Bug

We will be in Icicle canyon Sat and Sun Sept 18 and 19 for sure and maybe the 17th as well. If a couple more people commit, we can keep our reservation at the Chatter Creek Group Site for the 17th, 18, 19th. If no one else commits by Tues Aug 31, I will cancel the group site and we will meet at the Climbers bivy above Bridge Creek. So far,including me, only four people have committed to paying and only three have committed to coming (with kids etc). It is going to be fun regardless! The kids love it. Many marshmallows will die.

That's why we would drive up after the show. So we can be there Sat AM.

Here is an idea. The Circus is in Everette Fri the 17th at 7:30. Circus, drive to Leavenworth that night and bivy. Everyone else meet at the Bridge Creek bivy Sat AM by 9 or 10. If this sounds good, I can get tickets $15 for reserved seating and $9 for the second tier (have to order Friday). Or I can shut up.

The count is hovering at 4 families.

Aye... I feel for them as well. But having survived a few epics myself, it's knowin what COULD hit ya what put's the salt on the potatoes. I'm glad they are back and I hope their wives aren't too hard on them.

My girls started bouncing around at the end of the rope at 4 but their attention span was short. They mostly liked to pendulum across the wall. The oldest one climbed a 5.7 awhile ago at age 8. The important thing is to make sure they are having fun and want to go again.

Maybe we can have it at the climber's bivy above Bridge Creek if there are only 3 or 4. There is no sense paying $150 if we don't have enough people.

The response is underwhelming. Rather than pay $50 for a weekend at Chatter Creek, (assuming the three committed show up and pay a third), I will cancel the reservation on Wednesday September 1, unless there is more of a response.

Bring a friend. There are no rules.

I bought a pair this spring. I have not walked very far in them but had to replace the liners with something wider. After doing that, they feel comfortable. I have a wide foot (E). This does not answer your question but is worth knowing I hope. Having climbed ice in Koflachs and other ice boots, these feel like they will be good ice boots. Having skied in all the above boots, these feel like they will be for transportation, not extreme skiing. They are nice and light and I got the whole dynafit setup to match. See you out there!

My pocket rocket goes everywhere with me in the summer. It saves time, weight, and doesn't spill, stink or make loud noises. When it gets cold, I break out the MSR XGK. It stinks, sounds like a rocket, weighs more, and is just gettin fired up when the canister stove would have a pot half boiled (in warm temps). But I have had enough bad experiences with a cold canister that I will not trust my life to them.

Kid's Ropeup is September 17-19 at Chatter Creek Group site. Same place as last year. Bridge Creek and 8 mile were not available. Cost is $149 for the site. We will pass the hat. Confirmation number is 1-3435078. This is a family campout/climbing weekend. It is not an organized event per se. Bring your own food, beverages, cooking apparatus, tentage, my beer, etc. No cussing, cursing, or unsavory language unless it is part of a climbing story. To get there; go to Leavenworth. The first right is Icicle RD. Chatter Creek is several miles then a few more and maybe one more after that. Eventually, you will pass the Chatter Creek Ranger Station on the right. Take the first right immediately after and we are in the first loop to the left. There is a gate but it not locked. We check in at 3PM Friday and out at 11AM Sunday. Chatter creek is a ways up the valley where it can get cold. Bring appropriate dining attire. If you are coming, respond to this and post your name under COMING: Bug. Olivia 8, Meredith 6. Tentative: Can't find Leavenworth:

Kid's Ropeup is September 17-19 at Chatter Creek Group site. Same place as last year. Bridge Creek and 8 mile were not available. Cost is $149 for the site. We will pass the hat. Confirmation number is 1-3435078.

And my point is, regardless of religious persuasion, or scientific beliefs or whatever, people are going to find a reason to blame other people for their misfortune. We are changing rapidly as a society and even as a global society. The institutions of religion, in their many facets, cannot keep up with the rate of change. This does not mean that everything we held true up to now was wrong. There is 10,000 years of human wisdom in the Old Testament. It is woven into the New Testament and the Quran in many ways. I am willing to have Muslims, Jews, Christians,all religions, and atheists have their fights so that we can preserve as much as possible of the wisdom that is stored in the books and in the personal experiences of practicing those modalities of wisdom. We will need everybody to contribute when we start a new structure. History suggests that the kind of change we are seeing does not continue indefinately. We do not want to give up on anything that might contribute to a solution just because it changes with less frequency and is being wrongly used as an excuse for cruelty. Change will come. Keep the tools for rebuilding handy. What you do with the tools is up to you.

