The Fourth-The Fest

We spent the Fourth of July at the Flaming Gorge reservoir with Kelby Scott and his family.  

It was a lovely drive through a green desert, and we only got lost once or twice!  The gorge is surrounded by nondescript dirt roads leading into camping spots, and eventually, Kelby had to come find us.  

But once we were found, we went boating, 

The big Wyoming sky at twilight.

Fishing

The Kokanee Salmon were delicious!

Spear Fishing

The water was too murky for much fishing, but they sure do look good! 

Cornhole playing

Cody and I got schooled!

and firework watching.    

We missed our 16 layer jello, but it was a pretty fun Fourth nonetheless.  We headed to Lander, Wyoming for the Annual Climber's Festival next.  

The climbers festival didn't start until the sixth, but we like to get there a little early to get used to the rock and rope climbing again.  The first day we took it easy and did the usual climbs we had done in years past, took some practice falls and were feeling good.  The second day I tried a cool 5.13a called Full Circle that Brian Dunnohew talked me into.  I usually don't like really steep climbing, but the route turned out to be pretty cool. 

Brian Dunnohew pulling hard on Full Circle (5.13a).

 Later that day I decided to try a climb I have always wanted to do.  It is called Last Man Standing, a 5.13b.  I got on the climb and things were going well.  I was working on the crux move, which involves grabbing a mono (one finger pocket) and lunging to the next hold when it happened.  I dug my finger into the small pocket, adjusted my feet and threw for the next hold.  The only problem was that my finger stayed in the pocket.  We all heard a loud crack and I fell of the route.  Hanging in my harness I looked at my finger, it wasn't bent, or in any pain, so I thought maybe I just popped the knuckle, no harm done.  I was wrong, I pulled onto the route again and felt pain, and the swelling came shortly after.  My finger was not in good shape, maybe broken.  It's been about two weeks now, and the swelling has gone.  I have full range of motion, but if my finger is side-loaded at all in the direction of my injury, I feel sharp pain.  I'm going to take it easy for a while and let it heal.   

A classic mono move.  

 While Cody was injured, I had a belay slave at my disposal.  I made good use of him and got a lot of climbing in.    Last summer, my goal was to climb a climb graded 5.12.  I sent several 5.11d climbs, but could never quite make the .12 happen.  This year, I was determined.  I worked out the crux move to Tomahawk Slam, a 5.12a near Full Circle, and had worked out the top sequences.  I felt the butterflies that come when you realize that this time, it just might be possible.  You could send it, if you don't screw up.  I took a few deep breaths and tied in, fought the pump, pulled the crux, and before I knew it, I was clipping the chains.   I lowered down elated.  The send was made even sweeter by watching a tall man try to climb the same route, copying my method, and fail.  Repeatedly.  (I do the route much differently than most tall people do, and he just didn't realize there was another option!)   After some encouragement from Cody, I got on another .12a a few days later.  This one was called The Solace of Bolted Faces, and was much more suited to my style, despite the crux consisting of a long reach off a mono pocket.  After a day of work, I came back and sent.  It was a good summer for climbing at the Iris, as usual!  

Bright Lights, Big City

  When Cody got an email asking if he was interested in working with Vertical Solutions this summer, my first reaction was NO!  No, no no nonono.  We just finished working!  We're going to go have fun.  But I read on, and became a little more open to the idea when one of the jobs described was to erect a temporary wall in Central Park for a professional climbing competition.  That didn't sound too terrible.  We might be able to fit a trip to Manhattan (with complementary lodgings)  into our summer plans.  We hemmed and hawed on the question of whether I should accompany Cody- offsetting my plane ticket and cost of food/entertainment with his paycheck for the job.  We thought we could at least break even, so I went ahead and bought a ticket out to the Big City.

