Diving Near Our House

This first picture isn't even remotely near our house, it has nothing to do with diving, and the water temperature is about 30 degrees warmer than the frigid waters of the Puget Sound, but it sure is fun! This is me and a new friend at an "environmental park" near Tulum, Mexico.

One of our favorite things to do is diving. Seth is a dive medicine expert (from the Neurology side), and I have been interested in the field for many years. The physiology is really interesting. We are both dive master, full cave, and mixed gas certified. We live very close to one of the best dive sites in the Northwest. Seth loves to take still pictures, and I prefer to shoot video.

The underwater world is enchanting. Whether I am diving the colorful, warm, shallow reefs of the Caribbean; the cold, deep, dark emerald waters of the Puget Sound; or the pitch black, crystal clear cenotes (caves) in the Yucatan Peninsula that predate ancient Mayan civilization, I never cease to be amazed by what I see and I never fail to see something new. The diversity of life is astounding and it is an absolute pleasure to glide weightlessly through and above the landscapes, like a bird on a thermal. The landscapes range from scenes that look like the canyon lands of Arizona, to the cliffs of Yosemite, to the grasslands of Iowa, to a dense forest, to the most amazingly decorated caves in the world, sporting thousands of stalagmites and stalactites. Then again, sometimes it just looks like a big mud pie with visibility so poor that I cannot see my hand in front of my face and I need to rely on “instrument flying.”

The variety of life is equally diverse and changes with time of day and year. At one of my favorite dive sites, minutes from my house, I may see on a single dive several giant pacific octopi, 8 foot long wolf eels, white and orange plumose anemones, spiny and burrowing sea cucumbers, big ling cod, several species of shrimp, lion’s mane and moon jellies, three or four types of crab, sponges, sharks, rays, several types of sea stars, red Irish lords, seals, rat fish, sea pens, urchins, and several hundred other life forms. Each of these different critters has its characteristic behavior, which can be learned only through patient observation.

The pictures that follow are of the critters at Sunrise reef in the Colvos Passage of the Puget Sound. This first picture is of a Wolf Eel. Although it has the body of an eel, it is actually a fish. They can get about 8 feet long. They mostly eat urchins and are very shy and gentle. Some people call them ugly, but who wouldn't love a face like this?

I don't know why it is so funny to me, but I cannot help but to laugh whenever a swimming scallop goes by. It looks exactly like those chattering teeth things. There is an evolutionary reason for this. Most scallops are fixed to the reef and have a lot of predators. These things have a way to sense shadow, and when they do, they are able to squirt water through their shells and propell themselves quickly away from the danger. So when we pass over and use our lights, they are often activated. I love these guys...

This is a Rat Fish. Ratfish are named from the rat-like dentition (which is used to feed on crustaceans) and their thin, narrow tail. They are very curious and enjoy diving with you, but they don't get too close. They rely on their pectoral fins for locomotion.

This was a lucky find. We had about six dives in a row where we found a couple of baby Gigantic Pacific Octopus. There is a scallop next to the lowest tenacle in this picture. This one would fit in the palm of your hand. The full-sized one can be 18 feet, fully extended. They turn red when they are aggitated, and they turn white after they begin to die.

Octopuses begin their lives as eggs, tended by their mother. She lays her eggs inside a rocky den and may lay from 20,000 - 100,000 eggs over a period of several days. The female will tend the eggs, cleaning them and blowing water across them until they hatch, which may take from 150 days to seven or more months, depending on the water temperature. Upon hatching, newly emerged larvae immediately swim toward the surface and live as plankton for 28 to 90 days. If they survive, they settle to the bottom when they reach a weight of about 5 grams.

Octopuses grow quickly, and may reach 0.5 - 1 kg by one year, and 15 kg after 3 years. They eat mostly crabs and clams, and the juveniles can be found at depths from the intertidal to 200 m or deeper. However, many juveniles live in water less than 30 m deep.

The males die several months after mating. Mating may occur at depths from 20 - 100 m, and takes several hours. The females brood the eggs, at which time they stop feeding. Females die shortly after the eggs hatch.

In this picture, if you blow it up, you can see BOTH of the baby octos. One was upset with us and is red, and the other one is a lighter tan color. There is also a star fish near the mantle of the red baby octopus.

I LOVE DIVING.

This is the same wolf eel out of its den. You can see where it gets its name...

First Backcountry Ski Trip of 2007

This is a route up near Stevens Pass, called Jim Hill Mountain. Once again, our good friend Leo joined us. It was -1 degree when we started, but the snow was SWEEEEET. We skinned 5.5 hours up, for a round trip time of 7.5 hours. We would have taken more pictures, but the camera stopped working becuase of the temperatue. That was a major bummer, becuase there were some beautiful shots that will have to remain only in the memory.



At the end of the trip we drove down to Leavenworth for dinner at Mozart's Cafe. I'd never been to Leavenworth in the winter, so it was a real treat. The only thing it lacked was roasted chestnuts, one of my favorite foods.

Did you know that chestnuts are like the perfect food? I'm serious. Unlike other nuts, there is only a trace amount of fat, they are loaded with vitamin C, have no cholesterol, are low calorie, high carb and protein yummies! We went crazy over them this year becuase we found them in the Metro Market. We made roasted chestnut bisk, chestnut and olive oil pasta, and made a batch of chestnuts several times per week for about a month.

If you've never tried 'em, you really should! They are the bomb (no pun intended: be sure to cut a slice into them before roasting, otherwise they will explode). :P

A Date with Paradise

I have been writing a couple of books. One, "A Date with Paradise," was inspired by an absolutely horrific dive trip to the Bahamas. I know it sounds great, but it was a nightmare, pretty much from start to finish. I am not sure when the book will be finished, but I'm hoping it will be complete by the end of my fourth year. Whether or not it ever gets published doesn't really matter to me. It is more for my personal entertainment than anything else. I am including an excerpt from one of the chapters which describes a particularly unpleasant night, along with several pictures from that lovely trip from hell. Enjoy. :)

Remember my discussion about the large supply of Scopolamine? Well, Seth left it in the truck, and the five hours of diving had taken our initial patches off. But at least I got my 30-second shower! That was refreshing. As I said before, my standards were eroding and it wasn’t so bad – cold and short, in a space of about 2 feet by 2 feet and shared by about 30 people, but not bad. I was clean, physically exhausted, and ready for a long night of sleep. I was sure that I’d just sleep right through any rough seas and wake up in the beautiful Berry Islands. After all, I’d never gotten sea sick or experienced motion sickness, and I’d not vomitted in about 18 years.

I fell asleep just fine. However, the Twilight Moon was driving against gale force cross winds. Her hull is flat and wide. Do the physics and it is obvious that such a situation is the perfect recipe for a wretch fest. The reason that I woke up was that the boat rolled hard to starboard and slammed me against the bulkhead. The ship was violently moving from side to side and up and down at nauseatingly unpredictable intervals. It scared me. I began to worry that she would capsize and wondered how eight people would escape through an opening that only accommodates one while bumping that one’s head on the way both up and down the steep ladder. You have to understand the the berthing space is VERY small. One can barely sit up in the bunk, and there is only room for a single person (of four assigned to the room) to change. Although not predisposed to clostrophobia, the space was literally pressing in on me. Worse yet, that recirculating feces from the weird marine head must have been sloshing around for some time, because the stench was overpowering and thick. If I hadn’t been nauseated already, I surely would be now due to the pervasive toxicity that would permeate all bedding and clothing for the remainder of the trip and weeks beyond, in the case of my backpack.

I cursed Seth for forgetting the Scopolamine and he said that he had some Dramamine. In a tender voice he asked if I would like some. Like some? “Give it to me!,” I barked. If for no other reason, I knew I had to get out of the cabin for fear of death in this putrid coffin. I made the mistake of turning on the light to find some clothing. Turning on the light was my fatal error. Everything was twisting and turning violently without a visual frame of reference. Getting my clothes on was now a true emergency. I figured it would be gauche, although highly entertaining to the crew, to run topside naked and vomit. I had my shirt on by performing a Houdini miracle in that small space, but my first true gag came as I tried to get my pants on while being flung around in this tomb that seemed to be an impending sacrifice to Poseidon.

Not quite complete in my task, I yelled at Seth, “I’ve got to get out – NOW!” I’m not certain I even saw him, he moved out of the way so fast. During his residency training, Seth made the mistake of standing in front of a person whose skin had the same hew that mine was now sporting, and the result of catching the full brunt of projectile vomit was not one he wished to relive. He had gotten quite skilled at recognizing and evading people who were about to be sick.

I rolled out of the rack as we listed to port (a luck roll for Seth, let me tell you!). I pulled my pants up as best I could and gagged as I raced up the ladder to the deck. I don’t remember if I hit my head on the way up, but since it was seemingly unavoidable under the best of circumstances, I’m quite certain that I did.

I gagged one more time, but found instant relief in the wind and with some reference to the horizon, dark as it was that night. My Hell turned to a different sort as I was hit and completely drenched by a cold wave. Don’t be fooled…the Bahamas ain’t warm, Baby! I knew if I stayed on deck that I’d die of hypothermia. It was only 3:30 am and I wouldn’t make it through the night being barraged by wave after wave. If I went back below deck, the gags would culminate in something far worse, so that was not an option. So I was resigned to being on deck without shelter for a long time while I waited out the fridgid night in agony. I was already exhausted from the days of no sleep, diving, and cold.

At this point, I’d gotten my wits about me and heard the violent wretching on the port side of the boat. The retired Sergeant Major on board was reliving the over cooked bow-tie pasta, out-of-the-10-gallon-can tomato sauce, over boiled buttered green beans, and chocolate pudding with graham crackers. When this dive charter advertises that the guests will be fed well, they really mean to say well fed. This was an issue of quantity over quality, an no human being should ever be subjected to reliving it.

“Oh, NO!," I thought in sudden fear. “What if more people come up the ladders?” I’d be right in the line of fire. Using every available survival instinct, I realized that I would have to stay warm somehow, so I quickly retrieved and donned my wetsuit which was stored under the seating on the deck, and I just put it over my soaking wet clothes. The way wet suits work is that when you dive, a thin layer of water forms between your skin and the wet suit. Your body heat warms the water and keeps you a little warm. The suit only slows the dissapation of heat, it doesn't stop it. This was not as good a solution, because there was no layer of water to keep me warm, but it was MUCH better than nothing, and it cut the wind. Also, I knew no one would venture out onto the front of the boat, so that is where I wanted to be. Not only did it get the brunt of the waves and wind, but also there was serious danger of being swept overboard if one didn’t hold on. So I attached myself to the front of the boat, intent on staying there for an indefinite number of hours.

The Sergeant Major later said that when he had gathered his wits about him, that he had the same idea of getting to the front of the boat. When he looked to where I was standing, he “cursed the mermaid who had rudely attached herself to the spot of relative safety.”

I made my move just in time, because up the ladder across from ours (where six single bunks housed those poor souls who experienced the most extreme motion) came a middle-aged man who had abandoned all dignity, emerging in his tighty-whities. We all know what white cotton looks like when it gets wet…almost translucent. And believe me, this dude never ever wants to enter a wet brief contest. He flung himself to just where I’d been and began the loudest most disgusting series of wretches that I’ve ever heard. That sent the Sergeant Major off again.

Mr. Translucent Undergarment must have emptied his stomach and taxed his gall bladder, because the next day, the deck was literally green…even after all of the waves had washed over the decks at regular intervals for more than 10 hours. He had to be cold, so he went below deck. How, I’m not quite sure. Needless to say, he did not last long, and he emerged part way up his ladder. But the selfish bastard wouldn’t take the extra steps up and away from the area where the two berthing spaces emerge, and just wretched there, with his face at deck level. Perhaps it was because I was standing there looking at him with disgust, or perhaps he had regained some dignity after seeing what the waves had done to his appearance. Regardless, he was not willing to expose anything below his torso. I cannot say I blame him, but if there was ever a possibility of getting back to my bunk that night, it vanished at that moment when he decided to foul the area in front of the hatch to my berthing space.

