Get busy living, or get busy dying.
~ Red, in The Shawshank Redemption, (1994 film)
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Get busy →
Calm down and be civil →
You laugh, and then you probably think to yourself (like I did), “oh crap…that’s me…many, many times.” Whether it’s a delayed flight, or slow service at a restaurant (where we’ll overeat and then complain about being full) it’s amazing what we can complain about just so we have something to complain about!
~ Steve Kamb from, Does It REALLY Matter?
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Persistent organic pollutants →
Organochlorine pesticides (DDT, lindane, etc), organochlorine and organobromine industrial pollutants, solvents, placticizers, and a host of other such substances are in the stored fat of all of us. Their use over the previous decades has so filled our environment with these chemicals that we can’t escape them. The are in the air, they fall in the rain, they are in the groundwater. Consequently, they are in our food. Whenever we eat, we get a load of these persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that make their way into our fat cells and cells in other tissues. And they build up because we can’t get rid of them.
~ Michael Eades from, «http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/weight-loss/a-legitimate-use-for-orlistat/»
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Instant gratification →
Certainly, our march from one level of gratification to the next has imposed huge costs—most recently in a credit binge that nearly sank the global economy. But the issue here isn’t only one of overindulgence or a wayward consumer culture. Even as the economy slowly recovers, many people still feel out of balance and unsteady.
~ Paul Roberts from, Instant Gratification
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Boosting your adaptive reserves →
Heart rate variability turns out to be a generalized, deep measure of health. That’s because higher HRV is a strong indicator of resilience to stress, while low HRV is a sign of reduced capacity to tolerate stress. And at the deepest level, health is resilience, and diseases in various ways compromise resilience.
~ Todd Becker from, Track your HRV to boost adaptive reserves
This is a REALLY good article on understanding heart rate variability. Turns out, the MORE your heart rate varies — in terms of the variation of the timing from one beat to the next — the more that indicates good cardiovascular health. I found that idea to be counter-intuitive. I would have guessed, wrongly, that the more regular the heart beats were, the better.
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Your vote didn’t matter →
My working hypothesis had been that Obama was a lying bastard when trying to get elected and didn’t actually care about civil liberties, or even limiting foreign wars military actions. It now occurs to me that maybe he does care about these things but just finds himself unable to change government policy.
~ Vikram Bath from, «http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2014/11/06/your-vote-didnt-matter»
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Your bullshit story →
The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.
~ Jordan Belfort
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FitBit Charge HR →
I’m working with a friend of mine — Mike Bowyer — on a designed, intentional, training program. One of the critical components is working for specific times in very particular heart rate zones. So I’ve bitten the bullet, and am trying a FitBit. Online commentary seems to be that it’s not super-accurate, but I’m hoping it will do at least an ‘ok’ job of thoroughly recording heart rate during — saw this coming didn’t you? — parkour activities.
…until I smash it on a brick.
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The End →
It’s taken me nearly a year to go through the 2,000 odd photographs and videos that Mike and I took. Time well spent.
Looking back over the posts continues to bring back floods of memories.
th-th-th-th-that’s ALL FOLKS!
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Hawk-Eagle Ridge (sep 2) →
This was the incredible cherry-on-top for this entire Colorado adventure. Hawk-Eagle Ridge is this side, side ravine tucked up behind the Wind Tower just inside the beginning of Eldorado Canyon.
We took this photo (below) on the way out. The tall rock, on the right, closest, is the Wind Tower. So you hike up to the right, between the Wind Tower, and the next mass of rock (on the left in the photo.) Hawk-Eagle Ridge is the crumbly-looking, sloped wall in the middle of the photo. So it’s “the first lefthand ravine” as you go behind the Wind Tower.
…but we didn’t know that going IN. Instead, we didn’t notice this huge, house sized block of rock at the very bottom of the Hawk-Eagle Ridge ravine… it didn’t look like a block that had fallen in the ravine; The ravine was basically not-a-ravine as you hiked past this huge block. So we hike to the SECOND lefthand ravine and busted our *sses slipping our way up this horrid scrabble of avalanching rock, through all sorts of scrub bushes and piles and piles of poison. I expected to step on a snake or three at any moment.
Then we realized we were on TOP of Hawk-Eagle Ridge requiring us to do this sketchy rappel. Or rather, we rigged up a good rappel, and then Mike lowered the gear and rappelled off a couple of (what looked like) ratty old shoe laces. (See the two photos with ropes below.)
The second and third photos below, are the view of the Basile in the main part of Eldorado canyon as we climbed up around ONTO Hawk-Eagle. That’s a road down there at the bottom of the Bastile.
We eventually found a spot of shade at the base of this neat little climb (in the third and fourth photo.) In the second photo, you’re looking back out of Eldorado canyon, so you can get a feel for how we’re just sort of out of sight. The ravine was like hiking back in time. It was clear no one had be up here for decades. This was only the second time in the entire trip that I felt like we were out doing something not normally done. Everywhere else we climbed, it was always well-beaten trails and clearly obvious where to climb; This one was a real adventure. Albeit, a low-height, pretty-near-the-Eldo-access-road adventure.
Here, Mike had scrambled to the top and setup a top-rope anchor. We each took turns scrambling up this neat route. As I’ve said many times, every climb in Colorado had very different rocks. This one was blocky, but the rocks were very natural — normally, oft-climbed routes have their rocks polished pretty smooth and clean to the touch. This rock was very coarse and had a texture that rubbed off on your hands. There was also a very dry moss on a lot of the rock. Overall it was a very different tactile feel. Generally, you get used to your shoes “pasting”, (meaning the flat sole of the shoe has enough friction on plain rock face that you can just stand on very steep faces.) But this rock didn’t paste at all, because there was this every-present layer of fine “dirt” that rubbed off on your shoes (and hands) making everything this unusual sort of dry-slippery. In reality, it was simply the rock naturally weathering, untouched by climbers for who-knows-how-long. (At least, on the routes we climbed.)
Mark — the guy in the white shirt — had opened routes here (aka, “been the first ever to climb”) about 30 years ago. Mike and I spent a lot of time enthralled, listening to stories, and hearing how “these [full-grown] trees weren’t here last time!” I felt it was quite a privilege to get a belay from Mark.
As always, it’s over all-too-soon, and the hike-out commences…
…and I very much like the fact that I get to end my entire series of Colorado posts with a great shot of Mike and Mark!
Cheers gentleman! It was a grand adventure!!
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