I can now say that. I spent the last week in two different countries - Trinidad & Tobago and Venezuela. Gas is technically free in Venezuela, but you have to pay a small service charge for the guy pumping the gas. With the current "exchange rate," it works out to be about 10 cents/gallon. No wonder all the expats have motor boats.
I didn't have a lot of time outside of work to get out and take some pictures, but what I was able to see of the two countries was pretty nice. I wish to see Caracas during the day sometime. It seems like a beautiful city...such a shame.
I flew into T&T first. And I got one picture from the hotel.
Our Charter flight from T&T to Puerto La cruz (technically...Lecherias).
Puerto La Cruz from the airplane. Our "4 Star" hotel was out on the tip of the peninsula.
Proof that our hotel is "4 Stars." You be the judge...
Of Course, the pool area was beautiful...too bad I didn't have time to use it.
A traditional Venezuelan breakfast.
In Venezuela, we ate Italian food three nights in a row. Here is my meal in Caracas. I like their Italian spin...lots of carne!
With the new year upon us, we aim to change those things that have been bothering us for the last year. With our efforts typically landing flat on their faces in Feb. So, this post isn't about our goals, but just to say we had an excellent 2010. Dayna's business well exceeded our goals and was a tremendous success. And I had another moderately entertaining year at the salt mines. But, I can happily announce that I am now a professionally licensed engineer. All I have to do now is just pay my annual fee and I get to keep that privilege. In hindsight, it doesn't seem like we do much does. Besides work of course.
On another note, we had an excellent time with the Carroll Clan in Indiana. For the first time ever, our family had formal family pictures taken. Thanks no less to the gracious Mademoiselle Van de Merwe. Without further adieu, here is the current state of the Carroll Clan, pending additions....
Dayna and la Mademoiselle...
And here are some pictures of our Christmas in action. First off, I would like to mention that Princess Peach is safe and sound. Dayna realized some jealousy issues this break, but I think we made great headway getting past those. Here is me in action saving Princess Peach.
Here is the Christmas tree my parents got. That's a root bulb on the bottom...
The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree...
We love to eat, and it shows in our physique. But, here are some Korean chicken wings...
...and gyoza...
Isn't my mother just darling?!?
my father and his "Lamp Leg" tie
My father and I digging a hole to plant the Christmas tree, Otto watching
Finally, we got Brenna & Otto Just Dance 2, here they are rocking it out.
Sometimes, you just have to gloat. And this last Saturday, I knocked off a major obstacle in the randonneuring world, a 400 km ride. 21 hours, 5 minutes.
Dayna and I broke away for a quick trip up to Oklahoma. And yes, climbing was involved.
We camped in deluxe style--space heater, laptop for movies, flushable toilets and hot showers. We arrived at the camp in the dark. Quickly made camp (in our church clothes) and hopped in the tent for a movie. The next morning, this is what we woke up to.
A little bit better picture once we were up and about...
We climbed the first day at Elk Slabs. The climbing was fun and easy. The approach, not so much. Seems the trails are a lot harder to find than one would expect. Fun nonetheless, and I will eventually drag Dayna back up there (now that we know where we are going). Oh, and shutterbug forgot her camera.
The second day, we headed over to the narrows area.
With our late start and our bad luck, the only other climbers in the refuge were on the route we wanted to climb. No biggie, as there were plenty of open routes. We climbed this route (picture from the bottom).
Conor getting ready to climb (just had to adjust the sleeves a bit)...
Climbing in progress...
Dayna at the top...
And one of our buddies who were everywhere...
The second day, we headed over to Mt Scott (highest point in the refuge). The refuge borders Ft Sill, which has some artillery units. They were having practice that day, and we could see where they were hitting the mountain across the lake from us. Pretty cool! I headed up a "5.7" called high anxiety, nothing like the 5.7 I did my first sport lead on. I seemed to forget the hand jams and the "power" moves high anxiety was requiring. All was well and I made it to the top. Dayna jammed her way to the top as well (just kidding, just a couple of jams were needed).
Using all my knowledge, I managed to burn my finger one night. The granite quickly took care of this. My finger after high anxiety (and washing my hands).
We heard about a rumored burger place up the road from Mt Scott. Naturally, we just had to go. We settled on the "seismic burger," which was a full pound of beef w/ bacon, onion and all the fixings. Supposedly, pure Texas Longhorn Beef (no hormones). It was awesome. We also had onion rings, freedom fries (the owner is apparently conservative) and fried peaches.
The owner also has a sense of humor...or does he???
To help settle our Burgers, we headed back into the Narrows to attempt the route the other people were on the other day, but felt there was not enough time (the gates are locked at "sunset," whatever that means) and didn't want to risk getting stuck. We took the time to grab a Christmas Card picture--what do you think?
A picture of me defeated from the early sunsets.
