Bringing the Caribbean to the Canadian Wilderness

I went to sleep Sunday night with pineapple on the brain. It stewed inside of me all morning on Monday and then it hit me. An epiphany.

You see, Andrew and I are both cooks. And normally we bring a handful of fresh vegetables/fruit/herbs to supplement all of the fish (an occaional snake) we eat at Bob Lake.

So I'm thinking to myself "pineapple...wow. that's going to taste so good. pineapple..." when I realize how awesome if we ONLY brought tropical fruits to supplement our all-fish-occaional-snake diet there. It's going to be Bob Lake - Caribbean style.

So this time we're limiting our ingredient list to oranges, limes, grapefruit, melons, mangoes, pineapples and coconuts and herbs that are featured in the native Caribbean dishes.

Bob, meet Pineapple

At 9:11 P.M. on Sunday night, the following words appeared via text-massage on my cell phone:

"Yo next year at bob we should bring a pineapple"

This, I think, will go down as one of the best text-messages ever. I laughed out loud and my mind began to spin. But it demands a little explanation.

Who/what is bob? Why bring a pineapple? Why next year?

Anyone who knows me, understands. Bob is a place. Bob lake. It's where my best friend and I go on an annual "retreat"of sorts. It involves us getting dropped off via-seaplane on a remote lake in the Canadian wilderness for 8 days.

The drive.

The plane.

The snake.

You get the drift.

And next year, there's gonna be a pineapple.

A Foolhardy Friday

Yesterday was a hell of a day. To begin with, an 8 am Contemporary Issues class. This was pre-empted by breakfast and If I recall correctly, followed by a second breakfast and possible rest. Anyway, by midday I was at the shoreline of the Winooski River beneath Lime Kiln Road. A really beautiful place. I had with myself a backpack and large climbing pad. I wanted to climb a steeply overhanging rock ledge that I'd spotted while crossing the bridge over the river.

I descended into the river gorge and found myself on a tiny, muddy little shore. I took a look at my prospect.

The rock jutting from the left of the picture is the one I have in mind, and it extends about 1oo yards or so down the river until it reconnects with the shore. The plan is to traverse the underhang and climb my way downriver, without falling into the water of course. Realizing that my climbing pad and backpack will actually be of no use for this project, I decided to climb above the ledge (with them strapped to my back) and stash them there (I had an expensive camera in there along with cash and wallet etc).

This turned out to be a bad idea.

While climbing up the rock to stash my gear, my hiking boots fell from my hand (yeah I was even trying to do this one-handed), and splashed into the MOVING water beneath me.

So I panic.

I hop off, drop my bag and pad, and remove my precious climbing shoes (wisely) but fail to take my cell phone of my pocket (unwisely) and wade bravely into the cold waters of the Winooski River for my hiking boots that are slowly floating downstream.

And here's how I come out.



Amidst this foolish mayhem, a pair of unidentified small mammals came over to appreciate the spectacle unbeknownst to me - their presence betrayed by a series of seconds-old tiny footprints in the muddy shore. At least my antics did not go unappreciated.

So after saving my boots I immediately plunge a hand into my soggy pocket and frantically pull out my dripping cell phone and furiously dry it with my shirt. I follow the standard wet cell phone procedure of removing battery, opening phone and praying for the best. And I enter the realm of cell-phone limbo.

Demoralized but determined to do some climbing I set out to estalish a route, anyway. I'll take my chances with my gear. Whatever.

After 30 minutes of desperately trying to decode this absurd overhang, I give up. Sometimes the rock just does that to you. Humbles you like that. Getting you wet and killing your cell phone and having small mammals mock you. But you move on.

And that's what I did. Got the hell out of there!

The man is on a roll!

So this morning I posted about having establishing my first "boulder problem". Well, only minutes after having published that blog I revisited a climbing area along the train tracks that run by the Winooski River, where there are a couple of established "lead climbs" (long climbs that are studded with bolts that you periodically attach your rope to as you ascend) and "top rope" climbs (long climbs where you anchor a rope to the top of the climb prior to climbing it).

I'd never heard of any boulder problems down there but I figured why not check it out - maybe there's a good boulder problem hidden there that no one has noticed yet (I say "hidden" because almost all rock is climbable, but a boulder problem exists by virtue of it benig a portion of rock that is exceedingly difficult to climb and can usually only be climbed in ONE way - it requires a specific sequence of movements).

So I'm looking around, climbing various areas, etc. when I stumble across this beauty:

The sequence follows straight up from the mat, and ends when you've climbed to the point where your feet have reached the level of the little green plant jutting out of the rock (the cliff itself goes higher than the picture shows).

Let's try and break it down!

The problem begins (as many boulder problems do) with your butt on the ground, and both hands on the rock. This is called a sit-start. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the sit start sequence, so we'll begin once I've pulled myself up onto the face of the rock and am about 2 "moves" deep.

So here I am a few moves into the sequence:

I hold strongly onto the right "crimp" hold (a "crimp" refers to a very short ledge that you grip with the tips of your fingers) and lift my right leg:

Now I focus my strength on locking the grip on my left hand and push on my footholds as I draw my right hand up to the next hold and then draw up my right leg:

This allows me to match my hands on the right hand hold (not picture) and then move my right hand over to the crack hold and shift my body over to compensate.

Then I thrust upward, pulling with my left hand and pushing with my right foot to a high right hand hold, and complete the last movements, which I unfortunately couldn't take any pictures of because I haven't figured out how to customize the timer on my camera yet. But you get the drift!

My Very Own "Boulder Problem"

Yesterday was a wonderful day for me. I was able to finally send a boulder problem that I'd been establishing by the Winooski bay because of the beautiful weather. That last sentence was a little lingo-heavy so I'll help you out. In the language of climbing "send" means to complete a route without falling. A "boulder problem" is a short climbing route (usually 15 - 30 feet) that may not necessarily be a boulder (in this case it is a short cliff) and it is climbed solo without ropes. They are generally made to be very difficult and require a great deal of technique or power.

Anyway, it's the first boulder problem I've ever founded (which just means I was the first to spot it as a possibility, chalk up and solve it). Now I get to name it, rate its difficulty and publish its existence on RockClimbing.com.

And now I'm going to head right back there while it's still warm!

Scoial Interaction In a Digital Age

Hey guys. I got a little worked up after a climbing session and conversation with a good friend of mine on the way home from the rocks, and below was the result.

"Health Care is a Human Right"

Lately I have been told that "health care is a human right". The message is everywhere. You'll find it on bumper stickers even now. And in a way, I completely agree. But not in their way.

When I think of health care as a human right, I think of it this way - that we should have the right to take care of our health. And who would disagree?

But that's not what I'm getting from those around me. It seems that's not their message. Their message is that we have a right to have someone/something else take care of our health. Should this be a right? If it is, should it really be granted to everyone, all the time? Or even most of the time?

We ALREADY have the right to take care of ourselves. Take advantage of THAT right before you ask for any new ones. More than half of us are overweight. Most of us know better. And yet we CHOOSE to be that way. We've convinced yourself that you don't have time to exercise. We DO. We just CHOOSE to watch television instead. We say you can't afford a gym membership. We don't NEED a gym membership. Lifting heavy things and moving your body around isn't rocket science. We listen to your taste buds instead of your brain. Is that really how we ought to approach feeding the one body that we'll ever get?

Every day you make choices about whether you are going to exercise, how many hours of sleep you'll allow yourself, and what food (and how much of it) you'll put into your body. If you're a woman, and you go to a restaurant and order the same as your man - do you think it's a wise idea to eat the same amount as him? A full grown man is overeating if he finishes a meal at 90 percent of the restaurants in the U.S. That's a full grown man. If he is thinking about his health he'll eat maybe two thirds of what's on his plate. You should be eating even less. How much do you eat? Perhaps you say to yourself "well... it's a special occasion and it's OK to splurge every once in a while...". Ask yourself - should you allow yourself to consider overeating to be a proper way to celebrate? Is it really every once in a while? Can you honeslty afford to splurge?

Would you like to complain to me about your slow metabolism even though you can fix it easily by adding muscle to your body (that's what "toning up" really is) and changing your diet?

There is one health care provider that will be with you until the day you die - whether you like it or not. Yourself. Use it.