Our shadows stretched out long in front of us as we made our final ascent down to the lakeshore that is tonight’s campsite. It was a long day, much more arduous than yesterday - partly because we had a 1,900ft cumulative elevation gain and partly due to the altitude and second-day soreness.

At some point during the day we all encountered difficulties, although Anthony had the worst of it - succumbing once again to altitude sickness and losing his lunch and the day’s liquids somewhere along the trail (and then twice again before hitting they sack). Erik’s also showing small symptoms of a possible cold, with a sore throat and cough. But, tomorrow is another day… and we’ll just have to see how it goes.

Actually, it’s eight o’clock right now and all of us are tucked into our bags for the night (it’s not even fully dark outside). However, we’re all more than drained and it’s just too chilly to sit around outside. So, we decided to retire early. With luck, the night will restore our bodies an spirits (and be bear-free).

Tomorrow should be a little easier, with a mostly downhill morning and a small climb in the afternoon. If we feel OK, we may entertain the idea of pushing on into the Mammoth area… but, after today, that’s a big “if.”

Until tomorrow (or when I have a connection to post this), keep sending us positive thoughts!

It’s around 5pm on Tuesday and we’re all sitting around in a circle at our first campsite.

We ended up trekking a bit more than a mile further than we’d planned as the rangers warned us about an “aggressive” bear active in the area where we’d originally planned to stay the night. And, actually, having been able to check out the intended site on the way here, we’re at the better place.

Asking around the circle, everyone seems to be in good spirits, and I think we’re all happy with our stamina the progress we made. Then again, we’re still hiking on (relatively) fresh legs and aren’t trail-beaten yet.

It is absolutely gorgeous up here, and the trails aren’t as crowded as we expected for the holiday-led short week. I’m trying to take in more of the scenery this time around, instead of watching the feet in front of me and the terrain coming up.

Tomorrow sees us at our highest elevations for the whole of the hike, and likely our most brutal day in terms of exertion.

Wish us luck!

Happy Labor Day folks.

Hope you’re enjoying your time away from work.

As promised, I’m posting a detailed rundown of this week’s JMT hike.  And, as you read this, the guys and I are probably halfway to the Eastern side of Yosemite National Park, where we’ll begin our journey with high hopes of finishing what Anthony started last year and couldn’t finish.  Tomorrow (as you read this), we’ll hit the trail around 9:30am after gathering our passes and bear-canisters from the ranger station.

Below you can see the waypoints we’ve fed into the GPS we’re taking, and sort of track our progress.  Day two is our highest elevation day, while day five is our longest haul.  We pass through civilization only once when we go through the Mammoth area on day four, stopping in the Red’s Meadow area and maybe grabbing a real sit-down meal and a thermal shower from the hot-springs.  Aside from that, it’s miles and miles of scenic high-Sierra backcountry.  Check it:

Sorry for the fuzziness, I didn’t do it all html-table fancy like I did last year and just used a screencap of our Excel file.

If you’re so inclined, you can click on the following links to get an aeriel veiw of where we plan to camp each night (providing we stick to the schedule above): Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday afternoon (exit point).

And, that’s about it.  If we happen to have wireless access at Red’s Meadow I think I’ll try and scramble off a quick post on our progress up until that point.  If not, look for me back here in a week.

Wish us well!

Wednesday.  Sorry for the sporadic entries of late, I’ve been busy with work… and a day without time for my mind to wander usually means a night without much to write about.  Gonna be random today I think… but I want to get something out there.

Last night we had friends over for dinner.  I came home about an hour early to start the barbecue and char the meat; not a bad deal.  I can remember watching my dad barbecue for us when I was a kid, we had one of those traditional round Webbers, black - the kind like you see in those 1950s episodes of Leave It To Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet.  I remember we had some sort of Sunset Guide to Grilling cookbook which showed the novice grill chef how to form two mounds of charcoal on either side of the bowl for indirect heat.  I was always fascinated with cooking over fire, and still enjoy it.  So, like I said, coming home an hour early from work to start a fire and cook meat isn’t bad at all.

Tonight Sharaun had a volleyball game so Keaton and I got some time to hang out just Dad and daughter.  We took a nice long bath, playing in the bubbles and transferring water from one litte cup to another.  After that we got dressed for bed and brushed our hair (I brushed hers, she then returned the favor), and played for another ten mintues before getting into the crib.  We had a little tea party, and played in the “pretend pool” (which is just a comforter spread out on the ground with pillows for “floaties”).  I like when I can give her my full attention, although I admire Sharaun for doing it all day long, as it’s pretty demanding and requires putting aside whatever you might want to be doing (I mean, not to say I don’t want to be playing in the pretend pool with my daughter… but you know what I mean).

