billcoe

http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2011/03/updated-big-bend-national-park-proposing-cut-mountain-bike-trail-peer-nps-retirees-raise-objections7827 Here's one I could understand argueing over, building a new single track trail...one that exudes horses. This will be a substantial and somewhat costly project. I think bikes are much better than the roads and massive projects they are still building in Yosemite valley, but I've never been to the Big Bend area, and if Don wanted to argue AGAINST a new mountain bike trail at that location, I could see, understand and even empathize that. But he wasn't, he was saying don't cut a few inches off of a dead stump......

I've been hiking longer than I've been climbing and I've been climbing longer than Don has. It's not about age. It's that Don talks out his ass. Same reason I get my hackles up over the Westboro Baptist Church's approach. Don's the same way. He's not about a dialog, he's about spewing his belief's. "Blah blah blah he's the righteous one blah blah pontificate pontificate...blah blah...." He want's everyone to believe that if he is out hiking, and there is a large downfall/branch across the trail blocking it, he would turn around and not touch it, otherwise it's an environmental disaster and he's leaving a trace. Bullshit. Most of us would do the right thing, make the world better, and move it so that others may benefit. On this issue, like the church, he's full of beans, wrong, and the rest of us are right. It's really the way he presents the message that is so painful. He will continue to bray like an intolerant holier than thou asshole, you can rest assure of that, however, no matter how long or loud he brays and pontificates, it changes nothing except to make a lot of noises in public much like a jackass. ...jus sayin' too... Regards to all

That's so awesome and inspiring on so many levels. All of those lil kids are so much fun to watch: they get all up and happy and have so much fun, but that there is another plane altogether. Congrats to the lad as well Rudy. Photo below borrowed from RC.com. Ian Caldwell on Rude Boys, 5.13C

It's about making the world a better place. There was a near full sized Doug Fir tree up at Rocky Butte that everyone used to anchor Crack Warrior. In 1996 we had a winter windstorm that snapped it off @ 6-8 feet up. Made a nice stump and everyone still used it as an anchor as it started to rot (fairly fast). I didn't go there for some time but went up there @ 2006 or 7 with Crackman and someone else and the entire stump had disappeared just from natural rotting and was basically gone....except for some detritus still rotting at the base. Natural process. That's what is going to happen to this stump as well. I asked around if adding some bolts for an anchor at the top would be OK, (including here) only got yelled at once by some dudes out there and those guys didn't even know where Crack warrior was. They just were pissed that people were putting in convince anchors where gear had been easily used for 30-40 years. I agreed with their point but explained this former anchor rotten away issue, and they did get on board. So I didn't discount them as just knee jerk ravings like yours Don, but edumatcated them to the facts. Put in some chains and cleaned the rotten wood out. I also sprayed some poison oak there. I don't consider spraying that stuff environmentally wrong, although others, like Lucky Larry does. The entire top of that climb is much much better. As humans, it's what we do, make our world better. In this case, from what I can see, leveling that single dead stump would make the world a better place. Sure, it's selfish and self-centered just like Dane says up thread. But when they do it, if they sprinkle some dirt on top of it, you'd never know, and the world is better for both the stump being gone and you knot knowing of it's presence or absence. I'm sure that you would argue that the park service folks and climbers who leveled out the bases of Smith Rock routes and built some trails ruined the environment, and I would argue that they made the world a better place. Both of us will not change our views and opinions, but just remember that I'm right and you're wrong on this. Ta ta!

Man, you really aren't paying attention. I went into the convenience store for a Pepsi like last month, which is a rare thing to do for me, they wanted about a buck more than the last time I'd bought one....I mean, I know I'm old and all, but that shit is out of control. BTW, reading comprehension alert: no one ever said "only solution" (to budget cuts), until JB brought those words to the table. Pay attention jb, you're even driving off your allies with all this hand waving, bad reading comprehension and misunderstanding. There MUST be and WILL be budget cuts as well as tax and fee increases where they can make them stick, Please, don't be ignorant..

Speaking only for myself, I will be extra careful when climbing over Ivans fence that his pots don't attack me....Last Saturday, I was only following but with my left handhold snapped off a rock which broke into 2 pieces. I didn't fall and hung onto the large part but the small one peeled right off down the cliff and caught the belaying Plaidman in the chest after a single bounce. He was fine but I felt like shit. This is why I'm not climbing at Cathedral:-) I had figured it was me pulling too hard and fast, not paying attention, like a noob..... but maybe this is a better explanation cause then I can ignore my own culpability...hmmmm, I like that:-) BTW, side note for anyone who cares: Timetraveler Steve rules! Not only that but he insisted we leave the poison oak (still scratching now) and slick mossy cracks and meet him at a dry warm high friction place where he then ropegunned all these sweet easier bolted routes which we caught a free ride on till the ibuprofen started calling:-) Yeah!

