I don't lose. I win.
And that's all that matters.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
I hate to do this -
but this is one of the funniest photos I've seen in awhile.It's my Poppy holding one of my neices birthday presents, at her party this weekend...
that's my nephew who's arm and yellow shirt is also viewable :)
Thursday, June 26, 2008
It broke.
Spring in the desert is like a fever - the temperatures just keeps rising, till all of a sudden, one morning, it will break.
We're getting cool breezes and light clouds today - it will fuss a little bit now, and then the monsoon will hit and everything will be fine.
We've had a Mourning Dove in out cactus box, on our porch again this year. Her eggs hatched last week, and if you look close you can see one of her babies along with the mama in the photo below. She had two eggs, and I have reason to believe the second baby is down there somewhere, but I haven't seen it clearly yet...We're getting cool breezes and light clouds today - it will fuss a little bit now, and then the monsoon will hit and everything will be fine.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Thirty foot tall snow drifts in June???
As we watch GDR and TD riders dealing with the snow, The Morning Report brings another good story of Snow lingering into the summer... except instead of being in Montana, we're in Southern Utah.
Zion National Park (UT)
Canyon Rescue Conducted By Rangers
On Saturday evening, park dispatch received a report that cries for help had been heard coming from Echo Canyon. Rangers Rob Wissinger and Tom Parrack responded and located a party of four canyoneers who’d become stranded hundreds of feet above the bottom of a side canyon. They’d attempted to exit from the side canyon because a 30-foot-high wall of snow blocked their safe progress down the canyon’s traditional route. After determining that there were no injuries, Parrack made a technical descent to their location and supplied the four men with overnight gear, food and water. They were raised up from their position the following morning after receiving instructions on ascent techniques. A similar technical rescue was performed in the same canyon on May 13th, when another group of canyoneers found snow blocking their route. They were also unable to go either forward or back and had to be rescued. Craig Thexton was the incident commander. [Submitted by Bonnie Schwartz, Chief Ranger]
When we were in Zion Canyon last week we hiked a trail that follows Echo Canyon on our way to the Mystery entrance (you have to hike up from the canyon floor to the rim and Echo is the path of least resistance through one section). I was feeling pretty crudy so about 2/3rds of the way up I turned around and went back, and D finished Mystery on his own and I met him back down at the Temple of Sinewava.
While hiking along, looking down into Echo Canyon - I remembered our descent of it, in the spring of '04... it's the closest we've ever come to needing a rescue. Thirty to forty foot tall snow drifts, hundreds of feet long, that were just starting to melt out, so you'd find bergschrunds at the start and finish of each snow drift, and about a foot of space between the drift and the walls next to it.
At times, we'd be walking a three foot wide crest of snow, reaching out touching the canyon walls for stability, with an 8 inch wide, forty foot deep drop on either side, if the snow gave way... it was really an experience - scary, but crazy odd and fun at the same time.
We were in wetsuits, and the air temperature was reasonably warm, so there was no chance of us getting too cold... it was just crazy to have snow there, like that.
Eventually we came to an undercut ledge we needed to climb on top of, to continue along the next snow drift - except the ledge was too high. And the undercut was much too deep to do anything crazy and risk falling down into it. We built a small step of snow, and placed a square Nalgene bottle upside down on the top of it, to extend it's height another foot. D put one foot onto our step and used his Neoprene glove covered hands, to essentially crack climb the juncture of the rock wall and the lip of the icy snow drift... with two or three moves (and two or three or four tries) he got his weight up over the edge, climbed up a bit higher, wedged himself in place and sent the rope down to me with six loops tied in it, for me to climb up.
Later, we came to the edge of a particularly large drift to find it severely undercut, with what looked like a twenty five foot drop to the canyon floor below. Being on top of a wide and gently sloping snow field didn't leave us many options for anchoring a rope and repelling down the overhang... this was the point where I really thought we might be stuck... I always thought we'd find Some way to climb up the previous spot... but if we couldn't anchor a rope, there was no way we were jumping down, especially because we couldn't be sure how undercut it was, how thin it was, or if the very edge would hold our weight... so we hadn't gone all the way out to the edge, and didn't know what the landing looked like...
after probably half an hour of pacing back and forth, playing with a few options to use a Dead-Man (comforting name, I know...), D finally found a flake in the canyon wall just the right size to wedge a knot of webbing... a ring was attached to the webbing, and we rappelled down... (the whole thing turned out to be much more undercut, and higher than we'd estimated).
The really insane part, is that, last week, there were 90 degree temperatures on that walk up, right past Echo Canyon... yet, deep down, between those narrow walls, there was still massive amounts of snow. The typical Zion Canyon profile is much different that others you'll find on the Colorado Plateau - they're at such a high elevation, they actually get significant amounts of snow, but usually this also translates into them being much more open, they get a lot more sunlight too... but not Echo, Echo really is a special one, and of all the rescue attempts I read about, the above is one of the few where I didn't immediately think "What idiots!!!"
I'm judgmental - I know.
We debated, going back and doing Echo some time late that summer, once the snow had melted, so we could see, just how ridiculous our webbing must have looked - a ten foot long stretch of webbing, hanging fifty feet above the canyon floor... must have seemed odd to anyone who did the canyon, not knowing what it looks like in the winter and spring...
we also lamented not having our camera with us that day, I think the image of D in a wetsuit, one foot on an upside down water bottle buried in a snow pile, two hands crammed in the ice/wall slot, trying to heave his body onto the ledge, would have made a killer Nalgene ad :)
ah well.
Zion National Park (UT)
Canyon Rescue Conducted By Rangers
On Saturday evening, park dispatch received a report that cries for help had been heard coming from Echo Canyon. Rangers Rob Wissinger and Tom Parrack responded and located a party of four canyoneers who’d become stranded hundreds of feet above the bottom of a side canyon. They’d attempted to exit from the side canyon because a 30-foot-high wall of snow blocked their safe progress down the canyon’s traditional route. After determining that there were no injuries, Parrack made a technical descent to their location and supplied the four men with overnight gear, food and water. They were raised up from their position the following morning after receiving instructions on ascent techniques. A similar technical rescue was performed in the same canyon on May 13th, when another group of canyoneers found snow blocking their route. They were also unable to go either forward or back and had to be rescued. Craig Thexton was the incident commander. [Submitted by Bonnie Schwartz, Chief Ranger]
When we were in Zion Canyon last week we hiked a trail that follows Echo Canyon on our way to the Mystery entrance (you have to hike up from the canyon floor to the rim and Echo is the path of least resistance through one section). I was feeling pretty crudy so about 2/3rds of the way up I turned around and went back, and D finished Mystery on his own and I met him back down at the Temple of Sinewava.
While hiking along, looking down into Echo Canyon - I remembered our descent of it, in the spring of '04... it's the closest we've ever come to needing a rescue. Thirty to forty foot tall snow drifts, hundreds of feet long, that were just starting to melt out, so you'd find bergschrunds at the start and finish of each snow drift, and about a foot of space between the drift and the walls next to it.
At times, we'd be walking a three foot wide crest of snow, reaching out touching the canyon walls for stability, with an 8 inch wide, forty foot deep drop on either side, if the snow gave way... it was really an experience - scary, but crazy odd and fun at the same time.
We were in wetsuits, and the air temperature was reasonably warm, so there was no chance of us getting too cold... it was just crazy to have snow there, like that.
Eventually we came to an undercut ledge we needed to climb on top of, to continue along the next snow drift - except the ledge was too high. And the undercut was much too deep to do anything crazy and risk falling down into it. We built a small step of snow, and placed a square Nalgene bottle upside down on the top of it, to extend it's height another foot. D put one foot onto our step and used his Neoprene glove covered hands, to essentially crack climb the juncture of the rock wall and the lip of the icy snow drift... with two or three moves (and two or three or four tries) he got his weight up over the edge, climbed up a bit higher, wedged himself in place and sent the rope down to me with six loops tied in it, for me to climb up.
