RED ROCKS

After Josh and Liz’s wedding most of the crew headed down to red rocks for a week of warm winter climbing. The climbing was amazing and temperatures were in the high 60’s, we were searching for shade by 1 in the afternoon almost every day.
The trip started off well with Joey getting pulled over on the drive down and then getting let off. We have discovered from previous climbing trips (smith rock in-particular) that when you start a trip with a speeding ticket the trip usually doesn’t go as well as planned.
First day of climbing we headed to the Gallery, me and Justin decided to warm up on yack crack 11d and both got the onsite which was a nice way to start the trip. Shanel, Joey, Joey, Hannah and Stevo climbed the 9’s and 10’s on left wall of the Gallery. Climbed a bit more at the Gallery then headed to the Black Corridor, after doing a few routes in there Justin and I headed for “California 12a.” We have been looking at this climb for about a year now, its rated 12c, is extremely steep and fairly short (just what we like). We rigged up a sweet stick clip because if you fall before the first bolt you are gonna land straight on your back from about 15’ up. We each got on it twice or so, just climbing to the second bolt, it was awesome. The sun was going down so we left one of my draws there and planned to come back later in the trip.
The nights consisted of whiskey drinking, rummy, monopoly, hot tubbing, and eating fine foods (crab, salmon, and shrimp) courtesy of Charlie and Donna. Brandon and Breanne showed up night 2 making our crew total 9 for this trip.
Day 2 consisted of more climbing, Brandon, Justin and I all on-sited “Sweet Pain” 11d. Once again me and Justin warmed up with this climb, we decided we weren’t gonna pump ourselves out on anything that wasn’t worth our while. We then headed over to Tsunami wall to try out a climb called “Poseidon Adventure” 12c. This climb is short and steep with two big dyno’s in it, just like we love. This climb presented more committing moves than I have ever done while lead climbing it was awesome. We projected this for a while, no one got the red point, but Brandon did make it to the top clean with the first 3 bolts stick clipped.
Day 3 we headed to the third pullout to the “Wake Up” wall. Day 3 was a bit of a day off for us so we decided to climb easier stuff. Joey Peterson almost got his first 10a onsite but slipped when his hands were 2 inches from the anchors. Joey Dragon did get his first clean 10a lead outside that day (props to both Joey’s). We then headed to the Twinkie wall and set up some top ropes. We then began to discuss the dinner situation and Charlie said he was gonna stop by Costco on the way home, pick up some salmon and He and Donna were gonna make salmon stuffed with crab and shrimp we all erupted when he mentioned this. Later that night we indulged ourselves in one of the most amazing meals I have ever eaten.
Day 4 we split up in the morning with Joey and Joey heading to the “black corridor” with the rest of us going to “Stone Wall”. I hadn’t been to stone wall before and its absolutely sweet. We all climbed a few 10’s, then it was time to head back to “California 12a”. As we were projecting it a rouge desert fox attacked Hannah and Stevo’s back pack and stole away with a full bag of chalk, it was actually pretty entertaining except that the fox got away with a full bag of chalk (to bad for Hannah and Stevo). We climbed all afternoon on California, no one got it clean, but we did make it to the top with a take or two. California 12a is probably the best climb I have ever done outside it starts in a huge roof filled with hueco’s and big moves. I can’t wait till next year or this spring to go back and get the red point. Night 4 was the last night so we made sure to get a little more JD before heading home. Ate pizza and burgers, played more monopoly, and finished the festivities with a slide show on the big screen of all the pictures we had taken on the trip.

A Third Purpose

For as long as I can remember I have always thought or believed that any animal has two major purposes in life. 1. To Eat, 2. To Breed.

I’m not saying this is all animals are good for or that this is all they do, however, I always thought those were the two things that drove them. A week or so ago I was reminded about a most annoying bird that I had forgotten about for a while. This bird is the Mocking Bird (properly named). I remember growing up and my mom telling stories about how mocking birds would tease her dog Lassie relentlessly. Then I thought again and remembered how they would do the same thing to my old dog Bronco always stealing his food and sitting just out of reach, squawking constantly in his face.

So back to my story…. About a week ago I got up to go to work, and walked out the door to go to my car. I suddenly heard an enormous amount of squawking, hmmm…. I thought, that’s odd. I looked up the hill to see Sally (black lab) surrounded by no less than ten mocking birds. She was surrounded, and all the mocking birds would fly just as close to her mouth as possible while continuing to squawk at her, then landing on a nearby sagebrush and flying narrowly out of Sally’s reach just as soon as she chased them. It was like a bunch of bullies picking on someone, or a bunch of cool kids getting together and making fun of or picking on someone they didn’t think was cool. I mean literally, there was 10-15 mocking birds in a circle surrounding Sally for the sole purpose to tease her. So I have come to the conclusion that Mocking Birds have another purpose in life and that purpose is to be the biggest a** holes they can.

A Great Idea!

You know I was just thinking about the whole tax thing that Obama is proposing. I have a great plan. I mean the people who make over 250k a year right now already pay 40% at least in taxes, I think we should tax them more, psyche!

Ok seriously here is my plan for all the doctors, lawyers, employers, business men, and successful individuals who make over 250k a year. I think they should all work for whatever portion of time it takes them until they make 249k, then shut down business for the rest of the year, so they wouldn’t have to pay anymore taxes. Here is what would happen. A bunch of people would die (no doctors), a bunch of people would lose their jobs (no employers), etc, etc, etc. Middle class people tend to forget sometimes that it is often the people above them that provide them with jobs.

Oh wait, you want to make more money (own a business, become a doctor, or lawyer etc.) than start busting your ass. The vast majority of the people who make over 250k a year sacrificed a lot to get to that point and now they are being punished. If you don’t want to sacrifice to get there than that’s fine, just don’t whine about how the rich have it so easy.

BRAKE LIGHTS

About 5 months ago the brake lights on mine and Shanel’s Nissan X-terra stopped working. Here or there they would work on and off but never consistently. I checked the fuses and they were all fine, I checked the break light bulbs and they were all fine, so finally I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to worry about them anymore, because they still worked every once and a while.

About 3 weeks ago Shanel had to come to a fast stop and some dude had to swerve out of the way to miss hitting her. The dude rolled down his window and told her that her brake lights were out. Shanel told me later on that day what had happened and I proceeded to tell her that I knew the brake lights had been out for some time, I just didn’t know how to fix them.

Last week I was driving to the Hacienda for a friends birthday and got pulled over by the “PO” the “PO” was nice and let me off but told me I had to fix my brake lights or next time I would be ticketed.

Our crew was planning on leaving for Owens River Gorge the next day on a climbing trip and our travel vehicle was going to be the X-terra. I didn’t feel comfortable taking the X-terra as we could get pulled over rather easily and I would have a nice ticket to make the trip that much better.

I came home that Wednesday night and went to work once again on the X-terra. I ripped the entire car apart, checking every bulb and fuse you could think of. At around 1am I called it a night and went to bed with absolutely no progress made. Thursday morning I woke up at 6 am and headed straight out to the X-terra, I got out there and just started thinking what else I could check. I couldn’t think of anything, so I went online and started looking at auto forums of people who had similar brake light problems to mine. I found one forum with a schematic of my brake light system (showed everything, fuses, switches, etc.). This was very encouraging to me. I saw that the first place the problem could come from was the fuse, after that everything went straight to the brake light switch. Ahh…… I thought, the brake light switch. I started moving things around down there (it is very tight quarters down by the pedals under the consol) wiggling the switches and trying to unplug them. All of a sudden, my brake lights started working, I was stoked. This has to be the problem I thought, it has to be. By this time it was getting close to 8 am and I had to head to work.

It is in my nature to fix things, I love working with my hands and I absolutely love fixing things, because of this, I couldn’t focus one bit that morning at work. All I could think about was fixing my brake lights. I called around and found that “Kragen Auto” had a new brake light switch in stock. I left for my lunch break a little bit early headed straight to Kragen and bought the switch. Then I went straight to my parents house and began going to work.

Casey jumped in and started helping me (he likes fixing things too). We got under there and started unscrewing crap and prying things around. I told Casey I knew the problem we just had to get this dam switch out. It took a while, and multiple substitutions (me and Casey switching spaces) before we finally got the switch unscrewed. Casey got the switch unplugged and we got ready to put in the new switch.

Wait a minute, now the new switch didn’t have the same connection as the old switch so we couldn’t swap them out. We came to the conclusion that we needed to cut off the little carriage piece that plugged into the brake light switch, get a new one of those and then we could put the whole thing back together. Meanwhile, my lunch break was up and I had to go back to work, once again I felt defeated and annoyed.

I started calling people and found out that no one carried the other part I needed but rather you had to buy the entire front electronic carriage (around 700 bucks) and you had to order it from the dealership.

We ended up not taking the X-terra on the climbing trip, we had to get out of town so I left my brake lights unfixed as much as it aggravated me to do so.

When I got back to town I went back to work. I had discovered that the only way to get the part I needed was to go to pick and pull and try to find one and then splice the wires together. Before I went to this extreme I wanted to make sure that I was not gonna go to pick and pull for no reason. I thought to myself about the brake light switch and realized that all it was, was a switch, it turned power off and on. I went back under the dash and stripped the two wires that connected to the brake light switch and started tapping them together (connecting the circuit and providing power to the brake lights), it seemed to be working because I heard something switching on and off when I touched the two wires together. I called out my dad to have a look and see if the lights went on when I tapped the wires together. Sure enough they DIDN’T, great I thought, what now, I’m giving up.

Yesterday I gave in and took my car to John’s Auto Electric. I told him all that I had done and gave him the keys. He wasn’t to pleased that I had cut the wire and not allowed him enough spare wire to splice it back together, anyway he said he could fix it for 75 buck or so, so I said ok. He called me an hour later and said it was fixed and ready. I went to pick up my car this morning and asked him what the problem was. “It was the brake light switch” he replied. What the heck do you mean I said, I took that thing out and determined that the switch was fine and that wasn’t the problem. Turns out I had taken off the cruise control switch, which explains why the new brake light switch and the old one were not the same ( I had been trying to replace the cruise control switch the whole time and wondering why it had a different adaptor than the brake light switch). The entire time I knew there were two switches activated by the brake pedal, I had simply read the schematic wrong and take off the cruise control switch instead of the brake light switch (these switches are one inch away from each other).

Moral of the story is, my brake lights now work. I diagnosed the problem properly and bought the right parts to do the repair, I was so close but not close enough. At least I tried. One good thing is that I managed to brake my cruise control in the process “which is nice”. Now I have something else to fix.

WOW

So I went to Port of Subs today for lunch. This port of Subs is off of South Meadows Parkway in the same Shopping center as Smiths. I parked in the Smiths parking lot and went in to get my sandwich. As I was leaving a woman driving through the parking lot stoped, rolled down her window, and asked another lady walking through the parking lot this question.

"Do you know where Smiths is"

Me and Josh looked at each other in disbelief.