It’s less than a month now until Anthony and I embark on our “makeup” trip back into the Sierra backcountry along John Muir Trail.  This time, we’ll be four as Ben and Erik will join us as we try to finish the sixty-plus miles we failed to complete last time around - stupid snow… (what, you don’t believe me?, there totally was snow).  The four of us got together last week to have a planning session (read: pizza and beer and about fifteen minutes of me going over our slightly-modified last year’s itinerary).  I’ll go ahead and do a big kickoff entry here as that date nears, with the same kind of boring data I posted last time (I know, you can’t wait).  I think we’re all getting pretty excited, and hopes are high that we don’t get turned back by weather this year.  (In fact, the portion of the hike we plan to do this year has few “easy” outs, so we’re banking on Mother Nature being good to us).

I guess that’s all I have.  Bloggin’ ain’t easy lately.

Sunday afternoon and we’re back from a great weekend away.

Up the hills, across the bridge, and down the bumpy road we went.  We sidled up to the river and stayed a couple nights, staving off the heat of the day by playing in frigid waters and moving camp chairs with the shade.  Anyway, we’re back and unpacked and the dirt’s all down the drain with our bathwater.  Sharaun headed out with her friends for a nail appointment, Keaton’s napping, and I’m sitting here watching The Magnificent Seven on this humongous TV we recently got.  And even though it, like most of the things I tend to like watching, isn’t anything near HD (what do you expect for 1960?), it really seems somehow dustier and grittier and gunfightier.

I’m gonna talk a little bit about music, hope that’s OK.

Those of you who know me likely know that I am, in general terms, not a fan of country music.  Then again, those of you who know me a little better may know that I am a fan of some “roots” type country music like bluegrass and the early 19th century country-blues of the American South.  It’s just the “modern” country that I don’t like.  And, before you country people get all on my case - I’m not even talking about the whole “crossover country” thing that’s been going down now for ten or fifteen years; I’m talking about “traditional modern” country (I know, it’s an oxymoron, but it’s what I mean).  Anyway, I’ve always known that a lot of older “roots” country represents a large black hole in what I know about the evolution of music - I’ve just never tried to dive-in and figure it all out.  But, that changed a while back.

Sharaun and I were invited over to dinner with friends, and while we were there they were playing the “classic” country channel on Sirius.  Now, I’d always known I have some sort of affinity for rootsy, early-sounding “hillbilly folk” or “honky tonk” type stuff, as evidenced by the immediate shine I took to albums like John Prine’s self-titled debut and nearly everything Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers did during the roots-country rennaisance of the late 60s and early 70s.  But, that night nearly every single track that beamed down from the satellite radio seemed like a gem.  The rough nature of the tunes reminded me of the same reasons I adore things like Robert Johnson’s scant recorded history, or things like John Fahey’s Blind Joe Death: in them you can hear the embryonic sounds of decades of music yet to come.  After enjoying the soundtrack to our evening so much that night, I decided I’d spend some time questing for a good “classic country” primer.

The problem is, to make a decent and somewhat complete introduction to the birth of country music is not an easy task.  At first I began looking for some sort of compilation, maybe Rhino Records has done something, maybe some budget-bin put-togethers that managed to put a bunch of old songs together on disc when their copyrights lapsed or something.  Turns out, though, that the history of country music is a huuuuge beast, with twists and turns and reels and reels of music.  I tried reading threads on hardcore country music message boards for tips on good catch-all comps, I browsed through Usenet groups looking for homemade lists of essential classic country, I searched the internet far and wide - and couldn’t find much.

At first, I had decided to try and make my own collection.  I would download the best-ofs from luminaries like Cash, Lefty, Hank, Willie, Mel, Autry, etc. and just cobble together my own thing.  And, that’s how I started, just grabbing (and by “grabbing” I mean exchanging cash-money for) all sort of stuff.

I didn’t get far, however, when I happened upon a description of a twenty-CD collection called The History of Country and Western. This enormous compilation spans the years from 1927 to 1951, and was put together by a German label (go figure).  After looking over the tracklist, I decided this was the holy grail compilation I’d been looking for.  Sure, there’d still be stuff stretching into the early to mid 60s I’d need (to complete my strange “bookmark” years of when I figure the music was “pure” and not the twangy lost-love crap it turned into), but this thing would give my collection a huge jumpstart.

And boy, I was right.  This is an excellent compilation.  I mean, there’s nary a bum groove on this thing.  OK so it’s nowhere near something everyone’s gonna get into, but it’s one awesome historical document of the birth of a genre.  I sat spellbound listening to them on my first run-through, which was unfortunately brief (I plan on hitting the thing hard tomorrow at work), each track a little piece of music revelation previously unknown to me.  Seriously, I recommend it to anyone.  The best part about it is that it’s dirt-freakin’ cheap.  Amazon carries it if you want to get one for yourself.  Again, it’s got the nod of my hat.

So… somehow, I’ve gotten into country (please don’t misquote me on that, and no Sugarland albums for Christmas please, I will throw up).  Makes me happy, really, because I know there are so many more rocks out there unturned - so much good music I’ve still yet to hear.  I mean, what’s next?  Reggea?  Disco?  Standards?  No, no, and no, most likely… but still, I love hearing new stuff.

Anyway, I’m about done now… that thing kinda took off and spawned more paragraphs than I figured it would.  So, I’m gonna go enjoy the rest of my Sunday evening, maybe throw together some leftover Smores ingredients with a bowl of vanilla ice cream or something… who knows.

Goodnight y’all.

Happy Monday folks.  Was a great weekend.  Keaton had a good time with Grammy and Grandpa in town, she got into full “show off” mode.  We barbecued, enjoyed some beer, and got some great weather.

For today, I’ve got a pretty random entry, ranging a bunch of pretty unrelated topics.  It happens sometimes on Mondays, it’s the prime day for blogging leftovers.  So, I’m gonna slap a bunch of paragraphs on a paper plate, punch in two minutes on the microwave, and pour you a glass of icewater or Pepsi or whatever.  Here goes.

Our neighborhood Fourth of July get-together was fantastic, like a huge hunk of fresh-from-the-oven Americana; with kids on bikes giving impromptu “parades,” lame-style California fireworks set atop folding ladders in the street, even down to the nametags, handshakes, and cakes decorated like American Flags.  We got to meet a ton of our neighbors and Keaton even ended up with a couple “she’s so cute” hand-me-down toys from some of the older girls.  We also put toghether an e-mail list for the block, something I thought was another stroke of genius.  Ahh, community… it’s kinda nice.

Changing subjecte drastically, I want to talk about the Large Hadron Collider for a minute.  Now, before I start, I fully realize you may have never heard of the “Large Hadron Collider,” not to mention knowing what the heck “Hadron” might be.  And, I’ll also let it go if you accidentally misread that as “Large Hard-On Collider,” it happens.  Anyway, it is “Hadron,” and all you have to know is that it’s got something-or-other to do with physics.  See, the LHC (as I’ll cooly call it from hence forward) is the world’s biggest particle accelerator, a device which physics boffins use to smash different kinds of subatomic particles together at super-high speeds.  They do this so they can observe what happens afterward, like new particles or other phenomenon created by the collisions.  To physics nerds, all of this is incredibly exciting.

There is, however, a significant amount of fear mongering and doubt on the internet about the LHC.  See, the machine has just finished being built, and is set to be fired up for the first time any day now.  This has a certain set of folks quite concerned.  These people are afraid that the experiments performed at the LHC may create awful things that could possibly destroy the entire planet.  Terribly scary-sounding things like “micro black holes,” vacuum bubbles,” “magnetic monopoles,” and “strangelets.”  Whatever those are, they sound pretty intimidating, and can, apparently, destroy the Earth.  And, even though the official safety study was incredibly comprehensive and found no cause for concern, it’s still kind of interesting to think of the unintended effects the massive machine may have.  Heck, I’ve even written about a similar scenario before.

OK, I know that probably wasn’t intersting, but I’ve been wanting to write about the Large Hadron Collider now for a couple months, and just decided I’d go ahead and do it.  If you’re interested in when keeping track of how much time you have before you’re vaporized by a hadron-shooting reverse-vampire spawned from a magnetic monopole, you can check this website.

Now then, let’s move on to something equally as off-topic.

I found this site online today and loved it. I mean, regardless of how “real” it is – what a fun escapist fantasy concept. I’ve talked before about how I have this lingering desire to “drop out’ and start/join a cooperative community, and seasteading is like that with an added layer of cool. Yeah, it’s perhaps a tad more isolated than a small community of like-minded individuals taking to an agrarian lifestyle up “in the hills” somewhere (trying to avoid Branch Davidian “compound” esque imagery here), but wouldn’t it be cool to give up modern life and go live on a huge self-sustaining bio-barge in the middle of the sea for a year? Yeah, sure you’d probably get some sort of cabin-fever, end up hating or killing or sleeping with everyone in your little water-locked society… but, y’know.

