Series Reboot

It's been a minute.

Despite our best efforts, our travels continually outpaced the blog posts, and here we are a year on from our last visit to Scotland with only a single post to show for it. The memories are far more plentiful, and hopefully they don't fade too much before we get the chance to commit them digitally.

I hope, someday in the not-so-distant future, that we share some illustrated stories of our time in Scotland with Ellie and Cristobal, climbing and fighting midges and tent-flattening winds on Skye. Describing the logistics of transporting ourselves, 2 bicycles, and more than 150 pounds of equipment spread over 10 bags from London to the small mountain village of Vallouise, France - and then again to Chamonix. Climbing the Ailefroide, biking Isère and Hautes-Alpes, failures and triumphs and close calls in the Mont-Blanc massif - surviving the avalanche on the shoulders of Mont Blanc du Tacul. Three weeks of biking and via ferrata humbled beneath the heights of the Italian Dolomites.

Climbing up Ben Nevis with friends

Having less fun on the Isle of Skye, hoping our tents aren't blown flat. And it's raining.

We still caught a little bit of culture in London - "Tiger" by Franz Marc

Loading up the Bike Bus outside London to get us most of the way to Vallouise... only a train ride and a bike ride after that!

View of the Barre des Écrins, the Pelvoux, and the Ailefroide in the Écrins National Park

Climbing up Ailefroid Orientale in the early morning light

Biking through Isère and Hautes-Alpes

Another early morning in the mountains - at the foot of Mont Blanc du Tacul

Stunning views of the Mont Blanc Massif from across the way in the Aiguilles Rouges

Dolomites fun

In the Dolomites, a bike for each of us :)

Not to mention our return to the U.S. - coming home, buying a car, and over the course of 12,000 miles and 6 months passing the time with good friends in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Bozeman. A bit milder in the adventure department, with both of us working on the side, and not without some further challenges, but full of life we couldn't spend any better. Yes, eventually we will write it all down, remove the duplicate photos, and finish our journal of transience.

Good times with old friends

Susan and I on our hike through the Grand Canyon

Susan coming up a climb in Red Rock NCA

Susan gets fresh turns in the Wasatch backcountry

Looking towards the Tetons during our trip to Grand Targhee

Ski trip buds!

Getting in a little climbing out around Bozeman

Susan and I got to take a little detour to somewhere warmer :)

In the meantime, though, we're about to start on the final phase of our journey around the world and through gainful unemployment - a thru-hike of the Continental Divide Trail! Or, at least, an attempt at doing so. Neither Susan nor I is much of a purist, and neither are we willing to hike all that fast. (To repeat a running joke from Chamonix, "We are not light people".) So we'll see how far we make it, which (if any) parts we have to cut off, and how much is left for us to come back and finish another time.

3,000 miles, give or take, northbound from the Mexican border, up through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. We won't be able to keep up our famous detailed play-by-play (surely to everyone's relief), but I hope to be able to provide a few missives and some photos each time we pop back into "civilization" - or at least wi-fi. See you from the trail!