My friends Telly and Heidi did a lot of climbing before they had kids, and now that I have gear and am excited to go, I’ve pushed, prodded, and begged them to take me climbing and show me the ropes, literally. Today was our second climb at the Chuckwalla trailhead, and they taught me how to lead climb.

In the past, I’ve top roped, which is climbing with a rope that runs through an anchor on the top of the climb. Lead climbing is where you attach to anchors in the rock as you ascend. If you fall while top roping you don’t really fall at all, the rope stretches a little to absorb the impact, and that’s all you move. When you lead climb you fall twice the distance of your last anchor, so if I last attached to an anchor 10 feet below me, I’ll fall 20 feet, plus whatever stretch the rope needs to compensate for the shock. The advantage of lead climbing is you don’t need an alternate route to get to the anchor on top, you just climb up to it instead of climbing around the cliff looking for a hiking route to the top.

I did it and was able to set the rope so everyone else could climb, I didn’t even fall, though I was pretty close to it at one point. I’m slowly building up my endurance, and get a little better each time. Thanks, Telly and Heidi!

picture credits

stump (stmp)

1. n. The part of a tree trunk left protruding from the ground after the tree has fallen or has been felled.
2. v.To traverse (a district or region) making political speeches.

I went stumping with our City Councilman, Gil Almquist today. Now I’ve never been much for politicians, but I got a knock on our door today from Mr Almquist, and he was very convincing:

Hi, I’m Gil Almquist, and I noticed you’ve been working on those two stumps out front, and I have my backhoe, want some help pulling them out?

He proceeded to spend the next hour helping me, a complete stranger, pull two tree stumps out of my yard with his tractor. Then he even disposed of them. He didn’t mention the city council or government at all, I brought that up, he was just being a good neighbor (see Mark 12:31)

Why can’t our other elected officials be more like that?

Vote Gil Almquist in 2011

(Yeah, I used the <marquee> tag on a webpage, I haven’t done that in years)

The girls’ school had a cake auction last night as a fund raiser. Here’s our entry.

I made most of it, and Meg did the hard part, piping the frosting onto the tombstones. It sold for $65, which I thought was pretty good, but even better a friend from work bought it, so I got to help eat it today too!

Meg also made a batch of scary looking cupcakes that fetched a pretty penny!

Seven or eight times over the last few weeks I’ve gone to a nearby park with some friends from work during lunch break. The park has two large climbing boulders, like this one:
Each boulder has four sides, with one easy face so kids can climb. As you can tell from the picture,  the other walls are actually inverted.  The first time we went I looked at the inverted walls and though, “What a joke, I can’t climb these, nobody can climb these.”  I tried anyways, I was right I couldn’t climb any of them, at least nobody else could either

We didn’t quit though, back in the office we did pull-ups and griping exercises, trying to strengthen our climbing muscles, and we kept going back, several times a week. Eventually we all started to notice an improvement. Our goal was to be able to climb up all eight sides in one climbing session, at the beginning that seemed an impossibility, but two days ago Pete did it!  He’s nearly a foot taller than the rest of us, so we joked that it was his height that gave him an advantage, but in reality he’s been hitting the pull-up bar more than the rest of us and has bulked up. I didn’t feel too bad though, I did six of the eight sides the same day, a far cry from only being able to do the two easy sides.

Finally, one hour ago, I was able to climb all 8 sides consecutively! Even better, when I finished, I climbed one of the hard sides again, just because I could.

SUCCESS!!!

We’ve already been certified to belay at the local climbing wall, so our next goal is to climb all 16 corners, and then we’ll start some top-rope climbing at some of the local rock formations.

Here is a link to a bunch of photos of us working on the Bunk Bed. As we work on it more, I’ll update this photo set.

After spending several hundred dollars on wood and hardware, it was time to cut, sand, nail and glue. 8 Year old Natalyn got a pretty good picture of me at work.

Of course any construction job is union operated and needs proper staffing. Supervision, Cleanup and Transportation are vital.

It took me about 2 weeks of random evenings to cut all the large pieces, sand them, and prime them with a base coat. Then I started assembly in the downstairs bedroom.

Since I was installing lights and electrical outlets in the bed, as well as building shelves and storage bins in the headboard, it took me another two weeks, including Saturdays, to finish assembly.

Of course it’s still not done, it needs to be painted and the hardware attached, which will still take a while, but the main structure is done, and the kids can climb on it, so as far as their concerned it’s good to go. Katie said to me before she went to bed “Daddy, if I get up early in the morning, you’ll find me playing on the Castle Bunk Bed”. I think it’s a hit!

Who do the Obama supporters expect to clean up after them? YOU AND ME!

The National Mall After 2 Million NON-Obamaites attended a Tea Party this weekend:

The National Mall After “His Majesty’s” Inauguration:

From KenNelson.com

I’m not sure what he did to deserve it, but I was taken aback when I found him, dangling a foot off the ground while the makeshift noose held him fast. Nobody messes with my daughters, not even Unicorns!

Maybe I should worry…

I was only able to pump out 90 push-ups. It’s frustrating being so close to 100 and not getting it. Oh well, I’ll do the 600+ push-ups from week 6  over again and then try again next Saturday. (For the record, I freely admit that my form is atrocious and needs to improve as well, I’m referring to both my push-up form and my pot-belly)

I’m working on a 6 week program to work up to 100 consecutive push-ups.  I started almost 6 weeks ago able to do 22 push-ups. Today I did 81. Actually I did 295 in the last hour, but the last 81 were consecutive. Tomorrow is the big test to see if I can do 100 in a row. Wish me luck!