Update and What not.

Since we last spoke I said some things, you said some things we talked, but did we really communicate?

I'm now in Las Vegas, the weirdest place in the states. You can drink in the streets, smoke indoors, gamble and get prostitutes all legally.

The trip started off a bit rocky. We were supposed to leave Friday after work and drive as far as possible. However my good friend TD called up around 2 in the afternoon and wanted to know if I wanted to come to the opening ceremonies of the Olympics? Well of course I said yes. I'll most likely never see anything like that live and a free ticket was impossible to turn down. This of course put a monkey wrench in our take off plans. We however decided to leave the next morning after the show.

I'll say this about the Olympics. They don't go cheap with theatrics. That and 6 hours is a long ass time to sit in one chair. I had a really good time and am glad I went. I know I've been critical of the Olympics and I still feel rightly so, but it's hard to fault athletes and locals for enjoying themselves. I cheered along with everyone else when the thousands of athletes marched through the stadium. Anyone who dedicates themselves to thousands of hours of training to compete for the love of sport falls into the same thinking as climbing.

After a night of fun we woke up early and hit the road. Driving for 8 hours we arrived in Pendleton, Oregon a little tired but no worse for wear. We grabbed a cheap hotel and crashed out for the night. I've noticed that my Dean Moriarty gun-hoe is all but finished. I used to drive non-stop to where ever my final destination was. Now I'm done after 8 hours.

The next day disaster struck and our car lost power while passing a 18 wheeler. Janelle managed to pull the car off to the side of road without getting us killed. I switched and crawled the car another mile down the road to a pull off before the car completely died.

Stuck in the middle of nowhere Idaho. A very kind man pulled over and offered to call us a tow truck. In no time a flat bed truck was loading us up and driving us back to Mountain Home to spend the night then to be towed even further back to Boise the next day. Driving an Audi has it's perks... unless you break down then it's a money pit. Small lesson learned: Purchase AAA or BCAA otherwise you'll get a 339 dollar tow bill. Also one computer chip costs over 600 dollars to install and takes 7.5 hours. So after two wasted days we were back on the road and headed to Las Vegas. That night we stayed in Twin Falls, grabbed a hot-tub and hit the road early racing the rest of the way to Vegas.

Getting in quite late we decided we'd stay in another hotel. And if you're going to stay in Vegas might as well stay on the strip. The cheapest being the Excalibur... for good reason. Ghetto! But we played some slots lost across the board and ate grease pizza. The next day we headed out to Red Rocks and set up our tent and went to check out the bouldering.

Cool rock, small area, lots of crimps and pockets. Not my forte. But we've decided to spend at least 5 days here climbing and hanging out.

The weather has been a bit warm for my liking. 25 degrees Celsius is hot. But Janelle's enjoying the weather and catching a bit of a tan.

Right now it's raining so we're trying to decide weather to drive to Bishop or head to LA to check out Hollywood.

I guess I'll post photos later where I can find better internet. Sorry I know reading this is easier when you can skip most of it to check out pics.

Peace from bat country.

Oh Hi to my faithful readers in Oman! You guys rock!