I leave this Friday for a 4 day, 3 night summit climb of Mt. Rainier. Flying to Seattle Friday afternoon, gear check Saturday, then leave for Mt. Rainier national park on Sunday at 6am. Alpine Ascents is our guide company, and I have heard nothing but good things about these guys.
At close to 14,500 feet above sea level, Rainier is the most glaciated peak in the contiguous United States and is an active volcano to boot.
Mt. Rainier is the most well-known (well, maybe except Mt. St. Helens for those of you older than 30) of the active volcanoes that make up the Cascade Range. Cascadia (the geological nickname for the Cascade Range) begins about 200 miles north of San Francisco and ends along the northern coast of Vancouver. Over 10,000 people attempt to summit Rainier each year. Only half of those succeed. I am going to damned well try to be in that half!
After our climb, I will spend a day in Seattle before flying home and heading out to the beach for the Memorial Day weekend. As a result I’ll be offline until the 29th but will post plenty of photos when I get back and get my feet back under me.
Hold it down for me while I’m gone, and I’ll see everyone on the other side. Wish me luck!
Miss someone until they come back, or until you come back, until their absence in your life becomes something to be avoided at all costs. Miss them until you don’t have to anymore, until you’re reunited in your favorite booth in your favorite restaurant ordering your favorite meal, miss them until it feels like you never left. Or miss them until you can’t anymore, until the things you miss are identified and cataloged as things and not a person, until you figure out that easy company and long talks and unblinking, all-knowing eye contact will find you again the way they found you the first time. Miss someone until you don’t.
Stephanie Georgopulus, How To Miss Someone (via akidnamedcudi)
What I like about the Japanese kids in Memphis is, if you think about tourists visiting Italy, the way the Romantic poets went to Italy to visit the remnants of a past culture, and then if you imagine America in the future, when people from the East or wherever visit our culture after the decline of the American empire – which is certainly in progress – all they’ll really have to visit will be the homes of rock’n’roll stars and movie stars. That’s all our culture ultimately represents. So going to Memphis is a kind of pilgrimage to the birthplace of a certain part of our culture.
A friend of my coworker’s shot this Besbok antelope in South Africa last week. This thing is a monster. Taken at 250+ yards (all shots must be from greater than 200 yards).
Even as the blues was attaining nationwide prominence through the first Delta artists being recorded in the late 1920s, the Delta itself was in turmoil. Scholars looking back have found a depressed region decimated by cotton crop failures, boll weevil infestations, and the great flood of 1927. Racial tensions boiled over as more whites moved into the area. The revived KKK gained popularity in the region, terrorizing blacks. Once-numerous black-owned businesses were squeezed out of existence by institutionalized racism. Many descendants of Delta pioneers pulled up their stakes and moved north, to places like Chicago and Detroit, once again determined to find a better life.
It was during this time that the Delta bluesmen began to be seen as naive folk artists: trapped in the worst of situations, resentful of the modern world, using music as a coping mechanism and almost stumbling onto brilliance. But a closer study of musical biography and commercial history reveal a very different picture. Bluesmen were clever, ambitious, and quick to adapt to changing conditions. And their conditions were changed forever by a mail-order catalog.
Heading out tomorrow with the team from work to release a little stress and talk strategy for the second half of 2012 at the Orvis Sandanona facility in Millbrook, NY. This is going to be fun.
Orvis Sandanona is a step back in time, to a place where the traditions of the field and the hunt are held in the highest regard, and where wingshooting is a passion that links the past with the present. This venerable sporting institution is the oldest permitted shotgun shooting club in the country, so old in fact, that the main lodge was built during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson.
Using its richly textured past as a foundation, Orvis Sandanona has built upon that history a thriving, modern sporting clays shooting ground; one that welcomes and accommodates corporate outings and large groups with the same vivacity as it does with individual guests. With a sporting clays course that is consistently ranked among the very best in the nation, Orvis Fly Fishing and Wingshooting Schools, and a fully-catered lodge facility that includes ample meeting space, Orvis Sandanona is the benchmark for both corporate recreation and individual sporting pursuits.
What happens when four James Beard Award-winning chefs, three old-school Southern pit maters and one boozehound writer (along with a case of whiskey and too many Jell-O shots to count) come together to “reinvent” Memphis barbeque and try to win Barbeque Fest at Memphis in May?
Garden & Gun writer Wright Thompson offers his take on Memphis’ beloved tradition. To me, this story perfectly encompasses the passion and camaraderie that Memphis in May has come to elicit from people, and I could not be prouder to be a Memphian. Well done Wright Thompson. Well done.
You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She’s not perfect - you aren’t either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break - her heart. So don’t hurt her, don’t change her, don’t analyze and don’t expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there.” -Bob Marley
Renowned Swiss watchmaker IWC recently opened a New York store, and A Continuous Lean stopped by for a visit. You can read Michael’s review here. And you can count on me stopping by sometime soon…if even for nothing more than a little window shopping.
