Hello everyone! It has been a really long time since I posted, partly because I am lazy and partly because it does not feel nearly as necessary when we are in the states. So, I will start with a brief summary of the summer and move right along to current events. Below are some pictures from Yosemite that are new so if you have not seen any photos from the summer make sure to take a look. Here we go. . . !





I have to say that this summer in Yosemite was great. Eventually, Shane spent most nights with his girlfriend so Jenni and I ended up having a tent of our own. There are too many events to describe in detail, so I will just mention some notable ones. I did my first wall climb, participated in a pretty sketchy all-night booty run where Russ and I came away with two full ropes (both abandoned and left for us), climbed my first Valley 12.a (a sport climb), climbed East Buttress of Middle Cathedral, finally after 3 summers climbed Royal Arches, got much better at spinning fire and playing my didge, had some epic drum circles, saw my first pole cat, found a nickle arcade with ski ball, saw many of my old friends and made many new great memories.



After Yosemite, Jenni and I road tripped to Vegas to go climbing and see the city, only to find the campsite we were to stay at closed for the season and the sky dumping cloud tears. So, we booked into an Econolodge (there is quite a bit more to this story, ask me sometime) pimped around the strip for a day and then decided to shove of as we were not to into Vegas at that point. We next drove to Colorado Springs a stayed with my sister for a bit before heading back to Kansas.

In Kansas we set up shop at my moms house who graciously let us stay for free in order to save as much money as possible and avoid signing a lease. We spent some time visiting friends and soon Jenni was back at work serving and I was job hunting. Tile jobs proved to be un-forthcoming so I eventually started to substitute teach in between jobs. Subing basically became my main occupation so it was good I started when I did, otherwise I would have had no money at all! September to January was basically spent working as much as possible, seeing friends, climbing too little, eating too much, putting on weight and planing for our adventure in January.

On the 18th of January after pulling an all nighter of organizing, packing, storing and cleaning (we subscribe to Leave-No-Trace after all!) we got to the airport around 6 AM. This was good because the night before it had snowed a few inches which made the roads to the airport complete crap and driving over 45 miles an hour a really bad idea. However, it seemed as if everything was going OK up until now which makes me nervous because leaving the country never really goes smoothly for me. The other shoe was to drop when we found out that our tickets out of Thailand were booked in such a way as to make our stay 30 days and 5 minutes, and without a visa we were only aloud to stay for 30 days! Seriously, was a lousy 5 minutes going to ground us? In the end the super nice checker-in-guy let us on the plan at the risk of getting the airline fined and after that we were on our way!

The flight to Bangkok consisted of: Kansas City to Chicago to Tokyo to Bangkok; a total of about 20 hours flying and 26 hours traveling. Finally, after reaching Bangkok airport we hopped in a taxi and for a total of $2.75 each Jenni and rode to Khao San Road to meet John, who had arrived 6 hours earlier. After a bit of wandering on Khao San, we found the hostel we had booked and had a happy reunion with John, as we had not seen him since he left me in Australia in April.

What a change it was to be in Bangkok! New city, new people and a new temperature and humidity! 80 degrees and 90 percent humidity at midnight! To think that it was snowing when we left Kansas and this is considered "the cool season!"

Well, that is it for now, I will relate our Bangkok stories a bit later, of which we do have many, one involving being robbed by pigeons!