gregm

and what's it say about the sport of speed climbing?

i beleive there was a living winner a while back of a golfer who, on a bet, stuck his testicles in an automatic golf ball washing device.

Mel's Hole - a supposed bottomless hole located near Manastash Ridge in Ellensburg Washington ********* Expedition seeks paranormal pit By John Zebrowski Seattle Times staff reporter ELLENSBURG — A topographic map spread on the hood of a car showed where the search party would start. There is a hole out there, they believe, a hole that not only appears to be bottomless but has, on at least one occasion, brought an animal back to life. The hole, the story goes, exists outside of town on land once owned by a man who calls himself Mel Waters. For years, he said, it was used as the neighborhood dump for trash, old appliances, dead cattle. When the hole never filled up, Waters measured its depth by lowering weighted fishing line into it. After 80,000 feet, he gave up. Amazed by this odd place (which dogs and birds avoided), Waters called radio host Art Bell, whose late-night show on conspiracies and the paranormal attracts a huge national audience. The hole is now lost. Waters — himself a mystery — said he sold the property and won't say where it is. Few people know who he really is. So far, Waters exists only on radio waves, with a story many think is bunk. But tales of a deep hole in Ellensburg have circulated for years. Hoax or not, Waters' appearances before Bell's 10 million listeners have elevated an old local legend into a national paranormal mystery. Ever since Waters first called Bell's show in 1997, listeners have followed the story closely, posting each new clue on their chat page, melshole.com. They believe the hole is about 10 miles west of town on a place called Manastash Ridge. Before the search party headed out the other day from its staging area at the Copper Kettle on Eighth Street, member Brian Christ of Ellensburg, who would wait at the base camp, warned the others they were in danger. "People know you're out here, right?" he asked. Christ was clearly nervous. He'd heard what Waters said happened after he went public — that soldiers in yellow gear cordoned off his property and threatened to "find" a drug lab on it if he didn't cooperate. He also knew other details Waters told Bell: how one neighbor claimed to have thrown a dead dog in the hole, only to see it later frolicking in the woods; how another saw a black beam emanating from the hole; how transistor radios brought to the hole play programs from the past.

your camera may allow you to use the usb cable connection between camera and computer to open the card in the camera as a drive. it may require you to be using winXP. i wouldn't buy a card reader too quick. i'd be surprised if that software wasn't on a website somewhere (lexar's or your camera manufacturer's). search around, one typically needs to download the latest software version anyway to get stuff to actually work (which may be why you're having trouble getting the software off the card and onto your computer).

^^^ the next anti drug campaign. ^^^

proper way to say cascadeclimbers: click me with speakers on i hadn't known this (but do now) p.s. i was sort of hoping it would say "tom-AH-to", but it just says tomato.

three words: claymore claymore claymore

hey layton how much money have you made all together from your t-shirt business? no really, i'm dying of curiosity.

hey baby

i've skied it but have not made sweet love there. i particularly enjoyed the lower grass slopes that were only covered with a couple inches of snow. just kinda like grass skiing really.

ahh. nevermind.

anybody want to do some seattle area back country skiing tomorrow - sunday? i heard it was good today anyway. thinking maybe around baker or something. please pm me. thanks. crystal bc might be an option too.

from kirotv.com: Man Dies In Kayak Accident On Elwha River POSTED: 5:57 AM PST November 10, 2003 PORT ANGELES, Wash. -- Authorities say a man died after his kayak capsized on the Elwha River. Olympic National Park spokesperson Barb Maynes says the man was with some friends yesterday when his kayak turned turtle. The accident occurred in a turbulent area known as Goblin Gates, where the river shoots down a rock passage into Rica Canyon on the river southwest of Port Angeles. A member of the group hiked out to get help, and park rangers reached the area late Sunday. Maynes says a helicopter may be needed to recover the man's body.

