Seasons Greetings!

Howdy folks,

Much time has passed since my last one of these and there is much to tell. So without further ado... I find myself residing in the lovely Black Hills these days. Most time when not away for work, I can be found... (you guessed it) climbing! This first photo is of your humble narrator climbing up a famous old climb called "Threading the Needle". The climb is right over a parking lot full of rubber neck tourists. It is quite common to be sweating it out, trembling and scared, delicately balancing between success and a ghastly fall only to have some goober in the parking lot yelling up "How did you get the rope up there?" or some such thing. But every once in a while, they pull through and take a nice photo and send it to you.

The next job to come after Norway was out to this island off of the coast of CA called San Nicolas Island. It is a military island which also serves as a nature reserve. Most of the beaches were covered with hundreds of seals, sea lion, or elephant seals.  This picture to the right is of a group of female elephant seals. They may be cute, but good gravy do they stink.

I was on the island for about 3 weeks which pales in comparison to the native girl who had lived on the island by herself for 18 years. There is a book about it called "Island of the Blue Dolphins". When it was too windy to work, me and couple of the guys from work were able to rent beach cruiser bikes. We formed a gang (which we called The Dugongs) and explored as much as we could. It was pretty much like having a national park all to ourselves. Here a sea lion soaks up some sun.

 The next place I ended up was drastically less appealing. I spent a week in a very small, northern town in MT called Glasgow. It was rather uneventful, so I wont give it much more mention than that. After making a quick stop back to MN to spend Thanksgiving with the family, I packed my bags for Guam. It is in Guam that I sit composing this blog. It is 4am Saturday morning here, though it is only Friday afternoon for most of you reading this. I have been out here for three weeks and had such an amazing experience.

Here is the view from my hotel. It is literally on one of the best beaches on Guam. The snorkeling was unreal. Most days consisted of going to work, coming back to the hotel and snorkeling. The temps here stayed a pretty steady high 80's and the water was about the same. When not snorkeling, I could usually be found rummaging through the palms tree and jungle looking for coconuts. Much was learned about coconuts in the trials and tribulations of trying to open them with only sticks and stones. But I am stubborn if nothing else, and many coconuts were thoroughly enjoyed. I had to stop and laugh at myself for a moment as a pretty woman went running by me and gave me a look that made me realize how much of a primitive mad man I must have looked like down on my hands and knees smashing coconuts with rocks on the beach. C'est la vie.

Here is a picture of one of the critters that was around in hoards. They were quite fun to catch and really interesting to watch.

In my free time I was lucky enough to get a chance to do some scuba diving. Comparing the diving in Guam to the only other diving experienced in central WI (in late October in a man made lake none the less) made for drastically different experiences. Even down at 100 feet, the water temp in Guam felt like lukewarm bathwater and there were tropical fish everywhere. The most notable sightings while diving were a couple of black tipped mako sharks, and a number of sea turtles. I got to do a total of five dives, two of which were the most sought after dives on Guam called "The Blue Hole", and "The Crevasse".

Here is another critter that was around in big numbers and there is actually a good reason for this. Recently there has been a real big problem on Guam due to a large emergence of an invasive species; the brown snake. Not so long ago, the island had become almost devoid of birds. The snakes arrived with no natural predators on the island, began eating all of the birds which were the biggest consumers of the spiders. Thus, the spiders began to boom. The problem is still being worked on, but getting better. The snakes are declining, the birds are increasing, and the spiders still seem largely present, though mostly harmless.


For the of the WWII history buffs in the crowd, you might understand the significance of a place like Guam. For those who don't know, the possession of Guam was one of the most important in the war in the Pacific. Without it, America would have had no place to stop for supplies, gas, rest, etc. There was some very gruesome fighting that took place on the island, and to stand on the invasion beaches where thousands of Americans lost their lives caused for a very surreal experience.

So all in all, once again life has been quite good to me. I am actually finishing up this blog post back home in the Black Hills after 26 hours of travel. Feels nice to be home. After the holidays I will be taking a week and a half long climbing trip back to my old stomping grounds in AZ. So until the next one of these... live life in abundance!

                 And have a Merry Christmas from Santa and Danta!

Norway sampler pack

 Hello, hello,

Much to tell and little time to hold your attention, so I will dive right in. I will mention that I spent three weeks in New Hampshire working, but compared to Norway, deserves only that amount of recalling. So allow me to begin...

