First, I drove from Mexico to Austin on Wednesday, December 15th, and got to go out to eat with my friends Justin and Caroline, who recently got back from a 3-week trip to Tanzania. So we traded stories about our respective foreign countries while eating delicious Brick Oven pizza.
The next day, I flew from Austin to Seattle where mi novia picked me up and took me out for sushi! I was very excited to see her =)
The next day we made breakfast, and went climbing, and got ready for her birthday / holiday party, which was a blast. We had apple vodka + sparkling cider, sangria, guacamole, chicken roll, ugly sweaters, and mistletoe. And we even made a late-night hotdog run, much to my amazement.
Thanks to Brad for lending me an ugly sweater =)
Love this photo =))
Saturday, well, initially Nicole was going to work but we slept in too late and that ended up not happening, which was fine with me.
We left in the evening for Vancouver, super psyched to go hang out in Canadia. Unfortunately, someone stupid (ahem, me) left their passport in Texas because he somehow didn't think about the fact that Vancouver is in a foreign country. So... on the spur of the moment, we decided to change direction completely and book a hotel in Portland (where passports aren't required), and spend the weekend there instead.
It ended up being pretty awesome actually. We were able to recoup half the cost of the Vancouver hotel (for the second night), and got a pretty posh room in downtown PDX as our home base. The room was really nice, the bed was super comfy, there was free WiFi, and even a jacuzzi in the bathroom. So over the weekend, we went out on both Saturday and Sunday nights, we had brunch at Mother's Bistro on Sunday morning (with delicious french press coffee), we had doughnuts at Voodoo Doughnuts, and coffee at Stumptown. And we saw Black Swan, and had some delicious pasta. All in all, it was great.
Nicole had to work on Monday and Tuesday, so those two days weren't as exciting, but we did get her car fixed on Monday night and went climbing on Tuesday night at Stone Gardens. It's good to do some bouldering for a change after so much sport climbing.
Wednesday night we stayed up late with some friends since Nicole didn't have to work on Thursday, so we got to sleep in before my flight on Thursday evening. It was really kinda sad when she dropped me off at the airport, I realized how much I was going to miss her again /-:
I flew to Denver that night, where my brother picked me up at the airport quite late. It was well after midnight when we got home.
I spent a few days in Fort Collins with my family, celebrating Christmas and whatnot, and it was great, except for the part where I had a 7:20am flight on the 26th, and had to be awake at 3:30am for the airport shuttle to pick me up. I didn't trust myself to sleep and get up, so I just stayed up all night and slept on the shuttle / flights. But I was a zombie for the rest of the day in Austin, and got almost nothing done except for an oil change which took TWO HOURS. They were super busy but still, ack.
Anyway, my plan was to drive back into Mexico yesterday, but my buddy Justin was flying back into town in the morning and I thought, oh hey, wouldn't it be cool if I stayed an extra day and we did a code jam together before I leave Austin? So that's what we did.
So I drove back to Mexico today instead. It was completely uneventful of course, even though I crossed directly into Nuevo Laredo this time. The nice thing about taking so many road trips is that it gives me time to listen to all of my audio podcasts. Anyway, now I am here! And it's super crowded! It's hard to get anything done in the kitchen during dinnertime. But at least it's warm and sunny here, and I have a tent to sleep in, and I can climb!
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