Rad

My dad was an entomologist who studied bees. We learned a lot by osmosis and on collecting trips. Here's a few tidbits that may prove interesting or useful (Tvash can correct me if need be). There are many different species of wasps, some live in colonies (e.g. yellow jackets, white-faced hornets, and paper wasps) while others are solitary. Ditto bees. Bees and wasps do not bite, they sting you with a modified ovipositor (egg laying tube) coming out of their abdomens (butts). Most bees have barbs in their stingers that rip out a poison sack from their abdomen when the sting you. If you get stung by a bee you may be able to scrape the poison sack off without having its contents injected into you. After they sting you they will die. Not so with wasps. They can sting you multiple times and be fine. Insects are unable to generate their own body heat and they can only fly when their wing muscles rise above certain temps. This is why you see bumblebees looking sluggish on the ground in the evening or on overcast days: they're too cold to fly. They may get stranded on flowers or elsewhere if the temps drop. You can use this to your advantage. For example, I found a large white-faced hornet's nest in a bush near our front door a few years back. It was too big and too deep to get with raid and was clearly going to cause problems later in the fall. So I waited until night and went out with a garbage bag. I gathered up the nest and its sleeping occupants inside the garbage bag, double-bagged for extra protection, and then put the whole thing in the freezer overnight. That killed them. Turned out there were over 80 wasps in the nest. Yikes! I've been nailed by the cascade ground wasps multiple times on approaches, but always I've run down/up the trail so fast I never got a good look at my attackers. It sure hurts, though.

June 1990, Swiss Cheese face (5.5-5.7?) on Goat Rock in Castle Rock State park (Skyline drive Bay Area, not by Shasta). I surprised the instructors by pulling off a 5.9ish stemming boulder problem. I was hooked from that very first day. That summer I went on multiple camping and climbing trips with Outdoors Unlimited (out of UCSF) to the Tahoe area and Tuolumne. Great times. Xmas 1990, I got a pink chalk bag from my cousin that I still use today.

Nice outing and pics Trog.

Amen. It floors me that people don't understand that you taxes to fund things like transit and schools. I would gladly pay income tax to improve a lot of things in this state, but the short-sightedness of voters and Tim Eyman's initiatives are a lethal combo.

Seattle, because X38 and REI put it over the top! Where else can you spray inane crapola on CC with wireless devices during business hours, leave your Microsoft cubicle early, pop in your SUV to sit in 405 traffic, and crawl on I90 to X38, all while sipping your double-skinny non-fat extra poontang $5 cup of joe. At X38 you can climb ego-inflating sport routes and clip your shiny quickdraws onto bolts 3 ft apart on chossy rock. Is there more to life than that? Oh yeah, climbing the tower in the flagship REI!

One down, eighty seven to go.

No more monotonous than any other slab route. It's runout enough to keep your attention and has awesome views of Half Dome the entire way.

This is it! Don't blink or you'll miss it. Quick - go to Index and climb something awesome! I enjoy my work, but I wish I could heed the call of Index cracks and fall colors today...

I agree with all your points. I expect that the press worked to ferret out any conflict and controversy to put in the article, so the portrait may be a little skewed. Peace and harmony just doesn't sell copy.

I disagree. The article suggests the appraised value of the company was not as high as the inheritor wanted. The value of this business, like other service businesses, may lie primarily in its brand and/or the cache of its service providers. The younger a business, the more the value lies in its providers. If a key provider leaves or dies that will diminish the value of the enterprise. Older businesses, with more established track records and brand recognition, will take less of a hit when one or two key people leave. These factors would be true of any guiding business, so I don't think it speaks to the quality of MM as a guide service.

Yep, like most of the Gunks.

Show is at 730pm. Neptune Theater. Send Marylou a pm as she may have a ticket you can buy. See you there (babysitter is confirmed!). Rad

OK. Meet outside after the film and we'll go somewhere closeby(assuming my babysitter comes through!).

Are people going to the ReelRock film this Wednesday at the Neptune? We could go for beer/food afterward.

