These look pretty sweet....like the 007 of booze. Click here to read/buy the ultimate in footwear -- sandles with a flask built-in to the heel.

Thanks, Burgs

Click here to see a pretty hilarious outtake from the Photo Booth sketch done by the Late Show people

Good ole photo booth sketch -- when will it get old? haha

Source: Al, thanks! (original mycoolclips.com)

Well why stop taking plane flights? - I ask. I've just spent a nice relaxing weekend up in the mountains of Colorado up in Estes and doing some e-chores that have piled up. First I repaired my broken 17" Powerbook G4 (the reason why my blogging has dropped off). About 3 weeks ago a part of my powercord broke off inside the connector on my laptop, which required me to both get a new powercord and replace the DC-IN board inside the laptop that provides precious electricity to my computer. Thanks to a helpful online step-by-step how to manual by iFixit, my powerbook is now back in business and taking a charge. Since then, i've pretty much just been playing w/ my photos from the Colombia trip; so I'll be sure to put those up Monday when i get back to a high-speed internet connection.

The folks are hangin in there, and hopefully they will truck it down to Austin after tax season ends to get some more family time in. Other than that,... well time for another flight. woo. hoo.

Well the trip ended fast and furiously, as we didn't exactly sit on our butts in Bogota to finish the Colombia trip. First we used the public transit to get to Monserrate, a really cool monestary on top of this mountain overlooking Bogota. It was a bit smoggy, but it was still a spectacular view from the mountaintop about 3x as high as the tallest skyscraper in the city.

The next day, we rested up (sorta) for a big family dinner with Claudia's aunts and uncles and and sisters and brothers and me and chuck. Some fantastic meals were had on this trip (thanks Aura!) and here are some: Ajiaco (potato soup), Arrepes (fried corn patty), tons of pan y queso (breads and cheese), barbequed pork, about 10-12 different fruits i've never seen before (my favorite was jugo de lulo con leche), and plum cake and oh my gosh tons of great stuff.

Then our last day in bogota, the whole group of nine people (Aura y Luia, Claudia y yo, Paula y David, Andres y Alexis, y Chuck) went in 2 cars to a place called Villa de Leyva, which is a premier Bogota getaway about 3 hours away from the city. They are filming the telanovela (soap opera) Zorro there right now, seen on the spanish channel :) It was a really chilled out old spanish style town, w/ mostly white walls and tons of tiendas selling all sorts of trinkets. Suffice it to say i spent a few thousand colombian pesos there...

Anyway, I just got back to Austin after a job well done, it was another sweet trip and i'll work on getting thos photos together ASAP! ~cheers, Darin (ps - thanks a lot to all of the Lorente-Rodriquez family para todos)

We are back in the city of Bogota after a stunningly beautiful trip to the Parque Nacional Tairona on Colombia´s NE coast. Amazing rainforest and stunning beaches with rocky terrain you have see to believe. And mosquitos that love gringo skin...

We took a short set of busses and trucks from Tagonga to Tairona Wednesday and got to the start of our hike. The trees reminded me a lot of those seen in Costa Rica near Osa, though I did not see much in the line of wildlife. So we walked 2 or 3 km to the beach which was just stunning! Funny too, because i had a hard time enjoying it due to some gastro-intestinal troubles that sprung up during the hike (the way back, i actually appreciated what i hustled by the first time). Past the beautiful Arricefes beach we made our way to Cabo (de la San Guia...?) where we all got hammocks and slept under little lean to´s for something like $4 per night. Great, except for those bugs.

On the way back i tried a little snorkelling (couldn´t find the reef) and a little geocaching (couldn´t find the cache) but had tons of fun along the way! We took the busses back to Tagonga to crash for the night and grab some pizza listening to the music of Renaldo Sanchez (and and his son Pipe?). Then this morning, Paula and David, Chuck, Claudia and I all hopped a plane back to Bogotá and here we are again at The Lorente Casa. We plan on spending the next few days (including my birthday) checking out the city before I head back Mar 20th...

Just a quick note - its been hard to find internet lately so i haven't had time to blog much. We've been all over... Claudia and I met Chuck in Barranquilla and then spent a couple of days wandering around the super cool city of Cartagena. Really awesome stuff, good beaches, a bit of snorkelling, plenty of Aguilas and Club Colombias (beers).

Then we went to this freakin awesome mud valcano! and went swimming in it. the pictures are hilarious - completely covered head to toe w/ warm gooey cream-like mud. From there we cleaned off and made it to the far north-east corner of Colombia where we are now - Tagonga - a small fishing village just outside of Santa Marta.

Today, just chillin in the hammocks and on the beach, and will get ready for a sweet hike thru the internatonally reknown 'Parque Tairona' tomorrow. After that, its back to Bogota in a few days to finish off my trip w/ some great nightlife and celebration of my 1st international birthday, which happens to be my 27th. Stay tuned for pics!

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The Colombia Trip has begin! After a quick stayover at Jenny (Alejandro´s wife) apt in Houston we went to the airport for our 6am flight to Miama and ultimately for Bogota. Turns out, we would not get that to happen as planned.

Instead, our Miami flight got cancelled and we missed our scheduled flight to Colombia. We hopped a later plane to Miami which left us 5 hours to burn in Miami. Claudia's Tio Jamie to the rescue! Her uncle took a half day off work and came down from Ft. Lauterdale to take us out to lunch and take advantage of our new long layover! It worked out pretty well really, because after lunch we pretty much got on the plane to Bogota.

So 9 hours late, we roll in Bogota to find a good chunk of Claudia's family there to greet us. Her folks just finished treating me to an amazing dinner and some great spanish practice and whatnot. Anyway, we´re wiped-and need to get some rest before our trip to barranquilla tomorrow to meet Chuck and continue our adventures. Viva Colombia and will blog again soon!

Photo evidence, and video evidence! Click here to watch the video of Claudia and I finishing the race.

Hey all, just wanted to send a note out apologizing for the 2-3 day outage of my ole blog. The $$$ ran out on jumphook.com and they had the wrong 'notificiation' email for me so I never got word. Factor in the fact that my laptop is currently broken, I had no way to check any more. Anyway, all's well again, time to get excited for NCAA tournement action!