Yeah, unlike my friend Connelly, I still want nothing to do with free climbing radio towers unless intentionally "falling" off is part of the plan. But this? This I would so love to do.
Last Walk Around Mirror Lake - Boom Bip (Boards of Canada Remix) from FroschYankee on Vimeo.
I'm afraid of heights. There. I said it up front.
Yeah, I've summitted three Fourteeners, and I teach skydiving almost every weekend now, but that's different. I'll crawl all over the outside of an aircraft as long as it's above 1,000 feet and I'm wearing a parachute. Mountains? Well, the first one I did, the north Maroon Bell, in Colorado, back in 1978, I was feeling pretty sick at the top. "That's just altitude sickness," said the lead climber in our group. "Yeah," I thought, "The kind of sickness you get in the top of a tree that you weren't all that sure you could make your way back down." We finished that descent by moonlight, by the way.
Anyway, I said all that to say this: These guys are crazy. This looks fun under only one circumstance: wearing a B.A.S.E. rig the entire time. Under that condition, sure, I'd do this. But otherwise, unclipped, unrigged, unenclosed? Not on your life. Nuts. Plain and simple.
So, without further ado, here's the video. If you can start it and watch one minute and not watch the entire seven plus, then you're a better man (or woman) than I. And that's all I have to say about that.
I began blogging in earnest in 2007, inspired, largely, by my cousin, Barry, over at Enrevanche. Blogging was, in some ways my most important intellectual outlet. Through 2008 and the first half of 2009, it was also the place where I hung out with friends.
Then, in 2009, marriage, a new job, a new city, and the blogging didn't so much taper off as simply stop, precipitously. It dwindled to a short post every couple of months, if that. Not writing, I was also not reading. But that watershed year is behind us now. A custody suit is over (in our favor), a SACS accreditation visit to the new campus I've spent a year getting off the ground is complete (with an unheard of single recommendation about something no one could have anticipated, and the visiting team's single word summation of the inspection was, "Wow!").
In many ways, I've begun to live again. I no longer work every weekend. Late days at the school still occur, but they are no longer the rule.
Eventually, I might even begin to write again. And more importantly, read. But whom shall I read? There was a small group of us, who followed one another's words and lives with regularity. For over a year, I've shared little and read little, and the ether world that I knew has changed. It's like returning to your hometown after a year or more deployed. People will have moved on, gotten married, taken up new hobbies. So it is here. Barry, my original inspiration, hasn't posted to Enrevanche since July. Jay, over at The Extended Table, whose beautiful family I met in Colorado, and whose fine gift of spirits I enjoyed some remainder of with my new father-in-law/old friend last night, not since June. Phil, whose perspective I always enjoyed at The Archer Pelican, hasn't been heard from since April. And Lex, of Neptunus Lex, I'm sure is still blogging somewhere, but not at the address I used to visit. Only Buck, whom I'm convinced is a reincarnation of Addison or Steele, seems to have kept the torch burning over at Exile in Portales.
The world can change a lot in a year. The real world or the digital one. I hope my friends are out there still, and well. It won't be the first time I've come back to a place and had to spend time searching for the friends I left behind.
"Any one of us who is lucky enough to have a job today must worry about losing it. This Labor Day, we might salute the millions of Americans who don’t have jobs, but who in many ways work harder than ever."On the way to the drop zone on Saturday morning, lucky enough not just to have "a day job," but to have an extracurricular activity that's sometimes better than break even as well, I heard a short piece on NPR that moved me. NPR is my normal accompaniment on the way to work during the week, but on a weekend, I start out tuned into something a little more designed to get the blood flowing. I was grateful this past Saturday was different.
And really, really well at that. Of course I knew this when I married her. :-) It's quiet here at They Rode On, but if you like reading for the beauty of the stories and the words, check out the last few days work over at Cafe Catiche. You won't be sorry.
