More Women We Love

Finally, someone publicly debunks Uncle Pat's racism for the crustified, unreconstructed wankery that it is.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

How I Love Sarah Haskins

The next person to offer up patriarchal, crustified wankery dating advice like this bolus of writer's crap that appeared in my inbox yesterday is totally getting this link.



I do recommend clicking through to the Intent articles comments thought. The mind reels.

CU's PA Program is Officially Awesome

So I meant to put up a post when I got home on Friday and then things got away from me. I've officially begun the search for a good PA program and to organize the effort to get in! I've thought about it a lot over the past year or so, I've shadowed a couple of PA's (ones in family practice and one who does ortho surgery), I've talked to docs who've been in the profession long enough to sense which way the sands are shifting, and I'm pretty well there. I know from the message boards that PA's exist who hate their jobs because they would rather be docs, but those who thoughtfully weighed their decision between the two, evaluated the differences and came out on the side of PA are really, really happy.

On the MD side is my ego and the fear that maybe I am able to only work for myself. On the PA side is getting to do the part of the job I love the most (diagnose and treat) while not having to mess with the responsibility of a practice, of getting to work with a doc so there is someone to bounce difficult cases off of, 4-5 years of training as opposed to twice that, the ability to pick up and change specialties as easily as changing jobs instead of having to complete a whole new residency if I end up not liking what I'm doing, etc. etc. In short, it looks like it will fit into the life I want, instead of requiring me to dedicate and conform my life to it. Sure, there are specialties you can choose if you prefer to "dabble" in medicine: radiology or maybe physiatry, ER can be pretty flex too. But still. The more I learn the more excited I get, and I don't think I've felt this excited since I realized I needed to go to acupuncture school. Being a PA will, of course, mean that I will not only still be able to be an acupunk I will be able to get to people who would otherwise not think to try it in a million years. It will satisfy my need to integrate the two worlds. I can work with overseas and underserved populations that as an LAc are years away. And so on and so on.

So I visited my first program on Friday. Holy shit! The medical campus makes up for being in the middle of east Jesus nowhere by being all sparkly clean and new, and by having all kinds of cool stuff like a standardized patient program and high tech mannequins for practicing procedures and treatment scenarios. In the gross anatomy classes you only share your cadaver with 3 other students and you don't rotate--you get to do a full dissection. They have overseas rotations including India, Ghana, and a Spanish immersion in Costa Rica. You can put together your own rotations if there's someplace you'd like to work and they are open to it. You have the advantages of going to a school that also has a medical school, dental school, nursing, PT, etc. schools and all the professional resources that those provide. They work integratively with some of the other schools so you begin to get a sense of what it really means to work as a team.

Predictably, it is competitive. 600 applicants compete for about 100 interviews and about 40 of those get spots. I have my work cut out for me as I plan my prereq courses and start prepping to retake the GRE (sadly my awesome previous score is so 1998) early next year. It will be at least 2 years out, but I'm so excited sometimes it's hard to sleep at night. I am still a dork.

A very, excited and purpose-driven dork.

Why Health Shouldn't Equal Moral Rectitude

Amanda has a great post up over at Pandagon on the concern trolling of OMG Regina Benjamin is too fat to be surgeon general!!11! and the larger issue of moralizing health. If you guessed that all the fuss really isn't about Benjamin's weight or health status at all (last time anyone checked, there were no such requirements in order to be able to kick ass at the job), congratulations--you win a pony!

For instance:

It’s enough to know that most people strongly associate health and weight. So when disingenuous sexists start to bellyache about the dangers of letting fat women out in public, they get traction, because it’s becoming increasingly acceptable to suggest that not being perfectly healthy is a moral failing that should be punished with social disapproval, shaming, ostracism, and lowered access to society. Of course, we double down on fat people, and triple down on fat women, because of plain old prejudice, but this isn’t happening in a vacuum. Smokers, people who don’t eat right, and other people with poor health habits are also considered morally inadequate, if harder to judge because they’re harder to spot.

What is troubling about this is how it shapes policy: healthcare coverage is only for the deservedly healthy--if you have a poor outcome it's probably due to your irresponsibility and therefore you don't deserve help.

There is also an important discussion on the tactics of shaming in order to eliminate or modify people's behaviors:

People who see sex as a fraught, moral issue aren’t often in a good place to make healthy changes to their sexual habits. People who don’t view the status of your genitals as a judgment on your moral character are often in a lot better position to take care of themselves. For instance, if you get an STD and you think this means that you’re being punished for sin, you’re much more likely to be in denial, not get treatment, and pass it on. If you think it’s got no more moral implications than getting a cold, then you’re much more likely to get treatment.

I guess we need to make a choice, and sooner than later: do we really, truly care about helping people and having a healthier society full stop or do we care more about the smug, self-satisfied superiority we get from being moral scolds who other and punish?

On Food, Economics, Community and Development

This is EXACTLY what I was on about in my last I Write Letters post.

Having access to healthy food and an active lifestyle is, simply put, a matter of privilege. I grew up around towns like these and we'd see it all the time, although the industry was less agriculture and more logging/millwork since we were closer to the foothills.

Which is not to say there is nothing people in such circumstances or communities can't do about it--there are plenty of examples, from community gardens and CSA's out of vacant lots and school grounds to the group in the story that met with their city government to fix up their park so they could safely start a walking club. It's just to say that some people have to work a little bit harder, and it's not just about simply making "different" choices. As the story shows, plenty of people in the central valley would love to make different choices, but there are barriers preventing them from freely doing so.

The audio can be downloaded at the link above.

One More Future Post Note

I really, really need to explore why spas make my skin crawl. I just know there's lots to unpack in that knapsack, don't you?

I Write Letters

Dear Pitchers of Self-Righteous, Sanctimonious Victim-Blaming Health Woo:

You make me crazy with your assertions that people's poor health is totally, 100% their own fault for choosing to live "toxic" (conveniently ambiguously undefined!) lives how if we'd all just detox we could live in wellbeing and harmony and all fart rainbows. You piss me off for the same reason all the people still yammering about things like The Secret and the so-called Law of Attraction piss me off: that you are 100% responsible for everything that happens to you and that you are in 100% control, and if you don't have what you want or bad shit comes your way it's your own damn fault so just change it already and quit yer bitching and victim talk and take control problem solved thanks that will be 3 low, low, LOW payments of $29.95.

I want to say a lot more about this later, as it really deserves its own(additional) post, but for now, I want to get down that I understand the inclination to want to control your world. I do. I want it just as much as anyone else. But your assertions are patently ridiculous. And it reeks, reeks, REEKS of economic and class privilege to aver that this is categorically, uncritically so. It's like telling the poor to go and eat cake if they can't find bread to eat. Seriously.

So, for the article I read this morning (one in a series which I also hope to get to eventually--I've reached my critical bullshit breaking point) opining that health is up to the individual, I agree and disagree. Partly on the basis of the author's shaky at best "grasp" of the science of diseases like cancer, straight up. But also, even presupposing the author's premise that health is a choice and unhealthy people get cancer because they choose to live such a filthy, toxic lifestyle, I say your privilege is showing again.

I am a privileged person. I grew up in a white, middleclass, educated family, with two grandmothers who were so old school they were hippies before hippies existed. We ate almost exclusively homegrown fruits and vegetables, whole grains, weren't allowed sugar or soda or even juice on a regular basis (except, everything else as preservative and additive free as possible. We never ate out and never ate fast food. Not allowed to watch TV and "forced" to go outside and play in our vast yard or safe suburban neighborhood or even more vast (and safe for kids to roam free) open space behind our house. My mother even made much of my baby food herself with our Foley mill. I grew up in a small, rural town with most of its nature intact and unpolluted/uncontaminated by industry. Etc, etc.

