Introducing My Co-Author

This guy will be writing mostly on climbing stuff I guess cause he is obsessed with climbing (like worse than my obsession). We will hopefully inshaAllah in the future write some posts together as we dream to travel the world together!

Winter Trip Week 1

Yes there will be multiple parts to this story-telling because it was a three-week trip. I'll start with the adventures during the first week. Reached the airport and drove to Fort Collins where we booked our Airbnb. The house is so freaking cute and beautifully decorated. The view from the balcony was so beautiful and the place was perfect because one of the trail heads of the Horsetooth mountain was located two-minute drive away. We could even just walk there, would take a while.

The overview of the trip, engraved in my bujo.

The view from the balcony of one of the two rooms.

Texas was hot, it's freaking cold here. Just heat-bathing in front of the fireplace with coffee and a biscotti, so cozy.

We found a card game called Dominion. Love this game. My friend bought it after we came back from the trip.

I hate this type of snow.

Climbing up to get closer to the weak waterfall.

The nature's color combination.

This is what's feeding the waterfall, a small pond.

Curious to see how hard it was.

So our Airbnb house is somewhere on the left side of this picture.

Somewhere along the trail.

Group picture satu.

The next morning, we went to another trailhead and decided to follow some trails that form a loop going back to our parked car.

The view around sunrise time.

Turned my head to the left and looked down, I could see this cute and manja Doggo.

So this was the beginning of that day's hiking.

The view was pretty nice. 

Reached this valley-like place with a river between. The wind was strong and cold so pardon my watery eyes. 

Zoom out sikit.

Some weird stuff got inside of my shoes.

 The view as we were nearing the end of our trails.

We got excited to see some deers. Can you spot their white butts?

Dropped by this lake on our way back to our Airbnb place.

Came home to this shomel.

The next day came. We went on the Horsetooth Rock trail this time.

Foggy morning.

The view at about a quarter into the trail.

The view about halfway through the trail.

Took a rest and of course a lot of photos.

Finally reached the top!

A short video of how it looks from the top.

Started to go down on a different trail and found this view.

Complete the trail and the kids wanted to reward themselves with bubble teas. So this was a bubble tea shop in downtown Denver, with this Stranger Things theme.

We moved to another Airbnb house in Denver and stayed the night. The next day, the other five kids who were traveling with us planned to go skiing. Syikin and I didn't want to go skiing because, one, it is so expensive; two, I am not good at skiing or snowboarding and I know I won't be enjoying it so much; three, I have done it before in Canada and South Korea. So meh. Would be totally down for snow tubing but apparently winter arrived late this time, and there was just no snow tubing facility that was opened yet. Thought of going dog-sledding too, but again, not enough snow. Cheese bedebah. So after sending the kids to the ski resort, we drove to this small town called Vail/Lionstown as we bought this Big City (scavenger) Hunt for like $22 for two people. It's a self-guided  scavenger hunt, you just need your internet plan and phone, and it was kinda okay.

We stopped by this town, I can't remember its name anymore. There was this housing area with this river runs as you drive along the road towards Vail.

Then there was a mountainous area that we decided to drive through and finally got this view as we drove higher and higher. We had to take a different (probably longer way) down to the main road because they hadn't plowed/ploughed (potahto potayto whatever~)  the road and it was just so scary to drive without being able to tell your path from the edge of the cliff.

So we were in Vail, and this was one of our stops throughout the challenge.

There was also a skiing school and I believe this place is also open to public. I feel like this place was less crowded with people compared to the Copper Mountain area where the kids went to.

The town has this old architecture design going on. I forgot the history, must have something to do with Europen settlers that ended up here.

Very interesting hotel design.

We then moved to our next destination which was the Blue Lake. So I was driving this seven-seater car and there was only Syikin and I in the car. The road was very narrow like no two cars can pass each other at the same time. One would have to like pull over to the side and give way to the other. The road was snowy/icy and driving in this condition is like trying to balance the last egg that you need for your breakfast at the tip of a chopstick (I don't know who would want to do that but you get my point, it's nerve-wrecking).

So I reached a slanted road and as I was driving up, the tires just lost traction maybe (I don't know how cars work) and the car just went sliding down backwards. It was freaking scary okay because I couldn't control the car at all. I tried multiple times and decided that nope is a nope. Changed the driver and Syikin freaked out too. Then we decided to turn around.

Turning around turned out to be a problem too because as I said before the road was so damned narrow, and I ended up having to do a 137-point turn versus the three-point turn that we practiced for the driving test. The first two turns, I went down the invisible gutter thanks to the fluffy snow that made me thought oh that surface there totally exists! So that time, the car slid down the gutter and we were scared that we were going to get stuck there. We tried to remove the compact snow between the treads and that worked.

We finally got to turn back to the point where there's enough space to park the car and decided to walk instead to that place. It was super cold okay but we figured, we are already here so what the hell, just go la. So we walked and man that was freaking far. It looked like the lake was pretty near already from where we were but boy how wrong were we.

We even got sesat kononnya wanted to take a shortcut, but ended up heading to people's private cabin and I feared for my life for getting harmed because I accidentally trespassed people's property so we turned around and followed the road. There were countless time when we felt like just giving up and go back but we persevered! We did it, and we reached the place and it was worth it!!! You guys may think that oh okay that wasn't that nice but seriously, cameras never do justice to madanaychaaaah!

The view that removed all our tiredness away. We proceeded forward and tadaaah check out the picture below.

It was so cold I tell you ahhh. At this point I couldn't feel my face and my nose especially and I thought I was going to lose my fingers.

