Nerdmonkey.com

Spring Snowboarding.

Here it is -- the last day of April, and I had a fantastic day snowboarding. I've never been spring skiing before, so I didn't know what to expect. But I didn't expect such nice snow and great weather. Randy, my roommate Ben, and I enjoyed some of the last of my ten time pass which I was foolish enough not to use during the prime winter months of this excellent ski season. It was Ben's first time boarding, but he was about 10 times better than I was my first time. Cutting turns and handling blue runs his first day, I would say he's the best first timer I've seen.

Hopefully I can get up one more time before the season ends on Sunday.

Rocking at Smith Rock.

We had a great time rock climbing at Smith Rock. Randy, Brad, and I enjoyed three amazing days of climbing. I don't think I've ever done so much climbing in a short period of time. Brad had never been climbing before, but I must say that he's a natural. He was leading (on sport climbs) his first day, and even did a 5.10 rated climb his second day. Wow. It must be all that work he did on the tree house in our back yard.

Photos are available.

A little of this, a little of that.

Had a pretty good day today. I woke up early and went to a bikram yoga class. If it's too hot in the hot tub, it's too hot in the yoga class -- they keep it at over 100 degrees in there. Youch. But it was actually not as bad as I thought it was going to be. It was a lot of work, but I felt super chill the whole rest of the day.

The rest of the day included dart night over at my friend Doug's new house. He's expanded things a bit: now we have foosball and a pool table, in addition to the kegerator. I must say, Doug's place is a fun house.

Tomorrow I'm heading out to Smith Rock for a couple of days of rock climbing. It's been so long that I'm hoping it's like riding a bicycle, because I don't want to fall off.

Back from backpacking.

Randy and I had an excellent backpacking trip. We started in Seaside, Oregon and hiked down through Ecola State park, Cannon Beach, and the Oregon Coast Trail to Oswald West State Park (just shy of Manzanita). We were extremely lucky with the weather -- not a single drop of rain landed on either of us.

Of course I took some photos of the trip.

Backpacking the Oregon Coast.

Randy and I are planning a backpacking trip from Seaside to Manzanita (in Oregon). Hopefully the weather will be nice to us -- hiking in the rain never sounds like that much fun. We're supposed to leave on 4/17 and get back on 4/20. Ahh, sweet sweet backpacking.

Road trip photos, part 2.

I have almost all of the photos up now. Feel free to check out Part 2 of the road trip, Yosemite, or the Grand Canyon. Zion and panoramic photos will have to wait till tomorrow. Picking out the best photos sure takes me a while. Maybe I should start taking less pictures.

Roadtrip photos, part 1.

I just added the first album of road trip photos. These cover the trip from Ashland to San Francisco. I'll be adding another album that covers the rest of the way, as well as seperate albums from Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Zion.

Not so googlicious.

I just noticed that google finally got around to re-indexing my site again. My page now has a Google page rank of 3 out of 10 rather than the previous 4 out of 10. This is somewhat baffling. Before I only had one other page on the web linking to this one (according to Google, anyway). Now I have three. Any idea what made the old site more appealing to Google than the new one? Perhaps the bar has been raised.

Even more baffling: a search for "pictures of George Bush" lands this site at the number 8 spot.

The long drive home.

I just got back from the longest drive of my life. I drove straight from Salt Lake City to Portland. I was going to stop and spend the night in a hostel in Nampa, Idaho (a suburb of Boise), but the town kind of freaked me out for some reason. Everyone just seemed a little weird. It was probably that I had been driving all day and by this point everything seemed strange. In any case, I decided to book it home. After about ten and a half hours, I finally made it. It feels good to be home!

Iron, Lion, Zion.

After a few days in Flagstaff, I decided to make use of my National Parks Pass that I bought at the Grand Canyon and head to Zion National Park. Once again I am amazed at another national park. The views are incredible.

On the hidden canyon trail I started talking to another lone hiker, Chris. He was spending a few weeks traveling throughout the U.S. before beginning work at Yellowstone. We ended up hiking the rest of the trail together, talking about everything from work to favorite books to South Carolina, where he was from. It's always fun to meet a stranger.

I thought about staying in Zion another night so that I could do a little more hiking that day, but I decided I really was anxious to head home. So after a relatively full day of hiking I left Zion and spent the night just south of Salt Lake City. I figured I deserved a shower and to totally relax, so I bucked up for a hotel room for the first time on the trip. Well worth it.

Being sandblasted.

This past weekend I went camping with my brother, his wife, and some of their friends at Gooseberry Mesa which is a mountain biking area southwest of Zion National Park. I don't know if you could quite call in camping, really. My brother has a nice camping trailer complete with all the amenities of home -- kitchen, couch, bed, shower, etc. It was really windy and sandy, though, so the combination of being outdoors all day and being really dirty did make it seem more like traditional camping. Though the fillet minion sure didn't.

My brother's friends are an interesting and entertaining bunch. I got to witness everything from a guy shaving his legs (Mountain bikers claim this makes cuts easier to clean out among other things. I don't know if I buy it.) to shooting down kites with potato guns. The latter was actually quite fun. (BTW, good shot, Joel.)

On easter I went to the Grand Canyon. I had a little time to kill before heading south, so I decided "why not see one of the seven natural wonders of the world?" What can I say? It is one huge crevasse. Of course I took a lot of photos, so I'll have to post them when I get home. Overall I think you really have to get off the beaten trail to enjoy this national park. It was so packed that you have to wait to park just about everywhere you go. It was nice to get on a trail down the canyon and get away from the crowds for a while. But I must say that the Grand Canyon's visitors do make a very diverse crowd, which does make for good people watching.