gslater

I've got one numb big toe today from this weekend's trip to Rainier. I think it's due to the single day stretch from Ingraham Flats to the summit and then back to Paradise. That seems to be just about enough distance to cause it to happen for me. Shorter trips seem to cause no problem whatsoever. I had the same thing happen last year on a much shorter Hood climb, and the numbness lasted for a couple of months. I'm hoping it won't last that long this time. Haven't found anything to heal it faster...

And motorcycles: Link

Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a speedster such as yourself...

I can imagine that a severe sprain could easily take longer to heal than a break. Some bones grow back together pretty quickly.

It's no fun to have your job's existence (or your career fame/shame) directly tied to the setting of a single bit of data in the telemetry stream...

Well, with the amount of detail mentioned (in the second link) it ought to be pretty easy to discredit if it's false. Yeah, I thought about that, but it's also possible that she got to know the kid, and he found out all sorts of stuff about her (including what tattoos she has and such), enough to put together a plausible story. I just have a hard time picturing anyone being stupid enough to have sex with a 14 year old WHILE BEING DRIVEN AROUND BY A 15 YEAR OLD COUSIN. But hey, this is Florida we're talking about, so I suppose it's possible...

Glad to see this mission working out well. I was working at Martin Marietta Space Systems (makers of the Cassini propulsion module) back in the early days of CRAF/Cassini, and the program has certainly had its share of turmoil. Few things in the land of geekdom are as exciting as awaiting the results of an orbital insertion burn after a multi-year trip....

Oh, that poor, poor 14 year old boy. He just must be SO traumatized... Boo hoo.... If she is sentenced for anything, she should receive offsetting credit for community service already performed. Sexually enthusiastic 14 year olds are a community too, are they not? To me, it sounds kind of like a 14 year old kid telling stories...

Yup, I'm thinking there must be some unidentified/unmentioned evidence that he's connected to something worse. I highly doubt many legal jurisdictions in this country are too concerned about panty thieves leaving the country...

Portland's Freaky Panty Thief Yeah, this guy's just a bit of a freak, but c'mon, $10 mil bail for stealing panties? Doesn't that seem a bit excessive?

I think reporting free air freezing level is basically a way for them to report where the natural freezling level is, with the subtle implication that it can vary quite a bit from that due to local topography and microclimate effects.

I met Caddis. Despite the company he keeps, he does seem like a pretty decent guy. But everyone knows that the greatest dog in the world (except for its short life expectancy) is the Bernese Mountain Dog.

Thanks, I do watch that stuff. I'm not on constant Advil or anything like that; since my initial big problems a few years ago, I now just typically hit it for a few days whenever there's a flareup, and that happens maybe once a month or so. I'm rather paranoid about the long-term effects of that stuff. Tried the COX-2 stuff early on in my ailment, and it just didn't seem very effective. My nurse practitioner girlfriend says that those take much longer than the ibuprofen to ramp up to an effective level, so maybe I just didn't give them a long enough shot.

Seems to be the consensus of the U.S. intel community as well. I was recently representing my company at a job fair, and got to talking about old times and people with some guys from the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). They were pretty frank in stating that the agencies are all hyper-aggressively looking for Chinese speakers. I made some crack about Korean, and they were kind of like "we're not even worried about that..."

It's pretty wide open, and getting wider by the day. Much wider this year than last, but still easy to get around.

This one has always pissed me off. It's geologically a butte, it had always been referred to as a butte, and then the USGS caved on the renaming.

Good to hear. Glad it went well for you; lots of people don't get such rapidly favorable results. I'm trying to avoid ever having to have any surgery, no matter how small, so I guess I'll just keep trundling along with my Advil and stretching and so on, right up until I have complete kidney/liver failure from the Advil...

Nope, but I've definitely tried Cinder Cone Red, and can heartily endorse it. Yum

In the name of thread resuscitation, and in the name of PDX pride, I feel compelled to pass along a Pixies-related factoid I read yesterday. A recent (April, perhaps?) issue of GQ had an interview with Mr. Black. In the interview, they made multiple mentions of his recent move to Portland, and about how the city fits him. He makes a fine addition to the existing level of Portland weirdness, if I do say so...

And just a touch of windloading... Weather data from Silcox Hut at ~7000' on Hood

Great stuff, but I always seem to get distracted and come close to scraping my car on the sharp left in the drive-thru...

Some years ago, when the Pope visited Denver, the site for the big outdoor gathering with hundreds of thousands of people was at Cherry Creek State Park. The only problem with this site was the thousands upon thousands of prairie dogs, whose homesites would be trampled upon by the masses of people. I believe the solution was to basically vacuum all the prairie dogs out of their homes and into trucks, and then transport them somewhere else, like the prairies, where one would think they really belong...

UC Colo. Spgs., I believe. He was a major guru within the cycling world.

That's the only drawback I've found with it. There isn't much scope for strapping stuff on the outside. The lid is also kind of small so it's hard to pack stuff under that too. I've got a Genie too, and I'm thinking I may have to do a little creative modification to add a few additional task-specific attachment points. But other than that, it's a pretty sweet little pack, and nearly weightless. Folds up into pretty much nothing.

I think it was 3 years ago now that an ortho doc confirmed my self-diagnosed L5/S1 partial/minor herniation. Hurt like a mofo all the time, with lots of fun nerve pain shooting down my leg. I went the very conservative route, with lots of stretching, careful movement for a while, and lots of anti-inflammatory meds (pretty much just ibuprofen, although I tried some of the other stuff like Celebrex, which didn't work too well for me). The doctor hooked me up with a physical therapist, but I never went. After a couple/few months of being fairly miserable, I started getting active again. Strangely, running was one of the few activities that didn't hurt, so I kept doing that in small doses. Then I started adding back in snowshoeing and mild hikes (it's amazing how much work your lower back does on even mild hikes, yet you never really notice it until some condition like this comes along). Within 6 - 9 months, things were feeling quite a bit better, and I basically ramped back up to my usual activities. I'm just a lot more careful now. Sudden movements, lifting heavy loads, etc. all cause me to think about my back first. Every once in a while I'll do something to strain it a bit, and then I start hitting the Advil for a few days, and do a bunch of stretching, and it gets better. Sadly, I expect this to be the pattern for the rest of my life (I'm almost 39 now). The biggest benefit to me comes from the following: 1) Stretching, particularly the hamstrings. After doing a bunch of online research, I found someone who recommended hamstring stretching as the closest thing to a miracle cure. I hadn't really been focusing on that, but I started to, and it made a HUGE difference for me. Now, whenever I feel that ache in my back starting to flare up, it seems it's well-correlated to tightness in my hammies. 2) Lying/sitting position. When sitting around, reading or whatever, I lie with my back flat on the floor, with my knees up. At night, I usually sleep on my back with a pillow under my knees. If sleeping on my side, the pillow goes between my knees, which reduces some kind of weird angulation in my hips that starts to hurt my back after a while. 3) Ibuprofen. But people need to understand that the so-called NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) such as ibuprofen really only are effective once they build up to a certain level in the blood, AND STAY AT THAT LEVEL FOR SOME TIME. You get very limited effectiveness from taking a dose or two of Advil. You need to take it continuously for at least several days for maximum effectiveness. 4) Paying attention and not doing anything stupid to my back. Sadly, I have had to come to grips with not being 20 years old and able to get away with anything physically. Good luck with the rehab. It's no fun, but I think pretty much everyone with a minor herniation who is fairly careful and diligent eventually gets back into their usual activities.