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Went up to the 10th Mountain Division Huts again this year for the fourth consecutive year.

A great time was had, and some badly needed backcountry time made me feel good and relaxed. Here’s a few small photos:

I’m down with the sickness, as that song goes. Just Tuesday, I felt a bit off, but boldy stated to a co-worker, “I am stronger than these microbes!”. Ha! HAAA! Never talk shit to a germ or it will teach you your place real fast.

I’ll spare you the details, but I will share my personal nickname for this particular strain of funk: ‘The Sweaty Fever’

Try not to get it.

I never knew there was actually such a thing as a tesseract.

When I was a youngster, I always tried to read the books that my older brothers were reading. We read a lot of sci-fi type of stuff, I remember. Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time was one book that got passed around. I don’t remember the storyline at all, but what I always did remember was the tesseract. In the book, tesseract was the term for making the ‘wrinkle in time’ that could transport you super-far instantly. All you have to do is fold space-time so that your location and where you want to go are right next to each other. Then you just hop over, and you’re there. An interesting concept to be sure. We’re going to have to figure out how to do that one day, it sounds useful. I mean we’re going to have to get across those billions of light-years somehow.

mathworld.wolfram.com sets the matter straight. “The tesseract is the hypercube in R^4, also called the 8-cell or octachoron. It has the Schläfli symbol {4,3,3}, and vertices (+/-1,+/-1,+/-1,+/-1).”

I have no idea what that means, but there is a nifty 3-D interactive tesseract at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Tesseract.html

After all this time, to find out that a tesseract is a real thing… ha.

Who knew?

Well, it’s Halloween again. AKA my 34th birthday. This year finds me at home for the first time in years for my birthday. My usual habit over the last few years has been to go out of town on Halloween. This habit developed after close to 30 years of celebrating my birthday at someones silly costume party. I’d had enough. I decided if I left town, I could celebrate my birthday without going to a costume party. It works, too. I’ve had Halloween trips to some cool places, including New Orleans, Jackson Hole, and good old Colorado. I haven’t had to wear a costume in eons. It’s just not really what you want to do on your birthday after, say, age 10. This year, Halloween is mid-week, Jaime is super busy at work this time of year and can’t travel, and I’m starting my new job tomorrow (more on that later). I don’t know of any big party or anything, so we aren’t even blowing off a friends’ party, which is good. So we’ll just hand out candy, make dinner and chill. Sounds good to me. No costume necessary - that’s all that really counts.

There’s already far too much negativity in this blog, so I’ll skip the details and confine myself to noting that when it rains, it pours.

Well, I suppose that we should have seen this coming. The art of the boldfaced lie has never been more alive and well in our culture. Everyone from the President (and every one of his boys) to Paris Hilton is telling huge lies, outright boldfaced lies, and apparently getting away with it. I won’t even talk about GWB’s chronic lying, because, I’ll admit, it makes me too angry to be reasonable at all about it (hey, at least I admit it). If Reagan was “the great communicator”, then Bush is “the great fabricator”. Does that make Clinton “the great fornicator” (He told some famous untruths also)?

Psychopath Mark Karr lied about killing the Ramsey girl. Did anyone fail to believe him (especially in the press?). I personally read a page two foldout in the Denver paper where “handwriting experts” agreed the ransom note was Karr’s work. Uh, right. Suckers.

Are there any possible lies about performance enhancing drugs left that Bonds, Palmeiro or Floyd Landis haven’t used?

My new favorite is from Senator George Allen of Virginia, who tried to explain his racist tirade as merely a misunderstanding. He claimed he said “Mohawk”, not “Macaca” to the Indian fellow he insulted (who doesn’t have a mohawk haircut at all, and, uh, too bad it’s also on tape), “I was referring to his haircut.” Um. Well, that has obviously been shown to be an outright boldfaced lie, and Allen was forced to admit it (yeah, so we lied - shrug). Unfortunately, he is a known racist and a proven liar, and he’s still a shoo-in to reclaim his seat in the election in Virginia. If you tell me that race relations have improved in the South, well, you’re a liar too. Remember, lots of folks think Allen should be the next President. Scary. Bad scary.

The latest was from Paris Hilton who was arrested for DUI, saying she had one drink (but blew a 0.8), and wasn’t driving erratically, she says, she was merely trying to get into a burger joint for a late-night burger. Sure she was. Lots of anorexic Hollywood starlets go to the BK lounge for a whopper after a night of A-List partying. Methinks the only whoppers were the ones she’s telling.

The thing that really bothers me is we’re not calling any of these people out. We let ‘em have the lies. We want to believe them. The press reports these lies all the time, and gives the free passes, too. The press never apologizes for reporting these lies as truth either. “Oh, well,” they say, “we were just trying to get the scoop. You understand, right? We’d never knowingly lie to you.” Sure.

So, from the President on down to the media to the Hollywood A-List, we’re one big pack of liars and the suckers who’ll believe anything. We need to demand better. We deserve better. And my name is Ron Mexico

I’m tired of these lies and the acceptance by the public.

courtesy of Botlove dot com aka my brother Andrew

Went to the Holy Cross Wilderness southwest of Vail for a 4-day 3 night backpacking trip. We got rained on a fair bit, but aside from one pair of melted shoes, we were reasonably well prepared for it. Here’s a slideshow of the rest of the pictures from the trip. Had a great time with the crew. Let’s do it again next year

My adopted hometown, Longmont, Colorado has been named one of ten “All America Cities” for 2006. This is out of a pool of over 600 initial applicants. I’ve always been proud of my town, and been vocal in my support of Longmont. I’m happy to see that others can recognize Longmont for the great quality of life here and the forward-looking attitude of our city leaders and fellow citizens. Way to go, Longmont!