The Straw Brothers

Alex:









Just say for example you were from Colorado and youhad dual U.S. - Australian Citizenship.

Then imagine you were fanatical about snow boarding and climbing.

And your older brother was too.

Take into account that Colorado has aguably some of the best powder in the world and is not such a shabby place for climbing either.



Then lets just say you chose to live most of your life in Brisbane.

Either there's a girl I don't know about, or he's running from the law.

Eric: As above, but 3 years older.


Good choice boys?


Eric:













..The Straw Brothers taketo "Black Leather Dungarees" at Coolumand find out all about the hype, the pump, and the pure excitment of one of the Cave's best and highest.


















..










Alex on "the slab" section of the route. Not a slab. Just not as crazy steep.







Whether youclaim to be a boulderer or a boarder, you are going to need a beanie.

Otherwise who's going to believe you?






Climbers, don't just dream about being as cool as these guys, do what I do- copy their look.

Get the "Climber Beanie", hand made from un-dyedAlpaca and Merino wool, atRed Phoenix Emporium




Or at least click on the link to seethe boys represent Red Phoenix,the uber cool, cult style outfitters to the very chic.










Good choice boys.

jj






Snow Radish

It was with some regret that I set off to return the Xtracycle Radish after a long term test ride. I had several errands to run and left early in the morning, rear bags filled with items to drop off in the course of my travels.The day was gorgeous, the air fresh, and the temperature not too low. More than a week had gone by since our last snowfall, and the multi-use river path looked like it had been cleared. I chose the path over the road, wanting to make the most out of my last ride on this bike.




We rode for a few miles along the plowed path, until gradually patches of uncleared snow and ice began to appear. I had the opportunity to get off the trail and rejoin the road, but decided to wing it.






At length, we hit a section of the trail that was completely unplowed. The hard, crusted-over snow made for an uneven surface. I was not in an adventurous or experimental mood, as I had my camera on the bike without a great deal of padding to protect it. Still, I thought that I would try to continue riding and see how it went. Cycling on crusty, uneven snow feels not unlike cycling on rough dirt roads, provided that there is no ice. The more I try it, the more I like it, and I enjoy trying it on different bikes and tires to compare. The 26x2" tires on the Radish have some tread to them, and it was enough for me to feel a difference between how theyrode on this kind of surfacecompared to the slicker Grand Bois Hetres. Bike choice aside, I think my ideal tires for this terrain might be some fat 26" or 650B knobbies.






It was a windy morning, and the wind picked up in the course of the ride. Naturally, it was a headwind, and the strongest gust coincided with an uphill stretch. I bent my arms until my face was just above the handlebars, put my head down and pedaled, eliciting cheers from a Super-Commuter headed in the opposite direction. Later on the road, a man at a stop light asked what it was like to drag "a bike like that" uphill. "You must be either very fit, or very miserable!" None of the above, mister.






It's funny, because I could sense that I got a lot of respect every time I rode the Radish. But it was undeserved: The bike rides easy, and winter conditions did not reveal any weak spots in handling. I think that for those in cold climates contemplating cargo bikes, that's an important consideration. Cargo bikes have a way of making you dependent on them. And once that dependency forms, you want to be able to use the bike comfortably and safely year-round. I have not tried other cargo bikes in the snow, but I am glad to know the Xtracycle affords that freedom. Throw on some winter tires of your choice, and you may not even have to worry about whether the paths are plowed.




Against the backdrop of a winter wonderland I said farewell to my longtailed friend, and rode home on a vintage Raleigh Roadster- contemplating differences in bike handling and dreaming of future snow rides.

Cycling and Hairstyles: Long vs Short

This morning I received an email from a reader asking whether I prefer long or short hair for cycling. Short answer: Long!




Last summer I chopped my hair for the first time in nearly two decades. While I didn't do it for the sake of cycling, I did expect short hair to be easier to manage for someone who rides a lot compared to my previously unruly mane. Surely it would feel lighter, be less prone to getting disheveled and sweaty, be easier to comb. Lots of active women have short hair, so this logic made sense.




But oh how wrong I was.You know how sometimes you have a bad hair day? I feel like I've had a bad hair year.While I like the look of my bob and it was nice to have a change, as far as cycling it's been annoying and fussy. Not long enough to fit into a pony tail, it is long enough to fly into my eyes when I ride unless I use lots of pins. This includes the times I am roadcycling and wearing a helmet - loose strands won't stay under the helmet, but fly in my face unless I remember to pin them down. Post-ride maintenance is harder as well. When my hair was long and it got disheveled or tangled after a ride, I could simply put it up in a "messy bun" and it would look decent enough. With short hair there is no way to hide the mess; looking presentable after a sweaty or windy ride is a challenge.




So while it may seem counter-intuitive, my experience as a cyclist has been that long hair is easier to deal with: With or without a helmet, I can just tie it back or braid it and forget about it. Now that mine fits into a pony tail again, I am ecstatic and feel like I need to write a note to myself with a reminder to never cut it again. I could see how a buzz-cut or pixie cut would be low-maintenance, but my chin-length bob has been anything but.




What are your thoughts on hair maintenance and cycling? Have you changed or tweaked your hairstyle as a result of riding a bike?

La Sportiva Lo5 ski review

Dave on the Low5in the cold smoke of the Brevent. photo courtesy of Ross Hewitt




“I didn’t know La Sportiva made Ski’s, how are they?”



Seems to be something that I get asked a lot when I take MY Lo5’s out in Chamonix.



