Archive for May, 2007

10,000 views in Flickr as of this morning! Pretty cool… it’s gonna be a good day.

Quite the field of boundary layer cumulus this morning. These are pretty rare for Colorado. The weather has been so great lately, that I’ve been able to get back to riding my bike to work. Wow, I am sore!

I’ve been working a bit on the site lately. You’ll notice a more fine-tuned category list on the side-bar to the left. I’m not completely done with the re-org, but I should be soon. I’m also working with Dylan to update and debug the Adventure Map. If you haven’t played with this toy much, I strongly suggest it. It’s pretty darn cool.

On Saturday, Mark is leaving for Japan for a week. I’m hoping to get him blogging about that trip too. It’s going to be neat to be able to put some pins on the map in Japan and then Italy in July!!

Our plans to climb on Devil’s Tower this weekend got canceled because of the storm that blew through. Mark and I were both disappointed, but we didn’t really have the money to pay for the weekend right now (have to replace the laptop). It was nice to stick around at home for a quiet weekend, get laundry caught up, vacuum, and get some work done.

As I said before, more photos from the day are in the gallery.

Sunday morning dawned clear and warm again. We decided not to spend too much time on the rock that day, so we’d be able to get home with enough time to clean up and take care of everyday life. We packed up camp and made it to the the Nautaulis by 9am; early enough to be first on two of the more popular climbs on the formation.

Handjacker (5.7 ow) – Dylan started out the day leading this innocuous-looking, fairly short off-width, and a climb that Mark and I have done a few times before. The early part of this climb is pretty easy, but hard to protect. The last 8ft, though, are heck-on-wheels. I enjoy this climb because my feet fit well in heal-toe during the wide part. Dylan climbed it fantastically, without any hangs or falls, though it seemed to me to be the hardest I’ve ever seen him fight for a climb.

Lower Progressive (5.9+) – We hung a toprope on this one and everybody had fun giving it a try. Mark and Dylan both climbed without any trouble, of course. I had one flying crash as I tried to get on the climb, but I jammed and pulled into the crack, and eventually worked my way up. I actually had the most trouble in the center of the climb, in one area where I lost all friction for the foot outside the crack. It was a very difficult, but very fun climb. One of those climbs where you give it every ounce of energy you’ve got, and the finish feels so good for it!

Between climbs, Ann and I did a few yoga poses on top of the rock formation, the photos turned out really nicely, so I’ll post a few below. It was a really fun day. Dylan has an awesome video on his blog of Mark climbing Handjacker before we took off for the day. After the two climbs, we followed Ann and Dylan out to a coffe/sandwich shop in Laramie, and I had one of the best curry chicken wraps I’ve had in a long time. Great day, great climbs and great bruises to remember it with!

Well, I finally got the photos off my dead laptop and into the gallery, check them out!

Vedauwoo is one of my all-time favorite places to climb. It’s not laid-back sport climbing, and it’s not long, fun multi-pitch trad. It’s hard. It’s adventurous. It’s exciting. And it’s painful.

Last weekend, Dylan and Ann found us looking for a free campsite off the side of Wyoming CR 700 near dusk on Friday night. It was a good thing, too, because the site we were checking out was pretty aweful. They had a much better one in mind, that had a beautiful little beaver pond just down the hill, and was sheltered on all sides by a lovely, dense grove of pine trees.

We all woke up the next morning excited to be out here for the first time this year. As the sun came up, the air heated quickly, and it got surprisingly warm, very fast. We made our coffee, picked our climbs, and headed off to Poland Hill for the day.

After a nice little hike, that seemed much easier than last year, Ann headed up to lead Kim (5.6) while Mark and I set up to climb Sugar Crack (5.7). Mark was in high spirits for the day, and he wizzed up the lead for this climb. Even stopping to add a big bro to help with rope drag near the top of the climb. I tried to follow as if I was leading the climb, and it felt pretty good, but pretty creepy in the top, wider, area of the climb. I don’t know if I’m quite up for this lead just yet.

We walked off the back side after the first pitch, and found ourselves staring up at Little Old Crack (5.5). I remembered this route being rated 5.6, which could mean anything in ‘voo, and it looked darn intimidating. Even though I wanted to lead it, I suggested Mark take the first go at it. He jumped right on, and dispatched the whole thing in no time. As I followed, I found the angle to be less steep than it looked, and filled with giant holds and easy jams. Ah, so it was 5.5. I don’t think I’ll have any problems leading it next time I’m out there.