The legislators actually have to confront and balance this budget and must still deal with it by the end of the day, and can't just drunkenly wave their arms all askew incoherently on an internet bulletin board to get the job done....unfortunately. I can assure you that the state of Washington has hired some folks who's sole job it is to track down every scrap of extra corp. tax revenue they can grab, every damn nickel, and they are working over every company pockets they can both in state and out with a high powered Hoover vacuum. It's not all cuts cuts cuts, but that has to happen too, as Jim said. If you think that they have missed some corp or target, then you have an obligation to send them that info. Some interesting thoughts and ideas for the national issue: http://topforeignstocks.com/2009/11/15/should-the-us-drastically-cut-its-bloated-defense-budget/

....Crickets....

Well spoken. Nationally: http://www.cnbc.com/id/42246531 "In the Sovereign Fiscal Responsibility Index, the Comeback America Initiative ranked 34 countries according to their ability to meet their financial challenges, and the US finished 28th, said David Walker, head of the organization and former US comptroller general." .............

I had seen that positive story and was thinking of posting it Pat, but figured you'd be along sooner or later. Congrats to you, the ACLU, and all American citizens. Should be a long and interesting road from here.

Yes. Some bad ones - but if you find a good bottle you can go score lots of it for a mighty good price. I picked up a 2000 Bordeaux Wine there like 3 years back. It was in the 2 buck upchuck price range. Tasted fantastic. Went back and bought everything they had, 5 to 8 cases of the stuff. If anyone ever invites me over to your home to nosh, I'll haul one over, finally down to about my last case and now I'm starting to be careful on opening the bottles:-) Another time, they had Haagan DAz something of cheese ice cream. I was calling it Fumunda cheeze. They had cases of it for $1. each. I filled up the freezer at home and at work. Took a long time to work through it, stuff was amazingly great tasting. Another fantastic deal is sunscreen. Like a buck. The trick is to buy a single thing and test it or to go with a sharp eyed Asian lady who is smarter than you and will tell you to put back the Chocolate cause it will taste like gasoline, or the expired drugs I always seem to toss in the cart:-) PS, she told me to always pass on the perishables that are canned or bottled, like olive oil, etc etc.

Good points all. In fact I congratulated our new President on this board for doing the right thing and increasing the cafe standards not long after he'd gotten elected. Here's to hope! The WW2 time was a radically different time. Certainly darker and scarier in many regards. In many ways that was mandatory and this is voluntary, which makes the budget trend these days even crazier..to me. Me? Everyone who knows me knows I do live about as close to inner city without actually being under a bridge as it gets in a house 3 blocks from a close in light rail stop. My wife walks 3 blocks to work and I'm not ridiculously far.

Nice chart....they were looking at the opposite of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil This one below better explains it for the US during that period to now. ..of course, there could be a magic potion invented any day now that will alleviate this concern....and all the US manufacturers that left the building will come home...and and and

Wow! I am in total agreement with that article Jay. I swear I didn't pen that:-) Being in a hedge fund that short sells the Treasury on margin is a stunning position which I never believed I would find myself in. 1 year Treasury's at at .25%...how far can that rate go down and what will happen when the Fed stops buying? If the rate goes down I'll lose my bet, but I'm predicting a rise in interest rates and am acting on my beliefs. So to do the opposite, you should buy Treasuries Pat, cash in on that .25% interest rate and retire rich! It's a "safe" investment after all, everyone says so. Everyone flys to "safety" like US government T-bills when times are strange they say. This is as strange as it gets. Our country is in unprecedented and unusual times with as uncertain of a future as we have ever seen IMO. Get the booze, guns, stockpiled food, gas masks and potasium Iodine kind of things you mention covered soon everyone:-) Nice bed Prole, the top looks like a coffin though. Anyone else into eyeballing the future? Lay it down here for evaluation, love to hear your thoughts.

I've decided that dollar bills and T-bills are the wrong things to hold.

I'm on the phone on hold to my broker right now. Betting the farm that treasury bill interest rates will rise. Yes, you should do the reverse and go long on T-bills with every nickel you have. Whew....rolling the dice here. Risky business.....

? Cordless Big Boy ?

LOL, yah: or maybe in the shower...little sufferin is needed here. Man, that's some awe inspiring conditioning right there. Off the couch and up to the top. Bad assed.

This is not the kind of question to ask a bunch of chumps strangers on an open forum. Use your judgment, discuss it with folks who know the area and who go there, and do the right thing. Most of us even know where the hell you are talking about and most likely have never been there. Maybe you leave it if it's a high profile area or used as a chair, and just top rope the sequence? PS, Dwayner, it's a f*Ckin STUMP. OK? A "Stump". Look that word up. Another bit of advice: after a hard day of climbing, do NOT knock back 4-5 cocktails and then go bouldering directly over uneven rocks with no crash pad or spotter...that's do NOT do this. Spring, summer, fall, whenever.