cross posted from teletips: Regretfully, I am sorry to post that Ben Manfredi (Benman) died yesterday while WW kayaking yesterday. I am a little sketchy on the details, but apparently he was on the Grand Canyon section of Elwha. Ben was arguably the best/ballsiest tele skier in WA with numerous first descents. It is easy to say he went out doing what he loved, but he will be truly missed. My deepest sympathies go out to his brother Troy Manfredi and his folks, the Hummels (Josh, Jason and Kurt), and to all the other people who have been blessed with the opportunity of knowing Ben. Please take the opportunity to take a look at the website he actively managed: http://cascadeclassics.org/ http://www.telemarktalk.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=12123 this is really really sad. i'm at a loss for words. my condolences to all. he will be greatly missed.

my $.02 having had a brief stint as a DAT (dumb ass tanker): in korea we had one of those mine rakes for every 8 tanks. they are not general protective equipment for tanks, they are used to clear a way through a minefield. the first tank uses it to clear a path and the rest of the tanks follow in it's tracks. as i think ray said somewhere they severely restrict mobility and only work in limited situations. they are so heavy the whole tanks leans forward with one on - not for general driving around. they work nicely in loose sand like gulf deserts but not on packed earth or rocks. the engineers have better shit for clearing paths through minefields like big rollers and armored plows mounted on a tank chasis without the weight of a turret so it can still move. it sounds like the mine that killed those guys was a relatively isolated roadside hidden jobbie so the plow wouldn't have been used so i think it's more a question of tactics than how well supplied they were. as far as wearing body armor inside a tank definately not. it would be too restrictive and the casual reader probably greatly underestimates how cramped it is inside a tank. much of your survivabilty hinges on getting out of the tank within a couple seconds if it catches fire. we specifically wore nomex suits with nothing hanging off to catch on all the wires and hydrolic tubing for that reason. you might want one to wear outside the tank of the situation/tactics warrented it, but it would be another heavy pain in the ass and presumably if you were expecting fire you'd be in the tank. i'm not trying to be all warm and fuzzy about the army here. the m1 appeared to me to be designed to keep it's occupants alive - both so they can continue fighting and go home to their mommies and daddies. they are also incredibly dangerous pieces of equipment both to their occupants and those around them (about a hundred times worse than lawn darts) with the breach recoil, turret motion, ammo doors etc being fairly common causes of people getting killed and maimed.

i completely agree with you, and sadly, jackson and sharpton are two of the most popular political figures among black americans. kinda like marian barry... what a sad leadership vaccum. blacks really deserve better.

i thought it was a little derivative of south park with kenny being too poor for normal child activities and always getting gnawed on by rats when gets killed you bastards.

i think iain should post verbose mock treatises using archaic britishisms while DFA focuses childishly inane but amusing one liners. what do you guy(s) think?

i'm guessing this is the same fire that was burning a couple weeks ago now that i saw from the boston glacier. anyway it was a big mushroom and looked like an a-bomb had gone off. another thing that is really cool in the big picture linked above are the white ripples in the straight of juan de fuca. are those cloud formations or waves? yes dru has much snow up there. i am inspired to do some kite skiing traverses up there. some wind powered jibbage for sure...

i see some very perky mongol hoards in the not too distant future

... much ado about the deafening roar of cricket noises in the give jon money forum ...

no shit. i saw george and the destroyers at the gorge a few years back and i have never seen so much white trash in one place before or since

