Motion without Meaning

Effing Bad ass...

2010-06-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

One month to go until Pat and I climb Mt. Rainier. I'm confident when I say I'm ready. But it's weird I haven't spent a day in the gym (outside of the climbing gym). It's great!! So far Training has been jogging with Runergy, and Joanne. Average... 10-12 miles a week (on a good week). Climbing indoors at Boulderdash (I'm sending 11.b's now. Technically but not consistently, Honestly... I've only done one, but whatever). And full pack hiking... which I'll probably be getting to more this last month.

Other fun things...

MAMMOTH over memorial day weekend!! Holy smokes was that place bad ass. We snowboarded every morning, and climbed every afternoon, and ate and drank every night.

DAY 1: GEOPHYSICS WALL, Mammoth, CA

35 V-easy's V-0's and V1's. It was spectacular. Joanne, Alicia, Jeramey and I got through 17 of them... kinda. There were a few sketchy top outs, but we all got through every crux. Except for #6. Damn 6. I'm not 100% positive weather my ass even got off the ground. But it's OK, Bouldering isn't my forte, though it will be a goal to get better at it over the few months after Rainier. We'll see. Right now I'm probably a strong V0 climber... Ha.

Day 2: LOOKOUT WALL, Bumble-#$%*, CA

So this little excursion didn't start on the right foot, but certainly ended with some strong climbing. Getting to the wall was a monster pain in the ass. For those of you who use Mountain Project, and find yourself in mammoth wanting to climb. Buy a guidebook... otherwise you'll end up like us... lost in the desert.

Once we got our barrings straight we caught up with a Mercedes Benz full of chumpy climbers who happened to be going to the same area. Cool and Totally uncool at the same time... Since when has the climbing community become a bunch of snobby old dudes? Moving on... 4 STOUT routes... (5.9 sended by Jo, 10.a sended by me, 10.b Tiff conquered, and 10.d attempted by me, thnak god for rescue beiners) . Picture is me on the 10.a.

Day 3: Movie Wall in the Corridor, Alabama Hills, CA

By day 3 we were all very very tired. But we weren't going to miss out on Alabama hills. It's on the way back, and we're die-hard climbers, right? Right!! So we hit up some seriously scary sport routes. 10a lead by me, 10b lead by me, 5.9 lead by Tiff, 5.7 lead by Jo. And we all failed to send a 10.c you can see Jo trying in the picture. What bunch of BS... Another hour there with some more energy and I think we would have got it. But we were pressed for time. and only had 30 minutes to pack up gear and get to the restaurant for some Buffalo burgers. (PS for those who went to climb Whitney with me... Same place we ate across the street from the Hostel. Best burgers in town!! (in a town of 4 eateries).

Hahaha... Anyway, the drive back was fun. I drank two beers while we ate, and put the rest of my"party" vodka in a cup of coffee I hadn't finished earlier that day. The rest was car napping!!

Side notes:
1. I've decided that Alicia's guidebook is half mine.
2. I'm eventually going to swim across convict lake.
3. I really really really really love hot tubs.
4. I'm balding... I'm OK with that... and gosh darn it, it looks good.
5. Tiff is a good climber.
6. Joanne and I have a Love/Hate relationship. She's an organic nut-job!

My New Jacket

2010-03-16T23:07:00.000-07:00

Ha... my jacket's puffier than your jacket.
That's right... One 850 fill goose down, Eddie Bower "First Ascent" mountaineering jacket coming right up sir.

Would you like fries with that?

It's not all about me...

2010-03-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

As much as I'd like to think. HA... I know I'm a little selfish, but hey I'm 31 and not married living alone in LA. Right now it's OK. Anyway, this post is to pay homage to the climbing gods for letting my boy Dino ascend his first lead route flawlessly (5.9 Powder Puff Girls) Almost like he's been doing it his entire life. Don't let the name of the route fool you... it's a burly 5.9 with a long blind reach over the arete while holding an under-cling just before clipping the third bolt. Pretty squirrely for a first lead.

He didn't even shutter, or mention how scared he was the entire time! I was totally freaked when I lead my first route, so I know he was stressing even though he didn't say it. Then before you knew it he lead his second route Power Range. A bit more of a manlier name, but not so much a harder route as a different variation. They both follow the same last three bolts to the anchors, and they're practically side by side. None the less... It was a great weekend climbing!!

2010 Adventures

2010-03-03T23:28:00.001-08:00

Well, again it's been a while since I've posted. But that's not to say I haven't been stagnent... My next big adventure will be Mt. Rainier -Kautz Route in July, so I've dedicated everyday until then preparing for that day. I'll tell you one thing, if I don't make the summit this year, it won't be because I'm not physically strong enough, or mentally prepared. I started training in January. Since then I've become 15lbs lighter, and improved my climbing and hiking dramatically... I'm climbing at a 5-10d level, and making some serious lead climbing progress. So I'll leave you with this...

I'm weaker today than I will be tomorrow, and much stronger than I was yesterday. In July I hope to be in the best shape of my life, standing on top of one of the countries biggest mountains, having gone up one of it's most difficult routes.

