Two for one

So this post is a two for one deal, partly out of efficiency, but mostly out of laziness. Two weekends ago I spent another weekend with Sarah. We spent one day down in San Antonio along the River Walk. This was my first time on the San Antonio River Walk. I've only been to San Antonio two other times in my life. The first time was basic training, the second time was for a soccer tournament but we never left the flying saucer. The river walk was pretty cool, and I wish I could have seen it at night. We walked around for a few hours, just relaxing and talking. We also decided to take a few of our own Senior Pictures. I wish I would have brought my good camera... On Friday I finally fulfilled all of the requirements to join the Cibola Search and Rescue Team. A guy stopped by my office on Friday to do the final "pack check" to ensure I have all the required gear. Then, at 1230am that night, I got a call that there was a mission. I reported to incident command at 2am and found out there was a 68 year old man that got lost while ATVing and was dressed for the 50 degree temperatures of daytime. It was now 2am and 15 degrees outside. It took about two hours to find the guy with the aid of the police chopper, and it took another 2 hours to get him out of the canyon.

For the whole mission I stayed on the radios at incident command which was a great way to quickly learn how a mission is run. I look forward to taking part in more rescues soon.

A wedding in New Orleans

This last weekend I flew out to New Orleans to meet up with Sarah and her family. Their cousin Robyn was getting married so this provided me with my first chance to embarrass myself in front of her entire family. Luckily she only has like 85 relatives that I had to meet which made for a fun memory game with all their names.

New Orleans was a pretty cool city. It reminded me a lot of Portugal. Most of the building we really old and run-down looking, but in a good way. The city has lots of character, I just wish we could have spent longer there. I only got to eat at one Cajun restaurant which was disappointing because there are so many great ones down there. I also didn't get to sample the night-life at all, but then again, I'm not as young as I use to be. In the end I was in bed by 10:30 which is kind of sad when you're 2 blocks from Bourbon St.

And here are the rest of the Pictures.

Visiting Sarah in Austin

On the 5th I flew out to Austin to spend four days with Sarah in Austin. We both took Monday and Tuesday off so we actually got to spend a full 4 days together which was awesome. For most of the weekend we just spent the time hanging out together. Sunday we decided to head out to the Austin Zoo to see if it was any good. The zoo was nothing to write home about (although I guess that is what I am doing right now). It seemed to us like most of the animals were rescued from exotic animal breeders in Texas, which it turns out is the "Weird Pet" capital of America.

The highlight of the trip was definitely the monkeys and the tigers. When I tried to take a picture of this monkey, I got down real close to get a good picture and he reached through the bars and tried to punch me in the head. After backing up a little bit, I was able to get some good shots.

The other highlight was definitely the tiger cage. The enclosure was chain link, and you could get within about 4-5 feet of the actual fence. There was this one tiger that was pacing in front of us, so I decided to take his picture. He was apparently camera shy, and proceeded to stand on his hind legs, slam his paws against the fence, and roar right at me. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture because I was too busy crapping my pants, but I was happy to be in Austin and not San Fransisco, or I would have been eaten for sure.

Later that night we went out to see the movie "Juno." This was a great chick flick in my opinion. It had enough of a love story for the women, and enough sarcasm and comedy to keep the guys happy.

Here are some more of my pics on Flickr.