Editors Note: Writing commenced around noon on Monday.
Okay, back to writing in this thing. At first this was a lot of fun (I had a lot of free time to write though), now it's kind of tedious and extremely time consuming. Oh well, it's for the good of others so I can manage this.
Last weekend: (see, I typed that much 6 hours ago, told you these things take forever to type...)
(screw it, I'm not even going to tell you when this sentence was typed.... I'm trying to get this thing written, I swear. Invitations to go watch a Manchester United soccer game and grab lunch are reallllyyyy tempting).
Yep, it is now 1am on technically Wednesday morning. Told you. So, last weekend, went out to a small pizza place that has New York style pizza near campus with some friends. Afterward I took a taxi to a restaurant called Italiani's for dinner with Israel and his two friends. After a sangria, sampling everyone elses food because I wasn't that hungry, and a bottle of Italian wine between the four of us, we decided to go to a night club/bar/patio lounge place called La Rambla. We talked, had a drink, danced and talked more until I took a friend home about 4am then walked the 4 blocks back to campus. On Saturday I woke up around 12:30pm then had a fairly lazy and unproductive day. I was waiting for a phone call around 5 that I was again going to hang with Israel and his two friends nicknamed Memo and Garza. Well around 8 I got that phone call. After a quick shower and packing I was in a car with Memo (Guillermo) to pick up Garza (Luis) and Israel from their houses/hotel rooms.
We were headed for the city of Saltillo, about 45-60 minutes (depending how fast Memo wanted to drive, we hit 170km/h at one point) SSW of Monterrey. Memo has his family home and other family members in the city so he wanted to go visit them. We arrived to his home around 10:30, then visited with his family at his uncles house until midnight. While at his uncles home the four of us talked with Memo's cousins, sister, aunt and uncle and other family members. His uncle was grilling in the back area (basically a walled in section with no roof that had a grill and counter top outside. Had a drink, ate cactus, steak, grilled potatoes and a tostada with some wickedly hot homemade salsa. Once we left we got ready to go to a club for some fun. So, Dogma Bar as it was called, was this smaller little place with a ton of people in it. I mean packed. Pushing to get thru the crowd. But they had an awesome live band and it was a lot of fun so there are not hard feelings. We finally left about 4am, got some tacos at one of the many taquerias catering to those coming home from the clubs. We all think that those tacos made us sick though because we all felt weird for the next couple of days. Eh, I feel fine now so okay!
The next morning was breakfast with Memo's close family, talking to his family, watching a little tv, going to meet his grandmother, getting a driving tour of the city, packing up and heading back to Tec. We stopped for some seafood and to visit Garza's family and home (oh, he is in my Mate 3 class FYI). Then I got dropped off *near* campus because there was a soccer game at Estadio Tec and the roads were jammed. In Monterrey there are 2 main soccer teams: Rayados (the unofficial Tec team), and the Tigres from another university in the city. Since the stadium is 2 blocks from housing, it was crazy. Every restaurant, shop, or place with a tv was packed with people watching the game. There was a slightly elevated police presence but I didn't see anyone get too crazy. And for the rest of the night I just laid low and talked, and did some homework.
Classes on Monday and Tuesday weren't too bad. Waking up at 8am on Monday was hard. Dozing off in my Español Lengua Extranjera 2 class, but I managed to stay awake. Yeah I didn't do a lot on Monday. Stretched. Looked at the pool, listened to my stomach growling and figured it wasn't worth it. I really need to plan my eating schedule so I can survive these fast 1000m swims with lifting afterwards. I was up late working on some DME homework which made getting up at 8am on Tuesday extreeeeemely difficult. So Tuesday was full of studying, took a 3 hr nap with transgressed into getting some tacos in front of housing because they had another "let's eat and play loud music for the hell of it" event. Fine by me!
This weekend I am going on a roadtrip with Israel to his home in Tabasco and flying back because he has a new job in the Dominican Republic and leaves in a week. So I'll probably leave Thursday after Salsa class.
Sorry I don't have any profound words or new cultural info in this post. Maybe on Wednesday I'll add another short post with, something.
I guess I'll add that I now have 3.5 pages full of typed and written notes about many things SigEp including my Fellow project and 11 (so far) Reflections to write. If any of the new Brothers are reading this, I hope that your Sigma Challenge is proving to be insightful and that you are already enjoying the hell out of your decision to join. If any old fogie SigEps are reading this, pass along my best, and you'll hopefully have a video presentation this Sunday at GB from me.
