Toys

first_fire.jpg So I picked up a slide scanner from costco. Not sure about the quality yet, but was playing with old negatives. I have no recollection of this moment. It must be at the Giles house in New Hope, MN, but it doesn’t even look familiar. Not the first fire, but within a month of learning, I suppose.
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Universal Laws

But magic is never as simple as people think. It has to obey certain universal laws. And one is that, no matter how hard a thing is to do, once it has been done it’ll become a whole lot easier and will therefore be done a lot. A huge mountain might be scaled by strong men only after many centuries of failed attempts, but a few decades later grandmothers will be strolling up it for tea ‘and then wandering back afterwards to see where they left their glasses.
–Maskerade by Terry Pratchett

Digitizing the past

old_climbing.jpgSo I finally got around to playing with my video camera and figured out how to dump my old vhs stuff to the hard drive. I got almost 2 hours of climbing videos from 1995. It’s mostly slow and boring but it really takes me back. There was some fun stuff like this little dance Anne did I hope she doesn’t kill me for posting it, but it’s cute and shows why she was so much fun to hang out with.
Unfortunately the Roxio software that came with my DVD burner doesn’t actually burn DVD’s. I only found that out after I cut in all the chapters and arranged it all the way I wanted it. Kinda cheeses me off, but I guess if I copy the data to work I can make one with the software there.

Backpacking Sugarloaf

Secret Lake Friday evening I met Jared, his wife Jamie, and his dad Wayne up at the Albion Basin to go backpacking. I’d kind of gone nuts and got a new tent because I didn’t have a good one for backpacking. While I was at it, the boy scout motto, long dormant, flared up and I ended up with a decent first aid kit, new sleeping pad, headlamp and various other items I thought I might need.
We got up to the parking lot and headed out just after 6:00 p.m. for the pass between Sugarloaf and Devils Castle. We had a lot of fun along the way joking about the out-of-shape city dwellers attempting to scale mountains. Surprisingly, I was almost able to keep up, despite carrying all that unacustomed gear and on a swollen ankle that probably should have kept me from going. Around sunset we made the saddle and were rewarded with quite a view. Unfortunately this view included a line of lightning laced storm coming right towards us from the Timpanoges side. We debated the situation for a few minutes and decided that it was probably wiser to not camp on the peak in a lightning storm, a solution not often reached if you watch the local news often enough. So after a few blessed minutes of packlessness we hitched back up and started for lower ground. We made it back down in less than a third of the time it took us to make the ascent with the judicious use of flashlights.
aggrivated.jpgBy the time I got to the bottom my ankle had really had it. I didn’t notice till we turned around and started up the road at the campsites, but decided I’d probably not be able to make the same trip up the next morning, even with leaving most of my kit at the campsite. If there had been someplace to camp readily available, I’d have probably endured the weather just to give all my new toys a try and stuck it out, but I knew I couldn’t go farther, so I bailed and came back. I was sitting back in my chair by 10:30, so it was quite the adventure.
I did have my gps with me but I can’t seem to locate the cord that connects it to the computer, but when I find it or get the new one I’ll have to update this entry for statistical content. I also hope to get a little video, or some pictures from Jared to add too.

Trial Lake Trial

washington-trial.jpgWell, I tried to get the kayak out again yesterday, but the weather didn’t cooperate so I just took the kayak for a ride. I had thought it was a great idea to head up to the Uintahs, but evidently so did about another hundred-thousand people. Just before we got to Washington Lake we saw the remains of a really bad car wreck with one car upside down and another that looked like it had been hit head on at high speed. I’ve looked at the news and havn’t seen any reports, but I can’t imagine everyone survived it.
When we got to Washington it was wall to wall people in the campgrounds, so we backtracked to Trial Lake and the shore was lined with people fishing. It had been really hot when we were loading up the truck but by the time we got to the lake it was pretty cold and windy. We hiked around across the dam and just down from the cabin where I always fish when I go to trial and just left the kayak in the truck. I was dressed for warm wet kayaking and not for rain, but it wasn’t too bad. We did get rained on a bit, but not bad enough that I wanted to get my jacket out of the truck.
We took chance along, but the lightning was really scaring him, so he kept trying to climb under Kirk every time there was any thunder. scardey_chance.JPG
Kirk caught the first fish on some powerbait, but it wasn’t quite big enough to keep so he let it go. I was having a good time laughing at the little fingerlings trying to take my hooks that were bigger than their mouthes every time my line came within a couple feet of the shore. I ended up hooking a couple tiny fish with flies. I landed a really pretty brook trout that had some really funky markings, and one rainbow that was… er not so pretty mutant_trout.JPG

A couple more pictires of the lake…
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Pre-emptive Karma

I hope Rincewind never catches up with me

The root problem, Rincewind had come to believe, was that he suffered from pre-emptive karma. If it even looked as though something nice was going to happen to him in the near future, something bad would happen right now. And it went on happening to him right through the part where the good stuff should be happening, so that he never actually experienced it. It was as if he always got the indigestion before the meal and felt so dreadful that he never actually managed to eat anything.
Somewhere in the world, he reasoned, there was someone who was on the other end of the see-saw, a kind of mirror Rincewind whose life was a succession of wonderful events. He hoped to meet him one day, preferably while holding some sort of weapon.

–Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett