[caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“4032”] The Bonafide PWR 129 right after I got it home. [/caption] After several years of planning, I have finally acquired my kayak! It’s a Bonafide PWR 129, and I am really excited about this boat. The above picture was right after I got it home. Huge shoutout to TG Canoes and Kayak down in San Marcos for hooking me up with this thing! ...
[caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“4032”] Me in front of a palace in Vienna, Austria. I was lucky enough to get to go on a quick trip to Austria for work this year. [/caption] While November of 2024 didn’t exactly pan out like I was hoping, I want to make sure that I set goals for 2025 to try to improve myself. I can’t control a lot of things in this world. But I can control me, and I want to end 2025 in a better state than I started it. ...
We’re on the plane heading back to the USA. 🇺🇸 It’s been fun, Europe, but it’s time to go see our cats!
Woke up this morning to our flights out of Zurich being cancelled. We had been rebooked, but since we were on separate reservations, the system had put us on separate itineraries. So I spent a while on the phone with United, but the guy I talked to was very helpful and got us all rebooked. I even got some of the miles I used on Carrie’s ticket back? Airline fare rules are so weird. ...
We’re waiting for the train to leave Chamonix, and I definitely have mixed feelings. I’m sad to leave this beautiful place with the amazing food, great wine, and just mind blowing natural beauty. But I’m also looking forward to getting back to our house, our cats, and our friends and family. We ended up hiking 7 miles yesterday, with a pretty steep climb that allowed us to skip the ladders. We had a rain storm come through (though we luckily dodged the thunderstorm that came through across the valley). We also used our water filter bottle for the first time to get water out of a mountain waterfall. But it was a good hike, and we topped it off taking a cable car down from the mountain. ...
Yesterday we crossed from Italy into Switzerland on foot, which is a crazy thing to say. I ate an energy bar on an international border, while staring down a valley where I could see another international border. Wild. It was a very pretty hike, but it was the first time my fear of heights kicked in. I had a panic on this one part where I had a hard time putting one foot in front of the next and moving my poles. It was something about the angle of the trail and the very steep we were on. But I pushed through and once we turned the corner up the switchback the feeling subsided. ...
We’re going to take advantage of the free bus to go for a short hike today. This way we’ll get to see some of the scenery, but not have to be out all day. Courmayeur is absolutely lovely, and our hotel here is amazing. I’ll report back again this evening.
I’m so very glad we decided to go do a shortened day hike today. The scenery was the most postcard-worthy things we have seen yet. We took the bus down, and after about 2k of solid uphill we were rewarded with the most amazing panoramic view I think I have ever seen (this shot doesn’t do it justice, the album has the pano shot I took). We had a light lunch of spec and brie sandwiches, an espresso, and a delicious piece of apple cake. ...
Day 2 started well. Generally we had our nutrition better situated and our water plan was better (definitely both could be better). Amazing views crossing the Col de Bonhomme. Once we were done with the climbing, however, we realized that we only had 45 minutes to make it to our taxi. I also misread the instructions so I thought we had less distance to where the taxi was. At some point on the descent Carrie and I decided to split up and I would try to get down as quickly as possible to hopefully catch the taxi driver and try to convince him to wait for Carrie. It was during this process I realized there were several more kilometers to go down than I had previously thought. I went hard and when I got to the taxi guy (who was still there, thank goodness) I had to use my very bad French to make sure it was our guy. He eventually smiled and told me not to worry and that he would wait for Carrie no problem. ...
I’m very excited to start hiking but I’m also pretty nervous. We’ve been planning this for so long and now we are about to just start walking to our next hotel that’s 9 miles away. Crazy… Our time in Chamonix has been great. Glad we get to come back here one more night at the end. I will hopefully figure out the Garmin links today. If not I’ll hope to get them going tomorrow.