willstrickland

He's pretty consistent and sincere. Definitely, NOT a bandwagon guy. Been laying out the same ideals/arguments, especially forcefully on the economic front, for many many years. Guy has always been popular in the goldbug, libertarian, financial markets circle for his stance on the Federal Reserve, gold std, confiscatory nature of fed interest rate policy and the resultant inflation, etc.

Well, these should be better than anything the two teases would bring to the table anyway..

91 Subaru Legacy wagon, 4cyl, AWD, 25-27mpg hwy with a rocketbox on top..

Advocating assasination is a good way to get a visit from the Secret Service. Not really the best idea in the world, no matter how you feel (and I despise the little shit stick as much as anyone). Thankfully, the idiot will be left to "clur sum brush" on his ranch to his little black heart's content in another 12mo. Then we'll have another incompetent asshole to deride (regardless which one of them wins, they're all a bunch crooks and charlatans).

Take the job. You'll get to spend time with your mom in her last years and if you lose health insurance you and your wife will be in a tight spot. You can easily hire people to keep up your home in WA on an as-needed basis. Economy is going down the tubes for a while, job prospects aren't likely to recover for a couple years. And nothing prevents you from continuing to seek out any opportunities that should arise back in WA while you're working in CA. Better to be employed in SoCal for 6mo and suddenly find a job in WA than to stay up there hoping and wishing and end up out of health care and strapped for cash. Besides, SoCal isn't so bad if you can avoid LA proper. Tahquitz/Suicide and Josh are close. All things considered, the Needles is probably the best granite rock climbing area in North America and it's easy striking distance. Headed to San Diego on Fri to interview for a position myself. Don't want to move there, but the job market is tight and my background is highly specialized as is yours.

High altitude mountaineering is primarily about lung/aerobic capacity unless you are in the super-elite class putting up technical routes...and that tends to get called alpinism. Most " high altitude aspirants" are doing the slog routes that involve little, if any, real technical climbing. Now you can argue those points, but the greater point here is: If you can't get out yet on real mountains because of geographical/financial issues, so what? Train, train, and train some more. Forge your body into a lung with legs. Read instructional books and practice those skills. You can learn to tie knots, rig z-hauls, and lots of things in your yard, living room, local park. I learned how to rig crevasse rescue anchors and hauling systems in an agricultural drainage canal in the flatlands of western illinois in winter. Focus on what you can do, not what you can't. You can train. You can search for a mentor. You can look for University climbing clubs that accept students from other schools. You're close enough to Shasta, Whitney, etc that you should be able to finagle your way onto some beginner trip and catch a ride for minimal cost. Nobody is going to hand you anything. Make it happen.

"It seems that Carrie wasn't always this uninterested in sex. She admits to having 23 lovers before she married.... but only one of the 23 ever gave me an orgasm." Seems to be the problem right there in a nutshell. Probably something to be gathered from the construction of "gave me" as well.

I'm fine with it John, because really it's none of my concern one way or another. A man's gotta eat, and hollywood doesn't seem to be short of money or afraid to spend it. But for someone who crows so much about actions being the important thing, the irony is pretty rich.

Man that cat upthread go pretty riled with the Kool Aid comment, especially considering that the name of the gym is a take-off of Jim Jones, the cult leader who has his entire "congregation" commit suicide by drinking poisoned kool-aid. I thought that was pretty common cultural knowledge, maybe not. While no, John, I have not received an invitation to train there, something doesn't quite square with all the posturing they do about elitism and training for performance over training for appearance, etc. What I'm referring to is the fact that they readily accepted the task of "training" the actors for the film "300". Heath Ledger's recent passing not withstanding, I wasn't previously aware that acting in a hollywood movie was an elite physical undertaking with life or death consequences.

Predictable tripe from Kaskasky J Jackass. 100 hour agenda she pushed? Accomplished in 86 hours. http://www.speaker.gov/legislation?id=0003 Included stem cell legislation, min wage, lobbying ethics reform, implementing 9/11 commission recommendations, allowing medicare to negotiate on drug costs, and more. Maybe if you did more reading and less pulling things out of your ass...

List is a travesty. Dimebag Darrell and Tom Morello in the list multiple times? What a joke. I like RATM, but Tom Morello is about the most unimaginative soloist I've ever heard. "I got a great idea, I'll use this whammy pedal on every note".

You want a killer full body workout in 10mintues? Without the fees? In the refreshing outside air? Let me recommend OWFit. 5"-7" overhanging cracks. Makes those WODs seem like a Tahitian vacation. Owwwww.

Well, "static" ropes aren't actually static. They stretch, just not as much as dynamic cords. Anyone who has jugged or hauled on a static can attest to that, and the manufacturers report the % in their stats. Many, many insitutional programs, gyms, etc use statics for their TR lines. Sounds like typical overly anal stance from the Mounties who learn and repeat rather than investigate and think.

I live in Joshua Tree, and I'd be the first to admit that it's overrated as a destination. Trippy landscape, climbing history, tons of routes, but as the local saying goes "6000 routes and about 300 of them worth climbing". Josh is emphatically NOT where a party with your background/experience/desired routes wants to be. You COULD split time between easy trad at Josh and clip ups at New Jack City (little over 1 hour from Josh). NJC is kind of a trashy area in a way from the partiers, but has tons of clip ups at all grades, free camping. Mostly thin edging/crimping on metamorphic basalt. Doesn't climb like NW basalt at all. Pinnacles is not the place. The Valley will be a complete toss up on weather and it's not a place for sport climbs. If it were me: Red Rocks Smith

They have nice stuff and yeah the asian factories can produce to the stds of anywhere else. But, who can afford the ArcTurd stuff? Wild Things makes all their stuff in the US. And it's less expensive. Beyond Clothing (formerly beyond fleece) also makes all their stuff in the US. They're in Seattle now from what I understand. Also less expensive than ArcTurd. Both make exceptionally high quality goods. Support them.

