JosephH

I suspect HSA would be a bad idea for folks in poverty. For every low income person who 'gets' HSA's and manages them 'right' there'd likely be many more who wouldn't and who would still end up in ERs.

The Alamo, that happened in February. I'm personally not into the whole re-enactment thing, but it's clearly a popular annual event folks have decided to play out again and again.

The damned Columbia is a total blight on climbing. The Corps and BPA have been advised of the debilitating emotional stress it causes us every year and we have forthwith demanded they re-route the river far, far away.

Go Hawks.

Yeah, I figured that's all you had.

Ice gear and a set of Warthogs and there's unlimited vertical terrain just off the road...

There was a decent size rockfall onto the trail just short of the brass plague that took out the bridge there and bent one of the main beams. The trail is currently closed pending their structural engineer taking a look at it and re-planking. At the moment it doesn't appear additional [volunteer] resources will be necessary, but it wouldn't hurt to offer. I for sure can't get away due to a medical crisis in the immediate family, but it does represent an opportunity for the BRCA to make the offer.

Apply before Monday, January 28, 2013...

Dave, if you're likely to use yours at all then I could send mine, as with the family medical crisis I'm involved with I'm not going to be using mine for awhile.

Excellent tutorial Joseph! Thanks for the link. In your system, is it cumbersome to always carry the rope on your back vs. leaving the coil at the anchor? Also, why the A5 rope bag in your pack? Why not just flake the rope out directly in your pack? No - quite the contrary - I found having the rope hang down just sucked so bad I couldn't deal with it. Also, on winding routes like the SE Corner at Beacon or out in the open in blazing Gorge winds like on 'Free For All', having the rope hanging down is basically ridiculous unless you're interested in a workout of heavy squats while attempting to climb or being stranded by hung up ropes and tangles. As for the A5 rope bag thing, I've always used them and careful stacking the rope before each pitch with short, clean loops is way essential to the whole deal to avoid knotting as the rope feeds out of the pack. And given I've always only used the A5's for my ropes, soloing or not, it's just what evolved, but there is a reason for it. To stack the rope into the A5's I put an extended trad draw around my neck clipping the biners together, I attach the A5 to what then becomes the lower biner as they realign, and then I clip the rope through the higher biner and run it into the bag. What this setup allows me is to rapidly stack the rope into the A5 bag and watch the stacking as I do it if I so feel the need - i.e. I carefully lay the rope in the bag in small loops, avoiding coiling, as I stack back-and-forth around the bag interior and monitor that it's stacking up clean and level as it fills the bag up. I like using the A5's because they hang clean and open with that stacking method where as, if I use just used the pack, it's too bulky and awkward to stack from around my neck. In that case I have to extend the pack down from my anchor and stack into it that way - it takes twice as long as just doing it around my neck and I can't easily monitor and adjust how the stacking is going. So overall using the A5 plays into the fact I like to move fast when roped soloing and with a minimum of dicking around with it all and using the A5 seperate from the pack really contributes to that.

The smart money doesn't get religious or emotionally attached to any OS, language, or device - they all suck equally and all stand as an obstacle between what you can envision and what you can realize. However, I will grant you Oracle does suck on multiple fronts more heavily than most - none of them having to do with java, though.

What I do...

Thanks for posting up more about him and the memorial...condolences.

Again, completely dense. I posted that article for the specifics of the economic impact of the SARS outbreak. That you then detour to a irrelevant comparative rant is no surprise. We won't even get into your entirely odd inability to grasp the concept of a pandemic.

That was sure the standard dress and tooling for my one go at ice on Glenwood falls in CO. I ended up mostly half drytooling off the ice to the right way before it became fashionable and was never so happy to get off something in my life. I think the biggest advances have been in the clothing - that stuff sucked balls back then and the tools weren't any better.

Great rundown on the global economic impact of the SARS outbreak.

A very good point from our resident fount of all manner of deviant history.

Of course it's bullshit what you state. Hmmm, ok, now I'm beginning to think stubbornly dense as opposed to obtusely clueless. And believe me, I wish it were all bullshit, unfortunately for all of us it is fact. Sigh. Modern medicine is not good at controlling viral infections, even slow-moving, hard to transmit infections like HIV let alone a flat out dashing affair like the flu. Well, sure, but unfortunately it will always be a case of 'too late' and closing the barn door after the horse has already bugged out. By the time anyone had a clue and the situation reached a threshold where the CDC and airlines managed to agree to a cessation of business it would be too late and a done deal. That's because flu has an 'incubation period' prior to showing symptoms of up to four days. [video:youtube]rzhKyD19ZEY Check out the SARS spread map below (SARS has up to a ten day incubation period). It only took a very short chain of individuals to do all this. A rural doctor who had unknowingly treated some SARS patients back home came to the big city and infected twelve other guests on the ninth floor of his hotel. One was a tourist from Toronto, one a flight attendant (always a bummer) and - boom - you're off to the races. So, yeah, we can try, but by the time the political will existed to shut down LAX and JFK it would be far too late. Bottom line is flu's incubation period makes it virtually impossible to close the door on before someone gets in and screws the pooch, even when we know what doors to close first. And it only takes one human getting through to do in the continent - do you really think the odds favor successful exclusion by way of travel restrictions? If so, I suggest you not gamble. You somehow keep managing to misinterpret events, failing the basic science, and just not getting it. As Crux states, completely healthy twenty-something adults died saddling horses and making meals in Montana. Eye witnesses to the 19818 flu spoke to both the prior health of the victims and to the fact homesteads showed no evidence of having endured prolonged illness. It killed 25 million healthy young adults and did it virtual overnight and in their tracks. How could that possibly be? It happened because that flu strain provoked a violent immune system response. What does that mean? That means the healthier your immune system, the more violent the response. It mainly killed the healthy between the ages of 16 and 65. Believe me, I'm not just making this shit up. Click on Crux's cytokine link just above this post for fuck's sake. Cholera is a bacteria, and in that case carried to Haiti by untested U.N. Nepalese emergency aid workers whose encampment drained into the Artibonite River. My point exactly; the spread of Cholera is easy to prevent, but we completely failed to do so even in this highly predictable instance where detection, treatment, and prevention is straightforward if almost mundane. Viruses like the flu on the other hand are incredibly difficult if not impossible to stop. You don't stop it, you try to be prepared for its arrival and in the case of a flu pandemic, that's very, very hard to do. I'm not a PhD or scientist of any stripe, just a software engineering horticulturist with a background in microbiology and genetics. Oh, and I also have a degree in post secondary education in which, by any measure of this conversation with you, I have clearly failed.

A huge Myrtle is what we have in the back. Unusually flexible and weak-wooded relative to all the other trees I've worked in. Reminds me of a monstrous version of Mulberry and other pallet woods in terms of wood quality. Have no idea of what it looks like finished, though.

Sorry to hear it, did anyone here know the deceased?

Just to follow up. In 1918, it was exactly the folks with the most robust immune systems who died. Fully half, or twenty-five million, of the deaths were healthy adults age 20-40 who died of cytokine storms precisely because they were so healthy.

Haven't used it in woodworking, but have a massive one in the backyard I have to keep cutting back hard every couple of years. It's a pretty lousy wood from the perspective of working in one for tree work. They do grow back like a weed after a severe cut, though.

There is nothing about my statement that in any way contradicts anything I've posted up-thread. Are you really this obtusely clueless?

You're really not following along are you? There is absolutely nothing about our knowledge of viruses, better hygiene and better nutrition today that would mean diddlysquat in the face of a novel flu pandemic. Nothing. In fact, about the only real difference is today's transportation system just insures the much more rapid spread of any such a virus. Otherwise there's nothing about our current health or readiness which would halt such a pandemic or lessen its toll.

Round trip flights look to be $2-3k depending on when you go...