Do not confuse ALL Christians with the ones who try to force their brand on you. Having given it a great deal of time, energy, and academic study, as well as personal study, I doubt that the teachings of Jesus were meant to "force" anyone to do anything. The whole concept is focused on love and relationship to God and others regardless of their faith or anything else. That adds up to joyful unconditional acceptance as far as I can tell. We have a whole new political-religious thing going on right now. It threatens all of us. Not just non-christians. Very scary stuff for sure. Dietrick Bonnhoffer (sp?) Has a theory of the five mandates. Church, family, friends, state, and marriage. they all naturally overlap a little bit but one should never overpower another. If that happens, it is time for some poor soul to exercise the "Ultima Ratio", and commit what would normally be a sin in order to bring the world back into balance. He co-masterminded a nearly successful assassination attempt on Hitler. He was the last person executed by the Third Reich. He was a Catholic priest.

Bring me all your little white cars. Place them at my feet. Leave the keys. Give the silly hats to poor people.

My theorey is that literacy has led to a different cognization of the world around us. Pre-literate peoples tended to have mythologies that emphasized cyclical patterns. Literate peoples tend to think in terms of linear equations and absolute truths. I believe that it is the concept of 'secularism' that makes the difference. 'Secular' is an abstract term that would have no bearing on a people who related to the world through personal interaction for every morsel of food and and calorie of warmth. The wisdom for sustaining these hard ways of life was stored in the 'mythology' of the society. In a pre-literate (badly used, ethnocentric term) society, a mythology was 'fluid' so that new perspectives could be introduced without destroying the basis for life/survival-wisdom. With the invention of literacy (Biblical Hebrew- Torah, Ancient Greek-New Testament, Arabic-Quran) the concept of fluidity was lost and people started following the concepts in the book because "It was written". As the mythologies that were recorded in the books became outmoded, their concepts became abstract- that is, not based in everyday life. Jack Goody referred to this as the "concretedness of experience". This loss of fluidity was addressed in Christianity in the Ecumenical councils, the splits into Eastern Orthodoxy, Greek Orthodoxy, Protestantism and so on. In each split there was the conservative party holding on to abstract principles and the radical party attempting to bring real life experiences into the relationship with God as they perceived Him. As science expanded , primarily through religious endevors at first, the rate of change became too great for the elders of the churches to keep up with. Eventually, we ended up with a separation of church from science which is too bad because religion started out as an empiraclly based body of wisdom- not just knowledge. As a society, we are teenagers. We have a great deal of knowledge but no body of wisdom to tell us how to use it justly, or efficiently or however you wish to look at it. With the coming of the computer age, we will see a similar change in the mode of cognizance and will see another revolution in social structures. You may now call me Bug-Babba. I will be your guide through the coming millennia. I will lead you out of the dark places where your soul has languished and bring a new light to the races of the world!. Foooollllloooooow. Follow me now.............

I'll bite. What the f? There aren't any special characters in alphabet soup!

One 'g', one 'r', one 'i' and TWO 'z's. No 'e'. Did he spew alphabet soup and this was all you could scrape up? OOPS. Sorry. Just had to get in on the thread drift. WHACK! Bad Bug.

I thought Alex presented his post very clearly as hearsay and used quotes where the information was unclear. He tends to put out good information. Mellow out.

I am swamped this week. I am still at work right now. Can someone reserve a group site over there? The BridgeCreek group site is nice. It costs money. We passed the hat last time and I think it came out OK.

Are we supposed to bring crowbars and epoxy?

My kids are into the overnight thing. Sacrificing marshmallows to the night is still far more important than climbing. Hopefuly, we will be able to have a fire but don't count on it.

I vote for 11worth. But I will go either way. If it is Squish, someone else set it up as I have no idea what is up there.

September 17-19?