June 20th, 2010!!!! I'm so excited!!!! If you don't know, contact me separately. If you wish to join me on my endeavor, let me know. We'll talk, make a plan. *Jonatan F. RMX*
Dulces sueños
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
A Weekend Of Climbing
First word, amazing. Second word, ow.
Background on Cerro de la Silla... It is the most recognizable mountain that overlooks the city of Monterrey (technically the mountain lies in the municipality of Guadalupe, but most say Monterrey to make it easier). It is in the shape of a W. There are 4 peaks that constitute the main part of Cerro when viewed from the West, looking East. There is Pico Antena (Antenna Peak), towards the North. Pico Antena is somewhere around 1800 meters above sea level (1970 yds, 1.18 miles) while the city of Monterrey is around 540 meters above sea level (590 yds, .34 miles). Then is Pico Norte (tallest at 1820m), then Pico Sur, then Pico la Virgen (shortest at 1750m). That means we climbed approximately 1260 meters vertically (1378 yards, 4134 feet, .783 miles). The trail length is about 5.5km, 3.3 miles.
Friday night, laid low, talked with friends, procrastinated, slept well.
Saturday morning, 7:30AM wake up. By 8 I was on a bus with 30 other Tec students plus 3 guides on our way to the base of Cerro de la Silla in Guadalupe. We arrived, got off the bus and had all of our bags checked for stuff by security guards for a subdivision that we had to walk through to get to the trail. They took my pen and pencil (labeled them so I could retrieve them of course), probably to deter graffiti. So the group of 30+ starts walking up the hill in this sub towards the start of the real trail. The trail up the mountain is about 8 to 10 feet wide the entire way up. Half way up we stopped for about 15 minutes to see the old aerial tramway station that was built to handle a cable car to go up halfway. Sadly, on the opening day this aerial tramway had an accident that killed 5 people, including the design engineer. It never reopened. But the view from atop the platform was amazing! It was a perfect place to get some good photos of the city and get some water, plus oranges. The trail itself consisted of a multitude of surfaces. Mostly it was just the earth with small gravel and leaves but sometimes there were rocks larger than a foot in dimension that made for an up-and-down path that could get very slippery. Further up the hill they poured concrete into flat surfaces and ridged/speed bumped for the corners and particularly steep areas. I wore my Asics running shoes and did fine. The second photo is of the Tec campus at 20x optical zoom with my Sony DSC-HX1.
Right, Cerro de la Silla... So after 2 and a half hours of walking up the hill we made it to the top. And ohh buddy was it worth it. The view was incredible. Seeing the majority of a city of almost 4 million people without having to turn my head was an experience. It was sunny with a light wind that helped to cool us down after walking. At the top of Pico Antena is, go figure, several antennas for cell phone providers and telecommunication companies. There was even a medium sized transport truck up there. I don't think it drove though (bless you helicopters). We were at the top for about half an hour eating food, drinking sweet sweet glorious H20, and taking tons of pictures. Looking to the back of Pico Antena we could see the rolling hills of the mountain range and part of a municipality of Monterrey. Breathtaking. Some others in the group decided to venture down about 5 yards towards the real edge of the hill (one more step and its nothing but air an a lengthy vertical drop). I didn't go that far, kinda liked the feeling of not being able to truly fall to my death. Given a harness and a good rope oh heck yeah I would have gone right to the edge.Oh, I swear it looked like Pico Norte was below where we were, but anywho. 
So, after resting and taking a bunch of photos, we started the 3.3 mile walk back down the mountain. This hurt me wayyy more than the climb up. Thanks to football and track in high school I have bad knees. It is easy for me to go up stairs, run 5 miles, or bike a long ways. Walking a mile, walking down 3.3 miles, and standing for 8 hours kills me.
