Beck

sil tarps aren't so slippery you can't use them as a ground sheet... try bracing yourself with gear or parka or whatnot, or a hiphole in the snow...imagine if youre on a thermarest that'd make it slipperier, but on a foam pad and a dirty piece of silnylon it isn't bad, no worse than a piece of plastic... but slipperier than tyvek of course. To sew a seam that's more water resistant, use cotton thread. It swells up when wet and plugs the hole in the fabric. A topstitched french seam is probably the most water resistant...

I thought I had lost any title because I was an asshole, not cheap I've been trying to shove twenties in the disk drive of my computer but to no avail...

that site is a marketing effort on behalf of Burger King. Someone showed me it at work and it is disturbing in a S&M/ B&D sort of way, then the site was mentioned in the NYT sunday magazine last week that it is an ad agency's creation to promote Burger King's chicken products.... and I always thought Ronald McDonald was perverse!

that just sounded sooo Tanya Harding, Stemalot!! She is the new trailer park trash poster girl here in the NW.

there's a lot of cross platforming going on by car manufacturers these days. it lets automakers come out with new car models quicker and cheaper than designing one from the ground up. Many 'platforms' will serve as the base for up to six or more different models from car makers. This ford vehicle looks like they will be using a volvo chassis, the hummer2 is on a truck platform, etc. more ways to innundate car buyers with duplicitous cars to capture market share instead of concentrating on making engines that get fifty miles to the gallon like they used to make in the eighties.. and a side note on auto making, the PCV valve, invented in the twenties, that increases mileage and reduces emissions, wasn't required equipment until fifty years later.

Josh, there are old treads going up to Dusty Wedge or Rusk Basin on either side of chocolate creek. Plus Suiattle River Bridge is gone, you'll be swimming to cross the river if you wanted to go in via the suiattle river trailhead. Try the Buck Creek approach this year.

great snow by coleman pinnacle this weekend....but the snow is going quick this year

route info: from 410, slog, slog, slog, slog, ski, repeat slog out

give them the keys to the palace, and let the factions fight it out...o h, too bad Haliburton needs to rebuild all that oilfield infrastructure and the US is in such need of cheap oil we'll fight wars over it... remember, "conservation, it's a frivolous virtue" Dick Cheney

i'll haul in the pony keg if enough people want to go...

do you put those in a blender? seriously, getting that protein within the first hour after a workout maximises the muscle recovery/rebuilding..

there's that John Lee Hooker song, "one bourbon, one scotch, and a beer" which is pretty driving blues. It's a throw the shots back kind of song..

Are you just going out for a week? Why not just buy one, they work all over the country. You can also get little AM/FM jogging type radios, or CD players with weatherband on them now. I bought a little joggers radio for $10.00, and it lets you tune in some AM c&w or 'inspirational programming' when tentbound, the weather's crappy, and you are getting sick and tired of listening to a computer say "Showers, freezing levels dropping to the surface. A band of low pressure has...."

Continental Town and Country 2.125's - but they won't fit on a road bike. I'd recommend getting an old POS bike. It's not the bike you ride, it's the rider. A thrift store Shwinn will get you to where you need to go just about as fast as a carbon fiber race wheeled superbike. And less chance of it getting jacked when it's locked up.

if the weather's good, count me in. How about going right to the snow the day before?

congrats to ya! get that tractor and rip it up

to get a litter thru the chinook's floor hatch it has to go in vertically. Glad to see the weather cleared enough to get the climber off via chopper, it would have been a long and difficult lower otherwise. Cheers to the rescuers, and best of luck to the climber.

the ascent of rum doodle, and an early mount analogue. Also, high adventure.

Wait! Rumsfeld's behind the interrogation policy? Cheney's behind the profiteering? How incredulous!!

martlet is someone's alter-avatar, methinks... what a ballbuster!

that was some fairly foul mountain weather today for getting up so early- thanks, harry pi! nothing like wandering around in a whiteout for recreation...

I feel snomobilers, nude hikers, and lawn bowlers have every right to enjoy their given recreational desire just as Backcountry skiers and climbers do. However, I have also seen snomobilers ripping apart one of those big forest service information signs and feeding it to their fire along the Salmon La Sac. I personally think there is more destructive impulse in motorized sports enthusiasts A la 'let's rip it up' but can't fault them being out there. Riding them is fun. A big sport in some areas of the country is to combine bars with 'biles. drunk and zipping around, its a blast. Noise pollution is a pretty petty complaint. "I Don't like the noise." Gas and oil in the Backcountry is another matter, but a smaller issue than dogs in the backcountry. Their shit can transmit a fatal brainworm to hooved animals, and decimate an animal population. I say, ban dogs everywhere in the backcountry. Let's hunt them from 4 stroke sno-mos, the better to sneak up on em.

I haven't read all this drivel about Michael moores filmmaking. Disney choosing not to distribute a controversial film has been taken care of, the two brothers that run Miramax and put up $5 million for the film will distribute it on their own, shopping around for another film company to distribute it. It goes to the Cannes film festival to be shown. Chances are good it we will have the chance to see it before November. On a side note, another film critical of the US government, "The Panama Deception," was blocked by federal courts for a decade before winning the rights to be be shown- it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary that year.

a chicken and an egg are sitting on a bed. The chicken is smiling, smoking a cigarette with a pleased look on her face. The egg is just sitting there looking frustrated. The chicken says, "Well, I guess we anwsered THAT question."

When you need to mess with the bike chain, like if it's jumped the sprockets or chainrings, find a stick to manipulate it with. Don't use your fingers. Leave the house in clothes that leave you cold for the first ten minutes, and wear your rainjacket as little as possible, you'll be a lot more comfortable once you get to work. I see people riding in their waterproofs on days a tshirt would suffice, and think they must be sweaty. In the winter, a light softshell works great most every day except downpours. Find a good route to ride. even if its a few blocks out of your way, riding on a slow back street, or finding the road with the bike lane, is totally better than riding a madcap arterial. My 2 cents.