Home Is Here

After climbing Santa Maria and saying "hasta luego" to our friends in Xela, we started the 60 hour journey back to Ithaca.

Long trip:  
bus from Xela to Guate;
overnight in Guate;
attempt to fly out the next morning;
my flight is majorly delayed while Dave's was not;
consequently I miss my connecting flight in Ft. Lauderdale and spend the night in Florida while Dave continues on to NYC;
good thing I packed lots of food (Spirit gives you nothing) and my toothbrush (Dave had the rest of my carry-on);
realize once again that America is SO unfriendly to newcomers and visitors (so much for "give me your tired and poor");
fly to NYC the next morning (thankfully I didn't have to wait until the following evening);
Dave and I get horribly lost leaving LGA and end up in Staten Island (!);
arrive in Ithaca 60 hours after leaving Xela.

And now I'm home...

...it's been AWESOME.

We took a climbing road trip up to Rumney, NH over Memorial Day weekend and climbed until there was no skin left on our fingertips.  Dave had some impressive leads (I <3 my rope gun), as many of our other climber friends.  I redpointed a few routes I had flailed on last autumn.  Maybe I'm finally getting stronger.

this doesn't suck. top-roping the 5.11 at 5.8 crag

Random aside:  I've now surpassed the climbing goal I wanted to achieve when I first started.  Within another year, I think I will surpass my revised goals.  The funny thing about goals is that they're always a receding target.  I am thankful I have become wiser to this phenomenon.

this route kinda sucked.

What else, what else.

Ithaca Festival.  Yay, the students are gone, let those freak flags fly!

make art!

goats on cayuga street

We found a new apartment.  Not quite downtown, but a short uphill bike ride to South Hill.  Even though we don't move 'til August, the landlord is allowing us to garden all summer.  Score.

paste tomatoes plus six different open-pollinated/ heirloom tomato varieties, peppers, zukes, cukes, green beans, purple beans, radishes, lettuce, spinach, kale, strawberries (if i can keep the damn squirrels away), basil, thyme, oregano, stevia, chamomile, chives, mint.
wanted pea pods/ snow peas but couldn't find seeds.

I guess that's all:  here I am.  And for the first time in a long time, it seems right to be here.

I joke about the "Saturn Return" with my friends.  Every 27-30 years, Saturn returns to the position it was in the sky when you were born.  Supposedly, the late twenties are a period of significant change and upheaval in people's lives--getting married (or not, if the State doesn't allow you that right), having kids, major life transitions, career struggles, existential questions.  I put zero faith in astrology, but I surely don't doubt the concept of the Saturn Return.  For me, ages 25 to 30 was wild!

But after all of the upheaval, the here and there, the newness and change, I've found myself living about 2 miles from where I lived in August of 2000, when I first moved to Ithaca.  And for all of the changing that's happened in the past 12 years, I'm more myself now than ever before.

For the first time in a long time, it seems right to be here, on all levels.  In a town that I love, with a guy whom I love, with friends whom I love, doing things that I love to do.

gorges

I'll probably continue to update this blog periodically, especially for trip reports or travels.  I'm thinking about migrating over a few posts from the old Peru blog, just to have them all in one place.  Might write a little about the garden or share some recipes (how to make super easy, super delicious, super cheap yoghurt, for example).  I start my new job on June 18th, though, so who knows how much time I'll want to spend on the computer.

One final picture.  This one from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on the drive out to Minnesota.

P.S.  Honeymoon in Patagonia?