8-30-00

I had a great weekend. Our whole family went climbing at Exit 38 on Sunday. I warmed up on the 5.9 right at the top of the trail that usually terrifies me. I managed to get up it without hanging thanks to the excellent training at Vantage the previous weekend. Clint and his buddy wanted to climb everything in sight as usual. Their lack of rock shoes doesn't seem to slow them down much at all. They struggled a bit with the one crack climb we did. They don't have any experience with cracks, whereas Sue, with 23 years of climbing behind her cruised up it in fine style. This is the first time she has enjoyed climbing in 5 years. I have hoped for sometime now that her dislike of the sport was more hormone related than an actual dislike of the sport that built our marriage. Or maybe she simply likes competing with the boys. Anyway, it's great climbing with an enthusiastic family.

I have been working day shift while my foreman is on vacation. He used to get all the hard jobs, saving simpler stuff for me, the after school guy. Now, I am having to dig into my bag of tricks. Today I relearned the meaning of a mottled solid. It looked like bad squeeze between plate to blanket cylinders, but I assumed my foreman had set it up right. After the second job in two days had the same mottle, I put an extra three thousanths under the new blanket and it printed like a dream.

8-26pm-00

Bicycling to work was outstanding. If you drove over the Narrows bridge this weekend during the resurfacing project, read this and weep! Having sat in my car for 2 1/2 hours two weeks ago during the last resurfacing, I brought my 10 speed along this time. When the traffic slowed to a crawl at Olympic Village, 2 miles from the bridge, I parked the Toyota and pedaled. It seemed like more work pedaling to work than coming back. Perhaps the wind was against me. I had a normal 6 hour shift on the GTO running envelopes, both to be converted and 11x14's three color. Coming home I struggled for the first 20 minutes going uphill in the dark to where 19th intersects the freeway. My first view of the freeway was to the South towards Cheney Stadium. Oh no, I thought, when I saw that there was no backed up traffic. I've gone to all this work for nothing! As I came up to the freeway overpass, I looked toward the bridge and felt a huge surge of pleasure. Solid tailights for as far as the eye could see. The succers were stopped dead. He haw! I blew past those people in 10th gear. I was so high I felt like superman. The entire time I was on the freeway (about 40 minutes), I was pedaling past stopped or crawling traffic. There was a brisk breeze up on the bridge, 400 feet above Puget Sound.

I stopped mid span to reach over and grab a support wire, considering as always how cool it would be to climb up the structure. I am certain it could be done in perfect safety with ropes and gear. What would be really cool would be to traverse the structure below the deck all the way across at night. No one would ever know you were there. It would be an awesome adventure. One could possibly even sneak up onto the wires at the midspan. My foreman did that in high school, drunk as a skunk. I would do it sober and with safety ropes and harnesses, belayed. Someday maybe. Just have to find a crazy enough partner.

8-26am-00

I am feeling a bit more human this Saturday morning. Last night I was feeling the strain of having worked my first day shift in a year. On Thusday I worked swing from 4 PM until 11 PM. The next day, Friday, I showed up for day shift at 8 AM on 5 hours of sleep and worked 10 hours. I had only been sleeping in since Wednesday. Before that I'd been getting up for days (college) for a year. Why 2 days of sleeping in would get me out of sync I have no idea. It was probably something else bugging me. It is drizzling lightly outside and I am dreading my commute. They are resurfacing the Narrows bridge this weekend. When I went to work the last time they were doing this, it took two and one half hours to drive what is normally a 35 minute commute. Today, despite the drizzle I am carrying my 10 speed. When traffic stops dead, I will abandon my car and pedal. If the drizzle stops by tomorrow, we will go climbing at Exit 38. Clint wants to bring his buddy and Sue even wants to climb a little. Unfortunately we will have to detour around the bridge which will ad an hour and a half. I wish I could get some free time to finish up my internship. I owe her around 14 hours still before I can start working on my own web site. My unfinished web site is standing between me and looking for work as a web designer. You can visit the "in progress" version here.

8-22-00

College is out. I still have a week of internship I plan to finish, but other than that, I am done! I took my Psychology final this morning at 8 AM. I am thinking I will get between a B and a C for the class. It was the worst of the three required classes I had to take beyond the Web Design curriculum. Technical math was the best with Communication next in line. Math I have always loved for it's simple, progressive logic. Communication (public speaking) was fun because I am a ham at heart and enjoy speaking. Plus, in both of those classes, there was a sense of learning something that we could actually get our hands on. For example, I can now prepare and deliver a speech reasonably well. We were required to give many little mini speeches before the two big ones. Math class had 3 tests so we could see how we were progressing. And the textbook was excellent. The book was so good, I could have taken that class without the teacher.
Psychology class, on the other hand, was a horrible textbook combined with a teaching style that was primarily lecture. Listen and take notes. Perhaps the nature of psychology is such that we couldn't exactly practice it on each other to get better during class. And part of it was my fault. I could have been working on the required 5 character observations before the last day of class. I might have gotten more interested in the subject matter. Here's my take on psych: if I need to know more about what goes on inside peoples heads, I would go see a shrink. As long as I am funtioning fine in my interpersonal relationships and holding down a steady job, why should I, at 47 and happily married for 20 years, have to learn a bunch of 4 syllable words that are only appropriate in the office of a psychologist? Instead of making us take the class, we should have been given an examination that would test us for life experience and common decency to our fellow man. It's absurd to think that learning a bunch of big words we will promptly forget, will help us in the workplace, especially when we have been working steadily for decades.
D called me before I left for work today. I was a little worried why he would call me on a Tuesday after a weekend of climbing. I was afraid that I had gotten too personal in my journal.

