Preemptive: To all my friends. Yes, I know about the movie “Tracers”. No, I have nothing nice to say about it. Imagine Hollywood used a generic formula to paste your favorite thing onto the big screen; Do you think you would enjoy it? Right. It pretty much highlights all the negative aspects of Parkour, and casts Parkour in a bad light. (That’s just my opinion of course.)
Scree
noun : an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff.
Selling Out
If you think you can buy your way to individuality, well, you are not so smart.
Since the 1940s, when capitalism and marketing married psychology and public relations, the market has been getting much better and more efficient at offering you something to purchase no matter your taste.
~ David McRaney from, Selling Out
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Infrastructure, suburbs, and the long descent to ferguson
The short version is that as the climate degrades and fossil fuels become simultaneously more expensive and less useable, each generation inherits from its more prosperous ancestors an infrastructure that it can’t afford to maintain. Society muddles through from year to year — sometimes even seeming to advance — until some part of that poorly maintained infrastructure snaps and causes major destruction. The destroyed area may get rebuilt, but not to its previous level. The resulting community has less infrastructure to maintain, but is also less prosperous, and so the cycle continues into the next generation.
~ Doug Muder from, Infrastructure, Suburbs, and the Long Descent to Ferguson
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He draws heavily from John Michael Greer’s The Long Descent.
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How To Live on 24 Hours a Day
As you look back on the year that has just past, do you feel as though you spent another 12 months merely existing instead of truly living? Do you often go to bed at night with an anxious, sinking feeling that you wasted away another precious day of your limited time here on earth? One of my all-time favorite old books addressed this very concern better than anything else I’ve ever read.
~ Brett McKay from, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
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104 years old, still readable, and totally apropos of our lives today.
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DevOps
It’s been said by a number of smart people that DevOps is largely founded in an organization’s skillful collaboration and communication, and the culture that results. I agree with that idea, and I also think that it’s one of the reasons why the term DevOps is sometimes difficult to explain, because these are ‘soft’ skills we’re talking about. These aren’t things you can graph or alert on, they only manifest in the resulting product and environment.
~ John Allspaw from, DevOps
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What is Character?
Character. Like honor, it’s a word we take for granted and probably have an affinity for, but likely have never really had to define and may struggle to do so when pressed. It’s a word most men desire to have ascribed to them, and yet the standards of its attainment remain rather vague in our modern age.
~ Brett McKay from, What Is Character? Its 3 True Qualities and How to Develop It
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Love is all you need?
Nothing quite like the Grant Study has ever been attempted; as Vaillant puts it, this research represents “one of the first vantage points the world has ever had on which to stand and look prospectively at a man’s life from eighteen to ninety.” The mountains of data collected over more than seven decades has become a rich trove for examining what factors present in a man’s younger years best predict whether he will be successful and happy into old age. The study’s researchers have continually sifted through the results and reports in an attempt to ferret out these promising elements. As Vaillant details in The Triumphs of Experience, some of the researchers’ original hypotheses did not pan out, and the job of untangling issues of causation and correlation goes on. Yet several insights have emerged very strongly and prominently from the data, offering brightly marked guideposts to a life well lived.
~ Brett McKay from, Love Is All You Need
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If you start, go all the way
For some reason, we hold back – almost as if it’s preferred to actually going ALL IN on something. Why? Because if we’ve given our all, and we still fail…what is left? If we go all in and fail, we tell ourselves that we are failures. We aren’t good enough.
In reality, giving our all and then failing is one of the best things that could possibly happen to us. When we give max effort and we fail, we’re only setting ourselves to level up.
~ Steve Kamb from, If You Start, Go All The Way
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Bit of a backlog, sorry
Just in case anyone is actually consciously paying attention to what I post: I’ve a bit of a backlog of things to post, and I’m making an effort to catch up. So there’s going to be something like a post a day, for like, well, 150 days or so…
:^P
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History of Parkour
Truth is, there is no consensus on this. And – which really hefts a giant spanner into the works – you can’t just go and ask the founding father because this great movement is pretty damn far from being a nuclear family, 2.4 kids and all the rest. No. This child has had a whole host of surrogate step-parents influencing its development down through the years, the centuries, indeed even through the millennia. It has drawn on many sources, supped on inspiration from all over, and drunk from a hundred different cups as it has evolved – and by no means is this process over.