I am lucky to come from GENERATIONS of such people on both sides of my family. Read: we have no family history of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc. Nearly everyone lives to be at least 90. Yet, my own mother, who was also subject to this healthy genetic pedigree and was raised in the same privilege and was so conscious of health that she made my own baby food, was herself diagnosed at the age of 34 with cancerous tumors in her heart (yeah, wrap your head around that one, it's extremely rare even in the medical literature) that aggressively metastasized, well, everywhere and was dead about 3 months later. And children cancer--are you seriously going to tell me their parents brought that shit on by insisting on living a life of shitty food and environmental toxins? Or crappy, negative thoughts? Really?

I now am lucky enough to live in a sweet little neighborhood in south central Denver in a well-cared for house amongst many well-cared for houses, far enough from the freeway or messes of high tension wires that I need to worry about such things. We have an excellent water supply. On Sundays in summer I can walk to the Old South Pearl farmer's market, and when I can't I can afford to shop (if I'm picky) at either Whole Foods or Vitamin cottage which I can either walk or ride to. As I shop in such places, surrounded by organic whole foods many of which are local and most of which are sustainably produced, I notice that pretty much everyone shopping there is like me. They always are. I live this way because I care, because I am conscious that it DOES matter what food and lifestyle choices we make. And because I have privilege, I am able to CHOOSE in the first place, not to mention make fully informed choices.

Even though I have been quite poor at various times in my perpetual student lifestyle, I recognize that I am still privileged. Even the times when I was happy to eat rice and dried beans and oatmeal for a few weeks just to have something to put in my belly I'm still privileged. Because I know it won't always be this way. Because I have the knowledge and experience of taking good care of my health and making good choices. Because I am not so debased that even in (especially in!) Los Angeles I was able to afford to live in a neighborhood that was safe, and quiet, and green, and close to the ocean where natural breezes helped dispel some of the hazardous pollution, and safe places to recreate were all around me. Healthy people surrounded me and supported and praised my decision to choose health. It makes a huge difference. Does it ever occur to anyone to ask why everyone at their yoga classes and such is almost always from a certain cultural and economic station?

When I worked at Scottel, I shared an office with a young woman who had a 7-year-old and a 2-year-old. She and I would talk about them from time to time, and the trials and tribulations that come with raising kids. She and her husband were basically just starting out with fairly entry-level jobs, trying to raise 2 little ones in an expensive city. They lived in a little apartment where it wasn't safe to send kids out on the streets to play unless you watched them like a hawk, so they spent a lot of indoor time, watching more TV than she would like. And since her husband was all but a child himself in the kitchen and she worked full-time and neither of them were raised with the best traditions of food choices, it was tough for her to make sure everyone ate right all the time. Etc, etc. Tough going for a 23-year-old. I understand her frustration.

So my proposition is this: yes we live in a toxic shitty world. Yes, it is possible sometimes to choose whether (and to what extent) you will live in it. But at some point you have to acknowledge that not everyone has those choices, or at least that range of choices. For millions it's not as simple as telling them to quit eating conventionally grown produce and fast food, and get outside and get some exercise and start a meditation practice in the 5 minutes you may have to yourself as a single parent holding down 3 jobs to make ends meet. And I haven't even started on access to decent healthcare, or problems endemic to our current system of healthcare as predicated on a disease-management model vs. one based on prevention, but whatever, as we say in grad school academia, "that is beyond the scope of this discussion."

At some point, if you are serious about helping people, if you really, truly, REALLY give a shit then you have to acknowledge institutionalized forces (that are bigger than any individual) of economics, of public policy, of FOOD POLICY in this country which SUCKS tremendously, of racism, classism, sexism, able-ism, all the other -ism's that dictate and constrain the choices people make every day about how they negotiate their world. And once you do that, of course, you become dangerous, and radical in the most traditional meaning of the word. And not everyone is ready or willing to go there, to see that much or call for something so big and comprehensive. It means going through the looking glass.