The Mall at lovely summertime Central Park

Since Cody was flying with the rest of the crew, and I was on a different flight, I had planned to take our only cell phone.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take it from him when I dropped him and the rest of the crew at the airport.  He realized my blunder and stood outside, waiting for me to come back for the phone, but I didn't realize until the next morning.  Oh well,  I thought. I'll just call him from a pay-phone when I get there.  No biggie.    I arrived in New York's LaGuardia airport, found a phone and some quarters only to be sent straight to voicemail.  Oh No!  I was so prepared-  I packed the charger in my bag,  and the phone must be dead.  Okay..  Deep breaths.  You can just find a computer somewhere, find the contact information for Vertical Solutions, find a payphone, call Dustin, and meet up with them.  Hopefully.  

 Fingers crossed and heart rate a little elevated, I took a taxi into Manhattan, asking my driver to take me to the Mac store, or somewhere where I could use the internet.  Did he know if the library was open on Sundays?  Lucky for me, Abraham from Egypt (my cabbie), was very helpful.  He took me to a corner in downtown with a Best Buy,  close enough to the library so I could walk there if need be.  I was able to use a tablet computer on the demo counter to find the contact info I needed, and headed out into the street to locate a payphone.  I asked a pretzel vendor if he knew where one was, and he offered me his cell phone.  I called Dustin, who, by some miraculous act of fate, was two blocks away.  I bought a pretzel and thanked the vendor profusely, and practically skipped down to the corner where Dustin met me in a cab.  We were whisked uptown, where we met the crew and checked into our apartment.

Park Avenue and 89th Street

New York is full of wonderful food-  13,000 restaurants, according to one source.  Cody and I had delicious thin crust New York pizza, loaded with mushrooms, just plain cheese, sausage...  We drank Papaya juice from the famous Papaya King,  just a few blocks away from our place.  Hot dogs, Gyros, pasta, bagels and schmear, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Italian...  There was a great deli across the street from our apartment that had fantastic salami and cheeses.  The boys worked late a few nights, and I laid out a midnight snack of peppery, thin cut salami and some aged parmesan for them.  The cutting board was all but licked clean in the morning.

The view from Above

Since the boys were working for several days, I had lots of time to see the sights on my own.  I ended up buying a CityPass booklet, which included tickets to the major museums, as well as the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty.  I wandered museums on my own for the first several days, losing myself in ancient Greek and Roman Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the incredibly lifelike dioramas of the Museum of Natural History, (especially the Hall of African Mammals, and the Hall of North American Birds),  and wearing myself out walking all over the Park and the City.

Peregrine Falcon diorama at the Museum of Natural History

Temple Offerings in The Hall of Pacific Peoples at the Museum of Natural History

I'll never understand Modern Art.
A blank Canvas at the MoMa

The Competition went extremely well.   It was well attended, the walls looked great, the competitors climbed hard and interesting routes.  The New York Times even covered the event! It seemed really short to me-  it began at 2pm, and was over abruptly at 5pm.  Putting up the wall seemed like a lot of work for a three hour event!  The boys stayed late again that night to take the wall down.

Men at Work.  Cody is second from the left.  

The Famous Flat Iron building

We celebrated Cody's birthday the way he wanted to;  which is to say, simply and inexpensively.  We went to the top of the Empire State Building,  walked around the City, had a good dinner in Chinatown, and went to bed early.  We had attempted to get tickets to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, but the show wasn't filming that week.  The next day, we headed down to the Financial District, saw the place where George Washington gave the first Inaugural Address,  the Bowling Green, the New York Stock Exchange,  the big Bull sculpture.  We rode the free ferry out to Staten Island, which passes right by the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  We went home and rested, had dinner, then took the subway to the Strand Bookstore, where we perused thousands of books.  A milkshake was a perfect way to end the night, and to try to shake some of the humidity that lingers into the nights.

On top of the Empire State Building.

I flew home early the next morning.  Sarah (and little Fisher Bell)  picked me up in SLC, and we had lunch together and hung out until I had to go pick up Cody late that evening.  We slept hard that night!
We spent the next day in Salt Lake,  then headed up to Lander, Wyoming, for the 18th International Climber's Festival.  But that's another story.   Until then...  I hope you all are living your dreams.