Cheers Pat... Kautz 2010 is our time.

- Jimi-James

2009-09-01T08:12:00.000-07:00

I realize it's been a while... I haven't really been doing all that much outside of the climbing gym, but... Winter is coming up soon, and that mean SoCal Mountaineering will be in it's height. Things you have to look forward to reading are... San Gorgonio, a second attempt of Whitney, Baldy from base, and Baden Powell. We will see how many of them I can summit. I'm betting all this year.

Hang in there, I'm also starting a band. Woo hoo..

Cheesus... Seriously?

2009-05-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

You know... I'm a pretty out there guy. I believe in ghost, and monsters, Aliens even Jesus and God Almighty! But I'm sorry, for those of you who think the second coming of Christ is going to be in Cheeto Form... or on a grilled cheese sandwich... Sorry, there's something wrong with you. And whoever buys this on ebay for the $500,000... you should just walk off a cliff.

Who's with me? We give the guys from "Smash This" to buy the Cheeto and eat it on their internet show. How funny would that be? Hahaha... For those of you who don't know Smash This is a internet TV show that gets donaions on the internet to go stand in line for days with the rest of the gamers and buy a PS2 or whatever... then they smash it in front of all the people standing in line. It's hillarious...

Anyway, here's your Tribute picture to Cheesus himself.

Stoney Point is Dangerous

2009-05-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

Monday I went to Stoney Point Park for some bouldering. It was a good time... I quickly learned that outdoor climbing is nothing like indoor wall climbing. Woo... it's fun though. I met some dudes there who showed me a thing or two... or everything I know to this point about climbing. Regardless, even though I never made it higher up that my own head (I can't even stand on top of a 20 ft boulder... dangit), there's something special about a dude who can cling to a rock like a gecko, and then leap. Putting all fear aside while trying to grab a ledge barely bigger than two fingers. I didn't try that... apparently I have the wrong shoes. Ha! Another excuse to go to REI and make a purchase. After that and a climbing mat, I'll officially own everything in the store.

Brokeback Mountaineering II

2009-04-30T08:39:00.001-07:00

...On last weeks episode... Freezing temperatures hold down the crew at Upper Boy scout Lake, Cory suffers from a bad case of AMS, and tents were torn and the wrong types for our conditions.

Day3: Bid or Bust
The morning brought little warmth but the sun refreshing and the mountains glowed orange. Cory woke up and was able to hold down food which was complimented by a temperature close to that of a warm blooded animal, so things were looking and the four of us and we would soon be standing on top of the contiguous U.S. of A. So we all ate, backed our summit bags, filled our water bottles and started upward around 8am. The first part of the hike was gorgeous! Up and over and ridge, a traverse of the top of a gigantic snow bank, followed by a small corridor which put us at Iceberg Lake, a glaciated lake at the base of the shoot which led up the last 1500 vertical feet to the summit plateau.

The team spent the next half hour stepping into their harnesses and going over basic mountaineering skills like self arrest, rope team skills, rest step and pressure breathing... blah blah blah. Around noon we took the first of many steps up the final 2000ft that consisted of 1500ft of Class 3 terrain, and 500ft of Class 4 terrain. In layman's, steep and dangerous, followed by even steeper and way more dangerous. The burning was intense, sweat poured from our faces. It was so warm out we were almost down to our neoprene t-shirts. Cory led, followed by Pat, Pam and myself. About 2 and a half hours later we took a break before entering the 'even steeper and way more dangerous" section where we found Cory's AMS had just temporarily subsided and decided to come back right there and then. We decided it'd be best if we all turned back, and as close as we were to the top, we knew the mountain wasn't going anywhere. We arrived back at camp around 4pm, and started packing things up. But don't worry; the journey didn't end it just gets more interesting.

Going down can be just as hard, if not harder than climbing up the mountain. For starters, a few days on the mountain can really wear you out, followed by the fact that you've already done what you came to do so your attention isn't as acute as it was ascending so people tend to stretch the lines out, and before you know it, you find yourself several yards behind the rest of your team. Well at least that's the way it was in my case... I made several attempts to catch up by glissading down the mountain on my ass but they were futile and getting up after the short slide wasn't even worth the thrill. Just before hiking into Lower Boy scout Lake, I took a step and postholed right through hard outer shell of ice and plunged up to my crotch. My crampon snagged a rock on the way in, and my ankle twisted and I later found out I got a class 4 low ankle sprain, and class 3 high ankle sprain. Woo hoo... So now I was about a half mile behind my friends, none of which knew I was moving slower than salmon upstream.

PP&C found out about my injury when one of them decided to wait at the top of the bolder field before we hit the ledges. We really only had a short 3 or 4 mile hike left but the sun started setting and I was really preventing us from making any good time. So we put our headlamps on close to 7:30pm, and continued down the hill. At 8:30 we ran into our first real snag of the decent. The trail we were following just stopped. We knew were in the right area, I mean there's really only one way down... just follow the stream! Simple right? Not the case. We back tracked about 50 yards, put our crampons back on, and scaled a 20 ft vertical ice wall. Instead of winding around the other side, and going back down the other side we continued up the side of the valley. To our dismay, we found ourselves on top of a thousand foot cliff with nowhere to go. Our GPS's were either out of batteries, or couldn't grab satellite reception; to make things worse it was now pitch black out. So our only option was to backtrack yet again to the top of that ice wall we just made our way up. Beaten, bruised and tired, we finally waded through the waist high powder snow back to the trail. Shortly there after, we saw the romantic grey color of my 4Runner and I hobbled to it, giving it a kiss right on the drivers side window. Calling an end to a great trip.

