To do: Combine my blogs

I have a new blog that I've been using at http://markliu.me and I intend to keep using that. However, I just miss how easy it is to post to my Posterous blog! Posterous has a sweet API now, so in the near future, I'll be writing some code to automatically take entries from this Posterous blog and import them onto my other one.

I don't have the time to do this right now, and since I'm leaving for China in less than 2 weeks I've decided I'll end up using this Posterous blog during my travels. Nothing beats being able to write a blog post straight from email or even Twitter!

It's been a full year since my last international trip, so I'm really pumped to be going on such a long, relaxing 5 week excursion with Rachael. My blog post frequency probably won't be too high since we're not bringing a computer, but I'll have a phone there and maybe I can hook it up to my Twitter account. I'm determined to log a really good amount of this trip because I've really enjoyed going back and reading about past adventures through my old blog posts. My memory isn't the best, and I've never kept a journal, so blogging is definitely the right solution for me!

Life has really calmed down

I'm now back into the regular groove of things at Madison after a lot of fun traveling this summer. The John Muir Trail was absolutely amazing and would take a very long time to tell about all of those experiences. I wish I had gotten cell phone reception more often during the trail, but as expected, I was out of service for the last 10 or so days so I couldn't send updates. I do want to write about this trip eventually but I think Jon will be taking care of this for me! He is planning on making one of those personalized books for each of us hikers to have and I'll definitely help him collaborate. I think this is a great idea for keeping these memories forever, especially since both Jon and I have relatively poor memories. I'm finally getting around to posting my photos from the trip on facebook (www.facebook.com/mliu7) and if I find myself bored at some point in this next week I may write more about this on this blog. If I don't do it soon though I know it will never happen since my research is going to be getting into full swing really soon!

I'm enjoying being settled down for a little while now but I know I'll soon be itching to go somewhere interesting again. My next possible trip would be to Orongo, Kenya in January with Engineers Without Borders. A few days ago I was brought up to speed with what I missed on this project so I'm pumped to be back into the swing of things!

At Muir Trail Ranch

Hey everyone. I'm still fine and well and am at Muir Trail Ranch right now, about 110 miles in. George and John are great companions and we're all healthy. I just wanted to make sure we could get the meet up point right!

For our resupply/meetup near independence, we will meet you guys at the junction of the bullfrog lake trail and the JMT (the place alyssa showed me on the map at elevation 10560) on Tuesday at 1pm. From there, George and John have decided to change their schedule to match ours and we can then be off the trail 3 days later. We'll be at the summit of Whitney between noon and 1pm on Friday, and then exit that night. (To Rachael and Alyssa) I hope you guys can meet up with us from Independence! The last little bit is pretty tough (41 miles with a lot of ups and downs) after the meetup point, but I think we can do it in 4 days if you're healthy. Anyway, I hope you'r having a good time enjoying california.

-Mark