We rapped off Kim as a large guided youth group arrived, and decided to spend the rest of the day working a couple of harder climbs, now that we were all warmed up. Mark pulled together all of the big gear from the whole group, which turned out to be a really nice wide-crack rack. He then hopped on the lead for Fantasia (5.9).

This was an incredible lead! We have top roped this climb before, and it was a hard, painful, grunt fest. It’s exhilerating when you figure out the moves, and the rhythm of fat-crack climbing is unique and not to be missed. We used to tease our hard-core bad-ass climbing friend Tom about how we were going to make him lead this route, and he would shutter. Mark was nervous, but he pulled off one of the best leads of his life. Our rack was enough to protect the whole climb pretty well, and Mark made his way up with only one rest (it’s questionable as to if he even weighted the rope). This lead made Mark an official “Hard-core Bad-ass Wide-Crack Vedauwoo Climber!!” (or HCBAWCVC) Check out the blood and scars to prove it.

Next, Dylan decided to lead up Piece of Dirt (5.11a), a steep and challenging-looking climb on the face left of Fantasia. This was another Hell-Of-A-Lead for the day.

Dylan popped off maybe twice, but made the whole climb look graceful, simple and easy. So easy, in fact, that I offered to second it. Wow! Turns out it was a seriously hard climb. I ground my finger tips down to numbs crimping on tiny crystals, I cheeted twice by pulling on quick draws and I never even made it to the top! Ann did much better on this route. As I flaled on Fantasia next, Ann patiently worked out all of the crux moves, and fully climbed the route to the top! It was awesome. Mark tried last, and even he couldn’t finish the route without pulling on the draws. Thus proving once and for all that Dylan and Ann are much better climbers than us.

I missed some key beta, and never made it out of the bottom pod on Fantasia that day. But that’s ok. It was a long and sun-filled day in a beautiful, beautiful place. We had great climbs and great friends and great accomplishments all around. That night, we settled into our camp, eating the tastiest steaks of our lives, toasting marshmellows, and enjoying the cool Wyoming night.

So, not much more than one week after I got back my fancy, expensive camera, I was sitting there, editing my photos on my powerbook, and *thunk* my chocolate milk is suddenly pouring all over the keyboard. My instant reaction was to lift up the computer, turn it upside down, and lay it on the floor to let the milk drain out. I wasn’t quite quick enough, though, and within seconds, the machine made a sad little beeping noise and shut down.

I spent the next half an hour, or so, soaking chocolate milk out of the keyboard with various towels, and then cleaning it up off the couch and the carpet. It may be a while before I ever drink chocolate milk again.

I decided to pull up directions on how to get under the keyboard on line, and I opened up this computer for the first time. I was a laptop repair technician for a couple years in college, so the idea of pulling the thing to pieces and cleaning it up wasn’t that scary. And it didn’t turn out to be difficult. Unfortunately, there was milk EVERYWHERE. A puddle in the middle of the logic board, under and above the RAM, under the harddrive and the DVD drive.

While I had my machine open, Mark was sitting on the couch in front of his laptop. At one point, he turned around on the couch and knocked over the TV tray that had his laptop sitting on it.

“Oh, it’s not turning back on.” He mumbled when he lifted it off the floor. He popped out the battery and plugged it back in to see if that was the problem. Suddenly, a plume of SMOKE came pouring out the side of his laptop, and BRIGHT ORANGE FLAMES shot out the side!! Mark grabbed the battery, yanked it out of his computer, and threw it across the room!

“So, that’s broken.” He said calmly.

We stood there silently, shocked and dumbfounded. Our living room smelled strongly of burnt solder and toasted chocolate milk. Liv wagged her tail.

The next day we spent doing triage. It turns out Mark’s laptop had the super extended warranty and was still covered for drops and spontaneous combustion. My laptop was over three years old, and replacing the logic board alone would cost over $800. I decided, rather than send it out and have somebody try to repair it, I would spend the first part of my money and energy trying to get my photos and music off the harddrive (if I still could) and then probably just replace the machine.

After having most of the computer shops in town turn me away as nobody can read the Mac File System, I learned that the drive was still working, and the guys at Run PC sold me a $20 enclosure that turned the laptop harddrive into an external drive. I was finally able to access all of my data on my work computer this afternoon.

I feel like some kind of weird necromancer right now. The hulking, sticky shell of my dead computer is still sitting in pieces on my dining room table. But I’ve managed to resurrect it’s spirit and soul temporarily inside my computer here at work. Hey there laptop! Not doing so well, are we?