It means acknowledging your own unearned privilege and maybe even giving some of it up. It means committing to paying with your life (not in death, necessarily, but in myriad other ways) in order to continue your work for wider goals of economic and social justice for everyone. It means considering that there are barriers in the way of everyone living your so-called simple universal "cosmic laws". It means having an honest discussion about our country's food policy and making sincere efforts to support community gardens and CSA's and the like that are actually trying to empower people and communities instead of just telling them to buy better food and get some exercise, fatty or you'll get all the health problems you so richly deserve (ah, fat hatred apologia--yet another series of future posts!)

And if you're not there yet, that's ok, I totally get it. I wasn't always where I am, and boy have I been painfully called out on the carpet for my ignorant assumptions over the years. Wanted to sink through the floor and die, I did. It's a process, and we are all in it, and it takes a lifetime. It's not always comfortable, and sometimes it's depressing and even scary, and you may occasionally find yourself paralyzed with despair. You'd be in some good company, believe me. But you move forward with it because you care, because you are committed. You can only start where you are and go from there. But goddamn. Be upfront about it.

And until you are willing to be that comprehensive and self-conscious, kindly take your self-righteous, healthier-than-thou sanctimony and shove it up your ass.

Love,
LoLo

Mental Aether Update

A lot of things have been swirling around in there for a while. There are many, many posts I should probably write. There is a whole other health-related blog that I need to imagineer for my practice and soon-to-be-honest-to-goddess website. I'm feeling frustrated and somewhat rudderless trying to find my way and how I will fit into the larger world as a practitioner of TCM, like a woman without a country since I don't feel much affinity with what I've encountered so far in the "orthodox" TCM camps, but allopathic medicine by and large still has its head up its collective arse about incorporating anything new that isn't shiny and expensive and readily demonstrated by randomized, double blind controlled studies. Also, I went to an awesome functional medicine seminar in Boulder last week given by a former internist named Larry Dossey that was extremely interesting and thought-provoking, on the growing importance (and hopefully inevitability) of [allopathic] medicine's acknowledging the connection of mind, body and spirit when it comes to healing (and that each has the potential to affect the others, to which those of us trained in Chinese paradigms roll our bored eyes and mutter "duh!" while taking another swig of some elixir out of a highball glass).

In short, there's been a lot going on in my head, and I've been feeling a lot of frustration about wanting and not being able to zero in on the words to express it.

I need to review a couple of things, hopefully this week or next. One, there was a huge expose of Oprah and her great love of woo (fine, it's Oprah, whatever) but the privileging of that (with the complete abandonment of reason and science) over what we now practice and believe to be true about medicine is not okay. And I come from a long background of analyzing and criticizing bias, privilege, knowledge and knowledge production, etc. I am not beholden at all to the idea of science as some kind of church or holy sacrament for which you will be swiftly and surely punished if you dare to be critical. But I do see lots of parallels to work we did in women's studies and later in my career in education. So there's that.

And in my quest to begin to understand why I hate woo and have such a visceral reaction of anger toward it (and the pressure to accept it uncritically, even if it seems made up out of whole cloth), I came across yet another article this morning about how your poor health is totally, 100% your own fault for choosing to live a toxic life. It grew to be so long that it became it's own "I Write Letters" post. If you are reading this far, you've already hopefully enjoyed it.

So yeah, I have lots to say. Lots I NEED to say. As Gloria Anzaldua wrote that she was afraid to write, but she was more afraid NOT to write. She also wrote a shitload of righteous awesome in her book La Frontera and her other writings in This Bridge Called My Back, which should be required reading at some point. And please understand that I don't mean to appropriate her struggles and the risks she took to speak out about them or even consider them to be remotely my own, but they do help. They illuminate and inspire. And stress the importance that there has to be hope and vision for something different, and better.

As she and Cherríe Moraga once said, "To assess the damage is a dangerous act. To stop there is even more dangerous."

Now, if you'll excuse me I have some reading to go and do!

Finn Discovers Mushrooms!

The boring kind, that is. But still awfully cute...

For Whom the Maroon Bells Toll

You ever have a trip that turns out to be nothing like what you worked so hard to make it be? Even when you didn't really work that hard? Then you know what I'm talking about.

The original plan: leave early Saturday for the 26.something mile 4-pass schlep around the Maroon Bells. Arrive at trailhead, hoist on packs, and go--hopefully at least getting over West Maroon by the end of the day. Day 2 and 3 more of the same until back at the car, whence glorious shedding of stinky trail clothes and plans for post-trail beer and pizza commence. Drive home full of delicious beer and pizza, take showers, take naps, procrastinate cleaning gear as long as possible.

Well. Blink. Sigh.

Don't get me wrong--this was an awesome trip! Just, different.

It began the night before Day 1 when that nigori I split with Quinn over dinner made me too sleepy-drunk to drive home and James had to instead. Plus getting home and remembering that we still had to write out recipe instructions and prep/repackage all our food and pack since we got back too late from climbing the 5th to do it before dinner. James wanted to do some of it at night, but I made sad puppy eyes at him and flopped on my bed, practically falling asleep instantly.

We got up at 6 and did all that, had almost left the house just after 9 when we realized all kinds of stuff, like ZOMG we forgot the wine AND the platypus to put it in, we still had to stop off at the Crushery for coffee and breakfast, etc. I think it was more like 10 when we finally got on the 25. Once there decent time was made--I loved the red convertible with a couple in Cat in a Hat hats, all decked out for the 4th. It seemed like forever until we got to Glenwood, but we did.

Then, we had to stop at the gear shop because James needed a shirt and I needed a rain jacket (except I didn't, since my old one was hiding in the deepest darkest corner of James' pack unbeknownst to us until we shook everything down in camp later that night). Ah well, you can never have too many jackets, right? Then Safeway for a pot scrubber and pouch of smoked salmon and inferior deli sammiches, and finally we were on our way down to Aspen.

As we drove up the road to the trailhead, a road easel informed us that auto travel was restricted up to the Bells and we would have to take a bus. Crap. Or not, depending. We circled around, found parking, tried to find info in the people-forsaken visitors center (nice touch, Aspen Highlands!) and finally figured out from a guy working down in a gear rental shop that overnighters could in fact drive up and park. So up we went.

We pulled up to the ranger booth at the entrance. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: We're here to start a 3 day backpack trip.
Ranger: You have to go back down and take the bus.
Me: But there's no overnight parking down there--what are we supposed to do?
Ranger: Oh, you're overnight? Oh! Well ok. $10. When are you leaving? Oh, let me write you a different pass then.
James: Here's $10.
Ranger: You'll also want to take some chicken wire to wrap around your car for porcupines 'cuz they--oh, you know?
Me: Boy howdy, I do--I've had a car eaten by marmots in the Sierras more than once.

Etc. As she talked I noticed a list of annual passes taped to the window, and that my National Parks pass looked a lot like one of them, so I asked. Turns out, it did. So she took back our pass, and threw a couple rolls of chicken wire into the back seat, but didn't give us back James' $10. When we asked, she replied, "I don't remember you giving me a $20... but..."

Sheesh.

So we get up to the trail head, and realize we don't have the pass it sounded like we needed to put in the window, so after gulping down the inferior sandwiches (I was powerful cranky by now, and it was raining--yay!) we drove back down, only to be informed by a different ranger that putting up our annual pass would be just dandy, thanks so much. So, back up again. Changing into trail clothes in the rain, getting organized in the rain, etc. We toyed briefly with either trying to find a campsite or hotel room in Aspen, but then laughed at ourselves for thinking such a thing on the 4th of July. Suck it up and at least hike to Crater Lake, and then reassess. We even considered driving back down the road the the place in Snowmass where James took me and Jamie last year.