The closest bar was a dive in Lone Pine, where we matched each other beer for beer, and bag of chip for bag of chip. The hostel gave us a late night room, and our heads hit pillow just after 2am.

James vs. Mountains... 0/2....

"Summiting is optional, getting down is mandatory"

Brokeback Mountaineering

2009-04-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

So again, sorry it's been so long since my last post. But not a lot other than the move has gone on. I have done a few hikes and I suppose I'll blog about them later, but I really wanted to get this trip report up because there are just too many pics that need explaining. Anyway, so here it is...

Whitney Trip Report.
Day One: The dudes arrive

Cory and Pat flew into LAX Saturday April 4th. Cory landed at noon and Pat was supposed to be landing shortly after but his Plane was delayed a bit more than an hour, so Cory and I headed over to the Taco's Jr. (It's the same as Taco hut, only it's a Carls Jr. and a Taco Grill). After our gluttony, I took Cory to the Manhattan beach wore the scent of fresh oil and sewage. I'm new here, sorry... We didn't have time to go to Santa Monica or we would have. So we got the call that Pat had landed and hastily made it back to LAX to pick him up. We battled the 5, the 210, the 134 and the 101 freeways back to my house to meet Pam, have a quick pee break, and do a jumping picture before hitting the road for 4 hours...

We pulled in to Lone Pine California close to 6pm, checked in to the hostel and pimped Max, the old bearded hippy behind the counter, for information about summiting Whitney in the winter. Pam, who's not afraid to murder someone through sheer conversation, spent the next 45 min finding out that:
1. Weather was moving in and we'd have the best shot of summiting a day early.
2. We should make out push from Upper Boy Scout instead of Iceberg.
3. There's no need for snow shoes... AWESOME, those things stink.
Cory finally pried Pam away from Max, we went and grabbed Pizza then went anxiously went to bed waiting our 6am wake up time.

Day 2: The Road to Upper Boy Scout

We woke at 6am like we had planned, crossed the street and slopped up as much fat and protein as we could. My weapon of choice was 2 eggs sunny side up, biscuits and gravy, corn beef hash, and a cup of Joe to wash it down with. Whitney Portal road was a long winding road that leads from Lone pine (3000 ft) to the entrance to the Whitney Portal Trail head (8500 ft). From there, Cory, Pat, Pam and I hiked the John Muir trail to the Mountaineer's route which made a fast turn upward and followed the Boy Scout lakes drainage path through the valley.

The first passage proved we all did some exercise preparing for the trip, as we weaved in and out of bolder fields and serpentine switchbacks all on a 45 degree pitch. It got harder with altitude, and when snow entered the equation. We made our first difficult decision at about 9am. Continue forging up the stream or make our attempts at Ebersbacher Ledges. The Ledges make for easier climbing, but they're slightly more risky... and potentially deadly. Since Cory and I were "guiding" this trip, and Pam and Pat put on their harnesses for the first time in the hostel last night, we decided to continue on path less traveled. The morning turned into the afternoon quite quickly and 4 grueling hours later we landed at Lower Boy Scout Lake (approx 11000 ft). It was about 1pm, the sun is directly over head, the snow and ice on the ground is reflecting the sunlight making it feel like it's 80 degrees out and because of future weather concerns we still have another 2 miles, 1500 vertical ft, and 4 hours of climbing left.

The next stretch of land was just as beautiful as the last. The pitch increased slightly and the snow was starting to post hole making walking quite difficult. Cory carved a good path up the slope for us to follow avoiding a lot of the tricky sections and making crampons unnecessary. Surrounded by ice banks, the reminisce of big red woods trees thinning out just before the tree line ended, we saw our days end goal, Upper Boy Scout Lake. Exhausted, over heated, probably a little bit dehydrated the four of us stumbled into camp just after 4pm as others were packing up to leave having just summited. Talking to the passer by's rejuvenated our sense of "Holy shit we're here and can't wait to do this" and we split up into teams to tackle camping chores.

Pat and I set up the tents, Cory was hacking away at the lake with an ice axe filling our water bottles, and Pam was melting snow and heating water for dinner. Once all our chores were done we all met back at the rock we made our dinner table for that night and had dinner. A few bites into our meals we were startled by the sounds Cory puking up something good. He had come down with a case of what we all feared, AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness). AMS is a strange thing, nobody is more, or less prone to it than anyone else; just because you get it once, doesn't mean you'll get it again; It usually consists of vomiting, headaches, cold sweat, fever and because it's caused by extreme altitude gain, the only remedy is to descend. Since we had gone from 3000 to 12,000 ft in a matter of hours, AMS was probably the culprit. In the back of our heads we were hoping it was just sheer exhaustion, and we put him to bed with a few Nalgene's of Gatorade since it was too late to descend.