Told you it was random.  Goodnight.

Hey, guys… hope the week’s been good to you so far. We’re about halfway through I figure, so that’s something… I figure.

You think it’s easy to write this much every day and still be so awesome? Well, it is. Sometimes I look back on the tons and tons of words on this webpage and kinda freak out: “Good Lord, when do I have time to do ‘real’ stuff with all that writing?” Eh, I seem to find plenty of time. Surprisingly, even to me, it’s not as time-consuming as it looks – I guess.

Oh, before we get started, I updated Keaton’s picture gallery late today with some images from her 2nd birthday party here at home (at the kids gym with all her buds), and a few from Easter. Go ahead and go check that out now, this thing’ll be here when you get back - take your time even. (Yeah, I know, I said I might have some video… but man… that’s a lot of work!)

Anyway back to the writing/blogging thing if I may, I’m happy to say that overall daily readership here at sounds familiar has experienced a measurable uptick for 2008. That makes me happy, and I’m always excited to find out about new readers and get new comments – keep ‘em coming. Also on the rise are the spam comments the site gets, although thanks to the near-perfect filtering of Akismet very few end up getting through. Seems like just yesterday (it wasn’t, it was back in September of 2006) when I was exclaiming about my Akismet spam-blocked count breaking the 100,000 barrier, and here we are this week hovering just under 200,000. Amazing.

And, last on the blogging run of topics: You guys and your poll-gaming. I should’ve never said how easy it was to fool the poll by deleting cookies. Early Tuesday morning someone up-voted the “pants off” voting option by about ten votes. Turns out, however, that with this new polling plugin, I can actually see who games the system – and by how many votes. So, if I wanted to, I could completely discount “artificial” voting. Don’t think I will, though, as it seems to me that if someone wants to go to the trouble, they must really want to read something. Anyway, the poll for this Friday is still open, and right now the triple-X topic is out in the lead. If you’d rather see things turn out differently, make sure you flex your muscle of democracy and make it happen. I’ll post the poll again Thursday, but for now if you haven’t voted just cruise down the page and do it.

Yesterday after work I decided to get into the garden and prep it for the Spring planting. First job was to pull all the wheat from my failed “know the cost of a loaf of bread” project. Turns out wheat, I guess like any grass really, has a pretty extensive root network – guess that’s why they plant the stuff as erosion control on hillsides, eh? – anyway, pulling it took some time, after which I backfilled with more fresh compost/peat/etc. Since Keaton got some super-awesome toddler-sized garden implements as gifts for her birthday last month, I brought her outside with me to help. At first, she wasn’t having it. Being the fastidious princess she is, when I hoisted her up into the garden box she just stood there, rooted in her spot, looking down at her shoes with the most concerned look on her face. “Don’t like it, Daddy!,” she’d whine. “You don’t like what, baby?,” Dad asked. “Don’t like the sand in my shoes! My shoes are dirty, Daddy…” I tried to explain to her that getting dirty is part of gardening, but she wasn’t having it.

After ten minutes or so spent standing statue-still fretting over the dirt in her shoes, I tried to accelerate things by piling soil around her feet, completely covering them like we were at the beach. At first she whined some more, but soon enough she pulled her feet out and asked me to take off her shoes. Once she was barefoot, she seemed a little better and started walking around. Soon enough she was throwing dirt at me, it was quite a rapid progression. At some point, we found a worm while turning up soil, and I had her hold out her hand so it could crawl on her. She called it a “silly worman,” which is apparently what they are called on The Backyardigans (so sayeth Sharaun), and seemed to enjoy herself as it wriggled up her arm. We found a cocoon too, the kind where the pointy butt-end is still sort of alive and spins around to corkscrew the thing into the Earth. She held that in her hand and watched it move, and even knew, after I told her what it was, that it was going to turn into a butterfly.

We had a good time, and the garden is now ready for some new stuff. We were planning on planting tonight, but I got home a little late from work and the wind was up so it was a bit chilly (it’s looking like the amazing weather we’ve been having the past week is about to take a turn for the worse with the forecast showing rain and wind the next couple days). Maybe tomorrow if the weather holds and it’s warm enough as the sun goes down, otherwise we’ll have to wait till the weekend or something.

Well folks, that’s enough for me tonight… sorry it’s all over the place. Goodnight.