Leaving NH, your humble narrator spent about two and a half days traveling to get up to Vardo, Norway. If you look on a map, Vardo is about as far northeast as you can go in Norway (you can see Russia from there). Vardo is a very small island nestled far up in the Arctic Circle. It is mostly inhabited by reindeer (pictured here), but there was a small population as well. Surprisingly though, Vardo has had a very interesting past. There are bunkers built into every hillside (used for resistance against Germany in WWII), a very old military fort, and a very ugly history involving the killing of many innocent pagans, aka, "witches".

This second picture is from the inside of the Witches Memorial. It is a long hallway with plaques containing the information of all those killed (over 100), what they confessed to, and how they were killed. Basically it was a horrible time to be a woman. Something as small as an argument with a neighbor could be enough to be accused. Once accused there were two paths that would lead to your imminent death. Option one was to be tortured until you confessed to anything. I suspect almost anyone would admit to "worshiping Satan" after two days under a knife. Once you confessed to witchcraft, you would be burned. Option two was called the Water Test. It was believed that Vardo was the epicenter of Satan's work in all of Europe. It was also believed that water was the element of god. The water test involved being stripped naked, having hands and feet bound, and being thrown into the water (arctic ocean mind you). If the accused sank, and drown, they had been "accepted" by god and were in heaven. If the accused floated, as all humans with air in their lungs would and did, you were a witch. At that point you might just be burned, or perhaps you would be tortured until confessing, and then burnt. Everyone's religious beliefs are wrong... except for yours of course.



While in Vardo, we worked 5 days a week. This allowed for a few shorter road trips in the far north on the weekends. This is a picture of me in a place called Nordkapp. It is as far north as you can go in Europe. The winds were blowing at like 70mph while we were there. It took us about 18 hours to do this road trip as most roads go along the fjords, and nothing is close together that far north.

The food took a bit of getting used to while being there. Standard breakfast in Norway involves fresh bread, deli meats, and fish. I did get to try some interesting and unusual foods though... whale, moose, reindeer, eel, and cloudberrys.

This was an image I was happy to not only experience, but also photograph. This was taken right out of my hotel window. Rainbows occurred on a daily basis, and sometimes more than once a day. My work up there involved working on a radome ("no photography" was strictly enforced). The best day I can recall of work went something like this...

Get up on top of the dome (about 150' tall). Rappel down the side, making repairs to the fabric. The sun's out and it was pretty warm, and a cool ocean breeze makes it feel like fall. In front of me the view is of the small island of Vardo, scattered with small pastel colored houses (though mostly red). To my back is the endless arctic ocean (a group of whales swims by with some frequency). On my right, fjords fade in the clouds. And on the left side, far across the water is Russia.

Once the job finished, your humble adventurer took the boat (pictured in the rainbow photo) called the Hurtigruten (pronounced Hoot ih rootin). I had a two day boat ride from Vardo to a place called Svolvaer. Between the women of Norway and the boat ride alone, I have never seen so much beauty in my life. Check out a picture of Troll Fjord if you would like to see what I mean. The boat ride went all along the coast and weaved through the islands and fjords. The only real downside of the Hurtigruten was that it was mostly occupied by old German couples. At one point there were so many grey and purple haired fogies in a line, I thought I might have found myself on the boat crossing the river Styx (bahahahhahahaha).

Once off the boat, this is the view I was greeted with in the Lofoten Islands. I spent a night in a place called Kabelvag where I was able to get my hands on a rowboat and cruise around a fjord until dark.


After spending the night in the Lofoten Islands, I caught a bus going to a place called Sortland. There is a website I would encourage anyone interested in such things called Couchsurfing.com. You can sign up to be a host or a surfer. You maintain a profile, people write reviews about their experience with you, and so on. Anywho, I had gotten in touch with a number of people before I got to Norway and they had welcomed me to stay with them. So I went to Sortland to stay with a guy named Svein. When I arrived he had four people from Israel staying with him. This photo below is of the lake he lived on (the tallest mountain in the background is a famous rock called Reka). Svein was a very worldly, kind host. He cooked me whale, let me take his canoe out, had a 21 year old cat, and his house reminded me of a cabin in the northwoods of WI. We had great conversations about culture and life, a jam sessions with the Israelis, and spent some time splitting firewood for him.


After spending a few days in Sortland, I caught a bus to a place called Fauske (pronounced Fas kah), and caught the train further south to Trondheim. Many of my travel days were day long ordeals, usually at least 14 hours, but it was a great way to really see the country. Many locals I met told me that I had seen more of Norway than most Norwegians, as most Norwegians choose to travel internationally instead.



This photo is of famous old Trondheim. I had the unfortunate timing in my travels as school was starting up again. All of the youth hostels in Norway are dorms, so once school begins, the hostels close and you are left only with hotels. Norway has the highest standard of living in the world, and two of the most expensive cities in the world... Oslo, and Trondheim. So my stay in Trondheim was unavoidably expensive. It is also a place of high fashion and shopping, so much time was spend walking around observing. To give you an idea of what prices were like... an average dinner, say a hamburger was about $35. A beer, not even a micro brew mind you, was about $12 per glass.


So I was very fortunate in my travels in the sense that the couchsurfing hosts I had were overly generous. Luckily for me, my host Siw (pronounced Seeve) picked me up from Trondheim and drove me to her house in Sunndalsora. Norway just continued to unravel more and more beautiful scenery. The town of Sunndalsora is the kind of place that most Norwegians haven't even heard of except salmon fisherman, and BASE jumpers. There is nothing going on there. The lady I stayed with though was so kind. She had 11 Icelandic horses that she used for therapy for recovering drug addicts. She took me riding one night. This photo was taken from her yard. Keep in mind that these mountains are probably at least 4000' tall. Siw even owned a piece of one of these mountains, including the waterfall, and mountain spring in it. We cooked each other traditional dinners, spoke of culture, family, and life in general. After spending a pleasant two days in the Sundal valley, I took another day long train ride to Bergen.


...Endless scenery...

In Bergen I met up with a friend of a friend, a kind and beautiful girl named Johanna (pronounced Yo-ha-nah). She showed me around Bergen, took me out hiking and swimming, and even brought me to a climbing gym. Something to note about Bergen is that it is much like Seattle... it rains almost everyday. Off and on, all day long.

Due to the rain I didn't get many good photos of Bergen, but here is a really neat, old part of town. There were many art studios, and shops tucked back in here. After a few days in Bergen I had but one more place to go... back to Oslo to catch my flight home. Unexpectedly the 12 hour bus ride from Bergen to Oslo was the most scenic traveling I had done in Norway, second only to the Hurtigruten. Norway is the land of countless waterfalls. I must have seen well over 100 waterfalls in my two weeks of traveling... unreal.

So anywho, that was the bare minimum I can portray from my trip. There are so many more stories I would love to share about the trip, but it would just be too much for this blog. I am back in the good ol' US of A. I find myself in MN right now, spending a little time with the family. I will head back to CO soon where I have off until the 17th. Then I head to CA for two weeks of work. What happens for October and the coming months remains unclear at this point. There is talk of Germany, England, and Australia coming up... so stay tuned. And remember... don't do anything I wouldn't do (but be sure to tell me all about it if you do).

My beautiful Norwegian troll girlfriend

Summertime and the livin's easy

 Greetings!

How's it going? It has been a little while so it seemed I should slop another one of these things together. Lots has been happening, so this should be interesting.

I have recently gained employment with a great company called Radome Services LLC. They had me out in VA for a little over a month working on this here radome. This is basically a giant, heavy duty Kevlar balloon that is used to protect radars and antennas from the elements.

The old domes were about 20 years old and needed to be replaced. We had a bunch of prep work to do but the really cool parts were lifting off the old domes and putting the new ones on. The lift days involved two cranes, one of which was a 50 ton crane (it needed another crane just to put it together), 50 day labors to work the tag lines, and then my crew. The crane would pick up the dome and pluck it right off.


(This picture above is what the dome was covering, but this is classified, so shhhhh)
*Note; Photo removed due to graphic nature....


Putting on the new dome was a bit more complicated. It was basically the same process in reverse but there were a lot more potential wind/snag hazards. I wished I could get a photo of the lift because the deflated dome looked like a giant jellyfish with all of the tag lines hanging off of it. 

 The work was cool and I got to do some pretty cool stuff on the weekends too. This is a picture of the Luray caverns. If you are confused about what you are looking at, there is a small pool of water reflecting what you are seeing on the ceiling. I also got to go to Washington DC and see my childhood friend Chris. The boy who got his head stuck in our deck railing and use to help me throw large clumps of dirt at passing cars is now a respectable young man, doing good things for this earth. I also snuck into a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. I stayed long enough to watch them play their popular songs but left pretty quickly... there is just something about watching guys "rock out" who look like they are dodging wheelchairs and depends.