Good video Jay...damn libertarians.... I'm convinced that the big issue of our day, of this century or more, is our lack of an energy policy and massive federal government overspending. Until we knuckle down and get it together, we will be flirting off into these forays to places like Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan to keep the juice turned on. Unfortunately. Utilization and exploitation of energy is the number one factor of what defines a high tech, wealthy nation state. As oil disappears, we will become even more like a bunch of fish swimming in a ever decreasing pool of water, and I'm convinced that it won't be pretty. The only choice will be do we do it before it bitch slaps the entire country upside the head, or not. As individuals, investing in gold, oil and other commodities, real estate and hedge funds that short Treasury bonds may be the only thing we can do to survive this coming financial debacle caused by the energy shortage and this massive federal spending craze. Gold is overpriced (vis a vis what it takes to get it out of the dirt), commodities are looking like Tulipmania in Holland, and houses are in the middle of a big dive. We're fucked. What the hell is left? Invest in climbing gear? See the price of ropes heading up? Who called that ? (hand raised here) Good luck my brobahams!

You're cracking me up here Prole:-) thanks! mmmmm....Yellow cake....mmmm (picture of Valerie Plame whipping up the cake on the back of the package)

I believe there is a mechanism for the commander and chief to commit our troops and it's no violation of the constitution. Certainly, as they have said, all the congressional leaders were consulted on this. The political insider infighting never got resolved on this Libya intervention. Allegedly, Secretary of Defense Gates (significant that he is a former Director of Central Intelligence and Deputy National Security Adviser) and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen both opposed this attack. It is not a republican/democrat issue as you seem to indicate. Lots of people of all political persuasions think we should stay the hell out of there. The first 15 min. are up and an estimated $100 million has been spent. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/not-worth-it-first-day-of_b_838659.html Too bad we don't have any other priorities or better places to invest that scratch....and the millions soon to be flushed....

WOW, AWESOME!

As Larry may likely be the only person who has lived with a concentration camp survivor for years, I would suggest that he would have a better feel for what the man told him than anyone else here. Remember that there were hundreds of camps with lots of different configurations, and it was true that Auschwitz had that Arbeits Mach Frei (work makes you free) motto over the gates, but all of your babbling and topic shifting Rob, doesn't make Larrys thoughts or ideas any less true. In fact on THIS point, that "Everyone gets what he deserves" which was the sign over the Buchenwald gates as you say...he's suggesting that is here ...now....for us. ....so just turn on the news and go back to relishing our glorious march off to the 3rd war in Libya to right the wrongs in the world. "We will save the civilians from the predations of their own government." It must be true, every news channel is saying so. Todays HUGE news story is that we fired 110 Tomahawk Cruise missiles at Libya. Of course, none of those nailed anyone who didn't deserve it....did they? An interesting little bit of recent and current history that never seems to get played on the evening news: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War Note that this was the view from the inside looking out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedem_das_Seine Rob, I'm not anti-military, don't believe that is the case. As far as protests goes, they protested WW1 and protesters were killed for it. Didn't do a damn bit of good. My Grandfather was a marine and killed Germans in WW1. He did it so that peace would come to the world and his son would have a better life. His son, my father, was in the 8th Air Corp and he killed Germans in WW2. The casualty rate for those guys was shockingly high. You can research the causes of ww2 to see how that trip went down. When my turn came and I joined, we finally had figured out that we shouldn't be killing Germans and the Germans were totally down with this. In fact, looking around the world at our little military excursions I've seen us head off too during my life, they seem to have all net losers. I mean for most everyone: victors, losers, civis, people standing watching the next country over, everyone. I volunteered and worked up at the VA hospital and there was plenty of Korean War vets who - seeing our trading with Red China, have a different feel for that conflicts value to our society as well. Ask yourself, is this new POS conflict worth YOUR son's life so that bubba down the street can keep commuting to work and squandering a disappearing and critical resource with his 12 mpg monster SUV? Of course, the large ancillary benefit is that some large US corporations will have record profits (that you pay for through higher taxes to pay off this adventurism while they book the new boatloads of scratch tax free via an offshore dummy corporation) You can get a piece of this action via your 401K. If you can answer yes, (ie, it IS worth it) then we can have a discussion. For myself, I do not believe it is worth your son or daughters life Rob. I don't think we should be enriching select corporations while indebteding the population for years to come over this. I dislike the government pushing the idea, via the constant news reports, that it is -and that this is a worthy cause. It's not. BTW, if you don't have a son or daughter, ask yourself this single question that I asked myself, my father asked himself and my grandfather asked himself: "Is this worth MY life". Therein will be your answer. This vid should help to define that idea for folks: [video:youtube]

Haters gonna hate:-) LOL. It's about both health and performing better (or as the OP said "sending form"). Pullups can be one measure of how your muscles vs your weight are. When I was young, I was doing 5 sets of 12. As I'm not young, it still is germain to training hard. In fact, if weight is an issue or worthy of discussion, why is it an issue? Go from there. So...what's your pull up count:-0 BTW, all the 3rd grade climbers are outperforming me theses days, it's not about bragging, it's about doing better for yourself:-) Regards!