ok, raise your hand if during your time at UF, you did not partake in tubing on the ichetucknee river or the santa fe river or go to the springs, be they blue, ginnie, poe, et al? not too many out of you gators, eh?
imagine your best day ever at ginnie springs. temps in the mid 80s. cloudless skies. not too many gilchrist county residents. nary a pair of cutoff jean shorts in sight. cold beverages. attractive co-floaters, whatever your persuasion. got the day in your head?
it can't even hold the proverbial candle to sunday when we went tubing for an early birthday trip. keep the weather, lack of jean shorts, beverages, and floaters. add rocks and rapids, and you have tubing on the potomac river in west virginia.
i realize that some of you may not know what tubing is. take an innertube, fill it with air, and float down a river. most often, the float is on calm, flat rivers. butts tubing thought to themselves, "butts old pal, let's see how many crazy city folk will go tubing down rapids in these $5 tubes and pay us $30 a piece for the privilege. we'll buy an old school bus or two, some trailers, get some slick suit to write up a waiver, and they'll come in droves."
and we did. on our bus to the river, which is in a national park, oddly enough, there were three groups. we were rolling ten deep; we were the smallest group! there were groups of seventeen and twelve, all of us rip roaring ready for a lazy day.
lazy it was for the first half hour or so. then the fun began. rapids added to the equation, especially with a cooler tethered to your tube, makes it a lot more fun. everyone in our crew lost something of value, we all got tipped, and we all had a blast. i smell a new summertime tradition!
Showing posts with label water. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water. Show all posts
Friday, August 8, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
exposures
exposure in climbing is the distance from where a climber might fall to where the climber might stop if there were an unprotected fall. big wall climbers typically get the most exposure (several thousand feet); boulderers the least (several feet). i like to stay towards the lower end of the spectrum. a long fall, while it would give me a long while to contemplate my life and enjoy the ride, would be certainly unpleasant when suddenly stopped. why am i defining this? on tuesday, cp exposed me to the most exposure i've had thus far in my (brief) climbing career. we were in boulder canyon, trying to find our way to a cluster of sport climbs. 
we wandered up and down canyon road, unsuccessful in finding where we thought we wanted to go. so, we did a tyrolean traverse (ropes strung across river, attach to harness with carabiner, and pull self above river hand over hand) across the creek and scrambled our way up to some climbs that he'd done with kai and allyson. i say scrambled because it wasn't really a hike; 'twas far more vertical than that! before i knew it, we were easily 200 vertical feet above the road we parked on with well over 200 feet of granite above us yet to climb.
see the bolts on the picture? that's so that the belayer won't take out two people if he falls, stumbles, or the climber on the sharp end takes a whipper and yanks him off the ground. additional protection. to the right was the warm-up. the overall route goes at 5.8. i'd venture to guess that there were two, maybe three moves that went at 5.8. the rest of it could've been easily done with sneakers on. to the left was the other route. cp thinks the total route goes at 5.10b; my opinion of the first pitch, probably accurate, though half of it was pretty easy, though technical. laybacks and handjams on cracks. easy clips, breeze on my back, tourists watching the red-shirt climb up the sheer face in awe.
the climbing of the day being done, we down scrambled to the falls and cooled off in the creek. all in all, a helluva good day, minimal amount of climbing though it was.
we wandered up and down canyon road, unsuccessful in finding where we thought we wanted to go. so, we did a tyrolean traverse (ropes strung across river, attach to harness with carabiner, and pull self above river hand over hand) across the creek and scrambled our way up to some climbs that he'd done with kai and allyson. i say scrambled because it wasn't really a hike; 'twas far more vertical than that! before i knew it, we were easily 200 vertical feet above the road we parked on with well over 200 feet of granite above us yet to climb.
see the bolts on the picture? that's so that the belayer won't take out two people if he falls, stumbles, or the climber on the sharp end takes a whipper and yanks him off the ground. additional protection. to the right was the warm-up. the overall route goes at 5.8. i'd venture to guess that there were two, maybe three moves that went at 5.8. the rest of it could've been easily done with sneakers on. to the left was the other route. cp thinks the total route goes at 5.10b; my opinion of the first pitch, probably accurate, though half of it was pretty easy, though technical. laybacks and handjams on cracks. easy clips, breeze on my back, tourists watching the red-shirt climb up the sheer face in awe.
the climbing of the day being done, we down scrambled to the falls and cooled off in the creek. all in all, a helluva good day, minimal amount of climbing though it was.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
water, water, everywhere
i just finished reading life of pi. it was a long overdue read, considering everyone i know raved about it when they read it. i thought it was going to give me a different perspective on religion. teach me respect for other religions. not so different from my own outlook, "they're all different passports to the same afterlife." or something like that.
for those of you who haven't read it, go get it. it's a great story. slow going at first, i polished off the second half of the book yesterday after taking about a week to read the first half. oddly, pi's struggles to stay hydrated got me thinking about water.
