Torrent Falls Climbing and Natural Bridge

Saturday morning, John picked me up early to drive 3 1/2 hours to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. There is an area called the Torrent Falls Climbing Adventure that has a set up called the via ferratta which is system of reebars (large staple-like pieces of metal drilled into the side of a mountain to assist amateur climbers.) This is a great way to climb without knowing much about it! Ahem, I mean, I'm at expert level and I'm sure you can tell! Haha!

Here is Dave, our instructor, showing us the ropes (heehee):

Here I am at the beginning of our climb:

Look at how relaxed John is compared to me. I attribute it partially to his height but mainly to his athletic ability!

Here we are taking a quick break in a little carve out in the rock:

Here are our feet dangling from the edge with the view of the pond below:

This is at the end of the climb for me. My hands were pretty raw from grabbing the reebar without gloves.
After a break, John wanted to climb to the two bridges that were left on the course. This is the birdwire bridge. As you can see he had some fun with it!

Here we are after our climb in all of our wonderful equipment. We had such a great time!

We set up camp and then went to the Lodge for dinner. I had the Kentucky Hot Brown, a traditional Kentucky dish made of Texas toast, cured ham and turkey, lots of cheese, a tomato and two strips of bacon and then smothered in country gravy. It was delicious, but I was glad that John helped me out with it because it was a heart attack waiting to happen!
The next day John and I hiked to the Natural Bridge. This was only 3/4 of a mile long but I was having hypoglycemia and I'm still recovering from a cold so it took so long to get to the top. I had to stop quite frequently!

Here is Natural Bridge taken from Battleship Rock:

Here are John and I during our trip back to the Lodge. See how pale I look from the hypoglycemia? Not good! John was wonderful because he really helped me in the difficult parts of the hike down. He is so good to me. :)

Here is the start of Devil's Gulch. It is a series of 87 steps made of rock heading down the hill. After the 87 steps there are another 1,000 or so the rest of the way.

After arriving at the Lodge we had lunch before heading back to Oxford. We had a wonderful time communing with nature!

Trip to Oxford, Ohio Part 2

During the week while John had to work, Elan and I drove to various cities in Ohio. Elan now lives in Ohio since marrying Dennis and she wanted to use my time there as a way to get to know her new home state. The first day, we drove to Columbus. We ate a Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch (common place in Ohio) and then we drove to downtown, parked and walked around the city.

Tuesday, Elan and I stayed close to Oxford, running errands, including taking me to the dentist to get my stitches out because they were bugging me! Then Elan and I went to You're Fired, a ceramics place in town. I took longer than I figured I would but it was a good time!
Wednesday, Elan and I went to Cincinnati. We kept commenting how there weren't very many people in town. I found out later that it was because it was Veteran's Day! No wonder! We went to lunch at Izzy's, which is famous for corned beef and their famous side of potato pancakes. That's exactly what I ordered and it was delicious!
Wednesday night John and I went over to the Kidd's (Don and Corinne) for dinner. Their friend, Paul, was there as well. We had a nice dinner and then we played Wii Fit. We had such a blast playing and I figured out that John is a bit competitive, but mostly he's competitive with himself. The only game we played that I did the best at was the counting game-figures! I would love a Wii Fit for Christmas. It's a great and fun way to keep moving!

Thursday Elan and I were allowed at the men's lunch that occurs every Thursday at Haines Dining Hall on the Miami University campus (no girls allowed usually). While I was ordering my lunch on the other side of the lunch room from John, a woman who worked for the cafeteria commented on a man who was ordering a Mad Max (it's a spicy chicken fillet, a couple pieces of pizza in between toast) and asked for wheat toast because "he's kind of a health nut". Haha! The woman was flabbergasted! I laughed and thought "that's John!"

John and I went to Cincinnati on Thursday night and had a fabulous time. We had dinner at a grill restaurant and then we mosied over to the arcade where we played about 5 games of pool (I only won one by default-John scratched) and then we played several "driving" games that made me a bit dizzy and we ended with pinball games.

Elan and I drove to Dayton on Friday morning. We went to the Oregon District which was advertised as a Victorian style area, but it really wasn't Victorian given the tattoo parlor on the main strip. We went to the Oregon Express restaurant for lunch and had their famous pizza, which was pretty good! From there, we went to the Patterson Homestead which was really interesting. We learned about the history of cash registers and how much opposition there was to installing them. Patterson was also an innovator in employee welfare. We then walked around the neighborhood before heading back home.

John came over and we had dinner with Dennis and Elan. It was delicious-both dinner and dessert! We ended up playing Apples to Apples! Fun times!

