trip prep...

Meryl and i have arrived in Denver after a long 16 hour drive from Whitefish. (Dont tell Meryl but she was pretty grouchy the whole drive. One word answers and whatnot for 16 hours...). We are excited to wear our down and insulated pants while attempting to climb Aconcagua. It may be as cold as -20 to -40 degrees F. Meryl said my butt looked big in my pants....now im self conscious, but i still love ice cream...8 days until departure...

Burnout Statistics

I am approaching my last day of work (tomorrow) and in the process of reviewing my last pay check I crunched a few #'s and came to these conclusions:

I worked a total of 542.6 overtime hours during 2009.
That's about 13.1 weeks of extra time worked, yep that's over 3 extra months of work in 1 year.

I don't feel so bad about taking a 6 month vacation anymore...

Most of our projects... or at least the ones that I work one are not in Missoula, thus I have done a lot of driving this year. I counted up my repeat locations to discover that I drove at least:
21,264mi just to mobilize to a from our work sites.

Pinedale, WY 6 round trips x 940mi = 5,640
Circle, MT 2 round trips x 934mi = 1,868
Soda Springs, ID 14 round trips x 834mi = 11,676
Butte, MT 2 round trips x 240mi = 480
Lincoln, MT 10+ round trips x 160mi = 1,600
Total= 21,264

Wowza! Needless to say podcasts have become my new best friends. I should have been listening to Spanish tapes, I would be fluent by now!




Time is counting down, 22 days until we leave.

The Plan...

As time begins to tick away... I only have 3 days of work left in the "office" (plus 5 days left in the field), Forrest and I are begining to finealize some plans.

We are headed to LIMA, PERU on January 6th.
From there we will head up into the Andies to the town of HUARAZ to visit some good friends and stay with them for the week. Jenn and Ted own Skyline Adventure School and they are the reason that I have been to Peru 2X already and I am going back for a third. They are wonderful people and they run and incredible climbing school and guide service: skyline-adventures.com. They graciously offered us a place to stay while we visit Huaraz and also facilitated our trip to Machu Picchu.
After a week in Huaraz we head to CUZCO on January 15th to hike the Inca Trail!!! Something I absloutly can't wait to do.
From the Inca Trail our plan is to bus back to Lima with a stop in Nazca so that we can fly over the Nazca Lines.

On January 26th we fly from Lima, Peru to Mendoza, Argentina. We will spend a few days in Mendoza prepping for ACONCAGUA!
Our plan is to head onto the mountain the first week in February to try and climb the tallest peak in the Americas, 6,962 metres (22,841 FT).
The climb should take 11-20 days.. hopefully the weather is good!

That's the plan so far...

The origin of "Southie"

The night that Forrest and I bought our plane tickets, we headed over to our friend Toby's for a house warming BBQ. When we arrived, we excitedly announced our South America plans to our friends.
Doug, and his typical way with words exclaimed:
'Your headed to SOUTHIE that's awesome!'

everyone laughed, including Doug at himself...

Farewell Geomatrix

After a year and a half I am leaving AMEC Geomatrix, the environmental consulting firm that I started working for right after college. It was a great exprience, to dive right into the professional field after college but after a summer of 60+hr work weeks, and never being home, I have decided that I need some adventure... Forrest decided he wanted some too...

Meryl