We put our heads to pillows around 8pm. By then temperatures were in the teens, and light was dying quickly. I slept in the tent with Cory, waking up every now and then making sure he was getting enough water while keeping my fingers crossed he'd be fine, and we'd all get to summit the following morning.

cont.....

The Big Change.

2009-01-29T08:06:00.000-08:00

Mmmmmm, Lovely Cali:

Well... I'm sorry it's been a while since my last post... "but geeze... a lot's happened since then."
First and foremost, I've accepted a job in the fine state of California so I have approx. 6 weeks to sell my house, sell all my shit, fiend a place to live, move the shit I didn't sell out there... Blah blah blah. You know how it is. Anyway, I'll be working the same type of job out there, that I do here. OR stuff, with a side of IT and Business Dev. I'm really looking forward to the move. The company I'm working for is smaller, but the pay is good enough to live on in one of the worlds most expensive cities, LA.

The thing I'm most pumped about is location. I'll actually be living and working in Santa Monica, which is just west of LA on the beach. I'll be surrounded by Soooooooo many mountain. It's gonna be awesome... Check it out here. That's a list of all the peaks in So Cal. that are just a short drive out of LA. THe tallest one on the list is two hours!! Sick right? So I may have been "selfishly uprooting myself" while "leaving friends and family high and dry" (so says my soon to be ex-boss). So I took a poll off all my friends and all my family, it was hard to reach them all being that my dad live in Dubai, and my genius cousin Jim lives in Portland Oregon sans electricity, thank god for the pony express. Anyway, here are the results:

Family: Excited 98% - Pissed 2%.... (-/+ 2%)
Friends: Excited 97% - Pissed 3%.... (-/+ 2%)

Friends/Family who think I'm Selfish
2% - Extremly Selfish never finishes projects.
15% - Slightly Selfish because you never had me over for dinner
13% - Not selfish but hate to see you go
70% - WHo the F cares... it's your goddamn life, get the shit outa here, and go have fun climbing mountains, surfing, and biking year round.

Needless to say that the results to my intensive study makes me feel a lot better better about the move. HA.

SO I say to you Hasta L'vesta Pittsburgh, you're just not pokey enough for me.
This pic was taken yesterday...

Pre-Climb Musts!!

2009-01-05T08:39:00.000-08:00

First let me start by saying happy New Year and I hope everyone's holidays were splendid. Mine certainly were, even though it was a little stressful with a lot of traveling and spending lots of $. But I guess that's what the holidays are all about. I got a lot of cool stuff and gave out a record amount of gifts this year... fabulous.

Anyway, so over the last year I've climbed some mountains, camped out a handful of times and hiked more miles than I'd like to discuss. I've learned a lot of things that may be useful to someone trying to get into mountaineering. I'll start by listing some items that will go a long way in order to keep you comfortable and keep your equipment protected.

1. Sunblock and Lip Gloss; Be sure to cover all nooks and crannies. You wouldn't believe where I go sunburn if I told you. (IE. Up my nose, in my ears, under my chin....)

2. Moleskin; IS A MUST!!

3. Tight pants; Weird right? I have looser pants right now and the crotch tends to dip below where my thighs touch together. Now this isn't something anyone wants to hear but holy god, the friction literally will burns holes in your thighs. I'm not even that fat... my thighs barely touch but you wouldn't believe how uncomfortable this can get. Especially if you're out on a multiple day trek. Just look at this pic of Cory... Sure he looks like sorority chick on her way home from some dudes house the next morning... but he's not suffering from diaper rash.

4. Gators; Even on those short hikes, I think they're worth it. They're easier to clean and they'll save your pants from taking a licking from your muddy boots. Plus, when your pants cost upwards of 300$ you'll want to keep em around as long as you can.

5. Baby wipes; Trust me, you'll find more than one use for them.

6. Head Lamp; You never know where you'll be when the sun sets. And it's hard to find anything at night. Let alone a small dash of paint on a tree. Hell, I have a hard time finding those during the day.

7. Chinese Buffet; I know you can't bring this with you, but always know where one is when you've been out for 7+ hours. Knowledge is power, and the hunger for unlimited General Tso's and Egg Rolls can be so powerful this knowledge can turn you into a god.

Now grab your baby wipes and tight pants and get out there. There's miles of gorgeous trails to be broken and bivouacked on. (yeah I used that word...). Time for me to order some new pants on line. Later...

Mountaineering 101: A Good Nickname

2008-12-19T08:30:00.000-08:00

SO I was reading a fellow bloggers blog... naturally, and he posted the top 10 best names for climbers. Check em out here. Since not all of us were born with bad ass rock climbing names like Dave Dangle, I've decided to make up the top 10 nicknames for the outdoorsy folk. Here they are in no particular order.

