Ian update v2.0.0.7

Ok, I am moving to Bend next week. How sweet is that! Go me! An address is still up in the air but hopefully I can straighten that out in the next day or two. I looked at 2 houses and one was in one of the new "sterile" neighborhoods, while the other is in the old mill district near Galveston and 13th with cool roommates and 5 minutes from downtown. The only problem with that is a current roommate's sibling has priority over me. Grrr. I will be working trail crew for Deschutes NF but the really important thing about this move is that it is getting me 30 minutes from Smiffy! Hooray for Tuff Love!

Sasquatch not eat you OK?

We went to The Gorge this weekend for some music at the Sasquatch Festival, and of course, climbing. In our campsite at the Feathers we had friends from Alaska, New York, California, Washington and Oregon all converge for 3 days. Friday we just lounged around, climbed, smoked A LOT and drank ourselves silly. I have never seen such a diverse group of people(or so many) camping in one place. There were the climbers, the hippies, the rednecks, the hitchhikers, the yuppies and their puppies too.

Highlites include:
--Creating modern art with toilet paper in the 25 mph wind gusts and having a crazy hippie come hang out with us and ask for some TP but then try and take our whole roll (enviro-hippie maybe?). Either way, the chick just was weird and silently hung out with us for 5 minutes to make sure that we werent wasting any more precious earth resources (come on lady, TP is easily biodegradeable!).

--Making a very potent batch of special brownies for the trip, and then miscounting and giving them all away before Colleen and I got them. (I am a freakin genious!) The disappointment was horrible when I found a baggie with only crumbs left. Apparently they worked though. Kevin reported being "all fucked up" and not being able to walk, Mike, Sasha, Aleta, Farah, and Aleta's BF(?) didnt have anything to report because the brownies put them to sleep within 1.5 hrs (and they wouldn't have been able to remember anything even if they could have kept conscious).

--Climbing an 11.a(/10.c IMO) that I have looked at for a few years. Though only 4 bolts long, it was intimidating because the rock it was on was HORRIBLY loose and the bolts were in the middle of this choss. I really can't get it across in words how loose this route was. I pulled off at least 5 fist sized holds on the route and after inspecting the new bolts on rappell, decided that the bolts definitely should not be fallen onto. Lovely

--Chillin with me homies from Cali. It is always good to see old friends. I was really stoked to be able to show them around my neck of the woods for a few days.

Colleen in her first chimney
The show
Sending

One mountain just isn't enough!

I was feeling particularly motivated last week and decided to try out this whole, punishing physical activity that Will G and Colleen seem to love so much. So, my torture of choice was climbing mountains. I fenagled some folks to climb Hood saturday morning and we were slow(Mikel's asthma was really bad at higher elevation) but made it to the top by way of West Crater route. I gotta say, I dont know why anyone bothers with the Pearly Gates because WC is a WAY better route in my opinion. We descended and on the way down watched a party of 5 still on the way up (hogsback at 1:00pm). Those are the folks you may have heard about on the news. They made a very bad decision to continue because when we passed them it was starting to snow (a very clearly forcasted weather system was moving in over night). They all got off OK but they were still stupid.
Then Colleen Dev and Rhiannon met us in Portland and we continued on to St Helens to Ski In A Dress For Mothers Day! We woke up at 4 am to rain so we went back to sleep till 6 or so and it was finally slacking off so we started up after a very leisurely brekke. About 400 people turned out for the event. It was like a huge anthill with no more than 50 feet between any one group. We all made it to the top, and then got the enjoy a very pleasent bluebird ride down. Wonderful trip. I am stoked I pulled off both mountains. 11,000 ft. in a weekend. I can do better.

St. Helens pix up later(or you might be able to look at Cols blog for pix)

I got a new job!

Woot! I will be spending the next 5 months or so in Bend, OR working on trails in the Deschutes National Forest. Unfrtunately I will have to take a 15 cent pay cut from my job now, but hey, I am still coming out on top because now it doesn't cost 60$ to get to Smith! I will be working 4 ten hour days per week all over the forest. I am on a 5 person crew which is responsible for maintaining 2000+ miles of trail in the woods (I have my work cut out for me). Some of the projects my new boss was telling me about are coordinating volunteer groups, building 2 new XC ski shelters, some backcountry work, and possibly fire training/work. Should be sweet!

Additionally, if you know anyone looking for a roomate in Bend, please tell me. I can't camp at the grasslands all summer. :)
The forest:

StreamRipper

stream ripper is a handy(and simple) liddle tool that allows you to turn straming audio into mp3 files. Shwing! So lets get started. Visit http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=6172 and download the latest version under "file releases." It works in conjunction with Winamp so get that too if you dont have it(best media player ever anyway). Basically once you install it, the streamripper(SR) will hang out with winamp and when you are listening to streaming audio, just click the "rip" button and it will go to work turning otherwise unrepeatable musica into mp3s in a folder you specify. Thanks to my buddy Kevin for showing me this. :)

Revamping

My blog sidebar was having some issues so I got a whole new template, and in the process noticed that blogger spiffed up their interface a little. It is a hell of a lot easier to add/change blog elements. Check out the new stuff in the Template editor. I lost my links, so if you have a blog that I forgot, I can always add it.

Camas blooms: