Dos Equis Man endorses Wild Fiction

Apparently he writes wild fiction when he writes. If that isn't an endorsement then we need to go back to pen and paper.

Yoga King Dancer Pose Fail

Earlier in the day I had perfected the Yoga King Dancer Pose on the edge of the diving board but as soon as I asked my wife to record it my balance left me. You can hear my 4 year old telling me to focus in the back ground.

Semuc Champey Guatemala

More than 10 years ago when I was backpacking through Guatemala I heard about this place called Semuc Champey. It wasn't even on my list of places to go but the other backpackers I'd hooked up with convinced me it was worth the hardship to get there and they were right. Take a look at this cerulean colored pool:

I forget exactly where we were in Guatemala but I know that we took a few buses to a town called Coban where we arranged for a guy with a 4-wheel-drive jeep to take us to Semuc Champey the next day. I remember that we started out really early, like 5 or 6 in the morning because it was a long and rough drive down roads with enormous pot holes but beautiful scenery with exotic birds and squawking parrots.

I felt pretty beat up by the time we arrived but boy was it worth it. We had the place almost to ourselves and spent several hours swimming in the pools and eating a fruit laden lunch and exploring the area.

Semuc Champey is a limestone bridge that sits on top of the Cahabon River. Yes, this is a river on top of a river. The Cahabon River is a raging torrent that runs underneath this natural land bridge that extends for 1,300 feet down the valley. If you go to the top of the pools you can see the Cahabon drop into this enormous hole and at the end of the pools you can see it coming out of the side of the cliff and joining the final waterfall made by these pools.

Our guide was incredible. He took us down to the end of the pools and half way down the face of the waterfall and showed us where we could jump into the river below. Most of us did the jump and then swam to the river's bank and climbed back up the waterfall to get back to the pools.

I happened across some images of beautiful rivers recently and they sparked this memory so I thought I'd write about it and for a short moment relive this happy memory.

 

The journey back from Semuc Champey to Coban was no less rough but we stopped off and picked some fruit off a tree and sitting in the back of the jeep we shared it out. That evening when I went to shower I discovered that I had a whole bunch of ticks (or tick like creatures) over my lower abdomen. I managed to pull them all off but for a couple of years after that they left small red marks that I scratched at to relieve the itch. None of my fellow travelers suffered this and I had been holding the fruit pod most of the time so I think that they must have come from this plant.

Zumba Chocolate Cherry Smoothie Shake

I've just attended my first Zumba class. Damn it was good. Perfect amount of exercise for someone who isn't in great shape. That hip swinging was tough though, I don't think that men naturally swing their hips like that.

Once I've done exercising I'm always motivated to eat better. I think most people experience this. I have a jar of chocolate flavored whey protein powder that I've been waiting to use and thought this the perfect time to try it out.

This is what went into today's smoothie shake:

• From Costco:
• One navel orange (peeled)
• Handful of baby carrots
• Two florets of frozen brocolli
• A cup of frozen dark sweet pitted cherries (Townsend Farms
• One cup of Acai Berry juice
• Four pitted dates
• From Trader Joe's
• Two cubes of frozen ginger
• Eight strawberries
• From Aheers Health
• Two scoops of chocolate flavored whey protein powder
• From the tap
• Two cups of water (you can use ice as well - I just don't like my smoothies super icy)

Heart Magic Resveratrol

My wife got me on to resveratrol about 3 years ago. I had recently had my annual checkup and my physician checked my cholesterol (which was slightly higher than it should be) and asked me if I drank. I confessed that I'd given up drinking about 5 years earlier. She asked me if I would consider taking up drinking again but just red wine in small amounts for the cardiac benefit it gives you of lowering your cholesterol. After several cases of boxed wine (not all in the same evening) my wife came home with resveratrol which has the same heart magic cholesterol reducing ingredient as red wine. Not nearly as much fun but it had the effect, combined with exercise and healthy eating, of lowering my cholesterol and getting it back in an acceptable range.

As an added bonus I also got to learn some Greek:

...resveratrol also has highly hydrophilic (the ability to bond and dissolve with water) and lipophilic (the ability to bond and dissolve in fats and oils) properties...

Source:  Resveratrol

hydro = water
philic = love
lipo = fat

My wife, after reading the above, pointed out that there were some other supplements in addition to resveratrol that I am taking. She recently started blogging and came up with her own version of this story: Borderline Hypercholesterolemia and Vitamins

Sonali's first real hike

Today, 3/3/2013, Sonali, four months shy of her 4th birthday went on her first real hike. At the east end of Via Linda is the Sunrise Trailhead. Total distance was 4 miles with a 950 foot elevation change. I carried her about half the time.

In the image below we started at the far right (Sunrise Trailhead) and finished somewhere between Peak Spur East and Peak Spur West (I think).

At the quarter way mark. Still has a fair amount of energy.

Two tenths of a mile left to the summit. Note that we've lost the pink hair clip at this stage and energy levels are not the same.

At the top.

The end of the trail back at the trailhead.

Hoop Hanging

I was holding up the kids so that they could dunk the ball and then they wanted to hang on the hoop.