1. The Ascender
2. Col
3. Sticht
4. Summi
5. Pru (for Prusik)
6. Zip
7. Lupsy
8. The Descender
9. The Edge
10. Sirdar

Now that I've found all these great nick names, is it proper to give my self one? I was in a heated argument with a man who wanted to call himself Cobra. I'm not sure what happened to that guy, or if he ever followed through iwth his intention, bu one things for sure. Nobody's going sto take his name from him. With that in mind, I now deem myself Sticht Patla. So call me that from now on.

What it takes to climb a moutain.... Part 2

2008-12-15T06:00:00.000-08:00

Base camp: 8,000 ft - Bunny foot trail.
S0 what is there to do at base camp when you're stuck on a mountain? You have 4 days on this mountain, and you're not planning on making your summit attempt for 2 days. I'll tell you what we did. We hit on all the crazy hot chicks that were there getting wasted and dancing with there friends all while making out with each other while getting sprayed with water cannons and briefly exposing themselves for all of us unworthy "gentlemen" there. Oh wait... that's what happened to my friends who went somewhere warm, like Cancun for Spring break. All the girls on the mountain I met hadn't showered in three days, and smelled as ripe as a bunch of old banana locked in Cory work desk for a week. But who am I to judge? I spent all 4 days in the same pair of long Johns occasionally wiping myself down with a frozen baby nap. The good news is, during the 2 days before our summit bid, we learned how to NOT kill ourselves and/or our friends. After a long day of being awesome on a mountain, learning how to self arrest, put on crampons and get out of the way of falling boulders, I'd text all my friends and tell them how hard core I was, checked my work email and chuckled knowing exactly what I was missing... Suckers!!

Once the sun went down the temperatures dropped close to zero. Jay spent the entire first day making an ice table for the entire crew so we'd sit down and eat as a family. Surprisingly enough, we ate very well. The guide service we had brought all of our food for us and we had burritos, and Chili an eggs... They even brought us desert! How awesome is that? And let me tell you, our guides were babes. I'm not sure if it was their self arresting technique, or the fact they had set foot on the peaks of mountains I can only dream of. Ones things for sure, I was definitely more charming, Cory was way more funny and Jay I think told them we were all doctors or something... bottom line, it made the trip that much more fun.

The night before we forged for the pinnacle of the volcano, we went to bed at like 5pm. Here's a nice little pic of Jay, Cory and I sandwiched in a two person tent. This was intentional... I mean sometimes dudes have to cuddle to stay warm. Also, the fact we didn't know how to make a good flat area for our tent means we'd wake up all on top of one another. The good news is we did have my iPhone and I loaded on the movie 'Juno.' But movie night abruptly ended when my batteries ran out at my favorite part (when Jason Baitman tries to rationalize dumping his wife to be cool in the eyes of a pregnant teenager...). 11pm came very quickly and was followed a sea of climbers making a last dash to the compost toilet to "lighten load" one last time to avoid being the guy that crapped infront of an entire mountain of climbers on a paper target which to rub it in, you had to cary with you the rest of the time. Awesome.

So it's pitch black, we get our helmets and headlamps on, it's like -20 degree's and the stars are out and posed in the sky is a full moon. It was gorgeous. 14 of us lined up and waited for what seemed like 45 more minutes waiting for a straggler to put his snow suit and boots on (side note: This is the start of a series of events I will bitch about later). We finally start breaking trail a little after midnight. It's a little over 2000 vertical feet of slow winding valleys from Bunny to Helen lake which proved to be a pretty easy stroll. Not all of us in the group agreed with that... our hourly 10 min breaks turned in to 20-30 min little freezing parties while the "less trained" caught up (Bitch #2). Finally we rounded the last crest and made it to Helen Lake at dawn.

Helen Lake is the base of a huge, steep glacier called Avalanche Gulge (comforting name). At this point we break off into rope teams. The guides, Kirah and Meg decide to break us off into strong and weak climbers which personally should have been done hours sooner, but whatever. The strong crew, Cory, Jason, Myself and Janet (made up name cause I forgot) shot up wiht Kirah while the rest hung with Meg. I was disappointed to see her go but Finally we can start making up the ground we lost waiting for the slower people... Unfortunately the last 4 days on Shasta were winter like conditions which meant lost of snowfall. It wasn't effortless drudging up that portion of the mountain and it sure as hell felt good to get to the entrance of the Red Banks.

Red Banks is at about 12,000ft and it's large chutes of red lava rocks that was created by flowing magma back as the creating of the Volcano. It was pretty cool to look at. Surprisingly enough, at this point nobody got had any altitude sickness. That's not entirely true, Janet got a little belly ache half way up Avalanche Gulge and was forced to drop one on a target in front of the entire rope team. It's not like it's something we haven't seem before though, I mean we are from Pittsburgh. Standing at the bottom of Lava chutes wasn't a typical experience, at least not for me. There's still 2,400ft to climb and your looking up what I've come to believe to be the hardest part of the entire trip. The chutes were solid ice, with a thin layer of powder snow sprinkled on top. Our guide Kirah had us barreling up without crampons which later turned out to be a huge mistake (Bitch #3). 1000 vertical feet of ice climbing without spikes on your feet proved to be a very frustrating learning experience for us all especially me... this is where the infamous "breakdown" occurred. Which I think blown out of proportion by Cory when we got back to Pittsburgh a little, but whatever. Two hours later, we busted through the other side of the Red Banks to the bottom Misery Hill. The last stretch of real estate before reaching the sought after summit.

