Had a great time visiting the fam in Estes Park for the weekend recently. Watched a lot of movies, had a lot of home-cooked food, and played a bit of cards. Also, on the way back from Estes I managed to get a Sunday night out with Shaun and Kee (and Kee's new girlfriend Jenn) in Uptown Denver.

I didn't even know such a thing as 'uptown' denver existed -- I thought it was 'lodo' or nothing when going out. Denver keeps on changing though, and its no surprise that its getting awesomer all the time :) Had some good food at Stuebens down there, and then hung out at the local Tavern for some good times.

Good times in this case meant jager shots and bar games -- including this naught-often-seen mini-bowling game. Hilarious that the pins were suspended by strings and dropped down like puppets to reset the frame. Special thanks go to Shaun (once again) for letting me crash at his place, and big thanks to Keeler for getting up at 5am to drive me out to DIA monday morning. Great visit guys -- and great to meet you Jenn! (Kee you've outdone yourself :P)

New Photo Album

Photos are up from the Housewarming party welcome me to Claudia's little casita. Great turnout despite the rains, and had an absolute blast. My only regret is that the maximum conversation length with each person that attended was in the neighborhood of two minutes. Oh well, we cashed those pony kegs before 11pm so that's the sign of a good party. Thanks to everyone that dropped by!

New Photo Album

Claudia and I leave the 50 states for the 4th of July - this time to the "51st" state of Puerto Rico. Had a great trip and hit the hot spots of Old San Juan, the casinos, the island of Vieques, El Yunque, Rio Camuy Caves, and the Arecibo Observatory. Met the friendliest people around, and made us feel like we had a Puerto Rican home away from home :)

Apparently Nintendo announced a new product this week - the Wii-Fit. Someone dubbed over their trailer, and it's pretty hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iYBmAVuBns&feature=dir.

Thanks, Trevor!

The eagle(s) have landed back in the USA. Sorry for not blogging, but Puerto Rico is not the land of travel I am used to. American prices, no hostels, and no internet cafes on every block. Here are some interesting takeaways from the trip:

• Windy Mountain Roads: A Puerto Rican highway away from the coast consist of about 40 hairpin turns stuck together in a row. They will intersect with 2 or more highways with the same number of turns.
• Highway Signs: Always misleading, will tell you that a 'road will eventually lead to Highway 149', but certainly isn't the most direct route. Best to work on your spanish and start asking for directions at each intersection
• Broken Down Cars: Turns out that broken down cars in the front yard slash street serve both as a place to put your extra potted plants and as a social status symbol. The nicest neighborhoods and properites always had a borken down car in front. I guess it says: 'I'm rich enough to have bought 2 cars in my lieftime, here's the proof!'
• Puerto Rican Bookstores: The just don't really exist except in the capital San Juan. Well really that's not entirely correct, they have Christian bookstores but nothing else. We litterally went to 2 towns, a Wal-Mart and a WalGreens and found a whopping selection of 50 books. (total). About 40 of those were in Spanish, and useless to me.

Fantastic trip. You gotta see the pics - they will be up as soon as I get time to sort them and post 'em :)

Claudia and I landed after a long but uneventful day of travel from Austin to San Juan, Puerto Rico. This place has been a cool surprise for me. Turns out this place is way more USA like that i had previously thought. But the latin influence (and the constant spanish) is a reminder that we are definitely not in the 51st state :) Things are really pricy, probably like 1.2 times the cost of typical US stuff. But everyone here has gone out of their way to be super friendly which totally rocks.

We've spend the day recovering from our hangovers (Tio Danny's had strong drinks last night) and walking around Old San Juan's cobblestone streets. Some really amazing architecture, statues and colonial era stuff going on -- like La Morra (sp.). There was this group of families flying kites right on the ocean shore up on near La Morra which was really cool...

Also, we have a plan. Renting car tomorrow and catching a ferry to the Island of Vieques to do scuba and kyaking. Should be really cool. Also, my cell phone actually works down here if anyone needs to get ahold of me. I'm leaving mine off so the real world won't haunt me too much. email or claudia's phone is the best way to get ahold of me/us!