Blake, Allison, Lisa, Brendan and I we went to Ozone Saturday. It's fun not knowing grades or beta - you just see a line and start up it. We had sun all day and great views of Stuart dusted in snow. There were wasps everywhere, but they were pretty mellow and never stung anyone. We did skip one route with a large wasp nest in a key flake. A highlight was leading an orange slab/arete route with great views just as the sun's last rays swept up the wall. Blake and Allison may have some pics. Thanks for a great day guys! On Sunday Michael, Luke, Allison, and Lisa and I went up to the Sam's hill area. We did Ski Track cracks, Oprah's navel, a 165ft 5.10 slab/overlap left of ON (Up zone?), a 5.6 flake route, and a 5.9 crack/face to the right. All were fun. A few of those could use chains instead of rap rings + faded slings in a death triangle. A shorter day, due to late start and early departure, but still fun. I did jump in Icicle creek before we left. Come on in guys, it's not c-c-c-cold!

That wasn't my experience. I feel lucky to have climbed, hung out, drank beers, and laughed with both new and old partners. And the weather was truly stunning. I didn't see any naked dancing on the tables, but then it was kinda chilly for that anyway.

On Saturday we walked past some bolted, mossy routes on Secret Dome on the way to Ozone. Are these worth climbing? Who put them up? Just curious.

I was talking to someone at Ropeup who had great things to say about a couchsurfing community - people volunteer to host, ask to stay, trade pms, rate surfers and hosts, chat. Sounds pretty cool. It apparently works for places all over the world. couch surfing website Happy surfing!

Super fun times! I'm not a rope-up virgen any more... Big thanks to all who helped make it happen. I took a few climbing pics on Blake's camera. Maybe he and/or Mythosgrl will post a few.

I'm leaving from Seattle Friday late pm and returning Sunday - room for one to three depending on how much you like legroom and how light you pack. MattP, you still need a ride? Send me a pm.

Nice pics and TR.

Go look at Southeast Asia on a shoestring, the original Lonely Planet book.

Southeast asia is a cheap place to travel, particularly Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, and India. You can probably teach english to earn $. I didn't do that but know plenty who have. However, whatever you're making now will probably dwarf what you'll make overseas so saving now might be the better way to go. It may be different post-9-11, but people out there are awfully friendly - much more so than anywhere I've been in the US. Go for it!

Actually, stress is the key. High stress = memorable. Low stress = less memorable.

For all you New research on mice could explain why you remember a breakup (or epic Pickets bushwhack) so vividly but can't for the life of you recall that meeting you had at work. With information bombarding our senses like the billboard lights in Times Square, our brains can get overloaded. That's why memory-storing regions of the brain weed out the trivial and give priority to the significant, which can then get transformed into long-term memory. The new study, published in the Oct. 5 issue of the journal Cell, reveals how emotions could help the brain "decide" which memories to seal in and which to toss out. Memories are thought to form with the strengthening of connections between neurons. These connections rely on receptors to send and receive "brain data." Past research has shown that emotional stress is linked with an increase in the hormone norepinephrine in the brain. Yet, exactly how the stress hormone influences the processes involved in neuron connections and thus memory formation has remained mysterious. Hailan Hu of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and colleagues say they have figured part of it out. They ran lab tests on mice, finding that norepinephrine, as well as emotional stress, leads to a chemical change in certain brain receptors. The change strengthened connections in the memory regions in mice brains, they say. "Stimuli that would not be enough to form a memory now can form a memory," said study team member Roberto Malinow, also of Cold Spring Harbor Lab. Since mouse brains have many of the same regions as human brains, the researchers expect the same memory mechanisms would apply to us as well. While both highs and lows in life can spark the memory-boosting chemical, Malinow notes that too much of the stress hormone can backfire, causing a lapse in memory. "If you have too much norepinephrine it works the opposite way," Malinow told LiveScience. "So there might be an optimal amount of norepinephrine so that if you're too emotional, you might not remember things as well." He stressed the finding is just one piece of a large puzzle linking emotions and memory.