We were all pretty tired at this point. But what's mountain climbing without being weak and tired. All four of us were still fully invested in reaching the top and would have done whatever to get there. Unfortunately Kirah didn't feel the same, and she with her 30+ summits of Shasta wasn't in the mood to make this day a "double headlamp day." (Bitch #4). So we turned around less than 1300ft from reaching the top of my first mountain. It did tear me up a little bit... Having worked so hard for something to not reach my goal. A character trait (flaw to a certain degree) all three of us share is we're goal seekers. It's what got us to 13,000ft and it's what will get us there again. It wasn't an happy or easy decision but we were another 2 hours from the summit, weather had started moving in and it was getting late, so we agreed and followed our guide back down the hill.

We made it through the Red Banks, then down Avalanche Gulge. It started snowing something fierce, and before we knew it all you could see was white. The growing inches of fluffiness prevented us from glacading down the mountain our our asses, which really stunk for me having tender knee's. It took another 4 hours to climb down the mountain. We reached Bunny Trail camp around 6pm cold, wet, tired and hungry. To make matters worse, we had to pack up camp and hike the remainder of the way to the car. So the next 2+ hours weren't to exciting. But we did see climbers on their way up to make their own attempt, and they got a bit discouraged after looking at Misery they had to look forward to as we passed them on the trail back.

Cory, Jason and I finally made it to the hotel around 8pm. Something I learned and will never make that mistake again, is putting on a very high SPF sunscreen on our faces. We all looked like hell. Places we didn't even think could get burnt did... like under our ears, and up our noses. It was painful. Nothing beat the shower though! Once we were all showered up, we went back to Billy Goats (Ha... I remember the name) for a celebratory beer, and another "Greatest Berger in the world."

I think all three of us learned a lot and we're all looking forward to climbing together in the future. As a matter of fact we started training this weekend for a climb we're making in April to the top of Mount Whitney. It should be Un.... Real. As far as the bitching is concerned.. I think we could have made the summit, had we not wasted all that time in one group, or waiting at base camp for the straggler... or even if conditions were better. Hindsight is always 20/20 and I'm sure if things played out differently we may have makde it. But they didn't, we all still had a great time and I don't regret one second of it.

Microsoft 0, James 1

2008-12-12T09:03:00.000-08:00

Eff you Microsoft. That's right after hours of trying last night... rounds 1 through 6 went to Bill and his legion of Vista bugs. Just prior to calling it a night and hanging my head in defeat I had one last ditch effort that saved me from quitting my profession as a computer engineer. Here's the story of what I did to relinquish myself of that Mind numbing experience we call Vista.

I recently got a new computer, and rather than PAYING Dell for the "Downgrade," I chose to get Vista and remove it manually. I mean gosh... I'm an engineer I'm sure I can figure this one out. First let me get this off my chest...

'HEY DELL... the fact that you charge more for a DOWNGRADE is gay. You'd be better off putting a cheap spin on Apples. You'd spend half as much on outsourced telephone support... that's for sure.'

Moving on. First I figured I'd partition my HD and just run two Opearting systems, then delete Vista once I had a stable version of XP on it. The catch... Vista won't let you run an XP install disk. You can boot to it, but you lose your entire allocation table when you try and "fix" your MBR. And by god you better be willing to deal with a shit storm. I tried everything to restore it... and not because I really wanted to have vista, I'd honestly rather type assembly code to execute my commands that run that piece of shit operating system, but all my dear MP3's I spent years pirating right down the tubes (FU Lars). I gave up with that at about... 830pm. 10 rolled around and I had just about lost it... But Then I remembered something.... I have an old version of a Man's Operating system I can use to fix everything.

My brilliant idea was to boot into Red Hat from my CD ROM drive and and format the entire HD. And that's exactly what I did. Red Hat vs. Windows is like David and Goliath, if David was the winning kill-bot on robot wars and Goliath was the Copy Machine from Office Space that Michael Bolton beats the shit out of. Shit, Red Hat is so proficient I had to stop it from formatting my carpet once it ran out of Microsoft bytes. It was awesome...

To sum things up... In the future, just spend the extra 400$, and get a MAC. It'll never screw you over. They break half as often. They're pretty, sleek... you carry one around while wearing a cardigan and horned rim glasses and chicks think you're intellectual (or like dudes). Hell this chick like them...

As they eagerly wait...

2008-12-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

I know everyone's eagerly waiting part 2 of "what it takes to climb a mountain" but I'm just not in the mood to put forth the effort to do it right this second. I'm not sure I even want to talk about anything... so I'll just name 5 things I really want to do.

1. Climb Denali
2. Scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef
3. Hang Glide
4. Fly in a fighter jet
5. Get the band back together... ha

well I hope that pulls some weight for y'all. Maybe this is the start of List Tuesdays or something. Stay tuned for next weeks episode when I discuss the 5 greatest Christmas presents you can buy for someone exactly like me... ;)

What it takes to climb a moutain.... Part 1

2008-12-04T06:22:00.000-08:00

I was at work surgerizing yesterday and someone asked me 'what made me get into mountain climbing?' and 'How I figured out what to do to climb a mountain?' I'm assuming they meant what does it take to get to the base camp at any mountain. But I'll tell you what it takes to get to the summit as well.

Last May, Cory, Jason and I decided we wanted to stand on top of something big... I mean freaking huge. Since it was my idea I suppose I'd be the A-hole to do all the running around and looking for information. So first things first, how to pick a mountain. When I went looking for our peak, I went simply typed into google "Climbing Mount McKinley." Which I learned fast, was not our mountain. But it lead me to this great website with 10 mountains to climb, their difficulty and all the information we'd need to know to "Git'er Done."

So after reading about all the mountains, figuring out just how much time we all could get off, and reading about what each mountain offered as far as experience we chose Mount Shasta (14,162ft). By no means was this a beginner mountain, but we wanted an expedition style climb, winter like conditions and something freaking HUGE! Also Shasta is a Volcano, the good thing about that is volcanoes pop up practically anywhere making it easily accessible by road and not sandwiched between 100 other peaks in the center of a mountain range. So we went ahead and booked the trip in December for the following May. We'd fly into Medford, Oregon and make the two hour drive south through the rolling hills of Northern California to the city of Shasta at the base of the Mountain.

Now what? We have 5 months and nothing to do till then... Not exactly the case. We had to buy our gear and train. Let me tell you gear is not cheap! We boiled it down to the basics separating things we could rent, things we didn't really want to rent but would if we had to and lastly things we couldn't rent (which ironically was the bulk of the stuff). Researching and shopping for that stuff is one of the most fun things I've ever done. First off I love buying stuff (esp. for myself), and the thrill of going home and playing with your new toys is even more thrilling. I bought, a climbing jacket, mountaineering boots, sub 20 degree sleeping bag, Patagonia thermal undies, a GPS, some socks, gloves, glacier glasses, a hat, some gators, a first aid kit.... well you get the point. A lot of stuff for a grand total of nearly 3,000 $. Let me tell you REI outlet and Sierra Trading post are the place to buy stuff.

So now we have all our gear... time to get training. All we did to train was hike locally. We did a trail called Hells Hollow in McConnells Mills national park about 11,000 times. Well not that many times, but enough that I know it better than I know my own my own house. It's about a 14 mile hike from HH to the covered bridge but we'd do about 10. Hells Hollow is a pretty technical trail with a lot of elevation changed and places with tricky terrain, oh and gorgeous. Perfect for beginners...

Finally our weekend was approaching!! We had all our gear, and we trained like Olympic athletes for months!! I may have seen an ab or two before we left, which I haven't seen since my wrestling days, and probably won't see again till my next climb. So I picked my two friends up at 430am for a 545 flight to Chicago where we'd have our first of our three layovers... and the first of a few bloody Mary's. Cory actually sat at the bar and waited 25 minutes till 9am so the bartender could legally serve us. It wasn't the first alcoholic moment I've had, so I did the same.
No shame....

The flight continued to Portland, Oregon where our next layover took place. As we were approaching the city, Cory looked at the window and saw Mount Hood, then leaned over to Jay and said... "Oh geeze, I'm glad we're not climbing that mountain. It's huge!!" What Cory didn't know was our mountain trumped that one by nearly 3,000 ft. ouch... Another 2 hour layover with some more Bloody Mary's (actually we moved on to beer and Jack at this point) and we got on a prop plane to take us to the quaint town of Medford, Oregon. We landed stepped off the plane and it immediately jumped in to our rental car for the 2 hour journey south out of Oregon, and into northern California.

After seeing what Hood looked like in Portland, I was a little nervous to see Shasta. And let me tell you... I had every right to. Once we broke out of the cascades that separated Oregon from California we entered into a long stretch of flat highway that lead us straight to Shasta. We were 120 miles away and we could still see it. We were flabbergasted by its beauty and terrified of it's size. It's almost impossible to describe, and the pictures we took don't do it a lick of justice. But I'll post it anyway.

A little over 2 hours later we pulled into our motel just outside of the small town of Shasta California. It was 5pm, and we were starving. First things first, Beer and food. We dropped off our bags and headed down town to satisfy our more primal instincts. We stopped at the local coffee shop which turned out to be the place we'd spend most of our time when we're in town. Cory met a guy there, he had long dark hair and stunning blue eyes and happened to head up our guide service. They had so much in common it was almost cute with the exception it was two dudes and I have to spend 3 days in a tent with one... Anyway it was getting late, so Cory had to cut his man-date short with Christian from Shasta Mountain Guys I mean Guides, we went to this restaurant-bar. The name had something to do with a goat, I'd tell you but I totally forgot. We got a table for three, invited the only two girls in the bar to join us (because of what just happened in the coffee shop) sat down and proceeded to put on an eating clinic for the remaining patrons. 9pm rolled around pretty quickly and the bar has since run out of food so we stopped off at the local food shop to stock up on organic mixes and carrot juice, then crashed the Eff out.