Setting Sail

Nine months of work and miserable weather all lead to this.  One month of sailing and exploring the Puget Sound and destinations north.  We had been looking forward to this for the last 9 months, most of which was rainy and full of work.

We spent about two days getting the boat ready for the trip.  Finishing last minute repairs or improvements that we had put off and packing the boat up with a plethora of bulk food from Costco.  We figured we had enough basic food for the month and we could supplement it with fresh veggies, fruits, and whatever else was for sale at the places we went.  We bought two small kayaks to serve as a way to get to and from the boat, they worked great and were a lot more fun than a ratty dinghy.

Lots of clothes on, trying to stay warm.

The plan was to spend our final day on land finishing up little jobs and organizing the boat, but the unthinkable happened.   The weather was good, it was sunny and warm and there was wind for sailing.  At about 5pm we set sail and left Eagle Harbor,  we needed to get to Port Madison which is less than ten miles away.  This seem like a short distance but when you top speed is 6 knots (7mph) it takes a while longer.  The wind was out of the North so we had to tack upwind for several hours until it started getting dark, then we decided to start the engine and motor the rest of the way.  In the fading light we anchored and nervously watched to make sure the anchor was set and that we wouldn't swing into another boat during the night.  All was well, we crawled into the v-birth and fell asleep.

The next morning was rainy, cold and windless.  We wanted to get to Poulsbo for Viking days, so again we started the motor and sat out in the drizzle motoring for 2 or 3 hours.  Viking days had some cool things, like a great Norwegian Luncheon, a Viking Village, and some live music (First band was AWFUL, second band was really good) but we wouldn't bother going more than once.   The rain was off and on but the legendary northwest overcast was in full effect making it just barely cold enough to be uncomfortable.

Beth tied up the anniversary roses so they wouldn't spill over when we heeled

Viking days ended and we sailed very slowly, but without the engine back to Port Madison.  The next morning was pretty decent it was partially sunny, but the price you pay for sun in the in the Northwest is often time wind.  We spent five hours "sailing", and after going less than two miles we turned on the engine and motored to Kingston.

So for the last few months Beth and I have be really psyched on the idea of sailing engineless.  Of course, we have and engine on the boat, but we liked sailing without using it.  I built a sculling oar and mounted an oarlock on the stern of Gesena, a sculling oar is what they use on the boats in Venice.  Anyway we were getting good at it, we could leave our slip scull out to the harbor, short tack out, sail all day and park the boat back in the slip without ever turning on the engine.  We had been doing it this way for quite a while and loved the challenge it provided.  This is why we are always so bummed to turn on the engine.

Ok, so we got to Kingston and my parents showed up it town. We took them sailing and showed them the island, and ended up going to visit my aunt and uncle(where my parents were staying) in Lacey.  It was good to see them all. I hadn't seen my cousin Sarah in about 6 years so it was nice to meet her kids and for her to meet Beth.

After a night in Lacey we got back to the best sailing weather we could have asked for (at least in the Northwest).  It was sunny, there was plenty of wind and it was in the direction we wanted to go.  We paddled out to Gesena, lifted anchor and headed north.  We ran wing and wing with following seas for a few hours.  We were covering ground faster than we ever had before.  We decided to go through Port Townsend Canal and anchor on the other side for the night.  We were less then 1 mile from the canal and the wind completely died.  With the sails flopping around we sadly turned on the engine and motored about 1.5 miles to the anchorage.

I grabbed this crab off the bottom while kayaking.

After an an uneventful night near the canal we lifted the anchor and sat windless again.  We took turns sculling the boat, more for something to do than to actually get somewhere.  The wind slowly started to build and soon we were tacking our way towards the inlet to Mystery Bay.  The entrance to the bay is pretty intricate, but the chart looked like we could take a shortcut and skim over a shallow area.  We slowly motored our way through where our shortcut was.  With Beth on the bow and my eyes glued to the depth sounder it was no real surprise when we slowly ran aground.  I will say this was actually one of the coolest experiences of the trip.  We knew that it was only a matter of time before the rising tide lifted the boat off the bottom, so no need to panic.  We tried using the motor to get us off, but it didn't have the power and there wasn't enough wind to get the boat to heel enough to lift off.  So I got into my kayak and Beth handed me the anchor.  I paddled about 200 feet out in front of the boat and dropped it.  We piled every thing on one side of the boat to get it to heel over just a little.  Then with Beth in her kayak watching the anchor dig into the gravelly bottom I winched the boat slowly forward.  I cranked against the anchor until the line was super tight and then I would go jump on the low side of the boat.  Gesena would heel just enough to slide forward six or eight inches.  Once we were off it was a quick sail into mystery bay.

Mystery Bay was certainly a nice comfortable anchorage.  The first morning we were there we paddled a mile or two up to Fort Flagler, an old military base.  It was fun to wander around the bunkers and just enjoy the mostly sunny day.  We left around noon and got back to the boat just in time.  The wind picked up and the water was to choppy for kayaking, so we spent a boring, cold afternoon stuck in the boat.  The next day was decent weather and the little town was having a festival called Tractor Days.  Tractor days was ok, I think it would have been much better if you were from Mystery Bay.  We did catch some really big oysters and fried them up for lunch which was nice, but again the afternoon got cold and we were stuck under blanket in the boat.  We planned out our course for the next day.  This was to be the big crossing of the trip about 35 miles of more exposed water than we were used to.  The wind and more importantly the tides looked good for the next day, so we got the boat ready for a morning departure.

I used the hammer and screwdriver to help pry open the strong oysters

Things went slowly in the morning.  Just enough wind to think that you could sail, but not enough to really go anywhere.  We told each other "Once we are out of the bay there will be wind".  We motored out to find once again no wind.  This is when we decided we had had enough.  Not enough wind not enough sun not enough fun.  We motored defeatedly back toward Bainbridge.  The mood was not good,  I think that we just burned out on the Northwest, which I have now dubbed "The Gateway to the Great Indoors".  It was a great experience living on Bainbridge Island, Beth and I learned so much and got to spend a lot of time with Beth's family, which was great.  We just stayed too long and left too early for a sailing trip to be warm and fun.

We got back to Bainbridge, spent a day cleaning the boat and sold it for our asking price in less than a day.  That put some spring in our step and after being soundly beaten in pickle ball by my 52 year old father in law, we left for the west, the arid mountains, and close friends we were longing to get back to.

Update Coming Soon!

I know, I know.  It has been nearly over a month!

A brief update:

We've sold our sailboat!  Woo-hoo!  Thanks to Bruce from Indiana.

We're in Salt Lake City, staying with our dear friends PJ and Sarah, and their week-old daughter Fisher Bell.

Cody just had Lasik surgery today!  He's going to be on Fisher's schedule for the next few days-  eat, sleep, eat, sleep...  He'll be pretty light sensitive and is supposed to take it easy for the next few days.  His vision will be around 20/40 at the end of the week, and should be 20/20 or 20/15 within 3-6 months!

That's all for now..  A post on our boat trip, and more current events will be up soon!
Until then...
Live the Dream!

Plans

If there was ever a man with plans, Garrett Smith was it.  He was always dreaming, planning, next weekend, next month, next year.  That morning, the light will fall just so on the domes of Israel. That evening, the glowsticks in the hot springs will delight a redhead floating in their midst.  The snow conditions should be just right.  Wear your red jacket. 

He lived for moments.  He captured them, caught them, collected them, like so many butterflies, dusty wings preserved through a winter they never could have survived on their own.  Through his images we can see evidence a live well lived.

An old woman in South America looks through Garrett’s eyes and into our own.  We see nieces and nephews, squealing with delight as their gangly uncle rocks out to AC/DC, and helps them roast hot dogs on a pitchfork.  

We can nearly smell the arid desert air, the snap of juniper.  Do you feel the grains of sand on the red rock beneath your feet? Do you hear the river? Garrett did.

