slothrop

The maintenance costs for a bicycle aren't much, in my experience, especially if you do a little preventive maintenance. You can get a great used bike for $200, a nice new road bike for $600, or a new "hybrid"/commuter bike for less than that. If you lube the chain now and then and use covered storage, there's not much to maintain. And you can replace the whole bike for the cost of a front brake replacement on your car. It's easier to learn to do any and all bike maintenance jobs that it is to learn to be a car mechanic, especially on a newer car. Veggie-oil diesel is an option that hasn't come up yet. A friend of mine converted his Mercedes diesel sedan to run veggie oil. He put in a second fuel tank with a switch and always starts on petrodiesel, then once the temp gets high enough, switches on the fry oil. Similarly, when finishing a drive, he switches back to petrodiesel to flush the more viscous veggie oil from the lines. He gets his fuel for free from restaurants, then filters it and has a special filter in the car. The catch, though, is that the in-car filters are expensive and wear out quickly, so I think he ends up paying more than $1/gallon just in filters.

Yeah, but the goods look a little odd. With some notable exceptions.

Nevermind and Amazonia will have some dry routes.

I'd mildly sprained my ankle a week prior to a soccer game and it was still acting up. My teammate gave me some cream called Traumeel (contains arnica, among other things) and I rubbed it in, warmed up for 20 minutes, and played the whole rest of the game. Amazing stuff.

Maybe there's too much good climbing around here for the climber population. There are climbs at Squamish and Index that get overgrown because of lack of traffic, but are still good routes. The classics get all the attention. Try White Slabs on SCW, a four-pitch 5.8 route that gets 1/10th the traffic of Orbit. Ooh, Mr. Catbird, won't you tell us about your friends' new routes?

What about belays at obvious stances at the beginning of significantly harder climbing? Done in the mountains all the time. Or what about at obvious stances one single-rope rappel from the ground? Also routinely done. What, as in 70m ropes will be the new standard? Then 80m? The trend is for longer ropes, not shorter, for crag climbs. The more cragging routes with 30m rappels that get established, the less likely your prediction appears to be.

If you really want to open up Washington rock climbing to more people, teach your friends how to climb on gear and take a scrub brush and rack to the undiscovered classics you seem to think are to be found underneath the lichen. Then "stroke your wank" about how awesome your new routes are, so people climb them. If Exit 38 didn't exist, there would be fewer climbers in Seattle who only do bolted routes... thus obviating the need for Exit 38. Creating a new climbing area doesn't just satisfy demand, it creates it.

If you really think this is about "sides", you're missing the point entirely. If you think protests against the US government are ineffective, try protesting, say, China's government (and it's practice of torture) with marches in the US. Laughable. Principled, but not likely to change a damn thing. Consent of the governed is central to our democracy, supposedly, and protest is a means of indicating consent has not been given.

I find that the medium-sized nuts (#6-9 Smileys, BD-style) get placed the most, followed by the #4-5 and then the larger ones. I only ever bring doubles in the small sizes, and use HB offsets to double-up. I place my yellow Alien just about every time I go climbing. Best piece I own. Aliens and TCUs are good small cams. If you like Tieton, get a few hand-size hexes. They're often better than cams in the rock there.

Nice, Off!

Stern Farmer (C1?) is a good alternative to aiding JG. Once you get up past the bolt, any waiting free climbers can just pull your gear up to that point and you can coexist happily.

I wear a softshell skiing, when I'm pretty sure any precip will be snow and I know I'll be working hard while skinning and thus don't want a less breathable shell. Softshell pants on basically every alpine trip.

I know, we almost died.

If you think the New Deal was purely about improving the economy, you're missing the point.

Laurelhurst is marginally more rich than Montlake, so it'd never happen. One of the benefits of the "Better Bridge"-style proposal is that the off-ramp would connect directly with the stadium transit hub (light rail? and buses). I hope they can save the ol' UW Rock. I'd almost be willing to trade constant highway noise for shade and the elimination of the fratboy tailgate cluster during football games. Maybe the pollution would etch the grease off the rock.

http://www.clydesoles.com/Front/Camsbrand.html

Good luck, Wayne!

Low-tech method: Jog around the block dribbling a basketball, come back and do a few pushups and jumping jacks. I think a general warmup to get your body ready for exercise goes a long way.

Ugh. That's blackmail. A similar law passed in Oregon a while back, I heard on NPR. Apparently, a bunch of lawsuits are in the works and the impact hasn't been visible yet, but many of the suits are regarding nasty-sounding development projects.

How can a zoning decision cost a landowner money? When property taxes go up? Missed opportunity for subdividing and selling to a developer is not "lost" money. The recent court decision affirming local governments' eminent domain powers seems to say that they wouldn't have to go through the trouble of rezoning your land to kick you off. They just take it. Who decides the value of the land? County assessor? If so, then wouldn't this initiative just be an incentive for the gov't to undervalue your land? Seems like everyone loses in this scenario: less land value for the owner, less property tax for the gov't.

Could be anything. They could have bought your information from some Russian organized crime syndicate (seriously!) and then made their own card.

Blame Canada!

I have a bigger weenie than any golfer.

STFU, you can jam a spiked f#$%in' bat in for pro when you run out of #2 Camalots.

Aw, snap! Looks like you need to spend more time on olyclimber's woody, Alpine Fox!