Then we walked back to our car, and that was not bad. Going back always feels quicker than going there in the first place. Then we knew of this scenic drive between the Blue Lake area and the Copper Mountain area where the kids went skiing to, so on our way back we decided to do like halfway only cause we didn't have enough time. Curse words keep on escaping my mouth (I should have berzikir I know, it was just a reflex. I will improve next time haha) because I was just so mesmerized by how beautiful the views were!

It was almost sunset.

I could just stay here and chill for a very long time.

Okay I think this was a bit too long, sorry about that. I guess I'll continue in the next part! Hope you guys enjoy that!

Reviving this blog

Howdy!

I realized that I should have started documenting my PhD journey sooner, but I guess I got lazy. So it is time to make this blog breathe again! I will occasionally revisit anything that happened within this past 1.5 years of time period and just write about anything important or useful that I can remember. Starting from my most recent short trip to San Antonio, Austin (sort of) and Houston.

So this Spring Break had been kind of great. I am in the middle of this labor-intensive experiment that is causing me back pain. I try to be very very careful to not cause damage to the area in close proximity to my spine, hoping that this almost one-month long experiment would help me build strong back muscles instead. So that I can climb better haha.

So Syikin, Iqa and I decided to go to San Antonio first on a fine Sunday. We rented a car and drove to San Antonio, and just enjoyed the River Walk. So it's like a network of walkways one-storey beneath the main streets along the San Antonio River. It was the start of Spring Break for universities and schools so there were a lot of people! I don't really like crowded areas, except for perhaps concerts. Maybe.

This is the map that shows the locations of places that we visited.

Some birds and their nests.

The Alamo with a horse carriage that happened to pass by.

The Alamo was super crowded that day, people were lining up and the line never seemed to get shorter so we decided to just appreciate its existence from across the street. The Alamo was a Spanish mission that was turned into a fortress in the 19th century where the pivotal event in the Texas Revolution, the Battle of the Alamo took place. It was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

There's a virtual tour available if you are interested, so yeah you don't really have to be there physically to visit it. Howbowdah?

Love the color and the smell that comes with it.

Sorry la seluar macam fashionista sangat. From Uniqlo Japan haha.

Nice view as you walk along the river, with lots of expensive restaurants. If you got lots of ka-ching ka-ching, go ahead and have lunch here.

Memang famous for the colorful umbrellas by the river.

It's kind of nice to just rest your butt on the bench and enjoy the view and the cool breeze.

Moving on, we then drove to our motel, which was like... well, you get what you paid for. Student life, traveling on a shoestring, macam tu lah hahaha. We chose that motel because it is only about half an hour away from our destination tomorrow morning which was the Enchanted Rock.

So we bought some food at HEB and the next morning we prepared our breakfast/lunch, tuna sandwich with extra cheese! Left in the morning at about 730 AM (or was it 8 AM?). We knew that there was going to be a really long line in the car on the road because we of course did some research, well thank you TripAdvisor. We arrived there and as expected, there was a really really long queue. We thought okay let's just go to Austin, ain't nobody got time for this. But, we turned around instead and waited in line. After about 1.5 hours in the car, singing and babbling, we got near to the entrance. And there was a staff approaching each car handing out a paper. When he got to our car he was like, the park is closed so here's the parking ticket that is only valid for today. Please come back at 1 ma'am. I felt like I needed to break an electric guitar.

Before the pakcik staff came to our car.

We decided to go to our next destination, which was the Longhorn caverns. That was another one-hour drive. Reached there, bought the tour ticket for like $20-ish, which was scheduled at 11 AM. Took some pictures cause we were excited with the newfound iPhone X portrait feature. Not mine by the way. 

Not too many pictures taken because, it's a cave. I mean it's beautiful but cameras can never do justice to anything. Just like all the selfies you take, none of them look nice. No my face is not the problem!

At the entrance of the cave.

This tricolored bat found chilling. It is believed that these guys are the ones flying over that bridge in Austin.

There were some pockets that were adorned with crystals. So you can't really see them in this picture but we were actually surrounded by calcite crystals which I think were formed by standing pool of calcium-saturated water. This cave used to be filled with water, essentially a river that caused the cave formation through erosion and with the water drained out (plus electricity), we are able to see these crystals today.

I always love caves.

The area outside of the cave entrance. I fell in love with cacti during this trip so I took a lot of cactus pictures haha.

There's this observation tower next to the visitor center.

At the top of it.

And the view from the top. So if you go down the stairs at the far end of the circular area, you'll arrive at the cave entrance.

So we continued with our travels towards the Enchanted Rock. This time I can't remember if we were once again in line because I was sleeping at the back hahaha. The entrance fee is $7 per person. And so we started our hike.

The hike was super easy. Steep but very easy. So because of that, there were also a lot of people there too. It was sunny and very windy. It should have taken us about just 30 minutes maybe to reach the top but, photography sessions are always, the enemy of our time.

The head of Summit trail.

Look at the crowd.

I have a dream. to go outdoor bouldering.

Look at them growing randomly on a rock.

Jumping back kick. Lama dow dah tak Taekwando.

Itchy to climb but need shoes.

Look at this random garden on a rock.

Look at this random pond on a rock.

Crash pad is all I want for Christmas.

Hiking down back to our car.

A panoramic view while descending the rock.

Then we drove home to College Station, dropped by the Asian market to buy stuff to make the dry hotpot! YUM okay. And also we played Pandemic Iberia after that.

The next day, we went to Houston to see my "mom" from UNITEN, well she's actually not that old hahaha in fact we are of the same age. I just used to borrow her money every time I forgot my expensive purse. Mahal pun asyik kena tinggal. Kesimpulannya tayah la beli mahal-mahal.

She has adorable fraternal twins and words cannot describe how happy I was to see her and her babies. Now I want to have my own babies too.... How?

Reunion with mommy in Houston

Macam sama besau je dengan Aunty Linds

Ameliaaa

Naylaaa

Mudah terhibur these girls