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Gant has had some stupid ideas in his time, but a recent one is a real winner; he wants to run a marathon in Death Valley. Yeah, that sounds great. It gets better though, after the marathon, he wants to spend a couple of days in DV hiking and peakbagging. I’m sure that the next stage of his plan is to propose we do the entire trip in wetsuits or with no water, or maybe even both.

In other stupid idea news, an idea I floated on this website here in ‘03 is about to start coming together. I have crew who is willing to accompany, enable and document the potentially retarded plan to make a first descent on a certain mountain here in California. This mountain wouldn’t be hard to figure out for any long time reader here, it’s a high mountain, remote and during the winter is extremely difficult to get to.

Those that have volunteered their time for the Winter of ‘09 trip include an up and coming new media specialist to document it for posterity (and comedy in all likelihood). One other person who will be the sherpa of the trip, carrying the heavy loads up high for glory and contributing witty commentary to the documentary like a young John Madden and then one other person who may or may not make the descent attempt with me, but who will nonetheless add the comedy section to the film.

I’m not going into specifics, about where and what or anything like that because as the time draws nigh, I don’t want any unscrupulous charlatans to steal this idea from me. In all likelihood, this will be the highest mountain ever descended on snowboard in California and I want to be the first to do it.

I’m also looking for sponsors, so fork over some cash, cheapasses.

I have to go back to work today, after basically six weeks off. I’m not looking forward to it. I haven’t done much in the way of well, anything over these last six weeks and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve been to Disneyland a few times, rebuilt this website, did quite a bit of yard (dirt) work, and not much else.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the work I do. It’s just nice not to have to do any work.

If you ever want to know how to be a father, just watch this. Prepare to cry though.

People are amazing. If you have some time, and I recommend that you find some time for this, read about the first circumnavigation of the globe under only human powered means. All the big money, big name adventurers get the press for going around the world in a fucking balloon or something, whoopedeee!

This was done with legs, hands and heart. A brief synopsis of his journey.

• Lewis crossed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in a wooden pedal boat.
• He roller bladed across North America. Struck by a driver in Pueblo, Colorado, he spent nine months recovering from two broken legs, returning to the trek in May 1996.
• He kayaked from Australia to Singapore.
• He biked from Singapore to the Himalayas.
• He hiked through the Himalayas.
• He pedaloed from Mumbai, India crossing the Indian Ocean to Djibouti.
• He then planned to travel through Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, the Middle East before reaching Europe[2] — however, he encountered a problem in Sudan. The Egyptian authorities would not let him pass through their waters, and when his visa for Sudan ran out he was left with an “impossible decision”.[3] He attempted to kayak across Lake Nasser to Abu Simbel but was arrested on suspicion of spying. He was released but the Egyptian authorities forbade him from mountain-biking the 178 mile journey to Aswan.

In July 2007, he reached Syria and then crossed Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Austria, Germany, and Belgium before returning to London on 6 October 2007

Thirty degrees and windy.

There were five people invited to White Mountain, October of ‘07. This was a short lived tradition I had to hit WM every October to celebrate my birthday. It has always been cold up in the highlands in October, but I do personally enjoy the cold so it has always been fine by me. Of the four invitees, two showed up. Of the two who couldn’t make it, one actually let me know ahead of time. The other one just ignored the entire situation, and as a matter of fact on our summit day was fawning over himself, as usual. Of the three of us who were there, none made the peak.

We knew it would be cold, we knew there would be snow on the ground and we knew that Scott had never been higher than Telescope peak at 11,049 feet. This hike would be starting higher than that. Scott’s been training hard for this trip for a while now, while Jared and I are still up at a pretty good level after getting ready for the triathlon last week.

Jared drove us all to Grandview, it was dark and freezing by the time we got there. I started the fire, Jared setup his rarely used 6 man tent and realized that zipper on the door wouldn’t zip closed. Scott, meanwhile was trying to put on more layers than a polar bear. After the three of us were done with our respective tasks we started cooking. Scott had rigged up a nice little contraption made of tape and sticks to roast his food on. At 10pm it was 34 degrees and dropping. The tent door wouldn’t close and we had a long, cold way to go until the sun was up again.

Dawn eventually came, with Scott not sleeping much, but Jared and I putting down some good Z’s with the new cots. After warming up by the fire and a light breakfast we made our way to the trailhead and prepared for the hike.

There are essentially four uphills on the way to the peak. The first one is short and steep, and starts as soon as you get out of the truck and continues for about a mile. The second one is shorter and steeper, the third one is long and slow and the fourth and final one is very steep and sort of short. We ran across our first substantial patches of snow on the second uphill and took a nice long break at the telescope. The temps were in the forties so it didn’t feel too bad when we were hiking, but during breaks we would get cold very quick.

As we continued on the air got thinner and the snow got thicker. Still nothing that would really impede our progress, but it was there. We were above 12,000 feet and Scott’s first time up high was getting tough. Jared was cruising right along and passed us up. Along came another herd of Bighorn sheep and Scott made a very mature decision to turn around. Scott sat down while we waited for Jared to come back.

So, we hiked back; tired, hungry and cold. Scott’s new high point is about 13,100 feet or so. When we got back to the truck, we decided to bypass Scott’s promise of cooking up some steak fajitas in order to get down to town and get some food, as fast as possible. After the food, we also decided to stay in a hotel with a working door.

Good trip, good fun.

Album of pictures from trip

The triathlon was great for a bunch of reasons. One of the things that I keep going back to though is the families I got to interact with. Jared’s entire family; Liz, Jared’s brother, brother’s wife, dad, and mom were all there to cheer him on. Gant’s entire family was there as well; dad, mom, brother and brother’s wife to cheer on the two Gant brothers in the tri.

Both sets of families were really close, really friendly and were great to watch them interact with eachother. It was a sober reminder of what I will never have. I’ll never have my mom, dad, sister and brother (wherever he is) as one cohesive unit, supportive and tight like that. The other thing that it made me remember is that sometimes people really don’t appreciate how much they have, because they’ve never been without it.

What I’ve been trying to figure out is what I have that I’ve been taking for granted. I’ve got my health, my family, a house to live in and good friends.

I’d like Jacob and Attia to grow up like Dan and Jared, where the family is so solid and stable that it’s taken for granted.

Congratulations to me; I have finally finished cataloging, keywording and deleting duplicates of my entire collection of photos. I started with over 12,000 pictures, after purging duplicates, triplicates and quadruplicates of photos I’m down to 8,284 pictures. This has taken about 6 months of on and off work.

I’ve rated most of them, keyworded all of them and worked up a few that I really like. Thank god for Lightroom, I can’t sing it’s praises enough. I wish it had been around when I started taking pictures a few years ago. My advice to anyone starting photography, especially digital photos is to get Lightroom or something similar. Photoshop doesn’t cut it for large scale workflows.

Now, it’s on to figuring out the best way to display them on the website.

I’m just going to ride my mountain bike…

The Carp tri was finally here. All the training and planning and organizing had finally come to a head. We were in Carpinteria, waiting for the whistle to blow to start the party. I was anxious to get in the water, get that initial shock of cold over and start the race so the knot in my stomach would go away. I’m sure Jared and the two Gants felt the same way. That’s not how this story starts though.

A few months back, I don’t even remember how exactly it came up anymore but Gant was planning on running a couple of triathlons. Knowing that I need goals to work towards and this was to be a kind of long term commitment to train up for I was pretty excited. Jared was a lifeguard, so I could drain him for swimming tips and tricks and plenty of practice as well. So, the three of us started getting ready.

Doing an initial inventory of what we had compared to what we needed was unpleasant. Since it was going to be an ocean swim, most people would be wearing a wetsuit. I didn’t have one. Jared has one, but it’s old and ratted out. Gant has one, and even had a spare that fit me, though he failed to mention that until one week before the triathlon. The tri was also going to involve a 26 mile bike ride, on the road. I have a mountain bike; have only ridden a road bike like once or twice in my life. Jared has a mountain bike and has never ridden a road bike. Gant has a road bike (though no spare).

At first I planned on swimming once or twice tops before the race, and concentrating on my strengths, which I thought would be the bike primarily and the run secondarily. Jared and I drove out to Carp to meet with Gant and go for an ocean swim. Gant wore his wetsuit, Jared and I had boardshorts. The Pacific Ocean near Carp is a big ball of cold as far as I’m concerned. That swim sucked. The cold and lack of recent swims conspired to keep me from catching my breath at all while in the water. Gant and Jared both had worried looks on their faces as they hovered around me on the swim. One of the main things that kept me afloat was my fear of mouth to mouth resuscitation from either of those two.

That swim scared me. I was slow and sucky and the water was cold. I went home and ordered a wetstuit online from a place called wetsuitrental.com. A few days later Jared did too. We also started scouring craigslist for road bikes that were affordable-ish. Unfortunately there wasn’t much. There were some old beaters for a hundred or so and some big baller bikes for a thousand and more but not much in the mid range. I asked everyone I knew, Jared asked people he knew and we hoped for the best, but prepared for the worst by mountain biking everywhere from here to White Mountain.

Weeks went by with no sign of anyone with a decent road bike to borrow or a moderately good deal for sale. We continued to swim, Jared and Jackie both showed me a bunch of little things I was doing wrong, or inefficiently and I showed both of them my appreciation with a quick display of my middle finger.

Jared’s brother actually wound up tracking down two nice bikes to borrow two weeks before the race. So, we were set, wetsuits were soon to be shipped to us and we had road bikes for the race. Life looked good.

Those last couple of weeks went fast. We rode the road and realized how different road vs. mountain bikes are. To me personally, the road bike seems to use more of my quad; the upper and middle section of it, whereas the mountain bike seems to work my lower quad more. So, each road ride was quite difficult as my mid and upper quad seemed underdeveloped. That in addition to the fact that road bikes are geared much higher, so don’t seem to climb nearly as well and are a much rougher ride, due to the lack of a big padded seat and suspension.

Gant was still complaining that he wasn’t working out enough and his 14 mile run one day really left him tired. He also tried saying that him and his brother were just going to chill on the tri, and generally cruise. I know what that means from Gant. When Gant says that it means he’s going to pass you, but when he passes you he’ll stop to chat. That actually does a couple things;

1) It makes you doubt yourself because he’s just chilling and he’s passing you.

2) It shows you how he’s going to carry on conversation without breaking a sweat while you’re at your max output (this picture is of Gant and I on a Special Olympics torch run in Ventura county. Yes, he’s on the phone, yes I’m sweating).

3) It then shows you how he can just wrap up the conversation, (generally because you can’t reply to him because you’re out of breath) and then speed off like you’re a paraplegic on a NASCAR track.

4) His brother is the same.

Early morning on race day came; we were all in Carp ready and waiting for the starting whistle. It blew and we started. Jared and I started in the same age group, and Gant and his brother started in the same group six minutes behind us.

Of course, Team Gant wound up passing both of us in short order, even with one of them getting a flat tire on the bike portion of the race. Yeah, they are that fast.

The swim went remarkably well for me. 34 minutes to do 1500 meters, well better than I expected. The run went worse though, so my total time was 3 hours, 8 minutes. Which was pretty good for me, my goal was to get under 3 hours. So I have something to strive for at the next one. Jared was about four minutes behind me and the Gants were about 12 minutes in front of me. It was fun, quite a bit of fun actually.

Here are the results overall.

Here’s about the only picture I’ve got. Hopefully more later, though none from me. All the pictures were taken by Jared’s and Gant’s families whom were all present to cheer them on.

Here’s one of the two Gant brothers, taken by their dad, just before Project Triathlon Domination began.

 Pure Sex. 

So, no this isn’t the sleight of hand distraction that I said I was going to use if I passed out at the triathlon. That’s just pure love right there in that video, 2 billion on something that beautiful and effective, they can raise my taxes any day of the week for that kind of gloryhole.