OB course

Just returned from instructing a 22 day OB sea kayaking/mountaineering course. Here are a few of the photos.

On the summit of Mt Maude, Glacier Peak Wilderness


Off the North end of Orcas Island on our way to Doe Is.


View South from Mt Maude, smoke in distance.

On the Summit of Mt Maude.

Old photos

Musu.

I saw a friends photo of this room and it reminded me of this one I took a year ago of Kira and Elena.

To all who don't read this...

Stranger #2 - Carl

I have started a photo project called "100 strangers" where I have to shoot photos of 100 different people I have never met before. I am 5 strangers in and right now the project seems not too far from impossible but I'm plugging along. You can see the photos as I update them here
or see photos from other people around the world doing the same thing at 100strangers.com
thanks.

Music in Oly

Photos from Mexico

Posters, Calle Juaréz, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Statue/fountain, Colonia Reforma, Oaxaca, Mexico

Farfel, Oaxaca, Mexico

Old storefront, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Bombinados Reforma, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Truck of garrafones, Guanauato, Mexico.

Posters, Coyoacán, Mexico, D.F., Mexico.

B.Y.O.T.V.

Here's where we spent our first night, or really half night, in Chihuahua. In my opinion this place gets the dumpiest room award. Arrived last night at about 1am. It's right across the street from the train station. They do have good huevos rancheros though.
Which is to say we made it to Chihuahua. We called the train station later on wednesday and they said all was normal. I didn't really believe them though so we had to check some other sources, and sure enough they all checked out. So another early morning, this time with enough time to buy some street pancakes and atole, which I don't really know what it is but it's good.
Got to the station and passed throught the (apparently optional since we decided to not get searched) security and onto the train.

The train ride is really as amazing as they say. The best part is that you can hang out in the areas between the cars and hang out the big oipen windows. You can even accidentally open the doors (oops). There are 86 tunnels along the way and at least 15 wrecked train cars (that's as many as I counted but I know I didn't see them all) laying off to the side of the tracks, usually down at the bottom of steep gullies, cliffs, in rivers or right below big bridges (below).

Now we're in Chihuahua, which I like so far. Fairly quiet compared to some cities we've been to. It's also in the desert so it's always windy and the coldest place we've been so far, it's actually really cold. I'm looking forward to our last couple days of the trip before we head up to Texas, then home.

El Chepe

This is a picture of "El Chepe" aka the Copper Canyon Train, which we got up at 5:30am today to catch. What you can't see with the naked eye is that this train is actually going backwards (!!). That's because of this...

...or this is what I can only assume it looks like. An hour into our journey the conductor announced malas noticias and said we had to return to the station and maybe we would try again tomorrow, or another day, they really don't know. All they know is that there was a landslide because of heavy rains. I thought we were going to miss out on all the nasty rain back at home but I guess it found us here.

So we're stuck in a town called Los Mochis. I can't say it's my favorite town but at least they sell churros on every other street corner, and on the other corners they sell pancakes. But that's about it for positive comments. So the options are to wait an indefinite amount of time for the tracks to be cleared and maybe repaired or take a detour that could take up to 3 days, be expensive and not involve a cool train ride. Unfortunately we don't have time on our side since we have to be in El Paso by next monday. Hmm...

So we're here for at least one night because we didn't want to get on a bus today. Hopefully tomorrow they'll at least know how long it might take to clear. My guess is we'll end up on the bus.

Oh well.

Here are some pictures of Mazatlán. A Clamatto stand (Clamateria). There we're quite a few of these, can't say we visited any.

And here is a picture of the two of us.