Later, we came to the edge of a particularly large drift to find it severely undercut, with what looked like a twenty five foot drop to the canyon floor below. Being on top of a wide and gently sloping snow field didn't leave us many options for anchoring a rope and repelling down the overhang... this was the point where I really thought we might be stuck... I always thought we'd find Some way to climb up the previous spot... but if we couldn't anchor a rope, there was no way we were jumping down, especially because we couldn't be sure how undercut it was, how thin it was, or if the very edge would hold our weight... so we hadn't gone all the way out to the edge, and didn't know what the landing looked like...
after probably half an hour of pacing back and forth, playing with a few options to use a Dead-Man (comforting name, I know...), D finally found a flake in the canyon wall just the right size to wedge a knot of webbing... a ring was attached to the webbing, and we rappelled down... (the whole thing turned out to be much more undercut, and higher than we'd estimated).
The really insane part, is that, last week, there were 90 degree temperatures on that walk up, right past Echo Canyon... yet, deep down, between those narrow walls, there was still massive amounts of snow. The typical Zion Canyon profile is much different that others you'll find on the Colorado Plateau - they're at such a high elevation, they actually get significant amounts of snow, but usually this also translates into them being much more open, they get a lot more sunlight too... but not Echo, Echo really is a special one, and of all the rescue attempts I read about, the above is one of the few where I didn't immediately think "What idiots!!!"
I'm judgmental - I know.
We debated, going back and doing Echo some time late that summer, once the snow had melted, so we could see, just how ridiculous our webbing must have looked - a ten foot long stretch of webbing, hanging fifty feet above the canyon floor... must have seemed odd to anyone who did the canyon, not knowing what it looks like in the winter and spring...
we also lamented not having our camera with us that day, I think the image of D in a wetsuit, one foot on an upside down water bottle buried in a snow pile, two hands crammed in the ice/wall slot, trying to heave his body onto the ledge, would have made a killer Nalgene ad :)
ah well.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Impatience.
D - "God damned RVs!!!"
Going into The Tunnel in Zion NP, we had to wait while they cleared out opposing traffic, so this RV two vehicles in front of us could use the Tunnel.
Friday, June 20, 2008
In the middle.
Selma Lee's title issues appear to be in the middle of a turf war between two early-thirties, male employees at the MVD.
The first time I went in I spoke to R, and then I spent a long time trying to accumulate the documents he told me to get.
Later I went in and spoke to The Woman, and she told me a few things... a few days later, I went in, seeking clarity on Woman's comments and spoke to S. S deliberated for a long time and told me that R was out of his gourd and gave me a total new plan of attack - then asked me to bring in the old directives R had given me - just cause he wanted to see how incredibly wrong R had been with my case. He also told me to ask for him, S, when I came back.
I went back in today (without all the paper work S wanted, but with something else that I thought might help)... S wasn't in - they gave me to R again.
R took all my paper work, said "Just a second" - and then walked out of sight, leaving me sitting in his little cubicle for over 25 minute with no idea what was going on.
He came back - and told me something, again, that is totally different. He's going to call up the bank that originally held the loan for the car and see if they will create a bill of sale directly to me... ignoring three other people who have previously owned this car (comment on this in a minute).
And he told me the next time I came in - I needed to make sure Not to go to S... to ask for him, R, and if R wasn't there, to ask for his boss - whom we will call Supervisor. I was told absolutely, to not talk to S - which is exactly what S told me about R.
Also - R is essentially going to ask the Bank that originally held the loan on the car, to forge a document for me... they didn't sell the car to me, they sold it to someone else, but R (and his supervisor) are calling him, asking him to forge a document... WHAT???
If they'll take a document they know describes a sale that didn't happen - why on earth do they want it at all - why not just give me the gosh darn title???
Edit: Supervisor just called me to say that the Bank will not forge a document... which is actually a bit of a relief to me, imagine that... and when I explained to Supervisor why I had actually come in today, and that I didn't want anybody forging anything - I just had a question that R had never answered, cause he took my documents without really talking to me, we re-established that S was right all along, and Supervisor is going to call my missing link and put a little Government pressure on him to send me the documents I need.
The first time I went in I spoke to R, and then I spent a long time trying to accumulate the documents he told me to get.