Cueva de la Virgen (Virgin's Cave) is in the municipality of La Huasteca inside a park. There were 10 people with 4 guides that went this day. All of us had on full climbing harnesses and helmets. The cave is, I'm guessing, 200 meters in the air. We climbed up the side of this cliff that was quite steep. Sorry, I'm cutting down the length of this part because I need to restart my computer and go swimming, again (yes, this has taken over a day to complete). The climb was difficult, slippery, didn't always have places to grab hold so it was sometimes just using my two feet at opposing angles to walk up. By the time we made it to the cave I was needless-to-say tired. My legs never got a chance to rest after climbing Cerro de la Silla the day before. The cave itself was quite large. 30 yards deep, 10 yards high. We walked into the front of it, ate and rested at the back, then exited out the side. Upon leaving we were greeted with a, what seemed to be steeper hill than what we came up, which sucked because there weren't nice pointy rocks to get a good foot hold. We did however have some nice soil and small gravel that provided a great surface to slide down on our butts. Joy. Oh, did I mention gravity still works even when you are running out of things to grab a hold of so you stop sliding?? Ok, so after sliding down maybe 100 feet we stopped so that our guides could hook up a rope so we could start rappelling down the near-vertical face of the cliff. It took a while to get the lines situated then prep the 10 of us how to properly rappel then actually get all of us down the 3 different levels. There were only 2 ropes so we went down the first rope, then switched lines with the help of a guide, then went to the 2nd level then waited for everyone to get there. Then we joked and talked with the guides used one of the lines to get us down the 3rd rappel section. By the end of that 3rd section it was true what the guides had said, that the rope may "quemar los manos" (burn your hands). Mine had black lines across them. **Note to self: Next time bring gloves! Then it was another run down a hill with a ton of small-medium sized rocks then hopping down big boulders until we were back at ground floor. What an incredible climb. If you can get to my facebook, check out the pics there, I really hate the photo uploader with this site.
Background on Cerro de la Silla... It is the most recognizable mountain that overlooks the city of Monterrey (technically the mountain lies in the municipality of Guadalupe, but most say Monterrey to make it easier). It is in the shape of a W. There are 4 peaks that constitute the main part of Cerro when viewed from the West, looking East. There is Pico Antena (Antenna Peak), towards the North. Pico Antena is somewhere around 1800 meters above sea level (1970 yds, 1.18 miles) while the city of Monterrey is around 540 meters above sea level (590 yds, .34 miles). Then is Pico Norte (tallest at 1820m), then Pico Sur, then Pico la Virgen (shortest at 1750m). That means we climbed approximately 1260 meters vertically (1378 yards, 4134 feet, .783 miles). The trail length is about 5.5km, 3.3 miles.
Friday night, laid low, talked with friends, procrastinated, slept well.
Saturday morning, 7:30AM wake up. By 8 I was on a bus with 30 other Tec students plus 3 guides on our way to the base of Cerro de la Silla in Guadalupe. We arrived, got off the bus and had all of our bags checked for stuff by security guards for a subdivision that we had to walk through to get to the trail. They took my pen and pencil (labeled them so I could retrieve them of course), probably to deter graffiti. So the group of 30+ starts walking up the hill in this sub towards the start of the real trail. The trail up the mountain is about 8 to 10 feet wide the entire way up. Half way up we stopped for about 15 minutes to see the old aerial tramway station that was built to handle a cable car to go up halfway. Sadly, on the opening day this aerial tramway had an accident that killed 5 people, including the design engineer. It never reopened. But the view from atop the platform was amazing! It was a perfect place to get some good photos of the city and get some water, plus oranges. The trail itself consisted of a multitude of surfaces. Mostly it was just the earth with small gravel and leaves but sometimes there were rocks larger than a foot in dimension that made for an up-and-down path that could get very slippery. Further up the hill they poured concrete into flat surfaces and ridged/speed bumped for the corners and particularly steep areas. I wore my Asics running shoes and did fine. The second photo is of the Tec campus at 20x optical zoom with my Sony DSC-HX1. Okay, officially quitting uploading photos to this thing. It takes 3 minutes per photo, then they randomly delete themselves from the page. No more... (after the fact... I tried uploading more photos. Yes, it's still a pain in the rear.)
So, we continued up the mountain. Dang it! It takes forever to write in this thing. I'm going to swim my 1000m. I'll continue when I get back... Which for you will be 3 seconds of reading... Funny eh?
Back. That was fun. I'm really starting to like swimming, aside from the times when I go breathing stupid and i try to inhale as I'm turning my head back down into the water....
These blogs take forever to write, holy smokes... Alright, I'll try to type faster about the rest of my weekend.
Right, Cerro de la Silla... So after 2 and a half hours of walking up the hill we made it to the top. And ohh buddy was it worth it. The view was incredible. Seeing the majority of a city of almost 4 million people without having to turn my head was an experience. It was sunny with a light wind that helped to cool us down after walking. At the top of Pico Antena is, go figure, several antennas for cell phone providers and telecommunication companies. There was even a medium sized transport truck up there. I don't think it drove though (bless you helicopters). We were at the top for about half an hour eating food, drinking sweet sweet glorious H20, and taking tons of pictures. Looking to the back of Pico Antena we could see the rolling hills of the mountain range and part of a municipality of Monterrey. Breathtaking. Some others in the group decided to venture down about 5 yards towards the real edge of the hill (one more step and its nothing but air an a lengthy vertical drop). I didn't go that far, kinda liked the feeling of not being able to truly fall to my death. Given a harness and a good rope oh heck yeah I would have gone right to the edge.Oh, I swear it looked like Pico Norte was below where we were, but anywho. 