I must have given up hope at that point because a sudden and uncontrollable wave nausea gripped me and I vomitted violently. I wasn’t so fond of the dinner anyway. A crewmember approached me about 20 minutes later and asked if I was OK. I felt fine, though soaked to the bone and as cold as I have ever been, but I was very thirsty. I begged for a glass of water, which he was kind enough to retrieve. I knew with certainty that I wouldn’t venture below deck for any purpose now. He delivered the water, and feeling perfectly fine, I sipped it. That was the second fatal error of the night, as I hurled myself to the side of the boat again and…well, hurled. Was this night ever going to end? There wasn’t even a hint of morning on the horizon.

I had grabbed the Dramamine on the way out of the rack, but I hadn’t been able to take it yet, for obvious reasons. It took about an hour more to work up the courage to move myself to the back of the boat where I could ask for more water. By that time, about seven or eight people had come and gone from the deck, wretching all the while. I figured I was safe.

I carefully made my way to the back, still being battered by wind and waves, fighting to stay on my feet, for fear of landing in vomit. My bare feet were bad enough. At this point, I really had no standards. Even the recirculating feces seemed preferable to this. Maslow was wrong: he left out a layer of needs below the first, and I hadn't even realized that level. I had been brought low.

In the Captain’s pre-sailing briefing (why the word sailing is ever used is another question I’d return home with, as the sails were never raised), he explained how to properly vomit on his vessel. As explained before, using the bathroom like a civilized person was not an option due to the temperament and fragility of the marine heads. But the bathrooms were not civilized anyway, so I guess that didn’t matter. So that left the areas in the lower part of the boat and the deck. He explained that if one were to vomit on one’s bunk, that there would be no replacement sheets forthcoming, so it would behoove the guest to get topside in the event of sea or other sickness. Passengers were cautioned against vomiting overboard, for fear of falling overboard, which would be a true emergency. Instead, guests were to sit on the benches and vomit onto the deck. That was the only place to sit, as the berthing spaces, sleeping four people each, were large enough for only one person to change at a time. Therefore, it was not an ideal place, in my humble opionion, for everyone to be vomitting. No one asked my opinion, however, so I didn't say anything.

I made it back to the helm, which was just as exposed as everything else topside, and got out my Dramamine. I waited about 20 minutes more, to be certain my stomach was calm. I chatted with the crew and all seemed well. I swallowed that seemingly insignificant and tiny little pill with some soda water, and wouldn’t you know it? I felt my stomach contract violently and had to fling myself to the side of the boat again. There were no more chunks left, so I was acutely aware of and could actually feel that demon pill from hell as it escaped my gullet, like Jonah from the whale, mocking me all the while. Here is a lesson, boys and girls: if you are already sea sick, Dramamine will make you seasicker! I don’t recall that among all of the warnings and instructions on the bottle. I don’t think I will ever forget the taste of Dramamine.

Now I don’t have much disposable income, but I was seriously considering bartering all of my worldly goods and taking a third mortgage out on the house in exchange for an airplane ride from the next port back to Miami so I could escape the hell of my Bahamas dream vacation.

It was finally getting light, and one more trip to the side of the boat would be it for me. Someone brought me some bread and water and told me that it would help, which, miraculously, it did. Isn’t bread and water what they feed prisoners? I have never been so tired in my entire life. Nothing had changed in terms of wind, waves, and motion of the boat, but it was light. The Captain told me we had only about three more hours until we reached some protection from the waves, but it turned out to be more like four hours – four long hours. My face, lips, and eyes were absolutely raw from the salt water, and I was so cold that I stopped shivering all together. I ended up being on deck, vomitting, freezing, and battered by waves and wind for 10 hours. This was after a couple of days of bad travel experiences which left me sleep deprived. I donned my swim goggles that look like big mirrored bug orbs to protect my eyes. I must have been a sight…wet suit, bug eyes, and battered…to those emerging from a night without seasickness. Seth, in the unkindest of moments a man could have, took several pictures – not one, but several.