"Naw", he said, "you just told the truth, how could the truth hurt me?"
"Well, if it ever bothers you to be written about, just let me know, I don't want to make anyones life more difficult."
"Don't worry, you did good."

8-20-00

Day 3 of a 3 day climbing trip   Day: 1   |  Day: 2

We got up late this morning. Db made everyone pancakes before we headed up to Sunrise cliff. I led a 5.8 very poorly, my hands still tired from yesterday. We walked out, went swimming and headed back up to the feathers where I led Desert Storm, a 5.10a in excellent style. Whatever had been plaguing me all weekend was mysteriously absent. It felt so good to flow up the rock with the unerring grace that used to come so effortlessly to me when I climbed regularly.

At the anchor, I looked down the vertical line of bolts on the arete at D on belay.

"I don't care what else we did this weekend, this route alone was worth the trip. This is the climber I thought I was. Who was that other guy you've been climbing with?"

D begged for a yodel and ever the ham, I obliged, only missing one note. A little later I tried to cruise up another 5.10a but ended up hang dogging when my forearms packed in. All things considered it was an excellent way to celebrate graduating from technical college.

Top of Page

8-19-00

Day 2 of a 3 day climbing trip   Day: 1   |  Day: 3

It has been an awesome day. Right now I am sitting by a campfire with a bunch of new climbing friends we met today. They are sharing a bottle of red wine and some brandy. In the interests of my internet skills, I am holding off on the drinking until I finish making this entry. Our friend Db is laughing about my laptop.
"I was just in the tent hiding from you guys while I made a call on my cell phone. I felt guilty about using it out here in the great outdoors. And now here you are, with a laptop..."
We just met Db this afternoon when I looked down from the top of the cliff and saw a stunning blond. Even from 200 feet away without my glasses I could see remarkable figure and lovely long blond hair. Several of the local hardmen were hanging around gawking. She is that rare kind of woman who turns heads wherever she goes. To my great delight, she bouldered gracefully along the base of the cliff towards us as I prepared to top rope D. As she got nearer, I couldn't keep my eyes off her physique. I haven't seen thighs like that since I looked at Time magazines coverage of the Olympic sprinting events. Surprisingly for someone that pretty, she was very friendly, commenting on the awesome nature of the incut, dinner plate holds Vantage is famous for. As if the beauty of her legs weren't enough, she also had blond hair down to below her waist and one of those rare "light up a room" smiles. But more than anything, what really swept me away was the sunny personality. During the several minutes it took her to complete the circuit of the cliff, I gradually became aware of someone speaking to me.
"Mark...Mark!"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, having a little trouble concentrating."
"Yeah, I noticed. But, I understand."

D's equally sunny personality quickly charmed her, and soon we were all climbing together. She has turned out to be a divorced accountant rockclimbing and windsurfing for 2 months with her 8 year son and his little buddy.

But the best part of the day, besides camping with a world class beauty who leads 5.10c's, was the fall D took in the morning. He had gotten on something that was a bit over his head. The climbing got very thin above the first bolt. He climbed up to the left, and I warned him, "D, don't do that, your're way off route and too far from the bolt." But he ignored me and continued getting farther from the second bolt with each move. By the time he was able to reach across to put a sling in the second bolt, he was at least 8 feet above the first bolt. Although technically breaking numerous safety rules, all he had to do was successfully pull up 3 feet of rope, stretch over and clip it into the sling he already had hanging on the bolt. He got about half of the rope pulled up before his leg started to shake. I had a long second to think about the stretcher rescue I would soon be participating in. He popped off and dropped like a stone. My options as a belayer were very limited. He was so far above his last protection bolt that a successful belay was unlikely. I dropped my butt the ground, locking the belay plate off as he fell toward me at terminal velocity. For some miraculous reason, I stopped him about 4 feet off the ground. There were a group of 6 college age climbers standing nearby. They had been ignoring me, figuring I was an "old fat has been" with a goofy helmet. When I looked over at them, they were all staring at D and I in shock. They'd never seen anyone catch a fall from that far above a bolt. The youngest, most hardcore one of the bunch, looked at me with awe and said,
"Dude that was an awesome catch, you can belay me any time."
"I ought to be good at it", I replied with some satisfaction," I've been doing it for 23 years".Go to day 3

