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"If one more person says to me: 'Wow, you climb, and you don't have a boyfriend?' I'm gonna hurl. What am I supposed to say in response to that: 'Well, I have a really lousy personality'?"

- Kellie

Archive for October, 2004

Sunday, October 31st, 2004

Otro domingo mágico, cómico, musical con los Herrera

Como cualquier otro día con los Herrera (la versión merol-mexicana de los hermanos Alex y Thomas Huber) comenzó con el Beto-móvil (un chevy dorado hasta hoy por la mañana con dos espejos) a la puerta de la Tía Yola a las 7:00 a.m.

Acto seguido, el vehículo bajó dos calles para recoger a la “violetera suiza” que envuelta en su peculiar disfraz de chabelo-escalador subió al auto mentando madres, pues olvidó el cambio de horario y llevaba 50 mins. esperando a la tía y a Beto para irse a escalar.

Posteriormente la tía y los Herrera, se dirigían joviales cual son y sin mayor preocupación que encontrar el maldito periférico cerrado, a la Coconetla que según Beto quiere decir: “Lugar donde caminas un chorro para llegar a escalar paredes”.

Tras una serie de peripecias menores como evadir a los bañistas que acudían a congelar sus cuerpos al helado río, engullir fritangas de dudosa procedencia y abarcarlo todo con sus hordas familiares, el trío-sin-símbolo (pues no fue invitado) llegó a la base de una hermosa pared de roca donde las fisuras danzaban en todas direcciones y los desplomes parecían susurrar “orale… a ver no que mucho Espacio Escultórico…”

La primera ruta transcurrió sin mayor problema, Beto punteó Cuadro Pop (o algo así) con la gracia de un bailarín de Hawaiiano con todas las protecciones y cintas a la cintura. Sin problema alguno se desplazó por las fisuras… La tía y la violetera lo segundearon.

Después vino Tibiri-tabara, una hermosa fisura que comienza de dedos, luego de cadera (sí es verdad, la tía empotró la cadera se soltó de pies y manos y por poco y la tienen que sacar en partes de ahí), comienza pues Mauricio a puntear dicha fisura, tal cual es él escalando, cual grácil, núbil, sutil y delicada gacela, cuyos movimientos exactos y precisos apenas acarician la roca y… de pronto al meter la segunda protección, Beto y la Tía vieron un trasero-proyectil aproximarse a ellos de forma y velocidad absolutamente amenazante. Por obra y gracia del Espíritu Santo, la violetera suiza quedó a escasos 10 cm de romperse las piernas y quizá algo más… Sin mayor complicación volvió a lo suyo, (después de que la sangre irrigó de nuevo la parte inferior del cuerpo) y terminó la ruta con la “levedad de pluma” que le caracteriza.

Para no extender más esta breve narración concretaré los puntos finales.

a) Escalaron Kilowatito… la tía está en coma después de hacerla en la modalidad no “a vista”… sino “a oruga”. Los Herrera sin mayor complicación más que uno u otro pujido.

b) Al volver al auto, el flamante chevy dorado, había quedado tuerto… le robaron un espejo.

c) Los Huber mexicanos y la tía acudieron a casa de Mariana a degustar una suculenta comida… que terminó en la clásica charla de aquellos, que cada vez hablan con más lejanía y nostalgia sus recuerdos de la infancia, y pasan horas remembrando las caricaturas de don Gato, The Wonder Years, la evolución del Nintendo, etc… Es que es un hecho ¡no nos estamos haciendo más jóvenes!… pero… ¡A quién le importa!

d) Partieron de tan agradable tertulia para toparse con cientos de niños, imitación entre Kiss y Marilyn Manson que pedían “Jalogüin”.

Así pues, concluyamos las experiencias de este día con una frase urbana que nos mostró lo sabio que puede ser un domingo en la ciudad: “Precaución, excesivas dimensiones”.

Amén.

Friday, October 29th, 2004

Yahooween!

As every year, my friends at Yahoo! México brought their Halloween costumes to the office. Here’s a picture of them, thanks to Alma (the girl with the white face) for sending it! There’s my cousin Poli (Cruella De Vil) and my brother Güero (pirate). Funny, funny…

Friday, October 29th, 2004

Episode III poster released!

