Biking Every Day

I’ve been working in Blahview for two weeks now and I’ve ridden my bike every day. I have no doubt that I’ll be able to keep riding through the summer. The hard part will be next winter when the weather gets bad.

On the map, blue is my trip to work, green are options on the way home, and red are the bus routes.

See more progress on: commute by bike

Bridgid In Costa Rica

I drove Bridigd to the airport this morning. She will be studying in Costa Rica for the rest of the quarter. She won't have access to Internet or phone often, but she's going to try to keep a blog at bridgid.net. Check it out.

EMT Class is Over

I finished the EMT class yesterday and I'm excited to have my weekends back. Somehow we ended up having class for 8 hours every Saturday in order to make up for two 4 hour classes that were missed due to "snow". The severe disorganization of the class combined with insane amounts of busywork made the class inefficient and a little painful, but the practice sessions were good and I ended up learning quite a bit.

Ice Climbing at Alpental

On Friday the 19th, my boss Nathan took Julia and I ice climbing. We went to a short cliff across the road from Alpental ski area. I was surprised by how difficult it was to get solid tool placements in brittle ice. I'm looking forward to getting more top roping in on ice, but that may not be happening this season because of the warm weather. I took two videos of Julia climbing (1, 2).

The blog that keeps moving

A couple of weeks ago, I moved my blog back to Blogger, which involved moving from balexand.com to balexand.blogspot.com since Blogger didn't support custom domain names. A couple of days after I made the switch, Blogger announced support for custom domain names so I switched back to balexand.com. I'm sorry for all of the changes, and I promise that I'll stay put so you can link to my site without worrying about me breaking your links. Also, balexand.blogspot.com will automatically forward to balexand.com.

EMT Course

I started the EMT class yesterday. When I took the entrance exam a month ago, I was surprised to find that both Thien-an and Khoa are taking the class too. The class covers material at a painfully slow pace, but it will be exciting to finally get some experience working in health care.

Two Tries To Climb Jolly Mountain

Photo by Bridgid

Liz, Bridgid, and I headed out to try to climb Jolly Mountain last Friday. We got way too late of a start then we headed up the wrong ridge. But we still got a great view.

We woke up at 4am for a second try on Monday. We headed in the right direction this time but route finding difficulties combined with sketchy avalanche slopes kept us from getting anywhere near our destination. But we hiked up to the top of another ridge, which turned out to make a wonderful loop hike (see map).

Snowy Lakes and Golden Horn

Photo by Jay

Last September, Jay, Liz, and I hiked to Snowy Lakes. We spent the night then climbed Golden Horn in the morning before heading home. The climb was 4th class scrambling, but near the top it was sickeningly exposed. Jay took some awesome photos.

Tarantula

We saw this tarantula on the descent from Crescent Moon Buttress at Potrero Chico. Not only did the descent feature a tyrolean traverse and rappels down loose scree and through cacti, but there were also these guys crawling around.

Panamora From Top of Treasure of the Sierra Madre (5.10c, 7 pitches)

The view from the summit of a climb at Potrero Chico, Mexico. It starts out looking at Wade to the south then pans over to Jungle Wall. It pans up Jungle Wall where the popular Space Boyz (5.10d, 11 pitches) and Yankee Clipper (5.12a, 15 pitches) are. It pans all the way up to the summit that Timewave Zero tops out on. Then it pans to the north where the road can be seen heading towards the campground and the town of Hidalgo before panning around for a goofy shot of Bridgid, Ben, and I. Video taken 12/18/2006.