eternalX

Gunfight over how to cook chicken

for a little rock and roll?

That's the cool thing about Speakeasy DSL. They actually promote sharing your broadband connection with others, runnig a server, whatever.

Packed and Moved

While a 100BaseT line (100Mbps) is faster than the lowest standard of wireless (11Mbps), as soon as you get to the phone line, you're going to slow down to whatever your DSL line is, usually less than 1Mbps. The only time the speed becomes a factor at all is if you're doing a lot of traffic on your home network with others, not usually with the conneciton to the internet and now, newer standards support 54Mbps and above. WiFi is great. I use it at home. I use while on the road. I use it at local coffee shops. It's easy and fast. I now only stay at hotels with free WiFi access, which includes most Mariott's even in places like Knoxville, where i'm going on thursday.

The Five Spot is the most overrated breakfast in town. I have yet to understand why people wait 45 minutes to eat at this place. Yea it looks cool, but the food is BLAND.

d00d! Best bar? they make manhattans form a mix! I like the place though in that divey sense though. Haven't been there since the great wig party of 2003. Bets eggs benedict in town is Glo's. Best mom and pop diner? Probably Mecca for me.

I was using my gf's Sony this weekend to take pictures and I hought that the flash took forever to charge. Anybody else see that problem?

What's the deal with people in this town all being wishy-washy... Seattleites will vote on monorail's fate yet again It passed and yes there have been some issues but christ, can we complete a project around here? I wa sort of on the fence with the whole monorail project from the start, but it passed and we've already started work and I haven't seen anything really stand out as being a show stopper. Are we just going to throw away the last couple years of work and money?

my favorite is when it says that rain will turn to showers... wtf?

I think I said some of us have only done those trips, not everyone. In the end I realized I misjudged everyone's skillz and we paid. The funny thing is that you see a lot of advice on here that's "Go for it and try not to die"

HA HA HA... oh wait..you're talking about me! Well, when I posted I believed that there was one somewhat newbie involved in the trip, having only done Helens / Adams / Sahale, etc. Turns out that I was worng and that most everyone was unfamiliar with crevasse rescue, rapelling. And finally, Winnie's Slide is not ice climbing. It was defined as 'a bit sketchy' on this board or something to that effect. I don't even believe the Nelson guide makes any such mention of it being sketchy. I read the route descriptions for both and didn't seem to think there was anything crazy on either (there isn't). The thing about this board is that if you ask for comments about a climb, you get bombarded by why you shouldn't do it. With everything coming with such disclaimers, it's hard to separate what is normal "be safe" advice and what's "you don't need to be out there". In the end, I don't want to let anybody think i just disregarded their comments. I asked for advice, received it, and maade my own judgement. That's not a dis on anyone.

OR makes good gloves and they are having a sale at the company store in Sodo this friday. check them out. I use the Baker Modulars and they work for me.

I agree with this, but then the media and people outside shouldn't be surprised when mistakes are made.

With this latest Serena controversy and all the stuff during the Olympics, I'm a little confused on why they even use humans as judges. Every human is going to make a mistake once in a while, especially when it comes to judging how close a ball came to a line and there's a slow motion instant replay available with computer generated helper features. Then, they take it all out on the judge for making one mistake on one volley out of several thousand. WTF?

call me old fashioned, but nothing rhymes

www.accuweather.com has 15 day forecasts

No. I only take a couple pulleys to the gym. Actually, I would normally use 2 qds each with one locking and one non-locking, but i was trying to compare apples to apples.

The other day my partner got into a discussion about what to use for an anchor on sport routes. He uses 4 locking biners and one sling using the magic x and I use two qds with locking biners. He says the sling is better because it's equalized and I say the qds are better because everything is backed-up. It's probably 6 of one versus a half-dozen of the other, but how can the sling be safer?

For any serious snow climb I would strongly suggest picking up two more ice axes so that each of you can have your own. With the bad forecast we ended up going up to Cascade Crags and trying out the ice wall. Took them a long time to set everything up but it was a lot of fun. Thanks all.

Going in near the shelter seems like a good idea. Wish we would've known that.

We failed to summit Challenger and we have one day (maybe tonight and Thursday) to summit something else in the Cascades. I have two friends in (onoe from Phoenix and another from Milwaukee) and we're looking for something unique to the region and hopefully something where we can use our ice axe. Was thinking Shuksan (Sulphide) or West Ridge Forbidden. Any better ideas?

Climb: Mt Challenger-Big Beaver Date of Climb: 8/28/2004 Trip Report: Left Seattle at 8am. Arrived at Ross Lake Dam at 11:00. Started Big Beaver hike at noon. Arrived at Beaver Pass at around 7. It was raining but the dense trees kept us pretty dry. Got a late start and proceeded at look for the entrance to the bushwhack, hoping to find a post like the one denoting where the Luna hike starts. Well, the only thing we found was the USGS markers and a couple orange blazes about 1/2 mile from camp. So, we started the bushwhack here, passing a survey station and tower (and bees nest the stung the leader 10 times - all in all, 3 of the 4 of us would run into nests and be stung on this bushwhack). THIS IS NOT WHERE TO START. I'll get to it later, but if you come to the survey station, go back to the trail and back towards camp. YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO UP HERE. But we did. We started the bushwhack that took 5 hours, ran into two rock walls surrounded by devil's club, and was the most hellish experience I've ever had in the woods. Arrived at the 5700' ledge at around 5. Saw a black bear and watched him eat some berries. He was a big guy and completely unaware of us. We just watched until he moved on. Next, we proceeded to go past the upper ledge and drop into the next gulley over. We thought we should gain the next ridge, so we did. Another mistake. You should drop down and take the base around the ridges. At around 7 we gave up on making Wiley Lake (and therefore, the summit) and hiked down to a small pond to filter water and set up camp. It was a very sad evening once we realized we wouldn't make the summit. We got up the next morning and enjoyed a beautiful sunrise, made tea and proceeded out. Taking the corect route we made good time and encountered another black bear (though this one smaller) at the upper ledge. We watched him for half an hour and he watched us, though more interested in eating berries. We made our way around him and caught the trail at the 5700' ledge. This trail lead down about 500' and then into a creek bed. At this point we weren't sure what to do so we quickly followed what looked to be a trail to the left (north). I'm not sure if this was the trail or if the trail continued lower through the creek bed but the bushwhacking turned pretty brutal for about another 500'. At that point we made our way south (right) and only by luck found 1000' of widely-spaced, blown down trees. This last 1000' (and basically the whole bushwhack down was cake...IF ONLY WE KNEW ABOUT HIS ON THE WAY UP). We set a cairn where we hit the trail , about 500 yards north of the camp. If you do this trip, DO NOT go too far south. We were back to Big Beaver by 5. Out of Beaver Pass by 10 the next day and made it to Big Beaver Camp by 3:45. Had to wait for the boat until 6, but made conversation with a couple NOLS folks who did make the summit, which hurt to hear. I thought the Nelson guide did a poor job of describing the route. Go about 500 yards north or camp and head east. There are basically no markers so don't even bother looking for them. We saw one cairn on the who trip. All in all an okay trip, but we're pretty mad we didn't summit. Good luck to whoever else tries it. Gear Notes: glacier gear (not user because we didn't make the summit). Both people who brought trekking poles bent/destroyed them on the bushwhack Approach Notes: No markers. Good luck!

i've actually enjoyed watching the olympics this time around. beach volleyball, women's soccer, diving, gymnastics...it's all been good. i guess i am lame sheep.

i think we'll be okay until tuesday...