8-18-00

Day 1 of a 3 day climbing trip   Day: 2   |  Day: 3

Starlight illuminates the sagebrush around me. I'm sitting in the dirt, my rolled up tent for a chair. My coleman stove is fighting the breeze to heat up Sue's turkey soup. She and the family had to stay home for Clint's football practice. I think he found out tonight whether he made the team. D is sitting across from me, downing his second brewsky. We got over here at 6 PM and were on the cliff by 6:30. I led a baby 5.6 and loved it. D led a new route that wasn't in the guide book, near the top, he popped off. It was fun hearing the reasuring click as the stitch plate snapped onto the locking binier and I arrested his fall in midair. Climbing is, in my humble opinion, the best sport on this planet. To the outsider, especially as portrayed by Hollywood, it looks like a death defying activity. But as Dave hung there in space, grinning foolishly down at the guy who just saved his life, I was struck by how awesome a sport is.

Today was my last day in Web Design. It was sad saying goodbye to all the friends I have made over the last 11 months. G on my right got emotional as she tends to do. I love her for that. She has a warm heart. T showed up late wearing his interview clothes. Sure enough, he got hired today to a position several of the students had tried for. It was hard watching the passed over students learn of his success. I have not been looking seriously for work. I am waiting until my new site is up and running in a few weeks. I am really going to miss G. He is such a talented wizard in many many aspects of web design. He has a natural aptitude for digital design. I am still making the transition from traditional painting to digital painting. My motivation to paint traditionally has always been based on my love for beauty. I see beauty and I want to capture it with pastel sticks. Digital art is beauty that starts with a blank screen. What is pretty on a blank screen? It requires a new mindset...one I am adjusting to. G, and several of the other students never learned to paint traditionally, and seem to have picked up digital art as if they were born to it.

We had to move inside D's car, the wind coming over the plains is swirling the dust into our eyes and the laptop. I wished S had been there today. I wanted to give her a big hug. D is breaking out another brewsky. He doesn't like being ignored while I play with my laptop. He has really turned his life around. When I met him 5 years ago, he was a hard drinking bindery worker at Southgate Press in Seattle where I had been hired to run a press. We went climbing together and had a great time, although his drinking bothered me a little. Even when he got on my nerves, I always had a great respect for his long volunteer involvement with King County Search and Rescue. He got laid off when the print shop slowed down and fell on some hard times, scraping by on his professional diving skills, staying busy with search and rescue. We continued to climb together in the summer and I always wondered when he would find his niche. Now, he has been working for almost a year at a huge shop in Seattle, making a lot more money than I do. He's gotten rid of the old beaters and is driving a 96 Suburban, very cherry. I asked him if he took it up in the woods on his search and rescue missions. He laughed and said, Hell yes, this aint no city Suburban. Go to day 2

8-4-00 to 8-14-00

I made a foolish error and lost about 10 days here by working on the same file on both the laptop and the main computer. I wrote and uploaded several entries on the main computer with out updating the page on the laptop. Then, I spent the weekend climbing, and writing about climbing, on location with the laptop. When I got home, instead of cutting and pasting the new entries onto the top of the old journal page in my main computer from where I upload, I overwrote the whole html file over my home network. As I recall, it was no great loss. There was a lot of whining about finals week, lack of inspiration and an interesting, but unpaid apprenticeship opportunity . The lost entries are more than made up for by the excellent writing I did on my climbing trip on 8-20.

8-4-00

Working from a laptop is fun. Everyday I leave school at noon and drive to a pretty spot to do my internship. Today I went to Point Defiance park and worked on a picnic table with a 40 mile view out across Puget Sound. It was quite and pleasant for writing HTML. I got a lot done. It's kind of strange not having a boss hovering around, but I think I could get used to it. Tomorrow I will receive my new digital camera and can take some photos of old books to use on the web page I am designing. It is taking shape nicely. It was so cool to sit in the shade, the gentle wind blowing though the centuries old fir trees above me, typing code into my battery powered laptop. I know, it's not painting, but it is a marketable skill. And all artists need a day job. I hope to make this mine. With my years of printing behind me, and my painting and writing skills, it should be a no-brainer. My only excuse for not being more creative over the last year, digital or otherwise has been fatigue. Double shifts six days a week for 11 months does wear one down.

8-1-00

Got off work early today. I love coming home to the whole family. I have a pretty good idea now of what my new internship will involve. Today I spent a couple hours talking with K. about what kind of content she wanted on her page. It was fun putting into practice some of the concepts my teacher has been drilling into my head over the last year. K. and I had a three way conference call with the owner of the site to bounce some ideas around. Later I called J. the webmaster to ask some technical questions. Now I just need to sit down and do some coding. I am considering leaving school with the other interns at noon and driving down to a shady park by the waterfront to do the coding on my laptop. The only thing I will miss will be a wireless modem. I am sure that is in my future once I get a steady job in the business and have a little cash flow. I am starting to feel the pressure from the upcoming finals week. I have a lot of projects that all come due in 3 weeks. Thank god this is the last time I will have to worry about school finals...unless I decide to go back to study perl or asp.