General, All-Purpose Update

Lafayette, CO - I'm just posting a bit of an update to let folks know what we've been up to. It's spring. It's gorgeous outside. Everything around us is turning a lush green, while the peaks in the distance are still capped with snow. Suwei and I haven't been getting out and about near as much as we'd like, but we've had our reasons.

Surgery Part Deux:
Eight weeks after the sports doc stitched up my new knee bits, we were back at Avista Hospital and scheduled for another round of surgery. This time it was Suwei's turn. Our last visit to the fertility clinic showed that Suwei had an uterine fibroid that the doctor strongly recommended removing. Last Wednesday the doctor performed a laparoscopy, leaving Suwei with 4 tiny slits on her belly and one golf ball sized mass of tissue missing from the wall of her uterus.

Needless to say, she wasn't feeling 100% afterwords. I think she was surprised to learn how many simple tasks require the use of abs. By Saturday, however, she was up and moving around gingerly. By Monday we were out and about with friends. Now, she still has a bit of pain down there, but she seems to be healing up on schedule. I think she may even be back into the gym this coming Monday. She's pretty tough.

Suwei in the Sick Room

Couch Surfing:
Last weekend we had a friend from California come to visit. Guru has been traveling on and off for the last year or so, and is currently doing a 7 week tour of the United States (I think his goal is to visit or at least touch every state). Joining him on his road trip is Miao, a nurse from China and a fellow couch surfer with a new found love of roadside attractions.

Guru introduced Suwei and I to couch surfing a few years ago. For those of you who do not know what couch surfing is, check out their website here: http://www.couchsurfing.org/

Miao & Guru & our couch

I think this is a truly awesome idea. What a way to travel! If you've ever stayed at someone's house while traveling, you know what I mean. Basically if you have a couch or a bed to crash on, you offer it to travelers. In turn, when traveling, you can search for beds or couches to crash on. There are now surfers in 231 countries around the world.

Although Suwei and I have not yet officially surfed via the site, we have created a profile (http://www.couchsurfing.org/people/somehowlost/). It's been up there for a while, but Guru and Miao were our first official CS guests. I still need to finesse our profile a bit and I'm sure some good recommendations from Guru and Miao will help, but I think our main problem in attracting more surfers is our proximity to Boulder (There are currently 180 people offering their couches in Boulder). I will, however, use this site next time I travel.

So Suwei and I took Guru and Miao up Boulder Canyon to learn a bit about rock climbing. Afterwords we grabbed some lunch and took a shot walk in the town of Nederland, a little mountain hippy town at the top of Boulder Canyon. Evening was spent meeting up with Guru's cousin in Boulder.

Very nice to see Guru and very cool to meet Miao. We hope to host more surfers in the future.

Miao and Guru Rock Climbing in Boulder Canyon

Heading Back to Work... Sort of:
Drum roll please!!! Yes, I managed to get myself a job. Not a very high paying job, and I'm not too sure how long I'll be able to keep doing it, but it is still more of a job than I've have lately. On June 15th I'm heading to Santa Rosa, California to attend a training program for Suntrek: Active and Adventure Travel. If all goes right I'll be running adventure camping tours all over the United States for most of the summer. Come September things will calm down a bit and by October I may be out of work again. I figure at the very least this job will be a fun way to ride out the shit storm that is our current economy.

Suwei has given me the thumbs up to try it out and we're now anxiously awaiting some sort of schedule so we can plan out the few remaining bits of summer together.

Knee:
Just wrapping up week 9 here. This week I started the first of my agility drills: hopping, side stepping, and some rudimentary jogging. I've got a light weight sports brace that's supposed to hold everything in place while I get my leg strong again. I'm going to be cutting it close for the canoe trip and for the start of the new job. Not that it should matter, but both are damn good reasons to get up off my butt and get this damn knee up to par.

I can't think of anything else to ramble on about at the moment, so till next post...