Last Friday was International Women’s Day, and there is no place that does it bigger than Bilbao. One of the things that I love about this place is how socially active everyone is. There are many causes that people hit the streets for: ensuring pensions don’t disappear, labor rights, and on this day, women’s rights.
For all of the demonstrations, or
And of course, there was some amazing signage:
This tournament took place Feb 23-24, 2019 in Valencia, Spain. I played with the Spanish Mixed Masters National team. We had a great tournament coming in 5th place overal, and the top masters team there.
After beating the 2015 world champions in the 5th place game, we decided to pose for a picture:
Congrats to all of my teammates for a hell of a tournament!
For full standings, go to ulti.info, which is a side project of mine.
Back in my younger days, I used to be crazy. Well, maybe I still am. I came across this video from which brings two of my outdoor passions together: Climbing and Frisbee
Yes, that is the famous Alcove Swing on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, with a Frisbee!
Now, before some of you ask, yes, we did hike down and recover the frisbee. #LeaveNoTrace!
El Capitán in Yosemite has been in the national spotlight this past year as two amazing documentaries have been released about climbers epic struggles to the top. While similar, the films show two very
First, The Dawn Wall came out. That film followed Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson up the hardest route on the face of El Cap. They fell thousands of times, slept on a
Maybe more famous, after taking home the Oscar for Best Documentary, is Free Solo. Free Solo follows Alex Honnold’s epic free solo climb of El Cap. Honnold goes up a different, easier, route up the granite monolith. Yes, easier is a relative term here. What he did is unthinkable. He went up without any ropes or protection, just his shoes, his chalk bag, and his body. Absolutely nuts.
Both feats are impressive in their own right, and it really is hard to say which one is more impressive. In the end, I’d have to go with what Honnold did. Caldwell’s life was relying on his equipment to work as expected. Sure, he still could have died, but that would have required an equipment malfunction, or human error when placing the pieces. One slip, one unexpected bird flying out of a crack, one hold breaking, or one little slip, and
We woke up a few Saturdays ago without a plan, and said, what should we do today? We ended up in beautiful Armintza. It wasn’t a sunny day, and even rained a bit, but we still had an amazing time! I feel so lucky to live so
We recently had the pleasure of attending the local “Pelota Mano”, or “Handball” championships. Now this isn’t like the Handball you watch in the Olympics, this is Basque style handball.
It is played on a court similar to Racquetball, but much bigger, and only has two sides. You can read more about the rules from Wikipedia.
This was the local championships for Berango, the small town outside of Bilbao where I live. Check it out:
Be sure to watch those videos with the sound on, because the sound the ball makes when it hits their hands is almost the same as when it bangs against the wall. Check out what their hands look like afterwards:
And of course, a picture with the winner! 😊🏆
Required of all new Automattic employees, is a 4-minute or less, Flash-talk. I gave mine in early October, at the Grand Meetup in Orlando, Florida.
That talk has just been uploaded, and I am now happy to share it with you! My topic was a shoutout to my adopted home, the Basque Country.
I hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think 😜
I am proud to be on this map, and thought it was really cool! Check it out, and see if you can find me 😜
View the entire interactive map here:
https://automattic.com/map/
Three day weekend, can’t wait to hit the sand and throw some plastic around! It’ll be the first high level tournament I’ve played since Worlds in July. I’m playing with Sabotage in the Men’s division.
We had an amazing time! It was my first time playing with many of these people, and we had a blast!
Results in the second half of the tournament didn’t go as well as planned, but regardless we had an amazing time!
Full results here: https://ulti.info/40342
As an added bonus, I was asked to commentate the finals. You can watch those videos here: