Preparations

Christmas is over, and the time is drawing near for the road trip to begin. The route has severely shrank, but the psyche is still there and I'm hoping to get things officially kicked off on Monday!

While at my Grandparents' house for Christmas I was able to make some small changes to the Jeep so it will be more compatible with the road trip lifestyle. Papaw and I managed to snag the seat bottom out and then add in a small sheet of plywood over the top to allow for a little more headroom and also to create an awesome little storage nook for all of my food. Today, I started packing things into some small tupperware containers and getting the last of my laundry done up so that things will be ready to go a.s.a.p.

If I do get to leave on Monday I'm going to be heading down south to Georgia for the first leg of the trip. The destination: Rocktown; an epic bouldering crag outside of the small town of La Fayette. Right now, I have the intent to hang there for around 2 weeks and then it will be off to Arkansas to pull on some more stellar sandstone slopers! I can't wait to get things rolling!

A week in SoiLL

Well the last week has been spent in the company of some great old friends, and also with a few amazing new ones. We've explored some great new areas in SoiLL and have been fortunate enough to get some sends along the way. It was great to climb so long with Wayne too, he's definitely kept steadily improving and he did very well for himself in this new sandstone environment. Here are a few pictures from Wayne's camera from the week...

Sending Buzz Arete V4 at Giant City State Park

Wayne flashing the Center Line V3 at Giant City State Park

Wayne nailing the crux of R.I.P V6 at The Graveyard

Sticking the crux move on Bug Eyes V5 at The Graveyard

Sporting the awesome scarf that Mom made me.

Phillip cruising Shorty the Pimp 5.13a at Jackson Falls.

Wayne working into the crux of Shadow of a Man V5 at the Holy Boulders.

Inspired.

Topping out Enlightenment V5 at the Holy Boulders.

Beautiful sandstone slopers at the Holy Boulders.

My ticklist for the time here looks something like this...

V6

Pinch Me

Big Dyno Problem

V5

Enlightenment

No Name Problem

Bug Eyes

V4

Buzz Arete

Wedlock

Arete Problem

Broken

Gill Roof - Flash

No Name Problem

V3

Punch Drunk

The Center Line

Big Pinch

Skeleton - Flash

Formaldehyde - Flash

Hornball

Mollusk - Flash

Face Problem - Flash

V2

No Name Problem

Cracked Skull - Flash

V1

The Tomb - Flash

V0

Devil's Arete - Flash

Eye Sockets - Flash

Next Week

Well Graduation is today, and tonight will be some festive events. But, starting Sunday night I'm gonna be chilling in Carbondale for a week at Kevin Martin's house and climbing all over SoiLL. I'm psyched and Drew and Wayne are gonna be cruising in too, with the possibility of Brian Martin being there as well. I'm gonna be getting left behind by everyone. Crap! At least I have a tan.

San Ignacio Weekend.

Things I did today:

-Went ziplining in the rainforest. Pretty cool.
-Went cave tubing. Awe inspiring.
-Ate termites. They taste like mint.
-Held a wild tarantula.
-Saw a small species of Toucan.d

Tomorrow we are heading a little further south to some great looking Mayan ruins called Xunantunich (Shoe-nan-to-nitch). After the ruins we will head back towards Corozal and stop at the Belize Zoo. We are all definitely excited, and the zoo is an amazing facility where we will see many interesting species of animals!

Thursday was Thanksgiving. It was an interesting experience being away from everyone for the first time too. While everyone was at Grandma and Papaw's house eating, I was at school working, and for my lunch I ate empanadas instead of turkey and dressing. The empanadas were great! Thursday night Marga's mom cooked us some food for a small T-giving surprise and it was really good too. Unfortunately, it made 3 out of the 4 of us super sick for some reason yesterday. So on one of our great days off we laid around the apartment paralyzed with stomach pain. Bummer.

Next week with school I'm teaching science and language arts to the kids. It will be an interesting and quick four days I'm sure. Friday morning, early, we head out on a boat then to San Pedro for our last weekend trip. When we return late Sunday night we'll only have three more days of teaching and then we're back home! I can't believe things are flying by so quickly! It'll be road trip time before long!

Small update

Hey everyone! Things are doing well down here. I had it sprung on me to teach a Kindergarten class today, it was quite exciting, interesting, and it went well to boot. I'm pretty surprised since I didn't have anything planned for the class, but managed to make it all work out somehow.

Again, everything is going pretty well. I'm certainly enjoying myself and I've been able to see a whole lot of exciting sites. On Saturday of last week we all traveled to some great Mayan ruins called Lamanai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamanai). It was great and the sites were beautiful.

On the Thursday before I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to Mexico with the group as well. We did some touristy stuff, saw a movie, visited the local markets, and swam in an amazing lagoon called Bacalar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacalar). I've never seen fresh water that was so clear!

We teach until Thursday this week and then have Friday-Sunday off. Saturday morning we are heading down south to a town called San Ignacio where we will do the cave tubing, zip lining, and visit another set of Mayan ruins called Xunantunich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xunantunich). I'm pretty excited, and we will get to spend the night down there as well at some hotel. After that we only have the last weekend trip over the San Pedro!

Belize 1

The Last Weekend

Well this past weekend at Jackson was the last... for a while at least. I shamefully spent it thrutching my way up up Cro-Magnon Warrior .12b, which has to be one of the coolest routes that I've been on. My 4th go I found myself through the first crux, and pumped as all get out. I made it to a decent stance and managed to shake for a minute or so, pulled the last crux move but just couldn't get my hand to close all the way around the hold. Bummer.

Anyways, I couldn't have imagined a more amazing final weekend. There were tons of awesome people around The Falls and I was able to spend that last night with some of the closest and greatest friends a dirty climber could ever ask for. Thankfully, I'll only be gone for a month though and will be able to pick right back up where I left off.

On that note, I do leave for Belize this coming Saturday. I am very excited and can't wait to get into the school there and meet all of the great teachers, kids, and experience a new culture! I'll try and keep this blog updated while I'm down there as best as possible, but the internet is less than desirable as I understand it. We'll see what we can work out!