JayB

Jesus christ almighty. What a terrible affliction. We can add this to genetic disorders, plagues, cancer, parasitic self-replicating elements in the genome, parasites, etc, etc, etc that buttress the case for a beneficent designer.

In that case I'll use it to partially offset the amount that I send in when I file...

Better sink it into the TIPS variant...

Money is going the other way... I expect the government will use it to go on a bender.

There's also some fun, family-friendly flatwater kayaking available there. Can't remember the name of the river, but you could pretty easily bring along the tike for the paddle, and the hike to a nice waterfall/pool at the end of the paddle. I think the hike is about a mile long, over flat ground, through a rain-forest. Can't remember the name of the river, but it's pretty much the only one on the island. There's also a very scenic beach with a nice reef protecting the water near the shore near the NaPali coach that'd be a good one for families with small kids that want some protection from the waves. Link a map of Kauai and I could point out both....

When someone asks where they should ski in, say, Summit County - I'm glad to know that you'll be there to inform them that relative to the global aggregate, all of the resorts are a)really expensive b)really crowded and c) really developed. Seems like flights were leaving every half-hour or so, and the flights were something like ~30-45 minutes long.

Maui = more people, more development, more condos, more of the aggro-tropical-redneck-poly-mullet localism. Good news is that if you are into meth/crack/heroin, it will take all of 3 minutes in Wailuku/Kahalui for someone to roll up and offer you and/or your kids any/all of the above, so Maui has that going for it.

Been to Kauai and the others and Kauai is the only one that I'd have much interest in returning to.

The street level arbitrage that the average consumer has been using against the price fixing scheme is rather amusing...

Why people are whining about poor Chinese folks using the only comparative advantages that they have to lift themselves out of poverty...when they could walk the talk and buy custom gear that satisfies *all* of the perogatives of the economically-illiterate-protectionist-bargain-hunters-decrying-the-excesses-of-consumerism-while-searching-for for-a-high-end-niche/boutique/consumer-product posting on this thread is "beyond" me... www.beyondclothing.com I buy their stuff for other reasons, but if you need something that slakes the pain of the affluowesternconsumo angst in addition to actually working well for its intended purpose, the stuff that they make should do the trick.

Play follow-the-leader and hit up the Sovereign Wealth Funds.

Must not have been talking about the 360's...(?)

I took a closer look at the top chainring last night, and the cogs are worn enough that the thing could almost double as a circular saw. Thankfully I can use the other two for the time being until I figure out whether the repair vs POS acquisition strategy makes the most sense...

Get an appraiser who will "hit the number" and take out a home equity loan that you use to fund the purchase of several cash-flow negative investment properties with no-doc, neg-am, I/O, 2/28, option-ARM loans with significant prepayment penalties and your prosperity is guaranteed.

That's how mine started and it pretty quickly degenerated into complete uselessness. If the top of the cogs on the chainring have worn to the point that the ends are sharp, chances are the chainring wear is far enough along that it might need replacing. If that's the case, I suspect that you'll wind up replacing the chain as well since supposedly chain stretch + chainring wear go together and old chains don't work well with new chainrings...but let me know if you have any luck messing around with the rear deraileur. Anything that can prolong the life of the beater without requiring additional money would be welcome...

LaSportiva K4S boots might be worth a look if you can find a pair. Insulated, crampon compatible, with synthetic material below the cuff, leather above the cuff.

Leaning strongly in that direction myself. May have found a good candidate for the sacrificial POS... http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/bik/548907457.html

Cold is a given, but today's big nuisance was the chain skipping off of the top-chainring whenever I exceeded a certain amount of pressure. Thinking the chain, the chainring, or both might need replacing. Not sure if the outer chainring is replacable on the eight-year-old beater, and having epoxied the crank-arm in place recently I'm pretty sure that the crankset can't be replaced. I was planning to subject the old-beast to the final salt/slush/grime assault this winter, then pick up a new ride once I'd finished serving the sentence back here, but that may not happen. The new dilemma might be whether to go for a POS that I can leave on the porch with a flimsly lock, and not have to worry about taking care of, or a decent ride that will last for a few years. Leaning towards the POS option at this point....