I’ve just received the Star Wars newsletter by e-mail. I’m reading that the new Episode III poster has just been released. Here’s a copy of it. Enjoy!

Thursday, October 28th, 2004

Frustrated full moon climbing…

This night we (Judith, Beto and I) went to Espacio Escultórico for doing some no-lamps climbing at midnight while the full moon was in the sky.

We arrived there and got the bad news that the place was already taken by the university staff. They were rigging up some stuff for a big show that is going to take place there on saturday, so we couldn’t enter the place…

We couldn’t climb, but at least we took some pictures of the beautiful full moon.

Thursday, October 28th, 2004

HTML for food?

Some friend sent me this picture today. This poor guy just matches the way I feel these days while doing my job:

It’s not very pleasant to be programming in PHP, PostgreSQL and HTML if you are doing it for earning some extra money rather for the fun of doing it…

Wednesday, October 27th, 2004

Total lunar eclipse?

Today we (Judith, Beto and I) got out from work 1 hour early, so we could do some training just before the supposed lunar eclipse started…

After training we prepared our cameras and waited… Time went by and we couldn’t see anything, even though we were at an excellent spot (Espacio Escultórico). The clouds and the smog were the ones which actually eclipsed our vision of the moon for a long time this night

Tuesday, October 26th, 2004

Mambo-Tango in the rain…

Let the world change you… and you can change the world.

Beto and I have just returned from today’s big adventure.

As it had stopped raining in Mexico city for some days, we decided to go training in Beto’s motorcycle, the well-known Mambo-Tango (an old, strong and fun Vespa A1 scooter). At the beginning we were like heroes from another era, something like Cristobal Colón going to America. If you take a look at the next picture you can get an idea of our attitude:

As soon as we hit the road, the clouds started to do their thing, as Murphy’s Laws say: “If anything can go wrong, it will”, and indeed, it happened… We were successfully bordering the clouds limits until we reached Av. Viaducto, the rain was waiting there for us to come, we started to get wet but that wouldn’t stop us from getting to Ciudad Universitaria. I was wearing a pants and Beto was in shorts, both with jackets. Despite that, we got wet pretty quickly, as you can see in the picture:

Finally, total chaos and disaster came when we reached Av. San Antonio, there was the cloud’s tail, it was raining big chunks of ice and there were rivers flowing through the streets. We got frozen very quickly, so we made a stop below a bridge and waited for the rain to calm down. Here’s a picture of our situation:

After a couple of minutes the rain quit a bit, so we continued our journey to the south, as we reached Av. Revolución it stopped completely and we started to feel ridiculous of being frozen and soaking wet in a place where it hasn’t even rained! We were out from the cloud’s reach and quickly got to the university campus.

We approached the training wall, changed our clothes and trained as usually (at night and illegally). While climbing in the darkness I got very close to being stung by a scorpion! Fortunately I was able to see it with the aid of my headlamp before grabbing the rock hold where the animal was.

But the adventure didn’t end there. After training, we headed to El Jarocho for drinking a well deserved double mocha coffee, then to La Condechi for yelling some “Mamacitaaa! Merezcooo!!”, and finally rode to the north of the city just to have a final encounter with the rain in Naucalpan, which carved again Murphy’s Laws deeply into our brains.

It doesn’t have to be fun to be fun.

Tuesday, October 26th, 2004

Cultured Perl: Genetic algorithms simulate a multi-celled organism

This is a very interesting article that I found while surfing…

Saturday, October 23rd, 2004

Long and fast…

Beto and I went training today. I felt very fit and the conditions for the wall were excellent. After doing some long crimping sessions on monday and tuesday then resting for the rest of the week, the result was: 1200 meters of climbing in 56 minutes!

I’m amazed of all the possibilities of mixing different trainings…

Friday, October 22nd, 2004

Caipirihna’s night…

Today was Monse’s professional exam. She presented an excellent thesis work about α-amilase activity. Congratulations Monse!

Later, we (Ginna, Octavio, Mariana, Alejandro, Judith, Beto and me) went to Monse’s house for a party and drank a lot of caipirihna’s. We had lots of fun!

Now I’m going to bed because I’m a little bit drunk…