice. Oh, the responsibility. Might manage some proper blogging tomorrow. Feels like it’s been a while and I think we have some dates for the next few months’ plans… The Gaytán-Fisher World Tour 2005-2006 should be passing through: L.A., Zummerzet, London, Brissle, Bournemouth, Oakland, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Zummerzet again, L.A., Nevada, Guadalajara… anyroad, as i said last time, still have to buy the tickets. The selling everything we own has so far netted: $15 for a guitar, and $27.50 for some books. Hoping to get a fair bit more and buy a superlight notepad/lappy for freelance webdesigning and suchlike. Blogging from the beach…
Working like a demented aichtee-emeller today, the microdosis apothecary site‘s now brimming with products and crappy pictures. Among them Hierba de Sapo (Toad Grass, or Eryngo), Essence of Umbilical Cord and Shark Cartilage (sp?). None of them will cure my lifetime affliction of sneezing when I see bright lights or eat strong mints. However, I’m happy to hear that I’m not alone! I am merely one of 25ish% of the population who suffers from (bit strong that, how’s about ‘experiences’) Photic Sneeze Reflex. Apparently it’s only really an issue if you’re a fighter pilot… All these years I’ve been overstimulating my trigeminal nerve without even knowing it. I bet Annelise is the only reader of this blog who’s heard of that particular ganglion…
I’m not at all sure about this microdosis malarky. Granted, vaccines are often small amounts of the thing you’re trying to gain resistence to. But I’m 99% sure you don’t feed anaemics blood to get them going again. Still, I’m just a humble hispanist so what do I know?
Pinguino Frog’s put up some more film recommendations, in Spanish, but he’s usually right on the money. If your Netflix queue needs livening up with some decent cinema, hie thee hence.
Alrighty, back to work. Hasta pronto…
Judging by the stuff I swallowed by accident during the siphoning, it’s going to be very sweet, and potentially explosive if the Grolsch bottles go before the pop caps… Am storing it in a cupboard for a week before it’s going anywhere near a fridge.
So I phoned last week offering my services as a volunteer translator and they called back saying they might have work. I called today and they told me they’re looking for an English teacher to teach small classes of their employees. For free. And that they didn’t have any courses or materials yet. I’d be designing them… anyroad, to cut a long story short, I politely declined citing my web design work. To which they said they actually needed someone to do web stuff and they’ll call back. I’m quite chuffed at that, this would be the perfect inroad to getting some projects to come my way. I might know by tomorrow…
Sita did her stint playing Snakes (Chutes in US speak) and Ladders with kiddies in the town centre yesterday while I wandered off and took photos. Changing the world one Mexican at a time…
Once again we managed not to go a-Pottering last night. Jose turned up and we had another evening of informal political debate and updates on his philandering. Which was grand. Adolescent wizardry tonight though, hopefully.
To see the latest photos of the town centre, click here for the flickry slideshow. And have a picture of a frog to tempt you that way. 