Yesterday I came back from Pipestone, MN the local claim it’s home of the peace pipe and who can argue with them as far as I know that’s the only giant piece pipe that I have seen in the middle of the town. Yes it was cold you know YA

Right next to it is this sculpture of ass pulling a wagon probably to fill up the pipe with good pipe weed

The home steaders that came and probably killed all the Indians did smoke pipe weed they used the stones build German inspired houses

While everyone one back @OMA/@LIN was surviving the worst winter  ever… even worse than anything exepriecene by Micheal Landon’s fictional family in middle of the prairie… Well I was not there man…. I was @STL  for work at Jefferson Expansion Memorial, actually I’m here until Friday night.  I took some pictures of both the old Courthouse and the Arch.. The weather was crappy which made some pictures good some bad. Lucas probably could dominate the landscape with his awesome shooting skills but this is the best I could do with the Iphone..

The reflection of Old Courthouse

The stairs to top of the Courthouse

Check out this sweet window at old courthouse

The arch from  the side

No Snow just Rain and Fog

Well not it’s not story from Bilbo Baggins. As some of you know Megan and I took our Summer vacations to Peru. In short it was great.   I read somewhere that people who travel overseas try to classify their travels as strangely unique where in reality their travels are pretty similar to all the other tourists in given country. So to say I traveled 3500 miles to have some kind of unique experience that is shared annually by thousands would be a farce to say the least. The uniqueness comes from your own mental notes on given region.  With that being said I will try to provide some of the highlights and experience we did experience.  This was first time out of the country for Megan so her perceptive on things might be a bit different than mine.

• Inca Trail and Matchu Pitchu are awesome I recommend it to anyone to do it ( coincidentally it was my favorite part of the trip )
• Peru Treks is pretty top notch company ( great guides, porters awesome cook we ate like kings for 4 days thanks for the tip James)
• Spending night in Andes and looking at the starts is very awesome I’ve never seen that many start constellations ( full moon wasn’t bad either)
• Man slow food and lack of fast food is awesome so is food without corn syrup and preservatives
  • Favorite food I had was chicaron from local street market
  • Eating food at farmers market (I mean real farmers market not north face jackets and 5$ coffee farmers market)
  • Ceviche in Lima
  • Chica Morada  is legit
• Qeucha is pretty interesting language
• Organized groups are not for Megan and I (Came to this conclusion after colca canyon)
• 3 weeks in Peru is not enough ( this country is diverse  and beautiful I can see going back for seconds or/and thirds)
• My rudimentary Spanish got us by ( learning more would be a bit more beneficial and would be good investment in future)
• Brazilians are everywhere ( so are dutch and Belgians)
• Coca leaves do help ( I hope no drug test in future )
• Peru is pretty much cash only society (making change is pretty tough sometimes)
• Peru reminded me of Poland everyone is hustling to make some $$$$ ( I have not problem with that )
• The margin between haves and have-nots is wider and more visible than in U.S.
• Beach resort vacations are not for me for sure (I don’t think it’s for Megan as well)
• How does peru get live channel 5 tour feed ( I don’t know and I don’t speak french)
• Riding down a mountain road on P.O.S. bike is not downhill MTBing it’s kind of waste of your money and time ( that’s just my opinion)

That’s all I have  for now.  In short if you like to be pampered and expect hot shower every day Peru is probably not place for you to experience.  If you like to see exotic micro climates in matters of hours like to see how other people live and don’t mind small sacrifices then Peru and actually who south America is bargain bin worth of adventures. I would say yes go and experience it yourself.

We made it to cusco a first glance at andean culture first hand, very very cool.  I feel like giant amongs little people.  The high altitude was a bit of a adjustment but with help of coca leaves we´re managing just fine. .

Now for the bad news we have to leave a day earier I believe there is a national strike wed and thurs no there will be no transportation for these two days.   Extra night in mountains for free is not bad bargain.  We´re off for some fresh porcina tamalles.  We´re starting out inca trek wed morning.

I’m in trainning whole week. yey for SQL 2008 trainning. It’s cold and wet i’ve been riding my cross bikes like it’s going out of stylie. The peru trip is almost finalized waiting for another agency about calco canyon and trying to figure out why wellsfargo is bunch of douches and won’t let me buy bus tickets in peru online. I’m all alone this weekend which can only mean one thing JIM’S rib heaven bonanza … oh yeah…

p.s. why the hell IE doesn’t have built in spell checker WTF?

So Miss Megan an I decided to visit my brother in Tucson, AZ before he moves to Chicago. The timing of the trip couldn’t be any better… It was crappy and raining in good old Omaha. I got to see what the whole deicing of the plane, weird stuff. The plan for Arizona was simple go see my brother, hike and drink some good beer show Megan around wonderful town of Tucson. Coolest thing about Tucson bike lanes and trails everywhere and people actually using them. Tucson from cycling point of view would be pretty good you get good elevation gains you have single track, people drive slow. Megan has never been to this town she has never hugged Saguaro Cactus either, well now she can say she did one of those things. On first day we just kind of hung out this whole getting up early business sure can ruin your day. We checked out Dessert Museum it was good except on of the Ursus disappear.  From then on the rest of the week was spend on hiking and baseball.  Tucson has something close to 23 thousand hikes ( well not quite) but  having 3 mountain ranges gives you some option. If I was to rock climbing Tucson would be a great place to go I would assume.. The Seven Falls and Romero Pools hikes were sweet. The cacti and wild flowers were blooming, the weather was nice traffic was down.   The libation department was great as well from great beer (Greenflash’s La Freak might have to be my new fave)  and pizza to sweet Vietnamese and mexican cooking.  Wednesday Megan and I went to Arizona Diamondback game, the game was not a good one first pitch line drive HR but the stadium is nice.  West Coast people have diffrent idea about the baseball games for them I believe it’s place to relax and to get worked up quite different from Midwest/east coast teams…

We made it back home after nice couple of days off, to top off the mini vacation we headed to Waiting room for some Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy action. Place was busy but not packed the show was great I do love me some alt country fiddling. Older crowd for sure all the kiddies must of been at slowdown for some Oberst action.

Biking in to work I realized how windy it really is in Omaha.