Check out this rather stupid, high-altitude giddiness sponsored extreme sport: Dirt Skiing, by Darin Gillis.

On the descent from 19,340 ft. Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, there is a considerable amount of loose gravel that makes for an interesting extreme sport: dirt skiing. With just hiking boots, you can glide down the slope while using snow skiing style moves to avoid the embedded rocks.

Thanks Dustin, for filming this

Well here I am. In a (pretty nice) hotel room in Cluj, Romania. Its pretty cold outside, one has to wear a scarf in the night breeze. I haven't been drinking for 24 hours or so, which is easily the longest stretch of time in the past week I've pulled that off.

So why hasn't he blogged before now you may ask? Well from the second i've arrived in Cluj I've been taken from place to place, from 2 hour lunch to 3 hour dinner to bars and so on. Free time is time one should be sleeping. I'm not complaining, I have the best hosts in the world here in Horia, the head honcho at the NI-Romania office. You name it: taking the dinner tab, hooking me up with a more permanent apartment w/ a kitchen, and providing hilarity at every turn as well.

Whoooppps will write more and post some pictures next go round, i'm being called down to one last group dinner before the big NI-Romania soccer game. the majority of the Austin work people are back on the plane to Texas. I think I may get some time for my own exploration in the very near future!

And if you haven't picked it up from this -- I think Cluj is freaking awesome. I miss my girl, but other than that life is pretty damn good. Vive work travel.

New Photo Album

Darin jets out of Austin for one weekend to the east coast for a quick visit. Dustin and Amanda put me up for the weekend and drove me all over the state. First night, we all met up with Laura and went out in Manhattan. After that, took a car ride up to Saratoga to watch the Travers stakes, and also squeezed out a 6 mile hike in the Adirondacks the next day.

Thanks to Dustin and Amanda for driving me everywhere and being such great hosts. Thanks to Laura for making the long trip from Boston to visit on short notice. It was a blast!

Well its been too long since I've posted, because I've been waiting to deliver this jucy bit of news. I'm actually taking a spur of the moment trip out to NY weekend (Aug 25 weekend). Flying into NYC on a friday night (shenaningans will surely take place) then heading up to Saratoga, NY (near Troy NY were my good buddy Dustin is going to school) with little D and Amanada to see the big Traver's Stakes horse race. Should be a fun day, and a good excuse to go visit my former 3rd grade classmate :) The ugly part of the trip will be the red-eye 6am flight from Albany, NY back to Austin on a Monday morning -- but there was no way around it without paying an arm and a leg.

If you're in the neighborhood (ahem, Laura) give me a shout and maybe we can meet up somehow. I've never been to the north east, so I can't wait to check it out!

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 :)

The next trip tickets have been purchased! Claudita and I are heading to Puerto Rico! We're going during the week of 4th of July - doing our best to hold to my mantra of never spending Independence Day in the USA. However, Puerto Rico is actually a US territory, so we're not really leaving the country. (damn!) This was done by design however, becuase my pobrecita colombiana is having some VISA paperwork delays and would be unable to accompany me outside the country anyway.

So, time to head to the '51st state'! Can't wait to hit the beach, its almost a month away already. If you have any advice about what to see and do in the country - please add it to the Puerto Rico wiki page.

That's right, the next trip has been planned. Tickets purchased for the South American destination of Colombia March 8th thru March 20th. Claudia is taking me home to meet the parents and get acquainted with her homeland. I know what you're thinking. Isn't that the cocaine exporting capital of the world? (answer: yes) Isn't that where drug lord Pablo Escobar is from? (answer: yes) Isn't it unsafe to travel there? (answer: no! evidence: USA Today article)

I'm super-stoked for so many reasons...

• We're meeting up with Chuck who's been travelling for many many months
• Checking out a location where very few Americans are ever priveledged to go
• Get to experience sights in Colombia with my own personal colombian Srta. Claudia Bella; sights that even she is not familiar with

Our loose plan is to fly into Bogota the first night, get acclimated. Then take off (maybe by plane) to Baranquilla and see the northern pacific coast of Colombia. They have all sorts of really cool ruins and they even have a volcano that spews out warm mud that people can bathe in. You know I'm gonna do my best to get dipped into that mud bath! ¡Viva Colombia!

New Photo Album

Merry Christmas everybody! Here are some photos from Claudita and I's trip back to Estes Park for an old fashioned family christmas. Also we sunck off for a day of skiing and a bit of frolicking in the snow. See Calvin and Hobbes comic strip for more. Check out the album by clicking here.

This dodgy statistic has been hard to locate, but I thought I would finally hunt down the real number. Unfortunately, there is no real number! I was told over my last trip that only 2% of Americans have passport - this appears to be a rumor. According to an Oct 1, 2006 NY Times article:

The State Department estimates that 73 percent of Americans now lack passports.

So that means 27% of Americans have passports today. Considering that on January 8th our borders are 'closed' even to Mexico and Canada - this is still a mind boggling statistic! Especially when compared to the UK; seems that over 90% of the English have passports. Pretty wild, I hope to see this statistic change because I believe it would be a big indicator of an improving 'world view' for your average american...