Finishing What We Started

First, an apology for the lack of blog updates recently, which can only mean one of two things: either we've been off having too much fun to write about our lives in cyberspace, or we went off and did something crazy, like settled down and re-joined the working class. Believe it or not, it's been so long since we've written that we've gone off and done both.

Knowing that we were headed back to Berkeley and Mat was going to jump into his first year of real, credentialed teaching, we decided to make the most of the end of our summer, which turned out to be a highly successful endeavor. Manipulating our time between new teacher trainings, meetings, and HR appointments, we spent a good chunk of August in one of our favorite spots on the planet - the Yosemite High Country. Some of you may remember that about one year ago we started this crazy trip with a 30+ day through-hike of the Sierra, following Steve Roper's "Sierra High Route", a mainly off-trail route that stays as high as possible while following the Sierra Crest from South to North. Last summer we completed about 80% of the route, from King's Canyon to Tuolumne, and had it in our sights to finish up since last September. August seemed the perfect time to do it, and we set out from Tuolumne Meadows on a six day trip that would take us North along the crest, around Conness and up to the Matterhorn, and then back down to the Meadows to meet the Cane family for a first-ever (almost)-full-family camping trip.

The hike itself was amazing, and a wonderful way to finish the High Route. What the Northern section lacked in good fishing and desolation it made up for in stunning scenery and clean granite. As we never strayed too far away from an easy East Side entry point there were quite a few folks back there, but only two other souls doing a route similar to ours, and always plenty of places to camp far away from the crowds. We gained an appreciation for how the massive Mt. Conness and her satellites dominate the area by circumnavigating the peak, and discovered an absolutely beautiful off-trail gem in Spiller Canyon as part of our route back to TM. We loved Spiller so much that we dropped our packs at 2 pm on a day that we intended to walk much further, and instead made coffee, swam, fished, and read until the sun set - ahhh, the mountain life.

We rushed out of the backcountry to get in line on Monday morning for a campsite in the TM campground for the arriving and ever-growing Cane clan. Using our charm, humor, and bargaining abilities we scored the two absolute best sites in the whole 200+ site campground - a secluded corner of the A loop right along the river, with beautiful views and vistas right from the camp. The family rolled in, and a hectic yet entirely fun 3 days followed before they packed up and went home. Jean-Paul and Elena surprised us all with an announcement of their engagement around the campfire the second night, and we celebrated and felt blessed to hear the good news in such a magnificent locale.

We packed up Edric and Wyn's car and headed back to Sacramento with them, as the Eurovan was stranded in Bishop after towing it down the pass with Jason's well-timed AAA Plus card. The story around the van is another blog posting in itself, but it turns out that absolutely nothing was wrong with the van - it was just an idiotic move Mat made with the key that caused the engine security immobilizer to become active. Unfortunately we had to tow it all the way to a VW specialist in Bishop to figure out the issue, and after he asked Mat "How long has the key been like this" we immediately knew that it was our fault. It turns out those little batteries in the keys actually run a bit more than just the LED light. Who knew? After a few quick days in Carmichael we washed our bodies, washed our clothes, and got ready to head to our old/new home of Berkeley for the start of the school year.

Pictures of our hike are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/mat.glaser

Oui, we Wii

We spent the past week at Mat's parents' house in South Carolina, basking in the heat, sweet tea and boiled peanuts of the South. We always experience a bit of culture shock leaving "the island" (as Mat's mom refers to California) and Mat's translation skills in southern drawl were put to the test multiple times during our stay. We hadn't been there in the heat of summer for quite a while, so we combated the stifling temperature and humidity by spending as much time on the lake as possible. The highlight of the aquasports was a day full of high speed (and impact) tubing off the back of the boat with Mo's brother JP and his girlfriend who drove up from nearby Clemson for the weekend.

We also used the week to catch up on all the new-fangled technology we had been missing on the island as we broke in Mat's parents' newly-purchased Wii and Wii Fit. To be fair, we supplied them with the Wii Fit device, after purchasing it from a 16 year old Vietnamese kid in San Jose whom we found on Craigslist. Not knowing we had one of the hottest consumer items since the Cabbage Patch Kids in our hands we were a bit surprised to field all of the comments that we got as we carried it through the airport - had we had more of them we could have paid for our plane tickets in the time it took us to walk between Terminal A and D. We're very rarely ahead of the curve when it comes to things like this, so we were eager to check it out and find out for ourselves what all the Wii madness was really about.

We were a little skeptical that something so seemingly cheesy could be so much fun - let's just say they've come a long way since the Power Glove. The technology is honestly pretty amazing, and through some magic of gyroscopes and infrared transmittal the Wii senses every single move you make, your motions fueling such family-friendly games as golf, bowling, and even boxing. The Wii Fit was pretty rad as well, and while it's not quite the same workout as hauling all your stuff up El Cap and back down again, one could see how it could develop into a fun and easy fitness routine. While the yoga poses were not always 100% accurate, they were straight forward enough to do, and having some feedback regarding your center of mass was actually quite helpful in certain positions. We definitely got hooked on a few of the balance games and the sight of someone frantically hula-hooping an invisible hoop and gyrating their hips with reckless abandon in your basement is almost worth the price of the system.

When we could drag ourselves away from the Wii we also caught up on our movies. Wanting to check out all the hype around the new Batman venture we bought tickets for the local IMAX online and rented The Dark Knight's predecessor, Batman Begins, to watch on Mat's dad's big screen TV. We were quite impressed by the first one, even without the depth of comic knowledge that many fans might have, and our excitement for the new one on the big, big screen rose with every day. We filed into the IMAX dome theater at the Charlotte Discovery Center and then sat reclined in our chairs, teeth cleenched, fists gripping to the arm rests for the next two and a half hours, trying to keep our lunch stomached and the vertigo at bay. In short, it was a bit much - the wraparound screen so large that much of the action sequences were just a blur accompanied by super-loud gunshots and kabooms. We felt like we missed more than half the movie as we just couldn't focus on anything going on, and Mat was literally covering his ears with his hands whenever he anticipated an explosion. From what we did gather from the movie, Heath Ledger turned in an amazing performance, and if you didn't know that he killed himself shortly after the filming it would have been one of the most amazing feats of acting in a long, long time. Knowing about the O.D. and how twisted his life had become somewhat put a damper on his performance, as the lines between his acting and actually being a bit crazy became blurier and blurier. We haven't given up on it yet, however, and might try to catch it in regular screen format or eventually rent it when it comes out - chances are we'll be able to handle it a bit better on a 15" laptop screen.

All in all it was a great trip back to the East Coast full of excitement that can only be found in the Carolinas. We're set to enjoy the last remaining days of summer, although we're both currently battling nasty colds. Hopefully we'll be able to head to the mountains for a bit between Mat's trainings and meetings, and soon enough we'll be settling into our new home in Berkeley.