We are in Mississippi

Well, as hard as it is for me to admit I'm currently in Mississippi visiting with my family. Lora is here too of course. It's a Louisiana thing!

The most recent family photo.

Waiting to get seated outside the Jackson Crackerbarrel. A southern tradition.

It was absolutely fantastic to see my sister, Kimberly, and her two adorable girls. Both Lora and I missed them both a ton. Boy have they grown! It was also great to meet Mark for the first time.

John seems to be doing well. It's been two and a half years since I've seen my brother. He looks great. I'm not sure we'll be able to get a round of golf in this trip but hopefully in April when we return with our new addition.

Until the next post YA'LL BE GOOD NOW!

Two blog posts in the same day? What's up with Tim and Lora?

Lora and I went to Salt Lake City to see our friends Mike and Vicki get married... in an airplane hanger. With the multi-million dollar Lear Jet I felt like I was an extra in a rap video. This was the back-up plan in case of snow. Well, it snowed. The hanger actually worked really nice. Everyone had a great time. It was super fun getting to catch up with some old friends.


While we were there Nicole took some photos of Lora all pregnant and all. I know Sylvia has been hounding us to put some photos up on our blog. Well, here you go Sylvia.


Doesn't she look great? Nicole and Paul are great photographers too. You can check out their websites at the following sites.

http://www.nicolemorgenthau.com/
http://www.richerimages.com/main.php

Another story of Upper Cherry Creek from KayakSessions magazine

Check it out for some photos you have and haven't yet seen. The story is pretty good too. It was just "published" online today.

http://www.kayaksession.com/kayak-yosemite.php

Tim

J and J wedding

Hello everyone, we know we have been very bad with updating our blog. I am getting settled in here at g-mas house. My days are busy working from home, but I still wish I got more done. My belly is growing well and we are getting excited for the big day, which is now Christmas since I crossed the international date line. Sorry Silvia, we still don't have a picture of me looking preggers.

Last weekend we went to Jason and Jessica's wedding reception.




We had a great time. Good food, dancing, catching up with friends and flying pumpkins.


Here is the trebuchet that Jason's brother, Nate, built and supplied endless entertainment as he launched pumpkins great distances.

It was great catching up with Jason, Jessica, Michele, Ben and Jessamyn.

On Sunday we drove to Pacifica where Tim finally got some airtime. He has been trying for the last couple of weekends to get in the air, but the wind has been a bit cross. You can imagine how happy he was to get a 30 min flight in. We finished the weekend with a delicious dinner with Karen, Kevin, Laura, Ara and STINKY. He is still the best cat on the planet and very well loved.

I know, I know... How are we supposed to keep you coming back if we don't put up any new content?

Just a short hello from Sacramento. Things are going well here. Lora is back in the States and looking great. Work for me is fun at times and stressful at other times. We haven't really been up to much action. We've just been hanging out with our friends, family, and of course each other.

Future plans include a trip to New Orleans/Jackson to see family and then squeeze out a baby in December at some time. Feel free to send us an e-mail or a phone call.

Don't worry! Lora and I are still going to be posting to the blog.

Tim

The joys of playing in the mountains

OK so the title of this post basically is an effort by me to explain to you the reader how much my life has been a living hell since returning from the Middle Kings kayak expedition three weeks ago. On the last two days (days 6 and 7) I had to do some walking through poison oak. I've never really had to deal with poison oak more than just a bit no larger than a quarter. Well, I ended up getting it REALLY badly all over my arse! It was a really bad case. So bad that I couldn't even really sit down. I'll spare you the drippy, oozing details. It's finally receding and I can sit without wincing.

Chad with our route up Temple Crag right next to him.

Last week I decided to go climbing in the Sierra Nevada Mtns with a kayaking buddy. Chad is a great boater and like me he enjoys scaring himself on the side of a mountain. We decided to climb an absolute classic, Temple Crag.

Me at the base of the route. It ended up being nine pitches.

Chad snapped this photo of me on lead on one of the loose pitches.

It was a good trip but my poison oak condition made the 6 mile hike in and the climb a rather painful experience. I ended up having a fever due to the P.O. You can see in the photo below me on the approach at 4:00am needing to take a nap due to the fever. It really hit me hard. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we had to do this car to car because we couldn't get a wilderness permit due to the hiker quota.

I need a pillow... and some Tylenol!

Chad on the summit with the Palisades in the background.

