Off_White

A friend tried it solo once, had a total meltdown. He took shelter in the pod towards the top until a rope could be lowered to him.

It's still too early to find much in the used Dodge/Freightliner Sprinter department, but that would be pretty grand. 27 mpg with a 5 cylinder Mercedes diesel, and they handle really well. They've only been importing them a few years now, though they have a long track record in Europe as a Mercedes delivery van.

Does John do that headstand thing a lot? Someone should introduce him to BCMountaingirl (or some name like that), isn't she the one that does summit cartwheels? Happy happy John.

No, I think other things came up that added to the complexity of home, work, and educational life.

I miss DFA

Rose & Raindrop? It's a little deeper in than you're looking, but they have Terminal Gravity on tap. Personally, I think that should be your first criteria in site selection.

Hey Roy, your fame precedes you. Did you get your highest 100 yet? Thanks for making us 48 year olds feel young.

It's a relief to see that you are not in fact infallible.

Dru's just spraying, Roboboy is definitely not Arc (and neither is ALLCAPS for that matter if you choose to take that link seriously)

hear hear! John, I bet you'd do the DC for the right girl.

Saucy answer, but the question is valid. That highway is washed out on either side of Hood Meadows. If they're talking about what is good for Hood River, I'm thinking they must mean that stretch from the Columbia on up, and you still can't get to the Meadows from Government Camp.

Incredible site, I found the link courtesy of our friends at Supertopo. You can waste a lot of time playing find the climber: the guy lounging with the pig on Half Dome, party on the nose, folks topping out on Zodiac, a couple unattended bags somewhere on El Cap, looks like someone on S Face of the Column. Probably not a good place to go for those on dial up... website

Yeah, I guess we've found who he is.

What, no Seattle show?

I was thinking of his work with the Stinky Puffs, never knew they were that big a thing.

Janet from Sleater-Kinney is a brilliant drummer. Dave Grohl was a much better drummer than guitar player. Billy Conway from Morphine played with both great restraint and passion. Huh, guess all those bands are defunct too.

Got two turntables and a microphone... where it's at. You're not going to qualify as a "younger guy" for much longer little mister...

You should reconsider your bias Rudy, a little extra weight just makes you go down the hill faster, and short just means less wind resistance. You could be a 5.9 skier in no time.

That's kind of a cool construct, got a story to go with it?

LAME It's an open source code for encoding MP3's

You probably never liked speed either. Batdorf & Bronson on Capitol in Olympia is pretty damn great.

You'll find .flac files and such on Usenet as well.

I agree with Ken that they're heavy bulky objects, and there are a number of other options out there, but Pindude is right too. I never had problems rappelling with them, and the key to belaying with an eight is as he described, send a bight through the small hole and clip a carabiner through it, like a bulky off balance sticht plate. It's not my instrument of choice these days, but I don't have any problems with them. Say what you want about carabiner brakes and the dulfersitz, they're good things to know, along with how to do a decent hip belay. Ever drop your ATC? A well rounded climber needs to have more than one trick in the bag.

Does Itunes do that digital rights thing? Is it a subscriber service or a store? If it's a store, then you've actually purchased the song, and the problem may be in your player. I've tried two paid sources in the past. Rhapsody sucks, you subscribe and get unlimited access, but pretty much can only listen to it on your computer, like a radio station you program yourself, but it won't let you record or burn the material. Seems you only download 99% of the song, and the remaining bit comes when you're logged in. This is a Real Networks product, one of those companies that want to invade your computer and change the file associations so that you use their product to do everything. Comically, it's very difficult to unsubscribe. You can't do it online, finding the phone number is difficult, and invariably you wind up speaking to someone in India who has an exit interview script where they try to squeeze information out of you and won't just cancel your account when you tell them to cancel it. I'd say avoid Rhapsody like the plague, but your mileage may vary. Emusic is alright, a fair selection of indie type stuff that I tend to listen to. They have plans where you pay a set amount and get a certain number of songs. Cost per song gets cheaper the larger the plan you buy. The real goldmine is in the Usenet newsgroups. You'll need to do a little research since you'll need both a newsgroup reader and usually a separate account with a service that provides storage and access, but the amount and breadth of stuff out there is staggering. For about $10 you can download 25GB of stuff a month, and that's a lot of music. It's almost too much, downloading a dozen unfamiliar albums a night means it floods in at a rate too great to even assess if what you've got is any good. There's a lot of other free stuff out there too, from labels, bands, distributors, and the like on the web. You should take the time to get a little more high tech with your acquistion, it's not really very complicated, and downloading and your device are two different subjects.

Well, we've all got to work with what we've got, eh? Until you began expressing your hurt feelings it hadn't occurred to me to care. Silly as it may seem, I actually looked into your allegations, which was what led to to wonder what was your "first" post. Frankly, I don't see that your complaint has much merit, but my links will allow others to come to their own conclusions. It reminds me of the Repo Man scene with Duke on the floor in the convenience store, "Society made me what I am."