Anywho, after such a long time of working and not climbing I needed a fix. Luckily my old Phoenix friend, Colin, was on his way out to visit me for a climbing trip. We climbed around Boulder for a few days and then headed to a place called South Platte. The climbing was pretty cool but this storm was one of the more memorable parts. We were at pretty high elevation and the lightning was right over us.

We then headed to my old stomping grounds... the Black Hills. The weather was a bit cold for most of it, but we were still able to make the most of it. If you have ever driven through the Needles, you might recall the Needles Eye. This is a picture of me on top of the Needles Eye after climbing a notoriously dangerous route, which I was unaware of (thanks for the warning, Colin).

When it was too cold for climbing we made the most out of the beautiful scenery. Here is a buffalo who seemed to care about our presence as much as a bear cares about a tick on its ass.

 The trip ended too quickly but I was able to get a nice climb in with Colin and my roommate, Franklin (the two hooligans in this photo) in the Rockies.

I was also surprised one day by a face from days gone by. My friend Angela, from my NV days, happened to be in the area and surprise, surprise... wanted to climb.

We decided to do a pretty big climb a bit deeper in RMNP, so a bit more was involved. We ended up getting back country "bivy" permits so we could camp near the route.

We hiked in one afternoon with our climbing gear, and a minimal amount of camping gear. It was a 6 mile hike in with a fair amount of elevation gain. There were reports of a half mile stretch of forest with severe wind damage and a horrific amount of downed trees. We were aware of the challenge and ready to face it, but lo and behold as we were hiking in, the chainsaw crew was hiking out. They had told us they had just finished clearing the entire trail (saving us a few hours of tree hell). "Our saviors!" I exclaimed. I didn't have much to give them but I shared my bag of skittles to show my gratitude. Lucky us.

We weren't allowed to bring a tent in to this back country area, but there were these big boulder caves that people had created. Stones had been assembled as walls underneath big roofs to block the wind. It was like a little hobbit hut.


This was the view out of our "patio". This is supposedly one of the most scenic areas in RMNP called Glacier Gorge. The next day we got up and did our climb and had awesome weather. The hike out was pretty grueling as we were so tired, but still thankful that the path of trees had been cleared.

So that should about catch you up. I am in the middle of paragliding lessons right now. I have flown twice, and it is pretty awesome. Perhaps another hobby to pursue.

I have a few more weeks off before my next job, and lord knows it will probably be filled with climbing. Once I go back to work in early July I will be heading to New Hampshire for three weeks (working on radomes). Here is the real kicker... right after NH I will be flying to Norway (for work) for a month. Hoping I will get to extend my stay and travel, and who knows... perhaps some paragliding on the fjords? Come on now... this sounds like a fictional adventure novel.

How did I get so lucky?

I hope all is well for anyone still reading these, and anyone who isn't.



Bugs and Fishes,

The Danimal

(Insert punny title here)

Hey there!

How's life been treating ya? Can't complain myself. Life went from a solid three months of no work and hardcore relaxing to lots and lots of work. When it rains it pours it seems. It also seems as though my level 3 status in rope access has helped to haul in some work.


The first of these jobs brought me to a part of the states that I haven't really spent much time in... the dirty south as they say. I spent about a week and a half working in Georgia, and then a few days spent in Alabama. Both jobs were at paper mills and there is only one word that could describe the common state of a paper mill... disgusting.

The work we were doing was pretty cool though. It is called non-destructive testing, and intrigued me enough that I am currently taking a class for NDT. Basically the paper mill wanted us to take thickness readings on a number of holding tanks that they have.
This would allow them to see if any of the substances being held in said tanks were corroding the metal at an unusual rate. I was only supervising the rope access part of the work but the guys on rope were using a method of testing called Ultrasound Thickness Testing. They would carry a little machine with them that would shoot sound waves at different frequencies into the metal and based on how the sound waves bounced back, they would be able to determine if there were flaws or weaknesses in the metal. Pretty cool.

If you have ever driven by a mill though you must be familiar with the musk that it is all too happy to invade your olfactory sense with. You can see here a very unnatural liquid being spewed into the earth. This chemical is the very source of the most unholy scent I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing, literally causing your humble narrator to gag from the smell.