  Do you see the oceans in her eyes?  The love?  Garrett did. 

 He was truly a visionary, through both his life and his lens.  I mean literally, visionary.  He visualized, imagined how something would be, and then come hell or high water, it would occur.   He was determined.  He was reckless, occasionally.  He was well trained, experienced, but liked to feel the edge, that blade separating safe from exciting.  I watched him crack open his head on the Alcove Swing on the base of El Capitan one year, then nearly break his ankles on the same swing the next. He could always pick himself up, shake it off.  No big deal.  On to the next plan, next adventure, next photo.  He was unstoppable, insatiable, stubborn.

On Saturday, an avalanche swept away Garrett and all his plans.

"Tremendous loss"

 "Sanpete County Avalanche"

 

            There is nothing we can do, not for Garrett, not anymore.  But Garrett has done something for all of us, each one of us who ever knew him,  each of us reading this, because he has reminded us, so painfully and forcefully, of the delicate and fleeting nature of life.  We’re not here forever.  So plan, dream, prepare; go and do.  Go and do one thing you didn’t think you could, or never thought you would.  Go and do something you love.  Learn something new, meet someone new. Fall down.  Get up.  Try again.  Every once in a while, look back at it all- those photos, journal entries, letters, home videos.   Feel that joy again, and that gratitude for the opportunity to live, to experience this crazyamazingpainfulbeautiful world we share. 

Because folks, all too soon, that wall of white comes for each of us. 

And while it sweeps away all of your plans,

It cannot erase those memories, those days you lived and people you loved. 

So live your dreams. 

Because you can. 

And Garrett did.  

ps- Send some love, prayers, good energy, positive thoughts, whatever, to his wife Molly.  She is so strong and so brave, but could probably use all the love the world can give her right now.  

The Benefits of Being an Early Bird:

Some of you may doubt the benefits of early rising.

Being healthy, wealthy and wise sounds pretty good to me, 

But if you require more evidence, 

I present my case.  

 Peony petals, Lavender buds, honey and wonder smeared across the sky. 

 Mist rising from the water, 

reflecting previously mentioned colors.  

The company of other early birds, 

like this pair of Hooded Mergansers. 

Oh yeah.

I'm sure Franklin would agree.    

In other news...

Meet Luke, 

my new ukulele!  

Hmm...  More stringed instruments than people on a 27 foot boat....

Oh well.  

Hope you all are living your dreams and catching the occasional sunrise!  

Travel Guitar LTD., By Cody

Alright everybody its time for my once a year or so contribution to the blog!!! Try and contain yourselves, and don't all comment at once or the internet might explode.

I have been wanting an electric guitar for a while now.  Black Sabbath and Nirvana just don't sound right on a travel sized acoustic.  Its like trying to play classical music with a banjo, it can be done, but nobody thinks its cool.  Now living here on BI I have access to two great shops to work in: Beth's uncle Dave's shop and my boss Dave's shop.  I had everything I needed to make an electric that wouldn't take up too much space in the van/boat.  

Well take a look, I think it turned out pretty cool.

This is what it looked like when we bought it.

I Cut down the head 3+ inches and moved two tuning pegs.  Also doing a way with that health insurance looking logo.

I cut the body down quite a bit making it another 3 inches shorter and several pounds lighter.  I threw away the old pick guard and made a new one out of aluminum.

I moved the amp plug and the two knobs The body is made of maple, so the back and some of the sides are Shellaced and polished.  My boss Dave helped me with the buffing, something I had never done before.

I havn't finished the back cover yet, but it will be aluminum like the pick guard

I bought this super cool little HoneyTone amp.  It runs on a 9v battery, sounds great and gets loud enough to make Beth tell me to turn it down.

Side by Side of our two travel guitars

Modifying this guitar was pretty cool; because its electric you can pretty much do anything to the body and it won't have much affect on the sound.  Unlike an acoustic.   Special thanks to the Dave Allen family for letting me use their shop, and to my boss Dave for helping me buff the finish.

Also, a big thanks to Santa Claus for funding the project!