On hiatus

This blog is officially on vacation. 

You can find us back at http://cheryl-dan-mexicanmadness.blogspot.com/ for the next few months.

Our 23rd anniversary

  Grab a cup of tea, this one could take awhile.

We were married by a JP  in our living room on November 10th 1987.

Who are those skinny people?

Both Carse & Cowling clans were present in full.

But of course, the story started well before then.

We met at the International Balloon Fiesta,

Alburquerque, New Mexico. 

October 1983. 

It's 7:00am and yes, that's champagne in my glass. 

We spent a wonderful decade flying the Spirit all over Alberta, BC, Montana and of course back in New Mexico.  We could be found most week-end mornings on a launch field at the crack of dawn.

We've been extremely fortunate to be able to travel and have adventures around the world. 

  In no particular order:

Our first trip together was to England, Scotland and Wales in 1986.

Castles, canal boats and an introduction to some of my crazier relatives.

We've made a movie in San Martin de los Andes, Argentina

We've sailed around the Greek Islands

In Australia, we climbed Ayers Rock, played with kangaroos and koalas, snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef and drank enough Fosters to make the Aussies proud.

We've been on the most amazing safari in Africa.  We saw every kind of animal up much closer than we ever imagined. (Too close for comfort sometimes).  We petted cheetahs, fed giraffes, watched the wildebeast gathering for their annual migration, had a midnight picnic in the middle of the Serengetti and "camped" in the jungle surrounded by lions and baboons.

So much to do in New Zealand we ran out of time.  We'll have to go back to see the rest later. Spent 2½ weeks driving like fools in our rented camper van.  Built our own hot pool at low tide at Hot Water Beach, climbed around a very active volcano on White Island.  Punted along the beautiful Avon River in Christchurch and did a little sea kayaking. No trouble sleeping - lots of sheep to count. 

China was our first vacation with the Wongs.  Too lazy to use a thesaurus, but there's got to be something better than  awesome and amazing, because it was WAY beyond those wimpy descriptions.

We squeezed in a visit to Epcot centre on our way to a Caribbean cruise.  The mv Caribe (or was it the ss Minnow?) was somewhat less than luxurious, and we didn't really enjoy the whole cruising thing, but we did get a tiny taste of Puerto Rico, we rode horses in the Dominican Republic and had a spectacular, albeit  terrifying helicopter ride over the British Virgin Islands

 Then there was a bicycling/barge tour of the Netherlands.

Another vacation with Lesley and Dave.  Peru was everything we had ever imagined it to be.  Hiking up to the Sun Gate at Machu Picchu was breathtaking in both senses of the word. Touring Lake Titicaca and the floating islands in a reed boat was a hoot.  We flew over the Nazca lines, petted a condor, missed a flight, but found a miracle-performing Jesus in the parking lot of the airport (There's a story there)  We ate some of the best food I've ever tasted and fell in love with Pisco Sours, the national drink.

 

A quick, romantic trip to Paris & Versailles

Pictures and words couldn't possibly do justice to the San Franciso Kidnap caper with Bill & Vi.  Ask us about it sometime.  It's a story we love to share.  Complete with CD slide show.

New York.  The Big Apple. It started with me hearing about a show that I HAD to see.  (Movin' Up with Billy Joel's music and Twyla Tharpe's choreography. - What's not to love?)  It turned into a Wong family reunion of sorts.  Dave reunited with his mother after several decades and Jessica & Samantha finally met their other grandmother.

We packed a lot of stuff into that long weekend!

A camping and cycling trip around the the rim of the Grand Canyon

We battled flooding and hurricanes on a trip to the Baja peninsular in search of vacation property after a very persuasive sales pitch convinced us to check out Loreto Bay.

Can't believe I missed Chile & Easter Island.  It was one of my favourite vacations too!  Lesley, Dave, Dan & I covered a LOT of ground on this trip.  It was all excellent, but the expedition cruise around Cape Horn and Easter Island were definite highlights.

 There have been countless trips to Mexico including a couple to Playa del Carmen, a couple to San Miguel de Allende, Guadalajara, Lake Chapala, Ajijic, Ixtapa, and of course Puerto Peñasco.  
A couple of years ago we spent 4 months driving aimlessly around the southern US and Mexico in our first VW van, just following the sunshine.  And now we have a vacation property in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico.

We're not finished yet, there is still a LOT of world out there that we want to see.

It's not all adventure and travelling though.  We've survived plenty of home renovations and major backyard building projects. 

We've had our share of sorrow too.  We've lost some good friends along the way, both sets of parents and Shanda, our sweet, 3-legged beauty. 

It doesn't matter if it's sudden or prolonged, there's just no easy way to handle those kinds of losses.

So today we celebrate 23 years.  Of harmony?  Hardly...

We have different tastes in almost everything.

Musically, Dan leans toward Phil Collins and Elton John

While I, apparently, grew up on the harsher side of the '70's and prefer Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin

We don't agree on books.  Dan reads mostly non-fiction tomes involving politics and current events.

And I think we've already established that I like the girly, escapist fluff novels.

The widest chasm though is our food tastes.  They border on irreconcilable differences.  Dan has been known to eat (and I'm trying not to gag here)  peanut butter and pickle sandwiches, while I eat Marmite (aka road tar) on toast, daily. 

With all our differences though, the core values that make us who we are, are the same, and that's what keeps us going in a world with a 50% divorce rate.

Best friends and soul mates...just don't ask me to be in the same room when he's eating one of those sandwiches!

Seven Year Switch - Claire Cook

Okay, well that was a fun beachy novel.  Boy meets girl.  Boy abandons girl and young daughter.  Girl gets on with her life and is doing fine without him, thank you very much. Girl meets other boy.  Boy returns...
I had a hard time getting over the fact that they'd named their daughter Anastasia, but other than that, I enjoyed this one.

Not Pretty But Precious - John Hay

This one, on the other hand, started out kinda strange, and just got weirder.  An odd old-fashioned story about a plain woman entering into a marriage of convenience with a charming, worldly ladies man circa 1800's.  Once I got used to the writing style it was okay.  After a hundred pages or so it took an abrupt turn and new characters were introduced, but the writing style and the period remained the same.  When it took another strange turn another hundred pages on, with a completely different tone to the writing, I figured out that I was probably reading  short stories.  I hate when that happens!  Not sure if it really was short stories or if they were later seamed together somehow, I gave up up on it.  I'm glad it was free.

Thundershirt

Taz models her new Thundershirt.  This stretchy jacket is supposed to help to relieve her anxiety while travelling.  Apparently, it's acts as a big hug that will calm her fears in the van.  Uh huh.  We'll see.  The website had a LOT of positive testimonials (Duh, like they'd put negative stuff on there) and also, some of my Flickr friends have reported good results.    It's a long drive to Mexico and we know from past experience that she's gonna drive us crazy before we get out of Montana, so we figured it's worth a shot. (We have drugs as a back up plan, but would really rather not use them.)  She seems to like wearing it, but of course that velcro ripping sound was pretty darn scary.

 

Yay!  I finally managed to do a multiple image that I like.  This is Taz in the Sea of Cortez circa 2008. 

I still haven't figured out the cropping/sizing issue, I just got lucky with these two different sized pictures.

And, because it's my blog and I can do what I want...

I combined some old calligraphy with some even older poetry with a photo taken in Mexico last year. 

 

Only took me about 57 attempts to size them to fit eachother. 

Well, they still don't quite fit perfectly, but it's as good as it's ever gonna get.

That was actually kinda fun.  I'm gonna have to dig through the archives and see what else might work.
Hey, Lesley - do you like my seagulls?  I must've inherited my artistic (ahem) abilities from Dad eh?

Later:
Yep, I'm enjoying this.  More ancient calligraphy and a photo of a door in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

 

Don't worry, I'll tire of this sooner or later.

Gettin' there

Okay, so I still don't have one that I love, but my efforts at superimposing are showing improvement.