Astride the Stone Horse

SW, leg deep (given the angle, it was really tempting to title this post "Balls Deep"...admire my partial restraint) and nearing the top of Binou's Crack.  There's something comforting about being able to jam a whole leg in a crack; you know you're not going to slip out, and often you can pretty much sit on it, especially if it takes a curve like this one.

Top Out

RH making a grab for the chains atop Sparkling Schnitzel, a 5.11 off-width (tricksy baaaarely off-width; hand-fist stacks for me, and not big enough for a knee jam) in Indian Creek, Utah.

Get ready for a string of desert pictures, cause somebody just got back from MOAB.

Living Color

The brother escaping an inscrutable installation; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin.

Whippoorwilled

MD cruising up Don Miron, 5.11c, alongside Summersville Lake, NRG.

Rainbow Road

Porters & yaks crossing the prayer flag-festooned bridge to Namche Bazaar, high above the Dudh Kosi river, on a brilliantly sunny afternoon.

Cross-Eyed & Blind

Once more into the breach; the last trip to climb in the ol' EnArGee before the horrible, horrible winter descends on the east coast.  I've been feeling quite strong lately, and am looking forward to doing battle with the climb pictured here, Cross-Eyed & Blind, an 11a at the first buttress of the Meadow.  It's a beautiful line on beautiful stone, long, with many interesting moves.  Usually on a trip, I like to get on a bunch of routes, try them once or twice, not really caring about the send.  For whatever reason, Cross-Eyed is one of the few that really captures my imagination and my ambition.  If not this trip, then another- I know that I will send this.

Hope, if not change

Four years ago tonight, this was the scene on my street.  I doubt there will be anything of the sort tonight- no organic 3am congregation, no dance parties, no pot-and-pan drum circles, no bouncing, no unfettered joy.  No feeling that we've reached some sort of turning point, achieved a milestone, made a start on a path toward a new way of doing things.  And in this case, that might be okay.  I don't think it's ever a good thing to think of a politician as anything other than a man, a flawed human like any of us, and tightly constrained by a system that has entrenched centuries of vested interests and patterns of political behavior.  There is a reason hope is considered by some to be audacious- all too often, it is mired in, made a travesty by, reality.

That said, it will be with a sigh of relief if I wake up tomorrow, check the final ("final") returns, and see an Obama victory.  There is always a lesser of two evils.

Decay! Decay! Decaaaay!

Insects making quick work of late-season wildflowers, on the flanks of Mt. Hood.

The title, of course, comes from that seminal work of the postmodern era, Strindberg and Helium. Seriously, you should probably go watch it.  Let it bring...some...joy to the long, boring walk...through the shadowland of memory.

Down to the River (via elevator)

Trolley cars on the elevator to load a pile of tourists (us!) into Yangtze river cruise boats in Chongqing.  Visibility is maybe half a mile- enough to take in one of the many new construction projects expanding this already gargantuan city, going up on the other side.

Take Off

Cliff swallows & their nests, under the eaves of an abandoned house in the California ghost town of Bodie.