We woke the next morning to rain (all our stuff is out drying as I type). We packed up everything wet, cooked breakfast and left. We chatted with our kind "neighbors" for a bit, who kindly got us a cinnamon roll from a place we had read about online and told them about it. They made it, and we didn't, but they were kind enough to bring us one. And on the way out, we stopped at the Ft Sill Museum to see some "canons," aka artillery.
It wasn't too many years ago that I went inside a corner gas station to pay for my gas (this was before I believed in owning a credit card) and as I wrote out my check, the man behind the counter told me I had "an innocent face". It puzzled me, somewhat embarrassed me in front of the line of other customers, and I gave him a blank look. He insisted it was a compliment, and tried to explain I looked like a good, honest person. Nobody had ever told me that before and it came as a surprise to hear such a thing. I did thank the man and hurried on my way. It's nice to know that by our actions and countenance, hopefully people notice something different in us. This story came to mind the past few weeks over a recent incident.
I had never felt so upset, distraught, disturbed, anxious, nervous in my life. And for what?! I had done nothing wrong! I was bothered for hours afterwards before finally feeling somewhat settled, then peace, then laughter over the entire ordeal.
Over Labor Day weekend, Conor and I traveled down to Harlingen, TX. It was 5 1/2 hours from Houston, and near the border of Mexico. We went there to shoot a wedding and booked the event exactly a year earlier. Due to recent events, many border towns are no longer safe, so going into Mexico was definitely out of the question. I decided to make a weekend of it, then we could get settled in, see the area, check out the venues for the wedding, and have plenty of time to travel there and back. We arrived Friday evening and I checked in with our bride so she knew we had arrived. She asked if we could drive to her house the next day, so we knew where to go (she was getting ready there and wanted photos). We told her we would do that, and then also check out the church and reception.
The next day we slept in, then prepared for a day at the beach on South Padre Island, and headed out to find the bride's house and other venues. I drove, since I would be the one going to her house, and wanted to make sure I remembered it all. Our gps was stolen a couple months ago (I'll post about that another time.), so we looked up the addresses and wrote notes to get around. We arrived in the neighborhood, drove slowly past the houses, looking for the addresses, found it, went around the corner, turned around, and headed back out. We proceeded to the church, then onto the reception place in Brownsville. By this time we've travelled more than 20 miles from the bride's house. Due to construction we were on the feeder road and pulled up to a stop light. A car pulled up rather closely beside us and motioned for us to put our windows down. We thought they needed directions. A lady reached across her husband, taking photos of us with her pink camera phone. Did we really look that much like tourists?! That thought was cut short with screaming, ranting and raving. I looked more closely at the couple and recognized him as a man watering his bushes outside a neighboring house to the bride's family. We were accused of being at their house earlier and stealing from them, breaking into their vehicle. Then coming back to finish the job. I was trying to explain myself, and who we were, what we were doing there, Conor's telling them to call the cops, and my head is spinning all the while. Totally insane!!! Finally I told them we were there for Stephanie's wedding and the guy went silent, she kept going and informed us we don't belong in their neighborhood. The light changed--finally!!!!--and they went right, we went straight. I was in shock over all of this happening.
Not wanting to bother and upset the bride, I figured I would address the issue the following day when I arrived. It turns out the neighbors are actually really good friends with her parents and were attending the wedding. Sweet! LOL! The man realized they had wrongfully accused us, and went over that night to let them know what they had done and apologized and was rather embarrassed. The dad thought it was hilarious and told me they had all locked their car doors before I arrived to shoot. lol. Then the mom had us sit together during the wedding dinner to become better acquainted. Rather nice people, with a misfortunate mistake. After stepping back, I can see we looked suspicious, driving around slow, female driver, Conor & I had dark shades on, he had a ball cap, unshaven face--we both didn't look our best. Too funny!!! Definitely a wedding to remember! I love my job!!!!
Here's our mug shots. Oh, and our Starbucks gift cards the nice couple gave us, along with an apology card. We are forgiving souls, so there were no hard feelings, just a memorable story!
Change is good! I was so excited to purchase a new bedspread for our room. The other was nice, but totally didn't match the bright, crazy green I painted in our room. Conor wanted color . . . and he got it! Of course our cherry furniture it further enhanced by the green on the walls, and clashes even more with our dark teak floors. But, I tried! Trying to work with what we already had. The new bedding did help and it was fun to change the look.
In July we purchased a new mattress. Sooo comfy! I sleep much better and no longer wake up every time I turn sides. Yeah! In August we finally bought a rug for under our bed. We meant to do it since we had moved it since the bed slides all over the wood and has unfortunately scratched our floors. : ( Love the rug! It pulled in the look of the room even more. No pic yet--maybe after I get a photo printed and hung over our bed. It may be a while, so don't hold your breath!!!