So, after resting and taking a bunch of photos, we started the 3.3 mile walk back down the mountain. This hurt me wayyy more than the climb up. Thanks to football and track in high school I have bad knees. It is easy for me to go up stairs, run 5 miles, or bike a long ways. Walking a mile, walking down 3.3 miles, and standing for 8 hours kills me. Nothing exciting happened on the walk down, no photos, nada. So I move on. The rest of Saturday was filled with getting food, showering, and then passing out by 7pm (missed going to dinner with some friends because of that).
On Sunday, jeez I've written this much and I haven't gotten into Cueva de la Virgen... ayyy.
Cueva de la Virgen (Virgin's Cave) is in the municipality of La Huasteca inside a park. There were 10 people with 4 guides that went this day. All of us had on full climbing harnesses and helmets. The cave is, I'm guessing, 200 meters in the air. We climbed up the side of this cliff that was quite steep. Sorry, I'm cutting down the length of this part because I need to restart my computer and go swimming, again (yes, this has taken over a day to complete). The climb was difficult, slippery, didn't always have places to grab hold so it was sometimes just using my two feet at opposing angles to walk up. By the time we made it to the cave I was needless-to-say tired. My legs never got a chance to rest after climbing Cerro de la Silla the day before. The cave itself was quite large. 30 yards deep, 10 yards high. We walked into the front of it, ate and rested at the back, then exited out the side. Upon leaving we were greeted with a, what seemed to be steeper hill than what we came up, which sucked because there weren't nice pointy rocks to get a good foot hold. We did however have some nice soil and small gravel that provided a great surface to slide down on our butts. Joy. Oh, did I mention gravity still works even when you are running out of things to grab a hold of so you stop sliding?? Ok, so after sliding down maybe 100 feet we stopped so that our guides could hook up a rope so we could start rappelling down the near-vertical face of the cliff. It took a while to get the lines situated then prep the 10 of us how to properly rappel then actually get all of us down the 3 different levels. There were only 2 ropes so we went down the first rope, then switched lines with the help of a guide, then went to the 2nd level then waited for everyone to get there. Then we joked and talked with the guides used one of the lines to get us down the 3rd rappel section. By the end of that 3rd section it was true what the guides had said, that the rope may "quemar los manos" (burn your hands). Mine had black lines across them. **Note to self: Next time bring gloves! Then it was another run down a hill with a ton of small-medium sized rocks then hopping down big boulders until we were back at ground floor. What an incredible climb. If you can get to my facebook, check out the pics there, I really hate the photo uploader with this site. All in all, a great weekend. It is now Tuesday at 7pm local time and my calves are still screwed up bad. The quads are good, those I have trained well. Let's just say The Stick is my mortal enemy right now. My roomie Raphael has been laughing at me. Okay, it's about damn time I finished this post. I'm going to get food, and swim, then lift. Then tonight shall be lots and lots of Math and Fluids hw! Joy!!! I wish you all could have come along, it truly was incredible. Oh Michigan, why can't you have 10% of the stuff that is available here?? Right, because you're MICHIGAN!!
On a side note: I miss my car, I miss my cat, I miss my parents, and I cannot wait to get back on my bike. Salsa classes are going well, I'm actually teaching my partners the moves instead of me looking the idiot who can't dance.
Au revoir
Friday, February 5, 2010
[Insert title here], because I can't think of what to call it
So what has happened in 3 days? What could I possibly write about? Well, I was kicked out of the pool on Tuesday because I didn't have a swim cap. Okay. Still got 400m in. After shopping on Thursday, I am now the proud owner of a new 24 peso black latex swim cap. Quite stylish, if I may say so. 1000m on Thursday night. I felt like an idiot at one point because I turned my breathing a quarter cycle, so I was breathing out with my face turned and trying to breathe in on that stroke. Needless to say, I inhaled a good quantity of water thru my nose and mouth. But I did get back into the groove of things. Oh, on Wednesday night I put 2 new friends through a Butterfield lower body workout with some improvised core moves. If you don't know who Frank Butterfield is, as a SigEp, or I'll try to write about him later. It's Friday afternoon and I'm still a little sore.
