Sherri

Cheater. (sounds purdy though )

I know.

I'd have rather had the drugs and sex. Bruce didn't do much for me.

I missed out on the drugs and the sex, but we did have Bruce Springsteen. Class of 1985's theme song: "Born in the USA"

At our high school, dance lessons were part of our gym curriculum . I wish we'd had a shooting range. "Dance" as an activity may sound they were being soft on us, but I can assure you that polka-ing with an equally unwilling pre-pubescent partner was way more painful than being pummelled by a dodgeball, or a bullet. I still have scars.

Any camp counselor worthy of her tie-dyed t-shirt knows parachute games are IT on today's politically-correct playground.

I loved getting ready for back-to-school! I remember shopping for pairs of painters' pants and chukka boots at the department store and watching the clerk carefully tuck them into the big box at the layaway counter. (We usually didn't have enough $$ to pick them up but the shopping was fun .) And there was something magical about new school supplies. They seemed to hold such promise. Pencils with perfect points and tall erasers, bright purple Trapper Keeper binder(yeah!) that would eventually become a canvas for between-class doodling, and stacks of plain paper grocery bags ready to be transformed by a few folds and pieces Scotch tape into sturdy book covers. I'm sure the shopping list is quite different these days with little Ashley and Ayden packing laptops, ipods, cell phones, and Blackberries to preschool. I think the fanciest thing we had was a digital watch about the size of a dinner plate. And mood rings, of course. Old-school rules!

O'Douls

You've captured it all, dude: the photographer's vision, the dreamer's fire, and the climber's spirit. Beautiful stuff, Erik.

I love happy endings.

I'm not clicking on that video. Somehow I have a feeling it's going to involve Rick Astley....

They all trained on sport….thats how to get strong for crack…..you said they STARTED as hard core sport climbers. Tommy was taught to climb by his father who by all trades was and is a trad climber. Tommy was taught to climb gear……then turned to sport years later. i love it...you are making my point for me! dumbarse...sheesh, this is what i was saying to sherri at the very beginning... I better understand what your point was now, RuMR. I hadn't thought of how working on the finesse and athleticism on the sport routes might have laid a good foundation for the crack and face skills necessary for doing the trad routes well. At the time I transitioned to trad, there was such a gap between what I could do in that vs. how quickly I'd progressed in sport(relatively speaking, of course) that I felt like I was learning to climb all over.

That sums it up for me, too.

Guess it's not the first time I've gotten things back asswards. I found the gear relevant in the sense that, when it came to placing it, I had to learn to find stances in the cracks in order to do so without pumping out. Not that clipping bolts doesn't require finding effective stances, but, from a physical sense, the process seemed to be of more of a "balancy" one than a strenuous or pumpy one. Especially when pushing a grade, it was easier to grope for a hanger than to solidy jam a crack while selecting and properly placing the appropriate nut, cam, or hex--so I find the gear itself to be intrinsic to the style because of the differing nature of how it must be placed.

Summer's almost over??! Nooooooooooo!

I leaned more toward sport when I started climbing and found little to no carry-over from that skillset when I attempted trad routes. (ie-my sport grades would jump but trad grades did not budge and crack skills were pathetic.) This season, I put the sporto stuff on the back burner and put in consistent effort on the trad, which has resulted in inching my way up the grade ladder and the exciting discovery that I really enjoy the subleties crack climbing(before, it felt like one big frustrating grovelfest ). Interestingly, on the rare occasion that I do get on a sport route now, I've found that I'm climbing better and harder on them than I did when they were my sole focus. It was intriguing how the trad efforts bumped up the sport, but, for me at least, there was no gain when it was the other way around. I love crack.

His camera shoots backwards?

Nice going, Feck! I love the foggy ambience of the TR pics. Adds drama. I want to see what is in that mailbox.

I knew there was something strange about that map...just couldn't put my finger on it. Then again, I never was very good at geography.

I accidentally used the men's room at one of the RV parks there. I thought the caricature of the Bavarian dude drawn above the door was a theme decoration, not an indicator of gender designation for the loo. My bad. I have to add, in my defense, that the gentleman who seemed surprised to see me standing at the sink when he came out of the stall was NOT wearing lederhosen, either. This handy and informative mapping feature may have spared us both an awkward washroom moment. Nice work, Porter!

But isn't Leavenworth in Bavaria? Say WA?

Ice bars don't have bolts.

The evolutionary significance of ice bars in the course of human history and development? Just a guess.

Obviously, the surgeon general wasn't worried about warning us of THAT side effect.

Ice stools, too? Brrrrr.