The work in Alabama was much the same, but only a few days long. I left the south (a place I would be content to only visit on occasion) and headed back to the land of normalcy and racial tolerance. With only a week off before the next job, ya gotta make the most of it. I have been spending almost all of my free time climbing in beautiful Boulder Canyon.

Here you can see me getting ready to decipher the first difficult section of a climb called Gorilla's Delight. Since the weather has just been amazing our here lately I have also been lucky enough to get on some of the rocks that were too unclimbable in the winter. The Flatirons are the icons of Boulder and are amazing playgrounds.




So after a few days of playing in the mountains life led me to Washington. It is hard to imagine more of a contrast that going from working in the southeast at a paper mill to the northwest at a wind farm. The wind farm was near a place called Clarkston, WA. This was just a stone's throw across the river from Lewiston, ID.

Though the temps down in Georgia were already in the 90's with high humidity, the weather in Washington was still cold and dry. We had a number of days were we could not work due to snow.




It was an awfully pretty place to be working. As a "supervisor", I am not allowed to get on ropes. Companies hire on level 3's to be there for complicated rescues, and rigging. This means most of my time was spent sitting up on top of the turbine (the nacelle). The days can be pretty long but as you can see, it was pretty picturesque.

So after about a week and a half in WA I flew back to CO, where I find myself now. The weather has been just great and easy to make the most out of it.



Oh yeah, this was a picture taken from the plane ride home from WA. Usually this amateur photographer doesn't support the cause of plane window photos, but the layer of clouds looked pretty cool.

So tomorrow morning I will be flying to Virginia and will be gone for about a month. I get to work (not supervise) for a new company where we will be disassembling and reassembling what are called radomes (check out an image of one). A radome is a dome structure that goes around antennas and radars to protect them from the elements. So that does it. After returning from VA, I will have a berfday (25), become an uncle, and be hosting my buddy Colin for a few weeks of some hardcore climbing. Stay tuned!

There is pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Lord Byron

Mountains, mountains, everywhere

Howdy all,

Work has been at quite a minimum lately and leisure time has been quite high. Thankfully in a place like Boulder it is easy to fill the days. So let us begin...

These first two pictures are from a snowshoeing trip with my buddy Clay. This is an area only about 45 minutes away from my place in Boulder.


We were hiking in to a lake called Sky Pond. It is an amazing alpine lake at the foot of some pretty sheer cliffs, and a number of "must-do" climbing routes. This first picture here is towards the start of the hike. oOo... ominous.



The hike started off on some pretty well packed snow, but before too long we had to bust out the snowshoes. Here is Clay taking a moment to enjoy the view.


Snowshoeing is an activity that your humble narrator has has little exposure to. Aside from Ms. Ewens gym class back in ol' Diamond Path elementary, the only other time I have gone was around Lake Tahoe. We forgot to bring a bottle o' two buck chuck this time, but somehow we still managed to have a little fun... somehow.

So far Boulder has been an awful kind place to reside. Not only is there just so many things to do and explore, but the bipolar weather here allows for a huge variety of activities and adventure.




This picture is from mountain biking around South Boulder. This was literally the day after snowshoeing (amazing contrast, aye?). It was probably about 50 degrees and pretty sunny. This was a fine place to enjoy an avocado and canned tuna, though just about anywhere would be a good place to enjoy that snack.





With so much life to be had, why wait around for it to come to you?

This is where life took me the next day. This is another place in the Rockies. The big clean face you see is called "The Diamond". It is one of the best alpine rock faces to be climbed in Colorado.

I only hiked to the lake at the base, called "Chasm Lake". But looking up at this impressive rock, I couldn't help but to drool. The summit is at 14,000 ft, and what I hope will be my first fourteener, as they say.




Then one Sunday morning after waking way too early and realizing there was nothing going on all week, I checked the weather... snow, snow, cold, snow, ice... damn, my arch enemy was in town. How had he found me??? The average man might be content to hide from sick old man winter but not me. How dare he try and keep me from my cathedrals and sanctuaries! No one tells me what to do! But... what to do?

Go somewhere else.

So I saddled up the horse and rode north to a land I once knew well... the Black Hills. There I met up with my longtime friend, Lindsey.