~ From, History of ADD / Parkour / Freerunning
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I’ve heard a mind-boggling number or ridiculous things about Parkour. If you EVER have the opportunity to talk about Parkour, please go read this. If this doesn’t fit with your view of history… great! Now you know.
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Coaches must possess character
One of the great myths in America is that sports build character. They can and they should. Indeed, sports may be the perfect venue in which to build character. But sports don’t build character unless a coach possesses character and intentionally teaches it.
~ Joe Ehrmann from, Joe Ehrmann – Wikipedia
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Bookend
I left this quote on my desk when I left for Colorado. …and what a challenge it was!
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Definition of a Great Adventure
When you’ve had a ton of fun, and it’s still fun to pack to go home!
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Pizzeria Locale
On Saturday (23rd) I found my way to Pizzeria Locale on Pearl St in Boulder.
Mike was working all day, so I took the opportunity to followup on a friend’s suggestion and tried Pizzeria Locale for dinner. After a whole week of doing the “dirt bag” climber thing, this meal was ambrosia.
Bruschetta (with green olive tapinade), Italian Chianti, Margherita pizza, Budino (butterscotch pudding with caramel and nuts), and cappuccino; What a delight it was to eat a nicely paced meal!
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Rainy Day
We’ve had an unbelievable run of weather. But last night and this morning it’s been raining. Wet rock equals no climbing.
This morning we’re down in Estes Park holed up in a coffe shop. Mmmmmmmmmmm latte and Internet.
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So much to post
…so little time. We’re currently campimg in Rocky Mountain Nationel Park, and climbing in/around Estes Park. Yesterday was some practice sport climbing — mostly Captain Suffer (aka Mike) yellin at me. Then today (tuesday) we climbed all over Jurrasic Park; more sport climbing, but really pushing my grade. Photos coming!
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Climbers support ALS
Tuesday night Mike got nominated for the ALS ice water challenge. So we decided to try it with, well, extra challenge:
That
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Flatiron #1
900 feet. 6.5 hours of climbing.
It is 6am and I’ve been napping in the front seat of Mike’s van since 3am. I’m pecking this out, stream of consciousness, on my phone, racing the dying charge, with a sore right pointer finger. Other than some apples and oranges, I’ve not eaten a ‘real’ meal in about 20 hours. What we managed to do last evening is the most amazing, most challenging, most focused thing I have ever accomplished. Nothing else I have ever done is even worth *mentioning*.
We started on a whim at about 6pm: spreading gear out of Mike’s van into the parking lot as the the regular mortals stared. “Look! Real climbers!” From the lot we power-hiked up what, I’m guessing, was at least 500 vertical feet of increasingly gnarly wooded trail.
To the base. Of the biggest inclined slab of rock imaginable. We spent a lot of time going over gear, call-n-response stuff, etc.
And on my first day on real rocks, Mike started up the first pitch, dragging the “sharp” end of the rope, and setting hardware for fall protection.
“CLIMBING!” Then I followed.
We did seven pitches, meaning Mike climbed away out of sight, and set up. a belay position as high as our 200ft rope allowed. Then I climbed, picking up gear as I passed it.
Seven pitches. Three before it got dark. Four in the dark. (We’d brought head lamps. ) Oddly, the dark was WAY easier: All I saw was this rock, my hands, my feet, and the infinite piece of rope I was following.
Up, down, around, over. Literally one. Inch. At a time. I covered something approaching 1400 feet along the rope, 3, 4, 5? false summits. Where you scale a thrust of rock – rock sticking up literally into the Milky Way hanging from the sky – an inconceivable puzzle of body and mind, to the top. Only to find a little down climb, over, and up yet again.
Six and one half hours of, “I’ll move my left foot up two inches to that nice looking spot. Now, I wonder what’s up to the right for my hand…”
We reached the summit at 12:30am.
Then rappelled literally down into the inky black off the back. From there we walked down an endless foot trail and back to the van.
At nearly 2am. Where I lay in middle of the parking lot, flat on my back, enjoying the sheer comfort and staring at the exact same stars.
It was transcendental. It was Herculean (for me anyway. )
Now, at 6:30, my legs are a bit tired, my finger tips are sore. I’ve not one bruise. The sun has just popped up on the other side of the world. Climbing is not “my thing.” I’m never going to want to sleep in a park, or live in a van, as Mike does now without a second thought.
But.
My god! It’s full of stars.
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Red Rocks
5,780ft . Pretty easy walk up, with this awesome liitle rock formation at top.
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