All in all it took us about 14 hours. I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if I hadn't have been sick. It sure was great getting back into the mountains on some good rock though. Chad and I have plans to do some more so stay tuned.

A video certainly worth watching! And no there is not any kayaking in it.

Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University died today from incurable pancreatic cancer. Since I've been living in Australia for the past two years I hadn't heard about him. Maybe you have already.

In this youtube video he delivers a lecture in the "Last Lecture" series. It is very good! I know it's a bit over an hour long but what he says in it is basically a plan for living a good life. It all comes down to being a good person and not letting the "brick walls of life" get in your way of achieving your dreams. Absolutely brilliant!

Particularly good for all of the academics in our lives. Mom, be warned you may shed a tear or two.

Watch it!

More Upper Cherry Creek stuff

So I found this video that a group from CO shot and edited of their run down UCC this summer. Cool thing is that I'm in it. You can see my awesome style at 1:26 and then again hanging out in camp. I'm the one with short hair wearing a blue shirt. It's a great video really well done. It would have been good to see some more rapids from the second day but overall a great video showcasing some of the best drops on UCC. Enjoy.


Upper Cherry Creek 2008 from Powder Monkeys, Inc. on Vimeo.

The Watchmen Movie Trailer

So most of you know that Lora and I are closet comic book fans. A few months ago maybe a year I posted about a graphic novel called The Watchmen. I highly recommended the book and mentioned that they were making a movie. We are both geekingly waiting for the release. Well, they released the first trailer and it looks AWESOME! Zach Snyder (the movie "300") is the director and it looks like he is painstakingly recreating the scenes from the comic into the movie. Anyways, I 'm posting the preview from YouTube. Watch it and read the book. The story is so well told in the book and it looks to me like the movie will not be a let down.

News from the Front

Well I have news to report. First of all I was offered a 6th grade teaching position in Woodland, California. I'm really relieved due to the added pressure of securing a job with health insurance so we could actually afford to have our baby here in the States. I'm excited about the job too. It will be in a large elementary school and they use a modified year round schedule. This means that I will have lots of time off during the normal school year. I haven't signed the contract yet but I have an appointment on the 17th of July.

Lora is doing really well. She's over her stubborn cold and is working hard in the lab at the University of Tasmania sorting insects. I couldn't even begin to tell you how many insects she has collected over a 20 month period. THOUSANDS... TENS of THOUSANDS! She's motoring through them though. She's also really enjoying the 2nd trimester of pregnancy more so than the first because the all day morning sickness has subsided. On the phone the other day she told me that she's beginning to show a bit. Not to the casual observer just yet though.

I also just got back a few days ago from kayaking Upper Cherry Creek. This was my 5th time down this superb run and it did not disappoint. It starts out with carrying your boat and all of your camping gear 11 miles up a dusty hot trail far from the river. Then the next two days are spent dropping over one waterfall after another. The landscape is amazing with smooth granite dominating the landscape with dome after dome. The river cuts through these glaciated domes forming a kayakers wet dream. Yes Mom, it really is that good that I had to say that last sentence for effect!

The boys (Matias from Argentina, Chris Harjes, Josh Bruckner, and Dan Glauser) at the lake in the sky. From here it drops into the unportageable Cherry Bomb Gorge.

I had always portaged around the entire Cherry Bomb Gorge section requiring 45mins to an hour of carrying all of my gear over a 1000ft dome. Well this year it was time. I was the only one of our team of five that hadn't dropped the "bomb" yet. I was scared! The funny thing was that I wasn't sure who was more scared, me or the rest of the crew that had run it before. Sitting at the lip of this drop looking down the gorge was one of the coolest things I've done in my many years of kayaking. The coolest thing I've ever done in a kayak was running this gorge. There is something about being completely committed to sticking your lines or else. Well, eager readers we all had great lines off of the bomb with no carnage to report. YEAH! The rest of the run went down great. All in all I probably ended up running at least 20 new rapids that I had walked previously.

Chris in heaven!

This trip down UCC will go down in the books as my second favorite. I will always remember the trip that Lora and I did alone down it as my favorite. It's pretty funny to see the reactions from all of these really to cool for school, hardcore kayakers when I tell them that this run is a wife run and that "Ya my wife and I ran this two years ago." Jaws drop! Damn I love my wife!

Looking down the barrel of a loaded gun. This is from the scout of Cherry Bomb Falls. Amazing! It just keeps going too.