Adventures in Kansas and Nova Scotia

Well not too much of interest has happened over the last two weeks. We won our last football game and finished 4th in the league. There’s an end of season tournament but that’s this weekend and I’ll be in DC for a meeting so won’t be playing. Last weekend I went hiking both days and got hayfever reasonably bad both days. On the Sunday it was bad enough that instead of going back along the path I went back along a road which as well as being much better for my hayfever was also much shorter. Oh well I can’t complain as I still don’t get hayfever that bad compared to many people. To be honest the main reason I’m even mentioning it is because I’ve really not got much to say for the last two weeks.

I’ve also climbed on both Tuesday and Thursday the last two weeks. Am definitely getting back in the swing of things. Still don’t feel I’m that close to my best but compared to where I was a few weeks ago I’ve improved immensely. Err, what else? I got my test results back from my doctors and did the silly questionnaire. It told me I was slightly overweight and didn’t eat enough fruit and veg. What a shocker that was! Now I’m really struggling to think of anything interesting that has happened. Boring weekend in DC ahead with work but at least it may give me more to write in the blog next time!

A lot of the time since the last post has been spent sorting out things on my “to do” list – which included this blog and the reworked website. I also finally got round to finding a doctors and having an annual “well-being” screening which will allow me to obtain certain information about me (such as cholesterol level) so that I can fill in a stupid questionnaire, which in turn will make my health insurance considerably cheaper next year. I’ve yet to have my cholesterol results back so don’t yet know how stupid the questionnaire is but it will be worth it regardless seeing as how it will save me about $300.

I’ve also managed to largely sort a couple of trips. I now have a reasonably firm plan for my trip back to the UK which by the time anyone reads this I should have e-mailed people about. The trip Jen and I are taking to Yellowstone in August / September also got sorted which is definitely something to look forward to.

I’ve played in three games of football (soccer) and the weather has definitely been different in them. Last Sunday we were playing in the rain and the game was stopped early due to lightening whereas this week we were playing in the sun and 90°F / 32°C heat – today was quite exhausting. Our last game is tomorrow and it looks like we’ll be finishing safely mid-table.

But perhaps the most exciting thing to happen is that I finally managed to get in touch with some people from the local climbing club. I was meant to be climbing with one of them on Monday but she got a call saying her dog had escaped just as I turned up. She’d managed to find a couple of strangers (to both of us) for me to climb with but they’ve never climbed outside and it would appear that they normally climb together so I’m not sure how much will come of that. However my post on the club’s Facebook wall also got a response from Carol who also lives in Lawrence and who I went climbing with on Thursday. She seems mad keen about climbing if also rather good. I went to a different wall this time – the wall is at the back of a children’s gym, and it would appear that pretty much everyone knows everyone else. They also seem pretty keen and at least some of them climb outdoors so hopefully I’ll be able to get more climbing in now. Indeed I may now be going away climbing with Carol and others over Memorial Day Weekend at the end of the month.

All in all it’s definitely been a good couple of weeks – my list of things to do has shrunk drastically as I’ve got rid of some things that have been on it for months and it looks like I might be bale to get climbing more. Fingers crossed things continue!

Well I went away again at the weekend. Nothing so exciting as Western Kansas this time I just went to a couple of State Parks a couple of hours south of Lawrence and went hiking both days. Did about 14 miles on the Saturday and 7 on the Sunday. Not sure there was anything else exciting to report. Photos are here and here.

What else have I been up to? Well I played football, twice, the previous weekend, once on the Saturday and once on the Sunday. I sorted out a dentist and went for a check-up – my teeth are fine and the health insurance all worked properly and I didn’t have to pay anything. I’ve also managed to sort out flights and everything for my trip back to the UK at the end of June. I feel like I’ve got a lot of stuff done, including stuff that has been on my to do list for ages, but frankly none of it is particularly exciting so I think I’ll just leave this as a short blog post.

Over the Easter weekend I decided to take the long drive out to Western Kansas as there were a couple of cool looking rock formations out that way. It would appear that here in the US I don’t get any extra days off but it being Easter did mean I didn’t miss any football games as we were only meant to have one game on the Sunday and this was postponed due to complaints about it being Easter Sunday.

On the Friday evening I did the four hour drive, managed to find the camp-site and was in bed by one o’clock. Turns out it was still getting quite cold at night and my summer sleeping bag, even with a liner, didn’t keep my quite warm enough so I didn’t have the best night sleep. My new, over-ventilated American tent may not have helped! After I got up I drove another hour west to the first rock formation I wanted to see. I had realised that morning that although I had brought my Camelbak with me I had left the cap for it in Lawrence so on the way I stopped in a store in a tiny settlement – a village in British parlance but no doubts the Americans would still call it a city! They still sold things on credit to local customers which brought home to me how close-knit the community must be. Well, it was in the middle of no where. Flat no where. It turns out that those that said western Kansas was flat were correct, at least for parts of it.

One bit that was also flat was were the rock formations, called Monument Rocks, were. This made the big lumps of rock sticking out of the ground look quite odd as they were so out of place. I was well pleased that I’d gone to see them, despite them being in the middle of nowhere, and I took quite a few photos. As I still had a significant amount of the day left I went to nearby Scott State Park. This was in a cool location as it had a lake with bluffs all around it and you dropped down towards it on the road in. Quite unexpected given the flatness all around. I did an enjoyable 7 mile hike all around the hike and then headed back to my camp site.

After another cold night I went for a short, 5 mile, hike in Cedar Bluff State Park where I was camping. If I’m honest this was a bit disappointing as the Bluffs that were meant to be the scenic highlight of the walk weren’t very bluff-like or scenic. I found some scenic bluffs shortly afterwards when, after driving some gravel roads – something I’m getting quite used to – I found a parking area further along the shoreline. Here the bluffs were rather more spectacular. Again I may have taken a few photos.

I then went off to find Castle Rock. This may have involved a small 30-odd mile detour when I unexpectedly found myself back by the Interstate. The rocks weren’t in my Sat Nav, I didn’t really have an address for them – only a road they were on and my Sat Nav seemed to be giving different road names to what I was expecting. It turns out that one county (the one I was in) lettered roads going North to South while the adjacent county I was aiming for did it from South to North. This difference resulted in the detour mostly on gravel roads. It was well worth doing as the rocks were again pretty cool. As they were by a bit of a cliff I didn’t find them quite as spectacular as the days before but they were very definitely worth seeing despite the interest involved in driving the mud roads around them. Photos from the weekend are here.

As well as a couple of trips further afield I’ve also been exploring a bit more locally not I have a car. Clinton Lake is a reservoir near Lawrence and I’ve spent quite a bit of time, mainly in the evenings, hiking around it which I’ve enjoyed – it’s nice that I have some reasonably nice countryside so close by.

It would appear that basketball is a big thing in Lawrence. A very big thing. It would appear that college basketball is as big as professional basketball over here and the University of Kansas consistently has one of the best teams in the country. This would appear to make for some passionate fans. It would also appear that we have quite a fierce rivalry with the University of Missouri which goes back to pre-Civil War days and the whole pro-/anti-slavery issue which got rather violent in this part of the world.

The regular season finished at the start of March. Just before this we had beaten Missouri at home after losing to them away. It’s fair to say that downtown went a little mad after this. People high-fiving in the street, beeping car horns and waving flags. This however was tame compared to what was to come.

After the regular season the Big 12 conference, which Kansas is a part of and actually consists of ten teams, has a post-season tournament. Having won the regular season we were seeded first. However we failed to live up to expectations losing in the semi-finals. Although this was a disappointment people didn’t seem too disappointed as still had the National Championships to go.

For the national championship we were a number two seed, which meant we were actually ranked 5th as there are four number one seeds, four number two etc due to the way the tournament is structured. We made the regional semi-finals which I watched with a bunch of other people round someone else’s house and then we managed to win the regional final, thus beating our seeding, which I watched round Charles’s house. Charles was one of the climbers and will appear again in this post shortly.

This was also the time of many, many defenses, both of PhDs and Masters so on the Wednesday after the regional finals I went out for a couple of drinks in celebration of Allie, the girl who recommended my apartment to me, successfully passing her Masters. The next day was my birthday which I happened to share with one of the other students in my department so there more drinks.

Saturday was the day of the National semi-final, which actually was a proper semi-final as there were only four teams left by this point. I again watched it at Charles and after we’d run I decided to head down town. If I thought it had been mad when we beat Missouri it was nothing compared to after this win. The police had closed off several streets and they were full of thousands of drunken people celebrating, climbing lamp posts, bouncing on cars, setting of fireworks and all sorts of other hi-jinx. I stayed long enough to get a feel for it before deciding to head to the safety of home.

I’d signed up to play for a football (soccer) team with several people from my department. Our first game was cancelled as it clashed with the regional finals so our first game was on the Sunday. We lost 1-0 and I successfully managed not to make a fool of myself.

Monday was going to be an interesting day. Not only was it the National final, Chalres was also defending his PhD, which he did successfully. He’d already arranged a party at his for this reason so there were about thirty people at his house for a celebration and watching the basketball. We lost the basketball but I think it’s fair to say that everyone still had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.