Food for thought

I'm not really the type to have irrational fears. Jami is claustrophobic, others are scared of spiders, my mom is PETRIFIED of heights, (Sidenote: My Mom refused to walk up the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philly several years ago because she was afraid that she'd just run and jump off--It is hard to jump when you won't even get within 20 feet of the chest high railing though) and some people are scared of having names published on websites. Is this irrational? i dont know. ive just noticed some people protect their identity alot and speak in code while others post full names of people & places. i am with the latter group. should i be worried? by the way i posted this on my phone so i am aware the punctuation is terrible.

Thursday Haiku #2

Awesome vanity plates
Who needs them? Narcissists.
LGND2NV

Thursday Night Haiku

Went for a trail ride
I had to walk up some hills
Not too good at this.

I feel a little bit like Nacho when he says in prayer, "Lord, why have you given me this desire to fight and made me such a stinky warrior?" Even though I was the caboose when the CPT went riding in Lake Tahoe, at least I beat two of them in the Ironman last summer. Scoreboard fellas, scoreboard. :)

Tahoe TR (Trip Report)

The trip was my first time back to Cali since I quit my job out there. Lover's Leap was an awesome climbing area and I was psyched to do a couple of the area classics there. The Line is supposed to be the best 5.9 there and I think it would probably be the best 5.9 at any crag. It was super good and made me want to climb more cracks.

Looking up at The Line.


Jami walking down the sidewalk finish on the last pitch of Bear's Reach.




It was a good day.


The Lake Tahoe Basin is a pretty amazing place. I really started to gain a testimony of how great mountain biking is. They had some incredible singletrack there through the hills. Some of it was right at the maximum of my technical ability, so I had some crashes trying things that were kind of hard for me. I'm pretty green when it comes to mountain biking apparently.

The two docs soaking up the views from the Tahoe Rim Trail.


Boog laughed at me when I got this falling off of a bridge.


Boog carving up the streets.


Our break from driving was a short 4 mile run in the foothills of the Ruby Mountains in Nevada. It was a beautiful day and we had some great views of a spectacular mountain range. I can't wait to ski there some day! The kids had no choice, they were forced to come with us. Notice T's excitement.





Mmm. The San Francisco original.


Postscript: My Kodak is broken so I've been compensating with my camera phone. The quality is not as good, but I still like the pictures.

Families are Forever

Family reunion in Tahoe this week. Good times. I rode the flume trail with the bros yesterday. (Pics coming) Beautiful ride! I was feeling too good about life, so I decided to bonk on the way back. Nothing like a good bonk to make you appreciate chips, cookies, sandwiches, hummus, pita bread, and root beer. Mmmm. In those moments food dominates my thoughts.

Lake Tahoe is amazingly beautiful and weird at the same time. It has a really cool alpine setting with a rich yuppy flavor. I don't think any homes here are less than $1M. Kind of an exclusive place. But a rad exclusive place.

Today Keith & I did The Line, a 5.9 at Lover's Leap. I not much of a trad, and this was my first 5.9 lead on gear in a long while. It felt good to test the comfort zone limits with something well within my range. The route was spectacular and basically goes straight up the wall wandering less than 10 feet side to side during the entire 3 pitches. The leap has crazy horizontal dikes of rock that haven't eroded as fast as the rest of the cliff, so there were plenty of face holds on the route and good foot jugs for placing gear. A good way to spend the morning. Hopefully I'll have another day at the leap before the family reunion is over.

I took the below pics a couple weeks ago. My younger brother Jeff took a break from Med School studies to come climbing on a Saturday. He's a strong bugger for only climbing 2x every 3 years!

The Boog leading Right Pile.


Clipping the chains after an onsight or redpoint. I don't remember which.

LCC Panorama

I'd like to make it up one last time before the snow is really gone, but who knows. I kinda told myself I was done skiing until next winter, but maybe not?

Panorama of LCC in Mid-May 2009 as seen from Mt. Baldy.



360 view.

Campusing the summer away

The city of rocks is only 2 hours or so away, so we made a day trip last Saturday. And then it rained. I did one 5.8 slab in the rain that felt a little dicey. And it was chilly. I pumped gas in Snowville and it was COLD! Then I asked Jami's bros who came with us if they had jackets. After some "Ums" it was clear that it was going to be really cold for some (Ben & Joe) and less cold for others (everyone else). B & J ended up buying cheap blankets from Flying J and wearing them serape style. Excellent. After some wandering with the kids, we tried to find this boulder (Not for that problem, but some others FYI)and were unsuccessful--turned away by rain and lateness of the day. There's always next time I guess.

City of Rocks. We got sorta rained out, sorta kidded out.


Jami & the kids at Castle Rocks State Park, ID.


Craggin' at the pile a few weeks ago.


Sunset over Farmington.



I've been climbing a few times so far this summer. I'm getting a bit stronger than I was, but still a shadow of my pre TRS days (Trenton-Raegy-Sadie). That's okay, because I'm a dad and being a dad is pretty cool. Anyways, I've felt motivated to try and do some strength training and get a bit stronger, so I built a campus board. I have large and small metolius rungs. The smalls feel brutal right now, but when the strength comes in a few weeks (it will) I'll be able to start incorporating them into some of my workouts.

My campus board. The construction is pretty rough, but it'll get the job done.