By the time all of this was done and we were on the trail, it was about 3:45 and the sun was back out. No excuses now! We quickly slalomed through the day trippers around Maroon Lake and headed up the Crater Lake trail. Such a relief to finally be out! After about an hour it started raining again, even though it was still sunny and no clouds overhead. Bloody weather. Soon enough we got to the lake, and were pleased to discover that hardly anyone was there--even backpackers. We found our camp at #4 (the best one is #6, but that's what you get for not finding enough beta beforehand I guess) and set up. James took an awesome shot of his tent pitched in front of a dark, wet clearing that, along with the reflection from his camera flash on the guy-lines, made it look like the tent was hovering above the ground, suspended by lasers. I set about setting out the kitchen to make quiche, WEA-style. No cotton gloves for stove operation though--oops!

In retrospect, as I sat trying to cut the butter into the pastry mixture with a tiny plastic spatula and the titanium spork for which James had finally found a use (did I mention he mentioned this was his first trip not eating freeze-dried meals in pouches?) I reflected that really, this step could probably have been done at home. Also, a couple pairs of vinyl gloves are way better than the unwieldy used ziplock bags for handling the dough and keeping your hands from becoming a gooey, clubby mess.

The quiche poofed up beautifully, and unfortunately settled a bit too much as it cooled. However, it WAS very filling, which is a nice feature of backpacking food. And the flavor was good, although some dried herbs would have worked wonders. Next time, I suppose. The brownies turned out much, much better. And all the same, it was all good enough to attract the biggest, most fatty-boom-balatty porcupine I've ever seen (ok, it was the only one I'd ever seen, but zie was so big and fat zie could barely waddle away after grunting at James for trying to get a closeup pic).

At night, it stormed well--bright bursts of lightning and deafening cacophonies of thunder. Most of it was 1-2 miles away, but it came from the west and disappeared off to the east, right overhead. The morning dawned cool and overcast, and so we decided to leave camp where it was and just range out as far as we could on day hikes. We headed out toward West Maroon Pass with the leftover quiche for brunch, and got a couple more miles up the trail before we ran into our neighbor from the next camp coming the other way. He reported he'd gotten to the first major stream crossing (and we could see the stream from where we were, and it was fairly major) and turned around since he was just out for fun and didn't feel like changing out of his boots. His dog was ecstatically wet and muddy though.

After sitting down to eat and watching the weather come in around 11AM, we reached the same conclusion--no sense climbing higher out of the trees if it was going to be electrical. We donned raingear and headed back, made it almost to camp before it really started raining and a huge clap of thunder sent 3 dayhikers scurrying for tree cover along the shore of Crater Lake.

What else to do but take a nap? So we did. And it was nice, since neither of us slept well the night before. Woke up to still cloudy and a little drizzly, but lightening. We pulled out the packs and headed up the Buckskin Pass trail around 2:45 and the sun was already blazing.

Buckskin turned out to be a pretty cool trail, and amazingly beautiful. Fairly steady climbing but nothing rude, and flowers everywhere--columbine, avalanche lily, shooting star, Indian paintbrush, alpine strawberry, and lots of others I don't know. Lots of avalanche slides down that gulch, some of them pretty recent judging by the bits of still-green fir branches that littered the ground. We came on a guy in a good mountaineering tent camped in the most idyllic spot, except for being totally exposed in an open meadow to storms. Hrmm.

At last we were able to see the top of the pass, totally blocked by a gigantic cornice. As we got closer, we could see another trail that swung way out to the left of it to clamber over a much shallower wedge of it, but alas, no time. And no axes anyway. We turned around at the trail junction with Willow Pass and headed back down to camp.

The pizza with sundried tomatoes, olives and artichoke hearts came together nicely in spite of not having a big enough plastic to roll it out on (and I don't trust my throwing skills enough to not land our only bit of dough in the dirt). We were pleased as well that we had wine left in the platypus. The storm that looked like it was brewing seemed to swing north of us and pile up in the east, where it looked dark and angry.

Around the last of the sunset James spied a tiny wedge of alpenglow on the peak behind us, so we grabbed cameras and wine bottle and headed down to the lake. There we saw our 2nd porcupine, although not nearly as fat as the first. There were some deer too. I love twilight.

The rain chased us back up the hill and into the tent, where we stayed for the rest of the night. Of course, we awoke to bluebird skies. Breakfast of pancakes with butter and boysenberry jam, because really--why carry it on your back when it can go in your belly? On our way out we gave lots of beta to people coming in, and got reports that the weather was supposed to dry up for a few days. Nice timing, eh? Oh well. It was still amazing.

Once back at the car we were pleased to discover it unmolested by porcupines, marmots or other varmints with sharp nasty teeth. We also decided not to head back out down the East Maroon trail. The bag of fresh car clothes was so seductive, as were my chacos...

The drive home was a little sad, as it always is. I would love to go back again when the weather is more accomodating--thinking about what's on the other side of those passes is driving me nutz.

Taking the 5th

So Friday dawned. We slapped off the alarm (so much for leaving Chautauqua by 7AM, tee-hee!) at 6 and grunted back over to sleep for an hour. Fortunately we had sorted gear the night before, so it was a quick get dressed, grab climbing packs, stop off at the Crushery for some breakfast sammies and coffee, and up to the TH. We got super lucky--rock star parking at the nearest spot to the trail, inexplicably the last one left in the lot.

The weather looked shitty. Forecast said it was supposed to clear, at least until the afternoon storm, but I've learned this year that you really don't know. We sat at the picnic table and watched a soloist on the 1st Flatiron, barely visible without binocs. After about 30 minutes we decided to go for it. It was warm, muggy and sticky--not like my beloved high desert at all. James blazed a stiff pace up to the arch, and then after a small bit of bushwhacking discovered that in spite of our late start we were the only ones on this whole rock. James decided to try a different way onto the rock, and we set up a belay anchor for me, and up he headed. He quickly realized why he always took the left route, as this one was a bit of a garden. At least it wasn't wet any more...

Once he set up the belay station I set off to clean and climb. I was curious about this one, since it was the route that some of the other BMS groups did. All in all, I'm glad I got to do Seal--more fun, and a much longer and nuttier rap. This seemed pretty tame by comparison. But, still, easy and fun climbing. James didn't have to worry about having his lead head on too tight, and I didn't have to worry about much of anything.

We did the route a bit differently in a few other places, which presented a couple of interesting problems starting pitch #4 I believe it was. James and I each figured it out, no one fell or even slipped. I got all the gear back. As we got higher and higher the people down at the arch got smaller and smaller. Still I couldn't believe no one else was up there!

Finally, we got to the top, and James showed me a puddle with little critters swimming around.
It is amazing to me how they got there, and still survive up there. There was also a beer left by some BMS group for another, but it looked like it had been there a while. James threaded the rope through the very beefy eyebolt and executed a perfect rope throw. He rapped first, then me. Then down the trail as fast as our legs would carry us so we could hit the Southern Sun for beers and food.

We got right to a table, and after a lengthy discussion and sampling adventures got right to our beers. We knew we would be back in a few hours to meet Quinn and LJ for drinks, so we had little sammiches too. We even got invited to some private party, but alas we would be in Maroon Bell country. As we sat beering ourselves, the rain started to violently splat splat against the windows around us. We missed it by about an hour--so glad to be inside and not up on that rock as the light and boom show started up. Driving down to Denver was interesting, as many of my post-work drives have been this month. Rain so hard you can barely see, an inch or two of standing water on the freeway in spots, people pulled over under overpasses even though it's not that freaky to try and drive it. We just started laughing sometimes, it was such a storm. And huge, bright, fat lightning bolts that rent the sky in two over and over again, while the rolling claps of thunder were perceptible in the pit of your stomach they were so raucous.

And by the time we got home? Sunny, bright, blue sky... no evidence we got pounded by a storm except for the water all over everything still. This place, I'll swan.