Later I went in and spoke to The Woman, and she told me a few things... a few days later, I went in, seeking clarity on Woman's comments and spoke to S. S deliberated for a long time and told me that R was out of his gourd and gave me a total new plan of attack - then asked me to bring in the old directives R had given me - just cause he wanted to see how incredibly wrong R had been with my case. He also told me to ask for him, S, when I came back.
I went back in today (without all the paper work S wanted, but with something else that I thought might help)... S wasn't in - they gave me to R again.
R took all my paper work, said "Just a second" - and then walked out of sight, leaving me sitting in his little cubicle for over 25 minute with no idea what was going on.
He came back - and told me something, again, that is totally different. He's going to call up the bank that originally held the loan for the car and see if they will create a bill of sale directly to me... ignoring three other people who have previously owned this car (comment on this in a minute).
And he told me the next time I came in - I needed to make sure Not to go to S... to ask for him, R, and if R wasn't there, to ask for his boss - whom we will call Supervisor. I was told absolutely, to not talk to S - which is exactly what S told me about R.
Also - R is essentially going to ask the Bank that originally held the loan on the car, to forge a document for me... they didn't sell the car to me, they sold it to someone else, but R (and his supervisor) are calling him, asking him to forge a document... WHAT???
If they'll take a document they know describes a sale that didn't happen - why on earth do they want it at all - why not just give me the gosh darn title???
Edit: Supervisor just called me to say that the Bank will not forge a document... which is actually a bit of a relief to me, imagine that... and when I explained to Supervisor why I had actually come in today, and that I didn't want anybody forging anything - I just had a question that R had never answered, cause he took my documents without really talking to me, we re-established that S was right all along, and Supervisor is going to call my missing link and put a little Government pressure on him to send me the documents I need.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Bubble Wrap...
hides the cutest thing I've seen in at least a month.
What is it???
"yeah, but the bowls could concievable be used for something, you could eat oatmeal out of those bowls, the lizard can't do anything but sit on a shelf and gather dust and you need to indulge in more things that aren't, at all, practical."
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
My Take.
With all this discussion of Spots - who has them, why they carry them, who actually made the purchase, I know three things -
First - it's going to be freakin' Sweet to watch the Leaderboard for The Tour Divide (and other none-official TDers who will be racing the course while packing) this year.
Second - it's really hard to quantify exactly what advantages and/or handicaps are presented to different riders depending on whether they do or do not carry a Spot, mobile phone, GPS device, iPod etc. Does it add or release you from addition pressure, knowing so many might be watching your progress???
Third - the worst part of TransIowa v4 was after I had called for help and was waiting... not knowing where help was, how long it would take them to get to me, etc. Having run into Essam while he was attempting to ride the Kokopelli trail this year, showed me just how added the uncertainty was with a Spot. He knew he had pushed the buttom, but he had no idea if that meant his contact was actually on his way to pick him up or not, or even it his contact had gotten the signal he had told the bight orange box to send. And not knowing these things, it makes it pretty darn hard to figure out what the next step is... stay where you are, move closer to where you presume help is, find water, find a place to hide from the weather, or remain as visible as possible... when you're racing and moving you can make those decisions easily but when you don't know how long you have to remain somewhere it throws a lot of uncertainty into the mix... and no one I know who has a Spot doesn't already appreciate that.
I would think, even if you had a Spot, in most cases it would still be easiest and safest to get yourself out of whatever problem situation you were in - unless you were no longer capable of movement.
In a perfect world, each person would draw their own technology line, knowing themselves well enough to know what would or would not be an unfair psychological advantage... but the world isn't perfect -
and personally, if the whole point is to be all Person against Nature, or Person against Themselves, out alone, in the desolation of their own mind and backcountry, with nothing but two hands, years worth of amped up muscles, and incessant thoughts of inferiority - I'd take away iPods and satellite radios before Spots.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
Arizona Political Update
70-something year old Jake Flake, the state representative from Snowflake, a town named after his great grandfather - recently fell off his horse and broke several ribs...
we can only hope his wife, thirteen children, and forty-five grandchildren are tending him well.
It appears the "conservative agenda" will be ailing, until he can make it back down to the state capital. This is frightening, as everyone's worried all those gays married in California are going to sneak across the border like a Mexican Coyote.
we can only hope his wife, thirteen children, and forty-five grandchildren are tending him well.