You know how people say they wish their vacation would last forever? I felt that mine already had, and my biggest fear is that it never would end. I was too tired to recall why this would be fun, and I certainly couldn’t comprehend why I’d spent so much money to do it. We were now 130 miles from Miami, rather than 45. If the winds didn’t shift, that meant that we’d get triple our money’s worth on the drive back. That thought was too much to appreciate at the moment, and we were rolling up to the next dive site.

Seth convinced me to dive somehow, and I thought I’d feel better if I did. Besides, I had to get off the boat. I watched Seth as he readied himself for the dive, because I was moving slowly. I have to mention that, like it or not, swimsuit styles for men have changed over the years. But Seth, never a slave to fashion, still clings to his Speedo. To his horror, and my great entertainment, he realized that not only did no other male have a suit above knee length, but that his suit had aged, and aged badly over the years. He stretched it in front of his face and realized that he could see, particularly down the center posterior section, right through what remained of the paper-thin spandex.

He squealed, “Did you see this?”

“I’ve been trying to get you to lose that damn thing all week, but who am I to tell you what to wear?” I replied.

Seth was religiously careful about where he bent over and for how long for the remainder of the trip. My sense of humor had not drowned and was back with a vengeance, much to his dismay. I remembered back to his evil moment hours earlier, and I thought I’d return the photo session favor later, as he was bent over in his special Speedo, if I could muster the energy.

Diving the Cenotes (caves) of the Yucatan

There is nothing better than diving the caves of the Yucatan. It is my absolute favorite thing to do, of all of the things I have tried. And there have been a LOT! We were trained by one of the best divers in the world, Scott Carnihan of ProTec. ProTec offers incredible technical training. Tech diving is interesting becuase it is equipment and procedure intensive, and you also have to have a very good understanding of dive physiology if you are going to be safe. There are a lot of interesting medical problems that arise in technical diving that are different from recreational diving. The primary reason is that physiologic limits are pushed by mixing different gases to obtain greater depths and durration of dives. One of the problems with assessing risk in these divers is that we really aren't completely sure why some people get decompression sickness (DCS) and others don't, or why it happens to people when it does. It is not at all obvious when looking at the data.

This is Scott's "Mother Ship." I needed a belay to get into the damn thing. But it held about 20 sets of double tanks. That's a lot of space AND a lot of weight. Cave diving is definitely gear and proceedure intensive. I think that is why I like it so much. I would really love to get more experience and training in expedition caving (staging bottles and decompression diving in caves). I would also like to do some scootering, but the caves are so fragile that I am not sure that the Yucatan is the best place for that.

This beautiful girl is of Mayan descent. Her famliy owns the property overlying this cenote. She was more than happy to pose for pictures, sweet girl.

Cenote is the Mayan word for "well." The cenotes held great mystery for the Mayans. In one cenote, there is a room very far back and very deep called the "bone room." The cenotes were dry until about 10,000 years ago. Before that, the Mayan shamen would go back and perform rituals. It was very dark back there, and it is thought that they found their way unaided by light. In this "bone room," there are bones and carvings in the cave floor. They date back at least 10,000 years. I feel honored to be able to see such places.

After the ice age receeded, the caves flooded and are now the water table for the area. They are the most highly decorated caves in the world, have virtually no current, and are realatively shallow, making them extremely interesting and very safe by cave standards. If it were not for the water, the limestone stalagtights and stalagmites would not likely have survived. I only took viedo last time, but on our next trip, we will take some still photos and update the blog so you can see how incredible the caves really are.

This is Scott and me getting ready for a dive. You can see that we use two tanks. They are connected by a manifold which can isolate the tanks in the event of a catastrophic failure. Each tank has a separate regulator so that there is redundancy. We dive by the "Rule of Thirds." We only dive as far as a third of our air will take us. The second third is for the way out. The third part is not ours. It is reseved for any other diver in distress who needs help out.