water. we all need it. as kids, we didn't like it, but we drank it. a glass of water was unheard of. other sources, however, bring me back to those hot summer days playing outside. what triggered this? yesterday, i had a nice cool drink from a water fountain. in elementary school, water fountains were the best consistent source of water. i remember comparing notes with classmates on which ones worked best, which ones were the coldest, and which ones tasted good. yesterday, that water fountain was a blessed elixir to soothe my parched throat. exceptions to this rule are water fountains in churches and those that are outdoors. they just don't taste right. kids these days probably don't compare these notes, as their parents are more likely to send them to school with water bottles. i even had one boy who claims his mother told him never to drink from the water fountain.
coming in a close second is hose water. i thought clowe was getting a drink from the hose on saturday when we returned to his house. that earthy, metallic taste. i used to drink more than my belly could hold. it was just cool enough, never the first stream though. that was the water that got heated up and had the strongest hose flavor. just a hint of rubber or vinyl and the metal pipes. delicious!
incidentally, water has been in the news a lot lately. cities such as atlanta banning bottled water in light of environmental concerns. i thought i'd heard it all. then i saw this. ridiculous, no?
for those of you who haven't read it, go get it. it's a great story. slow going at first, i polished off the second half of the book yesterday after taking about a week to read the first half. oddly, pi's struggles to stay hydrated got me thinking about water.
water. we all need it. as kids, we didn't like it, but we drank it. a glass of water was unheard of. other sources, however, bring me back to those hot summer days playing outside. what triggered this? yesterday, i had a nice cool drink from a water fountain. in elementary school, water fountains were the best consistent source of water. i remember comparing notes with classmates on which ones worked best, which ones were the coldest, and which ones tasted good. yesterday, that water fountain was a blessed elixir to soothe my parched throat. exceptions to this rule are water fountains in churches and those that are outdoors. they just don't taste right. kids these days probably don't compare these notes, as their parents are more likely to send them to school with water bottles. i even had one boy who claims his mother told him never to drink from the water fountain.
coming in a close second is hose water. i thought clowe was getting a drink from the hose on saturday when we returned to his house. that earthy, metallic taste. i used to drink more than my belly could hold. it was just cool enough, never the first stream though. that was the water that got heated up and had the strongest hose flavor. just a hint of rubber or vinyl and the metal pipes. delicious!
incidentally, water has been in the news a lot lately. cities such as atlanta banning bottled water in light of environmental concerns. i thought i'd heard it all. then i saw this. ridiculous, no?
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
icy cool refreshment
this time of year, the yearning returns for my north central florida. a lazy float down a cold, spring-fed river. a six-pack of modelo especial. hillbillies and cut-off jean shorts and jailhouse tats and tobacco-stained doors on four-wheel drives. i need to find the tubing spot around here, buy a random pool float, tie a six-pack cooler, and fight the oppressive summer heat.
swimming pools around here are a hot commodity. few homeowners have them, rarely do apartment complexes, and community pools are membership only. 28 years or so, all i had to do was call a friend or open the sliding glass door. in childhood, hop the fence and say hey to the neighbors that had them and didn't mind (too much) if a few of my friends cooled off. during cross country practice in high school, we went pool hopping on long run days when it was like slogging through soup. those days, we were often met back at school by the police and a lecture from coach fecteau or brantley, "if you do this one more time..." morphed in gainesville among the climber set to pool hopping at hotels and apartment complexes, late night swims were a risky gambit, but security always asked us to leave, nothing more. we often knew someone who lived there, so it wasn't a problem. last year, we could throw the proverbial stone and hit our pool. a three a.m. impromptu swim at our pool after our going away party was the last in the era. i'm searching for that lax security around here, but something tells me "boys will be boys" is more of a southern attitude towards late-night pool trespassing.
bring on the summer. bring on the water.
swimming pools around here are a hot commodity. few homeowners have them, rarely do apartment complexes, and community pools are membership only. 28 years or so, all i had to do was call a friend or open the sliding glass door. in childhood, hop the fence and say hey to the neighbors that had them and didn't mind (too much) if a few of my friends cooled off. during cross country practice in high school, we went pool hopping on long run days when it was like slogging through soup. those days, we were often met back at school by the police and a lecture from coach fecteau or brantley, "if you do this one more time..." morphed in gainesville among the climber set to pool hopping at hotels and apartment complexes, late night swims were a risky gambit, but security always asked us to leave, nothing more. we often knew someone who lived there, so it wasn't a problem. last year, we could throw the proverbial stone and hit our pool. a three a.m. impromptu swim at our pool after our going away party was the last in the era. i'm searching for that lax security around here, but something tells me "boys will be boys" is more of a southern attitude towards late-night pool trespassing.
bring on the summer. bring on the water.
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