Dannible

A flask of 151 can offset the need for a sleeping bag and pad, and is even lighter on the way out.

THE CURE IS TO NOT DRINK IN THE FIRST PLACE. Just kidding. Water and coffee. Suck it up.

I don't think that climbing harder grades is all about ego. The great thing about climbing, I think, is that no matter how good you think you are there will always be something that you know you can't do, and when you pull of something that you weren't sure that you could do its a pretty neat feeling. My most vivid climbing memories are of times when I finally reached the top of a "hard" pitch or summits and just get to relax and enjoy the view. I can't get that feeling these days unless I really push myself. Last summer I got a similar feeling reaching the summit of Slesse or the end of the Gunsight Traverse as I got the first time I got to the summit of Liberty Bell by the Beckey Route. I'm not saying that easier routes aren't fun anymore, but they are a different kind of experience. It's like what I told my friend about ice climbing: its a much different kind of fun than climbing good rock on a warm summer day.

P.O.E.

In Mount Vernon (where I grew up) they debated water floridation for about 5 years before deciding to go ahead with it. It seemed like half of the letters to the editor in the paper during that period sounded like something you would hear on Dr. Strangelove. Now it has been a year or so since they decided to go ahead with it, but I recently read that they don't actually have any way to fund it. 5 years of fighting over something that they didn't have a plan to pay for.

I have a link cam (because it was half price) and like it a lot. It's great for when you only want a few cams, or when you want to cover the range twice without having to bring two sets. It works in places where others don't but sometimes doesn't look as good in places where others are fine. I used to carry mostly hexes and nuts, but now that I have more cams I place them about 70% of the time because they are fast to place and clean, and in most cases you can tell that a placement is good just like with a nut. I've taken several falls on questionable cams and none have popped or broken (as a result of the fall anyway). The best thing about link cams is that they are great for when you are scared and just want to get something in fast (though I guess this could result in a bad placement that will cause it to break?), or when you have already used most of the rack and only have a few pieces left with which to make an anchor. None of the common complaints have been an issue for me.

I think St. Peter's is just a steepish snow deal, and isn't that remote.

Have you done it in the winter? I did it in the summer, and heard something about it being good in the winter, but have trouble picturing ice forming on it.

For most of us it's always a long drive for ice. How long is the approach this time of year?

I am training. I left the weight off this time though.

My winter workout involves taping 50 pound weight to my whiskey bottle. Sometimes I get lazy and skip the weight.

Because protestors might block traffic and make me sit in my car for an extra few minutes, causing me and everyone around me to use more gas than we would have which would contribute to global warming and make all of the glaciers melt, turning our volcano slogs into scree slogs, which is way worse. Worse still, I might be late for something big, like my afternoon expresso. Screw the Iranian people, when it comes to something like war you've gotta think about your own needs. Did they say this Thanksgiving, or next, like 2008? I think that it would be a little late to do it in 2008, as they would only be a couple of months away from having to leave office, and that would be quite a mess to leave the next president with. On the other hand most things that the Bush administration does aren't that well planned out so who knows.

I'd be down to go to Mars. If the US cut spending in one big area we'd have plenty of money to do that and a few other things.

Clearly these people are terrorists.

Good stuff. Your description of the cold night sounded familiar. I was out for a few nights earlier this week and since the down in my bag got wet and at some point froze I was colder than I have ever been.

Faceshot pics? I do have such pictures. One of the news video guy who was shot near his eye, and another of a guy who had his nose broken by one. Not that it matters, but an Olympia city councilman was involved with the port protests last year, and was arrested at the Tacoma protests earlier this year. He was out of town this time around. He's no George Washington but he is an elected official.

Not a very good one either. Despite your own wavering declarations, you ventured down to this event with an agenda. I don't subscribe to the idea that opinion-reporting is inherently wrong, but I do believe in disclosure. Don't try to pretend you're just a neutral observer who, once on site, had some kind of epiphany. I wasn't reporting anything. I was just telling you guys what I saw. Would you have rather had this thead be only speculation from people who who were not there? In fact I told my journalism teacher about all of it and she told me to write an article about it, but I said that I didn't know how because I would be too biased.

Now there are a few hundred kids who walked out of school and are outside the capitol. There is another anti war thing tomorrow. Meanwhile the comments people are posting on related news reports on the Olympian website are calling for blood of those who don't support the war. It's scary how much everyone hates each other in this country.

