Holiday!

Hi everybody. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa, etc...!

I Photoshopped a strange card for everyone. I used to make weird digital images for holidays and birthdays and whatnot and I thought it would be a good time to start again.



My favorite part is the Darth Vader with the Santa hat floating in the water...

Refinery week

I spent another week in a refinery. This time it was ExxonMobil (often referred to as "CherMobil")



Wearing all that stuff sucks. We wear helmet, ear protection, flame retardant coveralls, safety glasses, H2S monitors, steel-toed boots, and gloves. And all was doing out there was standing near some pipes. Well, after not working that much for the better part of a year and a half (how did I go that long?) I need the money. Rope Access pays very well and requires little. Plus, being a climber, I'm already comfortable with the rope access part. The rest of the job, inspections and all that, is something I don't know. But hey, we celebrate the paycheck now!

Old Climbing Photo

By old I mean sometime this last April (I think).

Here I am rappelling into a bag of trail mix that Christine is holding up. Joshua Tree.

Tinsel Tri

The Tinsel Triathlon takes place in Hemet, CA each year. It's a short reverse triathlon. 5k run, 12 mi. bike, 150m pool swim. Very short. Olivia and I ran it together in 1:14:12. It was a blast.

Me with another finisher medal from yet another race...



Olivia is a tough triathlete. She always surprises me how much she improves from each race!



We rocked!



This is the coolest guy ever. I want to dress like this from here on out. Seriously, awesome!

Climbing in Malibu

Last saturday (sorry I'm a week past due) a few of us went climbing out in Malibu Creek State Park.



Though we didn't do any hard routes I did manage to have a great time and even managed to safely rig a piggy-back climb. I climbed a 5.6 with Olivia on my back. All was rigged for safety so no worries. I made it about half way before we had to switch to a simul-climb, having about 4 feet of rope between us. Then we downclimbed because being lowered may have been not as comfortable for our belayer.



Olivia and me belaying



Getting to and from the area we were climbing required a traverse over the water! Awesome!

2 more from Death Valley

Here are 2 of the photos from Brightroom (event photographers):

Death Valley Marathon

This past weekend, 12/6, I ran the 11th Death Valley Marathon. It was wild. There were only 149 runners, of which I finished 77th, mid-pack. I expected to finish around 3:40 but ended up with some pretty bad electrolyte-related problems that put me back an hour for a 4:40:22 finish time. It was around mile 15 that I started to falter and by mile 20 I was out of it. Eddie joined me for the last 3 miles and when I got to where he was waiting I was in a haze, many parts swollen, and ready to stop running. But I pressed on and finished the race.

Lesson: Death Valley is an extreme environment year round. Though it was in the 70's and not well over 100 degrees the dryness evaporated my sweat before I felt the moisture. This caused me to not realize that I had lost so much sweat. By the time I realized, around mile 11, and started trying to replace electrolytes, it was too late. So the next time I run in Death Valley (and I'm quite looking forward to it) I'll be much more careful and I'll run with Endurolytes electrolyte pills (we used those in our Grand Canyon R2R2R run this summer).

I talked to quite a few other runners who each said similar things. Apparently a lot of people just didn't know it would be so harsh. Despite the physical degradation and mediocre performance I had a great time on the run, talked to some cool people, and very much enjoyed the scenery. We ran on Highway 190 out and back from Furnace Creek. This stretch of highway is only a small part of the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile run from Badwater, Death Valley (lowest point in US) to the Mt. Whitney portal (highest point). I'm not ready for it yet but in a few years I'm hoping to be ready to run it myself..

Here's some photos:



Eddie and Cindy drove around until they found me-




And with 3 miles to go Eddie joined me as I half ran-half staggered toward the finish-



Coming in delirious and covered in my own salt!



And now for some Death Valley photos:

Badwater, the lowest point in the western hemisphere (-282 feet below sea level)


Walking around below sea level


Salt:





Sand Dunes (if you look really closely you can see people standing on top)-


As I was driving back (on Hwy 14) I came across a double rainbow. The main one was very vivid and the second only shows slightly. They were amazing. Then the sun set and the rainbows went away, leaving me with some great colors. I shot these with my crappy point-and-shoot while driving. I wish I had a nice DSLR and some good lenses. All in good time.

"Prop 8: The Musical"

In this blog I haven't gotten political before... so here I go:

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

A Thanksgiving update

For the week of Thanksgiving I spent most of the time in Sacramento at my parent's house. Several friends came. Thanksgiving morning we ran the Folsom Turkey Trot 10k. I ran it in 46:01, which isn't bad at all. Here I am finishing:



After the race we had a fun Thanksgiving with some of my best friends and my family. It was pretty cool.

A couple days later we went to San Francisco. We went to the store Sports Basement, which is AWESOME! Then we walked to a little tiny pub called the Black Horse London, which is only slightly bigger than my truck. It's owned by James, a great Irish guy with a big sense of humor. There's no fridge there - just a bathtub full of ice and beer. You could barely cram 15 people in there and all there people there were great to socialize and drink with. This was one of the best pubs I've ever been to and the next time I'm in San Francisco I'll definitely be going there again.

At some point during our 7-8 miles of walking we spotted a few Smart cars parked next to a small SUV. This was pretty funny... but you couldn't live in one of those.



Now back in Southern California but heading to Death Valley this weekend for the Death Valley marathon.