It appears the "conservative agenda" will be ailing, until he can make it back down to the state capital. This is frightening, as everyone's worried all those gays married in California are going to sneak across the border like a Mexican Coyote.
Quote of the Day.
D - I'm surprised they didn't make you move to Illinois, or Indiana, or somewhere.
M - Who???
D - The citizens of Iowa, for being so un-American.
M - What???
D - They never would have allowed that in Ohio, that's for sure.
I don't eat Watermelon.
M - Who???
D - The citizens of Iowa, for being so un-American.
M - What???
D - They never would have allowed that in Ohio, that's for sure.
I don't eat Watermelon.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Lost and Found - Paper Edition.
It all started when we moved to Arizona and had all these bare white walls. D said - "Why don't you paint something."
I only paint in scenic design class, but I got the point. I bought a bunch of old books and magazines at thrift stores, some picture frames, and went about making collages.
Since then, I've picked up a few more books, D's made collages for his Kaibab race posters, and I've used the pictures to make my postcard entries for TransIowa.
I have a system when I get materials for collage work. Essentially, I tear the book apart by the sections its bound in - all the pages of the entire book - and then separate each page into two boxes. One box is for pages with potentially useful images. The second box is recycling. Since you can't recycle whole, bound books, this allows me to recycle everything I won't use, and makes it easier to retrieve the pages I want. And instead of a pile of books, it leaves me with a box full of pages to go through when I want to make something.
I only paint in scenic design class, but I got the point. I bought a bunch of old books and magazines at thrift stores, some picture frames, and went about making collages.
Since then, I've picked up a few more books, D's made collages for his Kaibab race posters, and I've used the pictures to make my postcard entries for TransIowa.
I have a system when I get materials for collage work. Essentially, I tear the book apart by the sections its bound in - all the pages of the entire book - and then separate each page into two boxes. One box is for pages with potentially useful images. The second box is recycling. Since you can't recycle whole, bound books, this allows me to recycle everything I won't use, and makes it easier to retrieve the pages I want. And instead of a pile of books, it leaves me with a box full of pages to go through when I want to make something.
I've been going through my craft stuff, packing and reorganizing anything that I'm not liable to use before our move. I had about half a dozen books I'd gotten for collaging that I hadn't gone through yet, and thought I ought to do that, to reduce their bulk, come moving time.
When I get books from thirft stores, I don't get books that might still have some useful purpose in the world. I won't cut apart a book that has something left to give. Usually it's old encyclopedias, or TimeLife series, or other books that are way out of date, but have striking or vintage images in them. When I get home, I search for them on Amazon.com, to make sure I'm not about to cut up a rare book (I have actually bought a book for $1 and found out it was worth $20). One of the books I had sitting around was titled Lost Treasures of Europe. I'd done my usual quick search for it when I first brought it home, but didn't find anything. Today, as I was pulling sections of the book apart from it's bindings, D asked about it. It was published in 1946 - and is a collection of some 450 pictures of buildings that were destroyed in World War II. The book's editors compiled a list of all the major architectural treasures that were damaged in Europe, and published images of them, taken prior to the war, in this volume (along with a few "after" shots).
My curiosity raised, I searched for the book again. It sells for somewhere between $20-$40... mine was in perfect condition... before I pulled it to pieces!!! Distressed that'd I'd just killed a fairly rare and historic volume, but realizing there was nothing much I could do, I continued hacking it to pieces. Half way through I found a small piece of paper tucked between two pages (the above and below photos).
It is an absolutely PERFECT condition 5 Mark note, issued from Berlin in August of 1917, for use as a small denomination loan against commodities, in the German occupied territories, during World War I. Technically, it was not legal tender, but was used as such during the period (isn't the information you can find on the internet in 10 minutes amazing???).
This one doesn't so much as have a corner turned. It could not possibly have circulated - ever. I thought it couldn't be real when I first saw it, and can't really be certain that it is, it's too perfect. Except for the fact that no one would ever want to produce a counterfeit, as a search of German-language eBay turns up a value of about $2 US.
Monday, June 2, 2008
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