For those who know Israel Lopez Jimenez, he has been accepted to a new job. Unfortunately the last time I saw him was 2 weeks ago, and I cannot remember when he is supposed to leave... Time for an expensive phone call. Hopefully get to see him once more before he goes to whatever country he is working in.
Tomorrow, Saturday, I will be climbing Cerro de la Silla, to Pico Norte. In the main pic of this blog, see the tallest peak? Yeah, up there. The approximate elevation at Pico Norte is 5971 feet above sea level, 4134 feet above the city. Many a photo shall be taken. Moosejaw, Voltaic, and Sigma Phi Epsilon shall be shown from atop!!! AHAHAHAHAH!!! I'm excited. its a 3.3 mile hike up the mountain to get there. Should take a few hours to climb up and a few to climb down. Then on Sunday I will be going to Cueva de la Virgen, about 15 outside of Monterrey.
Oh right, I'm here to study... speak of the devil. I have Mecanica de Fluidos in an hour. Therefore, I bid you all adieu as I go enjoy the 75 degree weather. Please don't hate me... Oh, Dr. Fletcher has told me that more people are reading this. Great!!! If you have any questions for me, please email me at iwilliams@ltu.edu I am always checking email on my computer and phone. I will reply as soon as I can.
Nos vemos
Monday, February 1, 2010
Victory!!
I told you I would try to post when I got back from Zacatecas!! I know it's 12:45, but the bus got back at 11:45, then shower, unpack, talk to roomie, Facebook for a few minutes, and here I am.
The trip to Zacatecas was amazing. I love cities like that. They are required to keep the buildings in a large part of the city as colonial as possible. All store signs are painted in black above the doorway, nothing lit up or hanging into the street. The Mine Club was amazing. I was asked by a couple other international students if the US had anything like that. To my knowledge, no. Not at all. I'll have photos and videos up soon, somewhere. Cerro de la Bufa was really cool. On Sunday we went to La Quemada. They are pyramids built between 500 and 800 AD. The name "La Quemada" means the burnt. There was a fire that destroyed most of the structures inside this area, hence the name. There were areas that you could see stones that were darker than others, from the fire.
On Monday we went to Guadalupe to a museum of religious paintings, then went to a village outside the city of Guadalupe to see a family friend of one of our tour guides, his family makes grape wine. We sampled different types they produced. They had a 10 year red wine that was delicious. A 1 year sweet wine that I did not like at all. It seemed that the men and the women from France liked the 10 year wine the best, while the Europeans and Mexican women preferred the 1 year sweet wine. They had a white wine that I did not like. But hey, it was fun to sample them, and see how they were produced.
Then an 8 hour bus ride back, and here I am. Well, since I did almost no homework this weekend, I am going to dive into some Design of Machine Elements calculations (quite glad I brought my Mechanics of Materials binder with me).
Good night everyone. I will have photos up on Facebook either way late tonight or tomorrow afternoon.
再見
The trip to Zacatecas was amazing. I love cities like that. They are required to keep the buildings in a large part of the city as colonial as possible. All store signs are painted in black above the doorway, nothing lit up or hanging into the street. The Mine Club was amazing. I was asked by a couple other international students if the US had anything like that. To my knowledge, no. Not at all. I'll have photos and videos up soon, somewhere. Cerro de la Bufa was really cool. On Sunday we went to La Quemada. They are pyramids built between 500 and 800 AD. The name "La Quemada" means the burnt. There was a fire that destroyed most of the structures inside this area, hence the name. There were areas that you could see stones that were darker than others, from the fire.
On Monday we went to Guadalupe to a museum of religious paintings, then went to a village outside the city of Guadalupe to see a family friend of one of our tour guides, his family makes grape wine. We sampled different types they produced. They had a 10 year red wine that was delicious. A 1 year sweet wine that I did not like at all. It seemed that the men and the women from France liked the 10 year wine the best, while the Europeans and Mexican women preferred the 1 year sweet wine. They had a white wine that I did not like. But hey, it was fun to sample them, and see how they were produced.
Then an 8 hour bus ride back, and here I am. Well, since I did almost no homework this weekend, I am going to dive into some Design of Machine Elements calculations (quite glad I brought my Mechanics of Materials binder with me).
Good night everyone. I will have photos up on Facebook either way late tonight or tomorrow afternoon.
再見
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