Anarchists turned over part of a flatbed truck, dumpsters, and fences to make a roadblock. The police didn't have enough people to do anything about it yet, but other protestors cleared the road. The guy's sign is in refers to an Evergreen student who was run over by an Israeli Bulldozer a while back. After police pushed the crowd back from the line of girls who they were arresting. They loaded the girls into a city bus that said "Special Thank You" on it's electric sign. The roadblock on tuesday night, before the police started arresting people. OPD officer guards convoy. Some of the girls who were arrested on Tuesday. Off White said earlier that bandannas are for hiding people's ID, but most people were in fact using them to protect against pepper spray. As I found out, they really just hold the spray right up close to your face. Police and protestors watch a girl get pulled away from the line. Random wildness. Girl cries while getting treated for pepper spray. If this picture didn't have so much digital noise and you could see whats going on I'd make good money off of it. Soldier on a Stryker returns a peace sign to protestors. A few days earlier the pro war people said that they would smash my camera if I took pictures of them because the media always tries to make them look stupid. Stupidity is a choice. Girl getting dragged to the dungeon.

On Saturday night when the grumpy old pro war guys who were bastards to anyone who wasn't waving a flag left, a few of the anti-war people went over to talk to the more civil pro war people. Those pro war people agreed that the police had been overly forceful (others thought that the police should have used much more force), and the two groups agreed that someday they might be taking up arms against the government side by side. It was one of the only times I saw the two groups agree on something.

I'm not sure how this thing has been depicted by the TV news, but because I am a photojournalism student I was there taking pictures and saw a lot of it go down. Personally I am against the war, but I thought that the idea of protesting stuff coming back was a little counter productive. At some point I think this thing became more about police brutality than the war. Sure people are going to get maced and arrested for blocking the streets, but damn, things got crazy. On Saturday one image that sticks out in my mind was of a girl getting dragged off the street, thrown to the ground, and given a blast of pepper spray to the face. A lot of other people were sprayed and arrested that day, but things just got crazier. On Tuesday night I got there around 10pm to find a line of girls sitting in the street with about 100 people behind them, and 100 more lining the sidewalks around them yelling. Pro war people were on one side trying to start fights with everyone, including me, and the whole thing was lit by stadium lights. The police marched up in a line and arrested the girls one by one, and at some point pushed the crowd behind them back into an intersection. Nothing happened for a long time, but I knew that something crazy was going to go down. The convoy that the protesters was trying to block left through another exit but people realized what was going on and ran down the block and managed to stop it for a minute. The cops caught up to the crowd and broke things up with pepper spray (smells like oranges, tastes much worse) and the crowd started to run away through an empty lot and field. As people were running away the police shot pepper balls (mace filled paint balls) and rubber bullets, and threw stun grenades. Farther down the road someone put something in the road to block it and one of the officers plowed it with his car to move it, but someone else just pushed it back out. The car that had moved it had gone ahead, but now just did a U-turn and started driving back through the grass paralleling the road at about 30mph coming directly towards me and swerving all over the place. I ducked behind a tree and he got back into the road just in time. I stopped running and took cover behind a big concrete block to take some pictures, and though no one was within 20 or 30 feet of me, they threw a flash bang that landed right next to me. I had a headache all through yesterday from that. The crowd then went and blocked another intersection with dumpsters (worth noting that an Iraq war vet helped with that), and dispersed once the police pulled up. The convoy rolled straight through the roadblock. Cops and protesters returned to the port, but the rest of the night was pretty quiet. The local paper's coverage of all of it was pretty nice to the police considering one reporter was maced, another was shot in the face with a pepper ball, and another was swung at with a billy club. People did throw a few rocks at a police car and some buildings, but that was one or two people out of 200, and when it did happen people around them always started yelling at them. People in the community are making it out to be a pretty violent protest, but my only negative experiences came from the pro war people, who threatened to smash my camera, and tried to get me to fight when I hadn't even said anything to them. I'll post some pictures.

Spoken like a guy who only drinks Mikes Hard Lemonade. sickie

did you try VS, VSOP, or XO? VS. Even their cheapest is expensive for me.

how could anything French be manly. ;-) I see your point, but clearly you don't listen to Snoop Dog.