So there you have it. What does it take to get to the Base camp at mount Shasta?
Airplane - 800$
Guide Services - 550$
Gear - 1,800$
Rental Car - 200$ (I know a dude)
Hotel - 250$ (Cory met a dude)
Food and Bloody Mary's - 100$ (Jay just loves dudes)

Grand total: Close to 3,000$

Lyrics part 1

2008-12-03T08:22:00.000-08:00

I know this is kind of a rip off, but I'm going to do it anyway. I've been listening to these 2 albums for the last two years and can't get a grip on what it takes to write like this. Thrice created a two album series called the Alchemy Index. The first album Alchemy Index 1&2 represent the elements Fire and Water. And 3&4 are Air and Earth. Anyway, here's a clip of 'Silver Wings' from Air. Things you should know make this such so interesting is that every 6th song in the series represents the element itself talking to humanity, the last two lines of each songs are written in sonnet structure, and they all end with the same chord progression but in different keys and different intonation. It's ingenious.

If you think this song rocks check out the rest of the sonnets, or just go buy the damn albums!!
The Flame Deluge (Fire)
The Kings Upon the Main (Water)
Silver Wings (Air)
Child of Dust (Earth)

Anyway here are the lyrics so you can listen, watch and read....

From tender years you took me for granted
But still I deign to wander through your lungs
While you were sleeping soundly in your bed,
(Your drapes were silver wings, your shutters flung)

I drew the poison from the summer's sting,
And eased the fire out of your fevered skin.
I moved in you and stirred your soul to sing;
And if you'd let me I would move again.

I've danced 'tween sunlit strands of lover's hair;
Helped form the final words before your death.
I've pitied you and plied your sails with air;
Gave blessing when you rose upon my breath.

And after all of this I am amazed,
That I am cursed far more than I am praised.

My First Blog

2008-12-01T06:08:00.000-08:00

Well Hi. I guess a little introduction would be nice. I'm James. I've never really blogged before. One might say I've never really had a reason to. My life really is not that interesting (depending on who you ask), I'm not a good writer and I'm horrible at grammar and spelling. Oh well right?... I will warn you now though. Some posts may include gore, perversion, colorful language, sexual content and the occasional post dehumanizing women. Probably because some girl, possibly my girlfriend pissed me off. But I'll try and keep it to a minimum.

So where do I begin. I guess I'll start with what my morning consisted of. I sat at a computer watching some dudes neck (who we'll call Surgery Steve for the purpose of this blog) get filleted open on an operating room table, while some other guy (who we'll call Dr. Douche) tries to relieve their chronic radicular pain by removing bones from their spine. It'll probably work, and Steve wake painless, flailing his arms about like a raggedy Anne doll, but what happens while he was sleeping is a world nobody will ever really fully comprehend. One person is put in their most vulnerable time in their lives while to everyone else it's become so routine they've lost their sense of compassion. Who am I kidding, I facilitate this... Sorry Stevo.

Here I am telling the Dr. Douche about some hot chick I met over the weekend who was wearing a tank-top and every time she reached for her drink I was sitting in the best spot in the bar to see some sweet side boob. Awesome right? Who doesn't enjoy side boob? Great fucking story to guys who refers to "ass" as a noun and not a verb. The nurses in the room are disgusted but pretend not to be, the salesmen adds some colorful comments about how his wife forgot what sex was, you know the usual "I'm old and have kids so my life has become a joke to those of you who are still awesome" type comment. The PA's depending on wheather they're male or female pick a side and defend it (i.e. "You guys are pigs and you should respect Mrs. Side-tit regardless weather or not she was using her body as a tool to attract the biggest, alpha-male, meat-head in the bar"). Before you know it, the lesbian OR charge nurse hears the conversation on her rounds and throws in some great story about a string of sexual conflict she was apart of in Key West last Mardi Gras. Who does't want to hear about that? I mean I know there's only 4 hot lesbians in the world, but for some reason when guys here story's about lesbo's it's always Terri Hatcher banging Eva Longoria and not two trolls eating a dead carcass. I'm sorry for that description but we all know the truth...

Anyway, A mixture of blood and warm saline rapidly fill containers surrounding Steve's OR table. Dr. Douche is listening to Johny Cash's version of Hurt by NIN and making screw holes in the back of Steve's spine so he can fuse the top 5 levels with metal rods. I'll asure Douche that electrically Steve's spinal chord and nerves suffered no loss of function. He won't hear me because the music is so loud and he's getting paged by the ICU with concerns about his next patient Sally. As Douche slowly closes the wound we walk away with a victory... everyone in the room "got their's" from Highmark, and Steve can continue down his path of self destruction which led him here in the first place and more than likely will bring him back here again. So as Steve spends the next 5 days recovering from his opperation, Dr. Douche and I perform 10 more just like it creating forever flow of medical revenue.

What's the point of this post? Well to stress the fact REAL LIFE IS NOTHING LIKE GREYS ANATOMY. Quit being an idiot.