never underestimate the power of ignorance and stupidity: from http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/international/worldspecial/07LEGE.html G.I.'s Have X-Ray Vision. Of Course. By JOHN TIERNEY AGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 6 — As an American soldier peered out of a passing tank, a young engineering student and a retired accountant contemplated one of the more common questions on the streets of Baghdad: Did the soldier's wraparound sunglasses give him X-ray vision? "With those glasses, he can definitely see through women's clothes," said the engineering student, Samer Hamid. "It makes me angry. We are afraid to take our families out on the street." The retired accountant, Hekmet Tinber Hassan, smiled and said it was a baseless rumor, just like the widespread story that Saddam Hussein had been secretly working for America and was now at a C.I.A. safe house. "I do not believe Saddam is in America," Mr. Hassan said. "I heard he went to Tel Aviv." Just as truth is the first casualty of war, urban legends seem to be the first creation of a military occupation, especially when the cultural gap is as wide as it is here. After life under Mr. Hussein, people here are accustomed to conspiracy theories and ready to believe the worst about anyone in power. Of course, Americans have been circulating their own kinds of legends, starting with the fantasies a few months ago that the occupying troops would be peacefully welcomed by a nation of grateful flower-waving citizens. But there have been more guns than flowers. In the urban legends flourishing here, the soldiers triumphed thanks to Mr. Hussein's treachery and to American technology. The legend about the X-ray sunglasses may have evolved from reports about the soldiers' night-vision goggles, or maybe just from the imposing Terminator image of the soldiers. Compared with the residents, who cope with 120-degree heat by staying in the shade and dressing in light clothes and sandals, the soldiers have the look of robotic aliens as they patrol in the midday sun wearing combat boots, helmets and armored vests. Some Iraqis say the soldiers take special pills that keep them cool, but the most common theory is that they have portable air-conditioners — usually said to be inside the vests, but sometimes placed in the helmet or even the underwear. "There is fluid circulating throughout the underwear," said Mr. Hamid, the engineering student. "I am not sure of the exact mechanism, but we all know the Americans have very sophisticated technology." Aadel Delli, the owner of a food market in downtown Baghdad, said he did not believe the air-conditioned-uniform stories, which he attributed to popular doubts about Americans' capacity for discomfort. "Most Iraqis thought the American soldiers would be gone by now because they could never stand the summer in Iraq," he said. Sweltering soldiers have tried dispelling the myths about their gear by letting Iraqis touch their vests and try on their sunglasses, but some legends will not die. "I let a kid put on my sunglasses, and he was still convinced they had X-ray vision," said Sgt. Stephen Roach, a soldier from Lufkin, Tex. "He kept saying to me, `Turn it on, turn it on.' " When they are not peering through women's clothes, the male soldiers are said to be groping underneath the clothes during searches at checkpoints, supposedly provoking some of the attacks on soldiers. (Never mind the absence of evidence for this theory.) Other versions of the ugly-American stories have the soldiers drinking beer (or sometimes Kool-Aid laced with alcohol) inside their tanks near mosques. They have been accused in the Arab press of using pages from the Koran for toilet paper and of giving children candy packets containing pornography. The rumors became so numerous that Al Sabah, a new daily paper run by Iraqis with financial backing from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American-run administrative organization, printed a supplement debunking them. "It will take awhile for people to reject the conspiracy theories," said its editor, Ismael Zayer. "Under Saddam, people had to depend on rumor because they could not trust the media." Some of the stories seem intended to encourage the fighters who have been attacking Americans. G.I.'s are said to be so demoralized that 30 percent of them have already abandoned their posts and paid $600 apiece to escape by an underground railroad to Turkey or Syria. Others have supposedly converted to Islam and fled to marry women in Saudi Arabia. There are also rumors that Americans are hiding their casualties by dumping large numbers of soldiers' bodies each night into the Tigris River. Frustration seems to feed many of the rumors. Why would the builders of smart bombs and X-ray sunglasses take longer to restore power than Mr. Hussein did after the 1991 Persian Gulf war? The Americans must be withholding electricity as revenge for the attacks on soldiers. People swear there have been Army vehicles driving around with signs announcing that power will be restored when the attacks stop. For all the frustration, there remains some admiration for the occupiers, as seen in a popular fashion accessory on teenagers like Zahra Thaer, 13. She was walking down a sidewalk in Baghdad wearing a new pair of wraparound sunglasses. "These are the latest style," she said, explaining that she had been lucky to get one of the last pairs left in the store. Did she believe the soldiers' glasses gave them X-ray vision? "I am not so sure about their sunglasses," she said. "But I know about the helmet. Inside each helmet is a map showing the soldier the location of every house in Iraq. My friends at school told me about it."

if the cops don't play dan's tune he's prepared to take the law into his own hands.