6.01.2008

Rope Swing....

it's all fun and games...

until Garrett has to get 11 staples in his head.....

5.13.2008

Yosemite CatCH uP

YOSEMITE JOURNAL
MAY 4 2008


Arrived in the valley...the weather was cold and rainy but we're psyched to here. The drive wasn't to bad. Little scary at parts.
Camp 4 was welcoming. The site was covered with trees and there was room in the bear boxes for food. Went to bed early, and I was psyched on it.

MAY 5 2008
Got up and ate oatmeal. Garret and Molly arrived at a decent hour. Glad they're here. Started climbing on COMMITTED 5.9. It was 2 pitches of easy 5.7 and one move of 5.9 went fairly easy and the only downfall was a slow party ahead of our group of 6.
JW, Grace, Hailey, and tony got here after 17 hours of being on the road. >Glad to see them and so happy to hear they are safe.
Went to Jam Crack next where Sarah, Tony, and Beth all got some hood leads. I did a 5.8 & a 5.7 ok lead and TRed a 5.10d pretty sweet stuff. Burritos for supper,tea for dessert and now off to bed.

MAY 6 2008
Climbed Royal Arches today. Its 16 pitches and really good. Sarah learned, cried, laughed,and loved the whole thing. It pushed her to her mental limit and brought her back. It was great got stuck behind a slow moving party of kanooks but all was well. The route took us 10 hours. 7 pitches left to climb.

MAY 7 2008
Rope swing.
Check photos and video for documentation. Crazy fun, crazy bloody and crazy exciting. Garrett so far is doing good. Maybe a slight confusion, probably a handful of stitches, but so far he says he's fine.
Post Script:
Garrett took 12 staples to his scalp. Cody popped a tendon and now we're all just going to relax. Our new friend Steve has been very entertaining, teaching us games and showing us all sorts of fun things. JW has a stone monkey who has fallen in love with him. Kinda funny. Steaming some chicken and veggies for dinner. Should be good.

MAY 8 2008
Led a 5.10a and I sewed that thing up. Kinda scary but got the onsight. Felt good waited a few hours to get on 5.8 that was long and awesome called Bishops Terace, hands to fists to fingers to lie back. It had it all. Fin stuff.
Cody but on a uniform and got us half off pizza last night pretty good.

Met some kiwi's that are pretty cool. Newman is giving one of em a ride to Moab. Pretty sweet. I think that grace is digging one of them named johnny. Off to bed more to come.

MAY 9 2008
Hiked up to vernal and Nevada falls today. Went with Beth and Cody. Got up and came back down pretty quickly. We walked back instead of taking a bus to get a better view of royal arches. Good thing we did, we ran across a bear, and then we ran across a heavyset park ranger looking for a creature who took a picnic basket. All pretty comical for us.
Dinner rolled around and me being the clumsy fool that I am, spilled an entire pot of spaghetti.

MAY 10 2008
Shut down two years in a row. I never thought that I would be projecting a 5.8 for three years. Stupid nut cracker: climbed the first two pitches in under 30min and then waited for an hour fro pitch number 3, climbed up and waited while the party ahead of us had only climbed .5 of the pitch above us. I lowered off a sketchy half anchor and then we raped off. In the mean time a party of 2 came up behind us, then a party of 5. Can’t believe it. Lucky for me the party behind of us brought back my sling and a carabineer.

MAY 11 2008
Drove home, listened to a CS Lewis book on CD. Sarah and Beth bought some tasty licorice…

11.17.2007

trapped in a basement....

I have a new light bulb in my lamp. It's supposed to improve my attitude, especially during winter, and I could use that. I could use more light, more happy, a wider spectrum.

Mostly I use the lamp to read. This week I read "The Lone Surfer of Montana Kansas" by Davy Rothbart and find it extremely sad and incredibly heartbreaking. It fills me with longing -- insofar as one can be filled with emptiness -- which pretty much negates any benefit of the new light bulb and puts me right back where I started. It's like putting on a raincoat to stay dry and then jumping into a swimming pool.

11.04.2007

Mission Statement

We believe in sinker jams high off the deck, a bomber nut, the crescent moon, your partners whoop, sand-washing the fry pan, road trips, one-swing sticks, remembering to breathe, alpine stars (more for the alpenglow than the early hour) tea in the desert, the plungestep, pb&j on tortillas, lenticular cloudcaps, rest days, the focus of a runout, a cold beverage at the end of it all. if you believe in these things too, join us.
.....Alpinist 0

10.28.2007

Go make a life...

…not a living.


A beautiful friend of mine has been showing recently through photography and through example that we live the physical dream…such a sweet reminder…as dreams go they can turn you any which way, often frighten you…of course that’s when we forget that it is we who control the dream. They are meant to be whatever we wish for ourselves whether it be jumping out of a plane, spending time with grandparents or climbing some obscure mountain. This world in which we live is here to teach and astonish. It makes me laugh how quick I am to see what is around each and every corner, behind every idea; we want the answer to every question we ask and every decision that we make.

Lately I am sleeping in later and dreaming more. It is quite a treat. I truly enjoy the time between sleeping and waking. It gives me time to control my dreams; I am in complete control for those brief moments. I am able to envision things exactly in whatever color that I want. When you dream is it in color? I think that sometimes I dream in black and white. I wake feeling more dull some mornings and vibrant others, at first I thought it was the ratio of sleep to physical exertion, but now my new school of thought is that it is completely dependent on whether or not I dream in color. Laying here in the mornings and late night I think of friends and being in rich deep dark green meadows eating picnics and viewing people that you dream of trading places with. I look up these granite faces and wonder what each individual person is thinking right now: are they scared? Are they wondering when this pitch will end? are the dreaming of their next adventure? In the mornings I sit and wonder when my adventure is coming.

Hopefully its sooner than later…

10.25.2007

Contents

POCKETS
Phone
Wallet
Loose Change
Burts Bees Wax

Wallet
Home Depot credit card
Insurance Card
American Express credit card
Morgan Bruderer’s 11th grade student ID
Visa Debit Card
Utah Drivers License
Visa Credit Card
Blockbuster Membership Card
Mike Aitken Business Card
2 dollar bill
Temple Recommend
$90 cash

Phone
322 numbers
14 pictures

POCKETS
.67¢

10.23.2007

fall is falling...


I love being alone in the morning in the fall. All I can hear is the dragging of my feet over the leaves, and the echo’s of snapping twigs, rocks falling over and onto one another, and the backward kiss sound that your lips make after you inhale what beverage your lips desire when you find yourself parched.

I like seeing the light come through the hills and make them come alive with their beautiful decay. From my house I can see the sun creeping up over the mountains and painting the opposite side of the valley. Living on this side of the valley allows me to see this painting happen in slow motion. Colors slide across the canvas and fill the palette like ice cream dripping off of a waffle cone into the lap of whatever 4 year old is holding it.

Enjoy the colors while they are around peoples.

I’ll leave you to ponder some random stuff that I have noticed:
-Walking through IKEA is the closest you’ll ever get to walking through a website. (And lets be honest who doesn’t the love the interweb in real life.)
- Natalie Portman has a boyfriend and isn’t really my type anyway.
-This could be the last season of Smallville according to local gossip.
-Local Gossip sucks ass.
-Millie Vannile still kicks ass.
-Books are always better than the movie that it is supposedly “based on the novel by [insert authors name here]”.
-As I get older, the more I enjoy going to bed early and rising with the birds.
-As I get older, the more I truly love old classic movies. The first 3:10 to Yuma was way better than the first.