Trip to Oxford, Ohio Part 1

I arrived in Dayton, Ohio on Friday, November 6th on time, but I stopped off at the bathroom to freshen up and brush my hair because I had straightened it the day before. I took one last look in the mirror and didn't recognize myself due to the gum surgery I had undergone a few days before.

I wasn't the only one who didn't recognize me. Because I didn't walk into the baggage claim area with a group, John was caught off guard. I had told him that my hair would be different and that he wouldn't recognize me, but I don't think he expected for me to look as puffy as I was and he definitely wasn't expecting straight hair!

When I walked up to him I saw that he was dressed up in a suit and he had a beautifully crafted winter green sign with white cursive letters that read "Wales - Redondo Beach." When he got over the shock he pulled a bouquet of star-gazer lillies from behind his back! They were beautiful and lasted the entire week because there were a few buds that opened during my stay. I wish I had thought to snap a picture of John looking so handsome, but you'll have to settle for the picture of the bouquet:

The next morning, John picked me up for breakfast. We had to go to a few places because Patterson's Cafe was too crowded and the Oxford Cafe was closed down, so we ended up at Bob Evan's, which is like Denny's. John ended up asking an older couple to sit at the 6-person table we were seated at because they too had gone to Patterson's to find it crowded just like we had. Wow, the woman of the couple was quite a talker!

After breakfast, we headed over to his house for a tour. John introduced me to Griffin, his upstairs neighbor's dog that he shares custody of in a manner of speaking. Here is John playing Bite Club with Griffin:

After John showed me his house and we played with Griffin in the backyard, he and I went to Miami University to play disc golf. Disc golf is a combination of golf, in that it has 18 holes, but you use a type of frisbee. John is really good, while I suck big time! :) The exercise involved was great, however, and we walked around most of the beautiful campus while playing!

For dinner, John and I went to a Thai restaurant with Don and Corinne, good friend's of John's. This was the first solid food I ate since Tuesday and it was delicious! From there we went to Jungle Jim's, an international market that John really likes because they sell the micro-brew rootbeer he loves so much. We mainly just perused, but Don and Corinne seemed to do some major shopping!

Sunday I got to experience John's church, Oxford Baptist Fellowship. The service was great and lunch afterwards was fun as well. There were 10 of us at Fiesta Charro! After lunch, Don, Corinne, John and I went to Iggy's Gelato and sat in the warm sun outside while we ate our gelato.

John and I went back to his house to rake the pile of leaves he had in his backyard onto a tarp and we moved the leaves to the curb outside so that the city can come by and suck up the leaves. We had a fun time playing in the leaves!


After our "hard" work, I convinced John to brave laying in his hammock. Looking at the picture I now realize why John was making sure I look at the camera lense instead of the preview screen on his camera after looking at these pictures. I haven't told him about my lovely lazy eye! My right eye is looking in the correct direction but the left one doesn't like to focus all too much! In any case, we had a great time!

Totally 80s, dude!

Halloween night I convinced Shelley to dress up in 80s style clothing with me and go to the Lighthouse on Pier Ave. in Hermosa Beach where they were having an 80s band play. Okay, originally it was her idea, but since she's been sick, she was feeling like she shouldn't go, but I told her that given her outgoing personality she needed to go out and recharge.

So we did and had a great time! Dressing up was a lot of fun and then seeing the other 80s outfits were awesome--totally tubular! There was one guy dressed as an 80s rocker who was awesome. He really got into his character while dancing. His pants were so freakin' tight!

We stayed at the Lighthouse several hours until I was getting tired and I knew Shelley was but she's the type that would push herself because she hadn't been out in a month! We stopped at Pisano's for some pizza before heading back home.


I had to drop Shelley off and gather a few things before heading out to Palos Verdes where I was house-sitting for the night for the Steips while they were at Hume Lake. I arrived at about 1:30am. Angel (the cat) was outside meowing and when I let her in she went straight for her food bowl. Hannah (the dog) was sleeping soundly.

I was still wide awake when I noticed an email from John so I decided to write him back before heading to bed. :) I finally went to sleep at a little past 2am and I slept like a log. I woke up to a beautifully quiet house. I really like the Steip's house, especially the wonderfully arranged adirondack chairs in their back yard.


Here is the view from their back yard. On clear days it is breath-taking!



Not a bad gig, huh?

I was able to wake up in time for church (thank you Daylight's Savings Time). It was a wonderful sermon on "Bearing Fruit That Lasts". The thing I got most out of the sermon was that sometimes there are things in our lives that might be morally neutral that God wants us to lay down because although the thing we are laying down might not be evil, it may not be good for us at that moment. This is a lesson I am learning this year!

In the afternoon, Alice and I went to get manis and pedis and then we had dessert at Creme de la Crepe in Riviera Village. Alice is fun to hang out with!