I just scanned through the comments briefly, but it seemed as though decommissioning the upper stretch of the road above the washout would require...repairing the roadbed..in order to permit the passage of the heavy equipment necessary to do so. In other words, you'd have to fix the road in order to properly decommission it. It also seemed as though the fix-then-decommission plan is the *preferred* alternative over at the WTA? Rather than fixing or bypassing the washout and *not* subsequently decommissioning the rest of the road? Please correct me if I'm mistaken, since I didn't have time to read through all of the comments carefully. Also - any word on the cost for a proper decommissioning versus what it would cost to restore access to the campground?

I've used the slime tire skins and they seem to help.

It'd be a laughable conceit par excellance to suggest that anything involved in that outing was gnarly in any objective sense, but there were a few elements in there that established some boundary values on my personal yardstick. Contemplating the situation prior to moving away from the belay was one of them. Hopefully that'll remain the most consequential feeling 4th-class-traverse-to-decent-pro that I ever have to deal with. De-tilted. View from the belay

I'll trot this one out again...

I've found myself wanting to commend SC for his analysis here contra Jim in the same way that I found myself wanting to congratulate KFed on his parenting skills contra Brittney...

Your bias toward scientific studies is blindig you to new possibilities. I have dowsed for water. It was a mind blower. Can't explain it tho so it must have been a hallucination right? I pity you your narrow perspective. Seriously. It is sad in its limitations. "A mobile element based phylogeny of Old World monkeys Abstract SINEs (Short INterspersed Elements) are a class of non-autonomous mobile elements that are <500 bp in length and have no open reading frames. Individual SINE elements are essentially homoplasy free with known ancestral states, making them useful genetic systems for phylogenetic studies. Alunext term elements are the most successful SINE in primate genomes and have been utilized for resolving primate phylogenetic relationships and human population genetics. However, no previous termAlunext term based phylogenetic analysis has yet been performed to resolve relationships among Old World monkeys. Using both a computational approach and polymerase chain reaction display methodology, we identified 285 new previous termAlunext term insertions from sixteen Old World monkey taxa that were informative at various levels of catarrhine phylogeny. We have utilized these elements along with 12 previously reported loci to construct a phylogenetic tree of the selected taxa. Relationships among all major clades are in general agreement with other molecular and morphological data sets but have stronger statistical support. "

" FASEB J. 2005 Jun;19(8):960-2. Epub 2005 Mar 22. Identification of mTOR as a novel bifunctional target in chronic myeloid leukemia: dissection of growth-inhibitory and VEGF-suppressive effects of rapamycin in leukemic cells. The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) has recently been described to be constitutively activated in Bcr-Abl-transformed cells and to mediate rapamycin-induced inhibition of growth in respective cell lines. We have recently shown that rapamycin down-regulates expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a mediator of leukemia-associated angiogenesis, in primary CML cells. In the present study, we analyzed growth-inhibitory in vitro and in vivo effects of rapamycin on primary CML cells and asked whether rapamycin-induced suppression of VEGF in leukemic cells is related to growth inhibition. Rapamycin dose dependently inhibited growth of primary CML cells obtained from patients with imatinib-responsive or imatinib-resistant disease as well as growth of Bcr-Abl-transformed imatinib-resistant cell lines. Moreover, we observed potent cytoreductive effects of rapamycin in a patient with imatinib-resistant Bcr-Abl+ leukemia. The growth-inhibitory effects of rapamycin on CML cells were found to be associated with G1 cell cycle arrest and with induction of apoptosis. In all cell types tested, rapamycin was found to down-regulate expression of VEGF. However, exogenously added VEGF did not counteract the rapamycin-induced decrease in proliferation. In conclusion, rapamycin inhibits growth of CML cells in vitro and in vivo and, in addition, down-regulates expression of VEGF. Both effects may contribute to the antileukemic activity of the drug in CML."