24-Hour Race Old Pueblo Picture In Newspaper

If you look really close, you might be able to see me in the 5th row.

Santa Fe Snowboarding/Skiing

7 Cataracts Canyoneering

We canyoneered 7 Cataracts on Mt Lemon this past weekend. Here are a few shots from the trip.

Colorado River Kayaking Trip

Of the few pictures we have from the flood, here is a nice one of Alanna and I setting off to head up stream towards the Hoover Dam

La Milagrosa/Agua Caliente Canyoneering Trip

Steve, Kacy and I backpacked up to La Milagrosa in the Catalinas (near Reddington Pass Road) to do some canyoneering. It was a quick canyon, about 6 hours for the entire trip.

Chad on a tight squeeze rappel.

Panic!

We have an attendence policy at the Universidad de Tecnologica de la Mixteca, and while it may seem surprising to have one at the university level, the fact is that if we didn't, noone would come to class. The rule is that students can miss a maximum of 10 classes in the semester, and once they pass this cutoff, the do not have derecho (right). So as we approach the end of the semester (only 3 weeks left!), the students with bad attendence are starting to panic, which means I'm getting a flood of letters from doctors, dentists, and university officials offerering various justifications for the absences. Of course, many of these are forgeries. And not very good ones at that. To be honest, I've even been a little insulted to see how stupid they must think I am by bringing these totally obvious fabrications to me. But it's really more like a game that everyone plays, and if you bust them for it, they just laugh as if to say: "O.K., you got me this time, maestro! But we'll meet again..."

o poster tube, where art thou?

Every now and then I need to purchase a product that I'd guess to be quite commonplace but then turns out to be completely unheard of in Mexico. Last year I had this problem in Huajuapan when I set out to buy some resume-quality paper. Turns out there's no such thing. This weekend I've run into it again as I've tried to buy a mailing tube for some posters I want to mail to a friend. You'd figure that it would be a fairly easy product to find, but now having inquired at probably every papeleria here (at there must be at least 50 of them) I've learned that this is a technology that has not yet been unveiled here. People seem to understand me when I explain what I'm looking for - a tube made of cardboard that could be used to send a rolled-up poster through the mail - but as I describe the thing it becomes clear that this is the first time the concept has ever entered the shopkeeper's consciousness. But they do seem to respond in such a way that suggests that they'd approve of such a product if it ever were to be invented. So maybe one day I'll make my own, patent the design in Mexico, and make a fortune. In the meantime, it looks like my friend is going to get a big manila envelope with some folded-up posters inside.