Lovin' the USA

So in my last post I gave an update on arriving in the USA for a little break from South America while we hit up some weddings and see some friends. Here's a little recap of what we've been up to.

Just a warning to all two of my readers, this post is probably more of a recap of events and maybe not that exciting. :) I still persist in blogging this way because for me it's like a journal for our trip and it will help me remember our adventure of a life-time when I'm old and gray. That said, I am aware that our blogs are a lot less frequent and are consequently much much longer so I am going to make an attempt to blog more often (say every two weeks). Hopefully this will make my posts shorter and perhaps force a bit more creativity.

So we left off leaving California and heading to Omaha to spend a couple of days with Suzanne's family. This turned out to be very relaxing. We of course went to the zoo, Suzanne wouldn't have it any other way! Also, if you've been following our blog you know that our new camera arrived and we named him Nico based on the superstition that our named items do not get stolen (EEVA our computer is still safely ours). So after a quick Amazon order to get another SD card and remote control, we are back up to 100% functionality with our camera! The only thing missing is our super-cool strap that Julie gave us with the soft fabric and Notre Dame pattern.

Soon the next wedding was coming up and so we hopped in a car with Suzanne's parents for an early morning drive to Chicago for 8 hours. This seems like a long time but with 4 drivers and our new endurance for long travel times it was a piece of cake. We really enjoyed the ability to stop whenever you want and not have people come into your car (or bus) and steal your camera. :) After dropping Suzanne's parents off at the hotel, we got back into the car and began a 4 hour trip to Michigan to see some Colorado friends for the night.  We weren't able to go to Chris' wedding because we had been triple booked for weddings on this day!  So even though we'd have loved to go to all three, we let whoever had asked us first be the deciding factor which is how we got to Michigan.  But we still wanted to see as many people as possible so we drove out to Michigan to see Chris and Kristen and a lot of our Colorado friends on the pre-nuptials night. After crashing with our friends William and Betsy, we woke up early and began our 4 hour trip back to Chicago for Nicole's wedding. Their wedding was very beautiful. They got married in a gorgeous church and the reception was great. My favorite part was that Suzanne and I got the dancing started! I convinced a very shy Suzanne to get started but once we did everyone else began also so we felt like we definitely contributed to the party!

Great photo I took with Nico before the wedding:

From Nicole and Dave's Wedding

And Suzanne and I at Nicole and Dave's wedding:

From Nicole and Dave's Wedding

The next day we attended a brunch and then headed back to Omaha. One thing I noticed on our way back was how beautiful Iowa was to drive through. Everyone thinks that it's just flat corn crops as far as the eye can see but what you really get is a beautiful countryside of rolling hills with that same corn with a barn and grain elevator thrown in to make things beautiful. Then there are all these wind turbines dotted across the landscape (perhaps a testament to Iowa's importance in presidential primaries?) that altogether make Iowa very nice! I have some pictures to attest to this, see below.

From Omaha Summer 2010

With the weddings out of the way we spent two days in Omaha re-packing. We were able to leave things behind that we hadn't used in our 5 months but didn't want to throw away down south. Newly lightweight, we got on a plane for Seattle where we were met by our friend Sarah Kheriaty. Sarah had told us to consider our planning done while we were visiting her and she meant it! From the day we arrived to the day we left we were taken care of. She first took us to local hot spot the “5 Spot” where we took the following picture showing the sentiment of the city to Arizona's new immigration law:

From Seattle

Next she drove us up to Bellingham, WA where she and her husband Nick live during the summer. We had visited Bellingham before during the Ski-to-Sea relay race and had always wanted to return during the summer to enjoy hanging out on Lake Whatcom, so when the opportunity came up we wrote Nick and Sarah and they said sure! Bellingham is a medium sized town right by the border with Canada. It's known for being beautiful during the summer and for its lake. Nick's parents live on that lake. Nick was my roommate in college and he was constantly telling me about how great it was during the summer when they would wake-board, water-ski, wind-surf and play a sport called jetski-frisbee. This last one is even cooler than it sounds. Have you ever wished you could just accelerate to 20mph in a second as you were chasing down that overthrown disc? Have you ever wished that you when you dove for the disc, instead of hard ground was a nice cool lake to land in? Have you ever wished both of these things at the same time? If so, then jetski-frisbee is for you! Check out these fantastic shots:

From Bellingham Watersports

Nick:

From Bellingham Watersports

The only thing that could make this activity better is if instead of a boring old disc, you could use the amazing Aerobie flying ring! The only problem with this is that the Aerobie sinks, but one day we can hope some scientist makes a breakthrough. :) The other awesome sport that I learned was wake-boarding. This was slightly more difficult than jetski-frisbee, but just as fun. It was really my first time on a board (as opposed to skis) and had to learn the subtleties of shifting weight and the dangers of “catching an edge.” The same water that was so forgiving with jetski-frisbee was a bit different when you were going faster on a boat and your entire forward momentum is transferred to angular momentum (with your head traveling the fastest) and you slam into the water. Luckily its a type of lesson that you learn quickly from and you try not to repeat. Here's video of my fall (hint, hit the View HD Video link above and to the right of the playing video):

From Bellingham Watersports

Overall though, it was incredibly fun to learn all those watersports. You can see pictures of all the sports and all the videos of the falls below. Suzanne preferred skiing to wake-boarding and did great, never falling and never failing to get up on her skis!

Off the water was just as fun as on the water. Nick and Sarah and Nick's parents Larry and Elaine opened up their home to us and made us feel like family. Sarah pre-cooked tons of delicious food for us before we even arrived and we ate like kings all week. We also had plenty of time to get to know little Jacob Thomas and attend his super-cool 1^st birthday party. Sarah went all out for her son's party and had some really cute homemade cupcakes while Nick grilled up some good old hamburgers for everyone. Nick and Sarah are teaching Jacob hand signs so he knows how to signal that he's hungry and dance and all sorts of adorable things. When Jacob was sleeping we would often occupy our time playing a new game we got Nick and Sarah, “Settlers of Catan”. They were at first a bit skeptical but we think we won them over on how fun it was and at the end we were playing every night! Overall it was just fantastic. I think I would rank it just behind our Galapagos trip in terms of pure enjoyment. It was also really nice to stay in one place for 10 days in a row (a new record!).

Finally we had to say goodbye to Bellingham and begin our trip back to South America. First we headed to Seattle for a couple of days which turned out to be jam-packed with visiting friends! First we stayed with our good friend Kathryn who like our friend Anne was someone who knew both of us from freshman year in college but separately. From her home as base, we saw good friends Jennifer Slavick, Kevin Wachel, and Riddhi Mukhopadhyay. With each of them we got to see another part of Seattle and had a great time catching up and talking with our friends. After Seattle we caught a plane to San Francisco to catch our flight to Lima. During our 6 hour layover we were able to jet into the city and meet up one final time with our friend Lance and my brother Luke. Then it was back to the airport to continue on to Lima. First off we got on a flight to Houston and picked up my mom who will be traveling around northern Peru with us for 2 weeks! Then we flew to Panama City and finally continued to Lima arriving late on the 28^th.

All in all, we counted and we think we saw 58 people (friends and family) in the 28 days that we were here in the USA. I call that pretty good! We want to say thanks to everyone who showed us their hospitality and took in a couple of homeless and unemployed friends for a couple of days.

~Mike