We went to Custer (note the unusual rock "face" pictured here), a hockey game, and to the old college stomping grounds in Spearfish. It was a great way to spend a week. It is always so interesting to visit a place that was once called home and take a stroll down memory lane.





Sick of mountains yet? Didn't think so... how could ya be? But the story takes a plot turn, so fear not. If you had seen the last one of these I threw up, you may recall that I was soon to attend my S.P.R.A.T. Level 3 course...


Well that time has come and gone now and I am happy to tell you that I am now a rope access "Supervisor". This is a picture of Tough Terry being rescued in one of the skills required to pass. This is called a high-line rescue.


Just a short while after the course, my evaluator invited me on an annual ice climbing trip. I have never gotten to ice climb before and I couldn't pass it up.

It was a large group that showed up; perhaps around 50. Many knew each other from either rope access or alpine rescue teams, or from ice climbing trips gone by.

This picture are the mountains that surround the ice park. This is Ouray, CO. What makes this place especially unique is that they form the ice. There is a pipeline that runs on top the canyon and at night they have "ice sculptors" turn on sprinkler systems and shape the ice. There are hundreds of ice climbs, which is not something you will find anywhere else in the U.S.

Here you can see the result of every ones efforts. So the days were spent ice climbing all day, drinking all night, and topping it off with the hot springs. These hot springs have natural occurring lithium which apparently is what is given to people with depression. When one emerged from these hot springs, steaming in the cold starry night... life seemed pretty good.

So there ya have it folks. That is what I have been up to in a nutshell. I am heading to Alabama for a few weeks of work coming up soon. Winter is starting to loosen its grip and us sun worshipers are ready. Hope all is well for everyone!

Bugs and fishes,

Dan

Heaven sent, hell bent, over the mountains we go

Hey there,

What's up? What's good? What's new? What's going on? How ya been? How ya doin? Hanging in there? Staying outta trouble? Whatcha been up to? Where you been hiding? Which way ya going? You come here often? Have we meet before? Hows life?

Life is going pretty well here. Its' been interesting, as usual. So here we go... After the last one of these I returned to Milwaukee for a few days of work and then pretty much headed right to Fort Stockton, TX. I spent a work weeking out there replacing ladder sections inside of the turbines. This is the view when you pop your head out of the top.

Once I finished in TX I returned to CO and was lucky enough to find a great place to live in Boulder. I have two roommates in this house (we all went climbing today). If you know how many mountains are a stones throw away from Boulder, you could imagine I'm as snug as a bug in a rug.

I was intending to go back to MN for a few weeks over x=mas but an opportunity came into my life that I couldn't pass up. I spent my x=mas in Mexico with people I met over the internet (it's not as bad as it sounds... though I still dont know why I woke up in a seedy motel room in a tub full of ice). *This first black and white is a photo of an old church in the middle of the desert.

We left Colorado one night (we drove to Mexico) and ended up heading straight into one of the worst blizzards that I have ever seen. All the major highways heading to TX were closed. We ended up getting a hotel room and trying again in the morning. After many other mishaps and pure luck we got to where we were going... El Potrero Chico. It is this awesome national park that boasts some of the tallest bolted climbing routes in the world.



There are a number of camps right at the entrance of the park that really cater to the climbers that go there. The campgrounds have a big community kitchen, showers, and a nice restaurant. Here is a pic of the mountains scraping the sky behind the kitchen. Some of the taller cliffs in the park were over 2000'.

We ended up staying there for about 10 days in total. The weather was actually pretty cold but it warmed up to the 80s the last few days we were there. I got to climb some really cool routes. It is nice to climb a big route and not worry about all the gear. I also got to meet some great people and climb with new found friends.


On our 20 hour push to get back to CO, we awoke to this on the last morning of driving, well hopefully not the driver. It seemed a great conclusion to our trip and a good omen of things to come.

So if you read my last blog you might wonder if I am writing this in Florida right now. The answer is no. Some b.s. got kicked around and we ended up getting ousted from the job last minute. But not to worry. I have been pretty much just been relaxing and enjoying the cool new place I live.



Here is a pic of the Flatirons. These are a great place to hike and also to climb, though I have yet to climb there. I will be heading back to TX for some more turbine work. Soon after that I will be attending my level 3 certification course for rope access. I am very excited about that, so keep your fingers crossed for me. Anyways, I suppose that should about catch you up for now. Hope you all are doing well. Have fun!

Dan