globallagarto

I’m not progressing very quickly on this goal, but I did hike Paria Canyon and it was an amazing place.

It’s been slow going (and expensive!) trying to get our house ready to rent. So far we’ve had to put on a new flat roof, resurface the pool, put in new sprinklers and drip, new appliances, new sinks/faucets, etc. Challenging in many ways! We’re making slow but sure progress. It’s a pain but God willing this goal will be accomplished this year.

This is an important life-long goal for me. I am quite confident that it will happen someday but for a variety of reasons I have not been climbing at all lately. I have always wanted to do the Regular Northwest Face route on Half Dome and the Nose route up El Capitan, and I still hope to do those someday, but I realized that in the near term there are much faster and easier routes that would make this goal more reachable. In a week I could potentially climb Royal Arches, Lost Arrow Spire, Half Dome (Snake Dike route), and the East Buttress of El Capitan—which is not the same as climbing El Capitan, but it takes one day rather than five. I still don’t know when I’ll have the time to do this, but these alterations make it seem more feasable.

WHAT???!!! Unbelievable! We just got back from the NFC Championship game and I lost my voice from yelling non-stop for four quarters! How crazy is this? Who would have believed that the Cardinals would be the NFC Champions, now on their way to the Superbowl?! This is so far-fetched it didn’t even ever occur to me to put it on my list of 43 things until it happened! Go Cardinals!!! Go Curt Warner!!!

I think I’ve done this to the extent I want to for now. I’d like to move towards assisting others as they take the lead in this, while I focus more on other things.

This will never happen because I constantly add things to it. My to do list is a six page, two column document. I prioritize items and a lot of them do get done, but I’ll never finish it because I add things as often as I accomplish things. So I’m taking it off my 43 things list.

I don’t really think this is going to happen anytime in the near future so I’m giving up on it for now. I’m going to focus on other outdoor activities that I love and are more practical right now.

I’ve been pretty consistent at doing this so I’ll take it off my list. I keep in close touch with many old friends all over the place and continue to make new friends. It’s an important part of my life.

This was a great concert, one of my favorites. What a gifted group.

I saw Victor Borge in concert just a few years before he died. He was a great showman, comedian, and musician.

I like pre-fusion jazz (Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Vince Guaraldi, etc.) and of course most of the greats are gone now, so I was glad to catch Dave Brubeck in concert a few years ago. My friend Larry Norman (who was also a great musician) called and said he had an extra ticket so I went with him and some musician friends of his. Very cool experience.

Stunningly tragic, piercing, haunting, beautiful, brilliant.

This was a sold out performance in about 1998 at the Arlene Schnitzer Hall in Portland, OR and I didn’t have a ticket. I decided to just go to the venue with a cardboard sign that read “need one ticket” and see what might happen. My prospects were looking bleak and I was getting rained on, then suddenly the ticket office announced that they had some returned tickets for sale! I guess some corporation didn’t use their block of tickets and turned them back in or something like that. These newly available tickets were in the middle of the dress circle, and I ended up in one of the best seats in the house with almost no one around me. The only person who was near me turned out to be the husband of the pianist who was accompanying Mr. Perlman and it was interesting to talk with him before the performance and during the intermission. I was hoping he’d invite me to go backstage to meet Mr. Perlman but that didn’t happen. It was an amazing performance, he played with so much passion, and his face was so expressive. He really feels every note. It was a great experience.

I was a teenager in 1981 and my family was going to London for a summer vacation. Like many teenagers I didn’t think it would be cool to go on a summer vacation with my family, so I wasn’t planning on going. Then I found out Pink Floyd was doing five concerts in London and presto, me and the fam were on the plane! All five concerts were sold out but my dad generously bought me a couple tickets from a scalper for the fifth concert (which I believe was the last time Roger Waters did a full concert with the rest of the band). This was The Wall tour by the way. I had a friend in London whom I was planning on taking to the concert but I was unable to get in contact with her so my dad ended up going with me! I’m pretty sure he was the only guy there wearing a suit ;-) It actually worked out pretty well because Pink Floyd used to put on shows that were more like highly dramatized musicals with loads of special effects, and everyone just kind of sat back and took it in. So my dad, who certainly was no Floyd fan ended up having a good time and I was “totally stoked”!

A few days later Bob Dylan was there in concert on either his Shot of Love or Saved tour, I can’t remember which. I really wanted to go to that as well but my dad thought I should do more stuff with the rest of the family which I thought was fair enough—until later when I talked to some people who had gone to the concert and they told me how great it was. I did see Bob Dylan some years later, but that was kind of a mediocre performance.

One last thing, this was when the punk and skinhead movements were in full swing in London, and I don’t mean a few kids hanging out in front of a record store, I mean it was everywhere! I know there were some punks at that time in New York’s Bowery/East Village and in Hollywood/Santa Monica, but the vast majority of Americans (including me) had never encountered anyone before with a 12 inch magenta mohawk and safety pins in their face, much less groups like that all over. Wow, that was an interesting experience.

My brother was an exchange student in Japan and I went there to visit him. We decided to climb Mt. Fuji, not knowing it was some kind of holiday where loads of locals try to to make the ascent. We started out in the afternoon and got to one of the climber’s huts just before dark. These huts have very wide wooden “bunks” where people sleep like sardines. Very early in the morning, long before daybreak, everyone got up and started to make their way to the summit. Man, the trail was packed! It’s an easy climb but people who weren’t acclimatized to the altitude were struggling and some were even using mini-oxygen bottles. A few people were collapsed on the side of the trail from fatigue/altitude sickness. The trail got so congested near the top that it turned into a logjam and slowed to almost a standstill. Everyone was using traditional octagonal walking sticks that you can pay to get branded with kanji at each station on the way up. These sticks have bells attached, and it kind of sounded like we were in a herd of cats. I was getting frustrated because it was starting to get light and I knew if we stayed on the path we’d never make it to the summit in time to watch the sunrise. I began to strongly suggest that we blaze our own trail to the top. My brother had been living there long enough to know the motto often heard in Japanese culture; “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”, IE don’t stand out from the crowd. So he was appalled that I would suggest doing something so culturally inappropriate. I, however, had not lived there long enough to embrace that motto and I said “okay, I’ll see you at the top” and took off. With consternation he followed me and we raced to the top before a shocked audience of people stuck in “trail traffic”. (NB: as I recall this was on volcanic rock, not on vegetation or in a restricted area-so nothing was damaged). We made it to the summit just in time to see the sunrise and an incredible view! A short time after the sun rose the view completely clouded up, but during those few minutes the view was breathtaking. So I have to confess that I have on occasion been a culturally inappropriate mountain climber, but then again, I’ve also seen the sunrise from the summit of Mt. Fuji. I think they forgave me ;-)

My wife and I got together with friends and international students for an Easter BBQ. We went to a local halal market to pick up some marinated chicken for kababs, and kefta (beef ground up with cilantro, onions, and garlic powder) which we squeezed on to kabab skewers. Wow, it tasted amazing! We also put a bunch of asparagus marinated in oil and vinegar in a container on the heating rack and they tasted great as well. The vegetarians dug into those. I think barbecuing is America’s bridge to the rest of the world-most other cultures eat at home with extended family and friends on a regular, if not daily basis. This is unusual in America—except during barbecue season! Q-on!

After doing some bike repair I got out there on the trails. The weather is perfect and I hope I can continue to ride “regularly”!

Today I attended the funeral of my former boxing coach. “Mack” was a WWII veteran of the battles of Guadacanal, Bouganville, and Guam. He was such an inspiration, and he always had an encouraging word for everyone he met. He had been a professional boxer in Chicago during the Great Depression and knew all the greats of that era: Rocky Marciano, James Braddock (depicted in the movie “Cinderella Man”), Gene Tunney, etc. He was the toughest guy I ever met, even though he never acted like it. I will miss him a lot. So I feel motivated to start hitting the heavy bag regularly, starting tomorrow.

Had to postpone this one, but we did get to Honduras and Costa Rica in February.

The weather’s perfect, and I’ve got kababs in the freezer, just got to light the coals and do it.