We train extensively in total blackness, sharing regs, mask off, etc. We do a lot of drills on how to find the line, how to follow the line on the way out, rescue of a diver who cannot help him or herself, etc., etc., etc. It is safe if you follow the rules. There have been very few deaths of cave divers where the rules were strictly followed and where the divers had good training.

This is Seth and me in the entrance of a cenote. Scott took the picture. This was a GREAT dive. There is what they call a "planing" section in this cave, where there was softer rock layed out in a plane, and it is like a slice was taken away. It is only a few feet high and runs for about 40 meters. There are some restrictions, beautiful decorations, and a lot of stuctural variation and changes in depth. It was a very enjoyable dive. It is not a well-known cenote and that made it even more fun.

This is what the entrance looks like. It looks like a pool. But this is the largest wet cave system in the world. They are all over the place in the Yucatan, mostly unexplored. You can go for miles and miles (if you stage bottles and have a place to do a long decompression, of course), and they all eventually connect to the ocean. That is why the deeper caves have what is called a "halocline." That is where the fresh and salt water mix. It is no problem until it is disturbed. When it is, everything suddenly becomes so blurry that you cannot even see the line, even though the water is otherwise crystal clear. It is really cool becuase all you have to do is swim away from the wash of the person's fins, and you are back in crystal clear water with visibility at about 200 feet. Contrast that to the sometimes 5-10 feet of visibility in the summer in the Puget Sound!

This is one of my favorite cenotes. The cave entrance is down and to the right. Fortunately, that ladder isn't the only access to the entrance! There is NO WAY I could get out of there with about 80 pounds of gear on. :) Most people use these as swimming holes. Few people, other than international cave divers, use the caves to dive.

This is the view outside our room in Akumal. That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!!!
This is the best apres dive site -- EVER. It is appropriately called La Buena Vida ("The Good Life," for you Spanish illiterates). It is a sandy-floored bar with swing chairs. It has a very cool pseudo skeleton of like a dragon, or something, above the bar. It has these palm tree "tables" that literally sway HARD in the wind. The night we took this picture, the waiters refused to bring our food or drinks up to us. :) There is a little hatch door that you open to get to the "table." I LOVED THIS PLACE!!!!

Ahhhhh...Akumal. Someday it will be my second home!

A Typical Day of [my] MS-2

Every Tuesday morning, I meet with my "College group," which is part of the Introduction to Clinical Medicine Class. I have been very fortunate to be paired with some really wonderful people, and a wonderful mentor, Anne-Marie Aimes.

Each week, two students from our group do a complete history and physical on a patient in one of three hospitals, and then present the case to the group. Occasionally, we will all meet at the medical school instead and do a tutorial on some aspect of the history and physical exam. In the fall, we were at Harborview, in the winter we are at the VA, and in the spring we will be at the University of Washington Medical Center.



In this picture, you see Isaac, me, Anne-Marie, Andy, Mike, Anna, and Kaye.


There is also a system of student mentorship, where an upper classman (in the class ahead) is assigned as a "Big Doc," and an incoming student is the "Little Doc." It is really nice, because there is someone known to the incoming student from whom they can get advice about various classes and resources at the school. It is also a great support system for when things are tough.

I love my Little Doc. Her name is Veena. It's a weird thing that I was assigned to her. I would often go onto Student Doctor Network during my first year and try to give advice for people who were applying in the next cycle. No one uses their real name because it is totally anonymous. But I offered a lot of advice to one person in particular, and then we started corresponding by e-mail. It turns out that she was accepted, and I told her that I hoped that I would run into her.

Amazingly, she was randomly assigned as my Little Doc, and I was so happy about it. But things were really crazy at the beginning of the quarter, so we weren't able to get together right away. Neither of us had a description of the other, but we ran into each other in the student lounge (where the picture was taken) one day, and we both stopped short and just knew who the other was. It was very strange, to say the least. :)

This is our classroom. It looks just like the classroom from first year, but it is one door down the hallway. The classroom looks full, but it is only because it is the first day of the Epidemiology course. Other than test days, the room is usually only about half full. That is my perspective. I'm sure the professors would say it is half empty. ;)

We have a lot of other tasks that get loaded into our mornings and evenings, but lectures are scheduled from 12:30-5:30 each day.

