Older Stock

Tina gave me an external hard drive for my birthday at the beginning of this month. I was in the process of moving photo files onto it and came across these two shots of Mike and Jerry playing around on some dirt jumps outside of Park City last summer.

The Following Was Brought to You By...

The Yankees beat the Phils in a super-star six-game World Series. Old news. I know. And I lost my $50 bet with a co-worker. Maybe next year. Until then, New Yorkers have something they can smile about while sitting in traffic wondering, "Why...why do I live here...why do I pay thousands of $$$ for rent each month...why do I pay tolls....why don't I move to New Jersey?" Maybe. Anything's possible. Just don't move to Philly, in which case you run this risk.


On a better note, there are tons of murals in Philadelphia. Some really good, some not so great. Like this one.


Paul likes to exercise his constitutional right of coloring outside the lines.


Switching gears with a trip to the Aquarium, here's a picture of a jelly fish doing it's thing.


And a fish, just chillin'.


Moving on...

Climbing and Wagers

I climb. Not like I ski. But I like to dabble. A group of us from the workplace were down at the Swell this past weekend. It was a blast. On the wager side, the Phillies are in the World Series. Again. A buddy of mine at work put $50.00 on the Yanks....I shook his hand and accepted the bet. Now I've got to watch some baseball...

Here's a photo dump of the climbing pics. Sorry, no route info. We were in the Buckhorn Wash area of the Swell...












Click on this one (above), then 'all sizes' to do it justice...


B&W shoutout..

Weekend

Back from a little jaunt on the Right Coast - wedding, family, food, stocking up on fat reserves for the winter; you know the drill.

Heading to the Swell for the weekend with a motley crew from work. Should be a rowdy time. Will report on happenings when we return.

For now, here's a shot of a roadside waterfall up Big Cottonwood.

Littering And....

No, not smoking the reefer. Super Troopers is a damn good movie, though.

If you've ever been to Las Vegas, I'm sure you'll agree that place is the litterbox of the US. It's probably the filthiest city I've ever been to. Even driving into Nevada, as soon as you cross over the border from UT into NV, the pavement turns to crap and you begin seeing garbage scattered about the sides of the road and tangled in the weeds in the median. How is it that people still think it's ok to toss waste out the windows of their vehicles?

The other day I was heading up I-80 to Park City. I checked my rear view mirror and noticed a kind fellow riding my ass, in his Audi Allroad. My standard reaction in this instance is to begin coasting, generally slowing down once I take my foot off the gas pedal. Usually, this frustrates the tailgater, prompting them to swerve into another lane, slam on the gas pedal (decreasing their MPGs, ooooh checkmate suckerz...) and leave me in their dust.

Now, even though I shouldn't, I give them the obligatory stare as they pass me and I'll typically just smile or wave, hoping to see them pulled over at some point on the side of the road. However, in this particular instance, while the driver was laying on the horn his ugly girlfriend decided to toss her beverage from McDoo out the window as they passed me - spraying backwash and ammo-dumping ice cubes onto the pavement at breakneck speed. Please also note that I was going 75mph in a 65mph zone; so these goodies were probably going 80mph or faster when they passed me displaying their utmost class. No, I didn't write down their plate number. No, I didn't tail gate them back. But I made sure to pick up the next piece of trash I saw later on that day and toss it out. I'm such a boyscout.

The point of this blurb is to say thanks to my Mom for instilling in me the fact that littering gets us nowhere. I remember riding home after Mom took me through the drive-thru at, ironically, McDoo's, when I was a wee sprout (probably four or five years old). I had finished my drink and went to toss the cup out the car window. Mom caught me in the middle of this terrible act I was about to commit just before I was able to release my excited hands - dropping the cup on the ground as we drove down the road. She told me I better not drop that cup or I'd be in for it when I got home. Instead, Mom let me know that I could instead throw the cup into the street from our driveway. A great compromise.

I sat patiently for the rest of the car-ride home. I was prepping myself, getting ready to throw this cup as far as I possibly could from the edge of the driveway. As soon as we pulled into the driveway and the car was stopped, I jumped out of the car, sprinted to the end of the driveway (probably 10 feet), spiked the cup on the ground like my child-hood hero, John Elway, and stomped it flat like a pancake. I proceeded to peel the cup off the pavement, grinning at my destruction, and hail-married that thing into the center of the neighborhood road.

The crushed cup sat in the middle of the road while I stared at it from the end of my parent's driveway. It wasn't transforming into something magical, it wasn't changing colors, it wasn't getting up and walking away on it's own. It just sat there. I became severely bummed. In the experience I had gained in my four or five years of life, I thought littering was the cool thing to do. Mom was smart - inadvertently teaching me a lesson without me knowing. Shortly after realizing the cut wasn't going to do any good in the street, I went a picked it up and tossed it in the garbage.

That's me; the litterbug.

Thanks, Mom.

Greenday

I was 12, in the sixth grade (1994) and didn't know much about anything (still don't). I had just gotten a stereo with CD player one year before and the first two CDs that were given to me will remain un-mentioned.

With some money from Christmas that year I went and purchased Greenday's first commercially-produced album, Dookie. A couple of my buddies in the neighborhood also got it, but their parents took it away from them once they learned how many times the F-word was used in the lyrics.

My parents didn't ever really ask or seem to concerned about any of the music I've listened to, especially when I was growing up. I guess it pays to be a good kid sometimes.

I still have the Dookie CD and pop it in every now and then; Welcome to Paradise brings me back to living in Delaware, hating life and not knowing much about anything. All great feelings to be reminded of on a given day.

Pee Chee Folders

Man - At the beginning of each school year I was perhaps most excited about getting a new fleet of Pee Chee folders. Their soft colors and generic sports illustrations were way ahead of their time, that's for sure. Another great quality of the Pee Chee is that the folder's pockets run vertically, so if you pitch the folder upside down, all your crap stays neat and organized inside and doesn't come sliding out the top of the folder.