Are you already committed to LAX? Ontario is a little easier to deal with and closer.

No "if" cowboy.

Bill, I basically make one and only one trip to the Apron on any extended stay. Don't care to hang around there much because of the rockfall history. This time it was a repeat of Cold Fusion (3pitch 10c slab) and Apron Jam->Mr Nat. And yeah, had the entire apron to ourselves. Seems like Goodrich is getting a decent amount of play since it's in the Supertaco free guide.

Let's hear em. What's the best pitch(s) you climbed last year and what made it so good? For me: Spectreman, Vedauwoo. Just a beautiful line, double overhanging corner starting perfect hands tapering to fingerstacks with one savior fingerlock that ends the crux. Perfect rock, less flaring or grainy than most Vedauwoo fare. Runners up: Mr Natural, Glacier Pt Apron, Yos. Maybe the best 5.10 fingercack of all time. Long pitch, on perfect rock with locker yellow tcus/aliens size fingers forever to a very short thinner crux right at the end of the pitch. Slabby enough that you are mostly on your feet with delicate smearing, edging, and toeing in. Last 25' or so: Energy Crisis, Cream Area, Yos. 80' of dead vertical 1 1/8" to 1 1/4" splitter on excellent rock, in an area almost nobody goes to. Solitude, views, and a wicked pump from the horrible size. All fingerstacks, ringslocks, and thin hands. Inconvenient approach, but that keeps the people away.

Go try em on. The sizing is relative to the model. For example, a high performance shoe like the anasazi laceup and velcro are made to have slightly curled toes and by design are not especially comfortable at a size that works well. I wear street size in these models and they start painfully tight and barely stretch. For a basic flatter, neutral lasted, all day shoe like the Hueco, again I'm at street size, but they are basically flat toes, and a very comfy fit at that size. In the altia high top, I went half size down and they are now big enough now that I wear socks in them. What I would do is focus on a model made for comfort/all around use over performance, and go somewhere around street shoe size.

There's more people opining on this topic on the web that probably anything else. For people who don't want to play it like an odds game (e.g. making lots of trades with a positive expectancy -akin to counting cards in blackjack- and taking lots of small losses, using technical indicators, quant stuff, and charts as your primary tools) then I like the simplicity of Bill Cara's approach. Essentially buying only the highest quality companies when their share prices are beaten down, and raising your stops as the price cycle swings high. It's a simple accumulation zone/distribution zone concept that works well in the middle of market cycles. Currently, in the early stages of a bear market, probably best to sit in short maturation debt instruments and wait out the capitulation that typically marks true market bottoms.

Hey Mark, I was guiding some folks in the area the day your friends in the pic climbed the Flake. Had just been up the Flake myself earlier in the day. So I wanted to pass along a couple of points. I am trying not to spray on your TR or be a dick about this issue...here goes: First, that day (a Sat if I recall correctly) was the most crowded day I've seen in the monument all season. There were mob scenes all around the campground, it was a nice sunny day. Naturally, there were lines for the popular easy routes. Communication with other parties was necessary to figure out who was doing what or waiting for what. As we were gathering some gear from the base of Intersection to head to another area, we saw your friend above starting up the West Chimney. Now not many people do the W.Chim, but it was crowded and I'd already seen a party go up it that day. Another party was just starting the Flake simulatenously. The bottom of the Flake is the crux, a section of 5.8 squeeze and OW. The leader was solid and moving right along, although wide climbing does tend to be a tad slower than other types. Your pal there proceeds to leave the W.chim at about the 30' level and traverse into the Flake, stepping into the route literally just above the guy leading the actual start to the Flake. The leader on the Flake could have easily reached up and grabbed his ankle as he stepped into the crack. Now imagine the situation this leaves the other party in...the leader is 30' off the deck, a guy has just merged into his route off an adjacent line and the guy (your pal) isn't climbing quickly. The guy can either hang out until your buddy finishes the route and his second follows (probably an hour at the rate they were moving), he can lower off and wait on the ground, he can keep climbing with another party's rope and pro in the crack creating an even bigger clusterfuck with two ropes and sets of pro. It would seem that a reasonable party would have at least made the guys on the real start to the route aware that they planned to leave the line they were climbing and merge into the other line. It wasn't as if they were on an alternate start, they were on an independent route. When I realized what was happening, I was like "WTF?!" Your buddy created a giant clusterfuck. I didn't know either party (your friends or the guys they cut off) so there's no playing favorites in this. I would have been PISSED if I were the guy leading the Flake. Probably would have taken your friend's lead rope, clove hitched it into the first of his pieces I came to, stopping him cold, and climbed by him, or came to blows when he got down. Now maybe I have this all wrong and the two parties had some communication and agreement beforehand, I didn't talk to either party, I only observed the action but it certainly appeared to be a clueless guy creating easily avoidable issues. At the minimum, your buddy didn't climb the Flake, he climbed some mash up of the W. Chim and the Flake, avoiding the crux. Sorry to put negative stuff in your TR. Maybe have a talk with your pal and teach him a little common courtesy/crag etiquette. I'm glad you all enjoyed it down here, don't wait so long between trips next time. And don't sweat the Bearded Cabbage, that move is hard, especially if that ghey tick mark is still next to the crack. I did it a few days before you were on it, someone had ticked a ridiculous spot on the crack way above the good jam you really want when making the crux move. If you hit the right spot, it's not bad, wrong spot and it's desperate and forces you into a lieback. (today was gorgeous).

Dean Scream