This quarter, I am driving each day from Gig Harbor. It sounds bad (and sort of is), but I am listening to Board Exam review lectures on my iPod. The drive takes between 75 minutes to about two and a half hours, depending upon traffic. I used to get very frustrated, but it doesn't matter anymore, because it just means more study time.

Staying physically fit is super important to me, so when I get home (between 7 and 8:30 pm), I either lift weights, go for a five mile trial run, or both.

Yes it is very dark outside for the trail run. There is a great system of trails that go for tens of miles right by our house. Seth and I don headlamps and just go for it. It is actually really fun and I enjoy it a lot.

We have built up quite a nice workout room, with a pull-up and dip machine, a squat rack, a cage for bench press and other exercises, barbells and dumbbells. We have pretty much everything we need for a great weight workout. We also have swiss balls and balance boards for proprioceptive workouts, abdominal workouts, and other strength training.

One of our lower energy activities, when we are feeling really lazy and in a fun mood, is disc golf. It is so much fun that I actually bought a target for our backyard. We also like to go to courses around the area and to different areas when we travel. Our favorite course is in Bremerton. The course wraps around old growth forest and is quite pleasant. So sometimes, on days I have less energy, we just go outside and throw some discs and drink martinis. :)

Seth's Birthday

Seth was on call over the holidays, so we didn't get up skiing. For his birthday, I got a room for two nights at Crystal Mountain, played hookie from school for a day, and skiied for three days. It was pure luck that it DUMPED snow all weekend, and we had amazing conditions all three days.



I made the mistake of sitting down on a flat spot while I was waiting for him to find a ski. It was like quicksand. Every time I tried to get up, my body would sink a bit deeper below my skies.

This is Seth's second season, and although he is doing amazingly well and can ski just about anything, the heavy powder takes him down occasionally. :)

What a great weekend!!!

Teaching the Kids to Climb

Climbing is such a good sport. Not only is it outside in some incredibly beautiful settings, but it is a great workout for the body and mind. Seth and I really wanted to expose his kids to this activity, so on their last visit with us, we spent a ton of time in several different areas.















This is me standing on top of Independence Tower in Smith Rocks, Oregon. This was a really good climb for the kids becuase it was about a 5-4, but with incredible exposure (on the back side which is not seen from this angle). It was a real confidence booster for them.















This is the belay ledge on Castle Rock. I am belaying Seth as he leads, Bex will follow and drag a second rope up behind. I will climb as Seth belays me from above. Rope management is very important, especially on multi-pitch climbs. I have the ropes butterflyed out over my personal anchor.

In this picture, I'm teaching Bex to rapell on a short route up Icicle Canyon.














The oldest daughter Bex was all over it. She did a multi-pitch climb at Castle Rock, and got her first lead climb on a sport route at Exit 38 in North Bend. That is why we call her Bextreme (Bex, for short). This is our Castle Rock summit picture.














The youngest daughter really pushed through a lot of fear and was super proud of herself (as expressed by the two thumbs up!). I was really proud of her. She still talks about it.

The middle daughter, Rachael, had the most courage and did well also.

This next year, for the winter vacation, we are going to take them to Whistler and teach them how to ski/snowboard. We got them up to Crystal Mountain last year for a day, but we'd like for them to begin to master that a bit more.

I'm bummed that I'll miss the visit this summer, becuase I'll be in my medicine rotation of 3rd year. Seth is going to fly them into the Bay Area and stay with his family. That's what we did at Thanksgiving, and they really enjoyed seeing family again. What they don't know, is that Seth bought them some VERY NICE mountain bikes and that they will spend a couple of weeks riding the trails around the area. The bikes are front suspension, with front and rear disc brakes. They will be able to take them home with them. It is a nice gift.


We have totally set them up with basic climbing grear, backpacking gear, and now mountain biking gear. So starting this next winter, our gifts to them will be experiential. So this winter is skiing/snowboarding. The following summer will be canyoneering in Zion. After that, we aren't sure, but it will definitely be fun, becuase we don't know any other way to live. :)