Up until last year I didn’t know they made ski’s either. Everyone knows them for their boots and we’ve all seen the ridiculously light Ski Boots sat in the shops looking very racey. But Ski’s? In an already vast market of ski’s you need to find a good neash and do it well to get anywhere and I’m happy to say that quality wise they are very good.









Let me first describe my skiing and what I look for. I live in Chamonix which is of course a haven for steep and technical descents which are primarily human powered with the exception of the ‘big pheriques’. Therefore there are two different days that I usually have in Cham. If there is fresh then the norm is to lap the Midi or the Grande Montet until I can’t stand. These days require big ski’s, stiff boots and a powerful approach to skiing. We don’t get that many days like that unfortunately. This brings me on to the other type of skiing we have where you head out with a bag full of what you think might be useful i.e ropes, poons, axe(s) skins and you head to either a pre-planned objective or and area where you think it might be good… For days like this you need a predictable, stable ski with good edge grip and enough float to get you through the 3 day old pow. They need to be stiff enough to plow the crud and crust and light enough that you can rinse out 1200m+ of vert and still have enough in you to ski back to town. Finding a Ski which does it all is tough I agree so compromise needs to be made however I think I might of found my perfect partner with the Lo5’s for days like these…..



http://davesearle.me//01/25/y-couloir-aiguille-dargentiere-one-of-those-days/



http://davesearle.me//01/27/s-couloir-aiguille-de-leboulement-d%C2%B2/



Most of the people I ski with will run a 100m waisted ski as their touring ski. We all like to enjoy the down with big turns and airs and we don’t have time for mincy skiing on floppy Rando planks. We want to go deep into the massif in a day and ski out fast so we can get back to our homes to re-hydrate, refuel and plan for the next day.









This past week in Cham I have exclusively skied on the La Sportiva Lo5 to give them a proper test. I was skiing for 4 days around work and here’s what I did.









Day 1: Two laps of the Aiguille du midi via the Valley Blanche/Envers du plan. Deep, fresh powder and an icey, Bumpy track back to town. A good day- Perhaps better to have been on a bigger pow ski but still the Lo5’s put a smile on my face and gave me a good day out for sure. They handled the bumps very well and kept me on the straight and narrow (track).



Day 2: Y Couloir on the Aiguille d’Argentiere. Steep (up to 50 degrees) decent in perfect cold snow. 1200m up and 2650m down in a day up to 3900m. I felt super confortable and secure on the Lo5’s putting in jump turns in the steep and narrow couloir and they felt light on my back during the hike up. Skiing the Grande Montet homerun (red run) in the failing/flat light was a breeze. They handled very well on the piste with good carve ability.



Day 3: Col hopping in the Aiguille Rouge. We wanted to ski a steep north facing couloir but ended up skiing a sloppy south face with variable snow and some fun drops to get through the rock bands. The ski’s handled all the messy snow well. They delt with the cunderballs, debris, powder, semi corn and icey track in equal measures and again I appreciated the low weight as we spent most of the day going up.



Day 4: South Couloir of the Aiguille De l’Eboulement. 1500m of vert in a day and 2250m down in variable snow, which was mostly breakable crust. Tricky skiing for sure and not really that pleasant. Only a massive reverse camber ski would have been fun on the way down. I still felt glad to have the Lo5’s on my feet as they were predictable to turn on the steeps and the early tip rise helped no end in the crust.



All in all a pretty full on week in Cham. All kinds of snow experienced and I’m still loving the Lo5’s as my touring ski. As a light and reliable SKIMO tool these pretty much hit the nail on the head and would be a good companion to any Climber or Ski Mountaineers/ Tourer who needs a reliable and predictable yet fun ski to rip the resort, pow, steeps and bumps with ease.



Other info:

I mounted My Plum Guides 1cm forward from the line with quiver killer inserts. I have the 178 and my set up is exactly 4Kg in total.











editors note:



Dave and my buddy Jerry, a ski patroler in Montana, have been ripping and raving on theLo5s this season.



Jerry's comments on the Lo5.



Dane -

Snow here has been so thin I have only skied them once (but am going for three days starting saturday). I took them up to Bridger on a day with 6-8 inches of very cold powder (@0-10F) and a firm base. Skied bumps, pow, chop, nd a few rocks. Was skiing with a former US Team member and his son so we were mostly hauling ass.



I didn't know when I ordered these that they were the same dimensions as my 165 Kilowatts (the sportivas are 178) so I have a good comparison although the BDs are around five years old. Both have dynafits mounted.



My first impression is that I now get it when they say the early rise skis seem short. These feel about the same as the BDs - not a bad thing except for steep bumps where a longer ski would be better. That sounds counterintuitive but this ski in a 188 would really smooth out the foreandaft. Even with a more traditional boot (I was skiing the green dynafit),youjust can't get that tip to do much. Opposite on the powder and chop where they require no effort. They are more fun than my Fischer Wateas at 114 atthe waist. More control and feel. No issues on the packed and I couldcarvepretty easy with an upright over the feet stance (I ski a lot like Pierceand Arnold - not as well but standing pretty upright).



As a one quiver ski I think they would be fine if you kept them out of thefirm bumps (did I mention these were really firm bumps). Since I have nointerest in skiing that sort of terrain I would ski them every day at BS. Would like to try the 188s. I patrol on a big Dynastar Legend at 188and really enjoy them and think the Low 5 in that length would be stellarespecially at about a third the weight. I think the sidecut is the newstandard for an all round ski and have no problem keeping an edge in firm spring snow.



I've never skied the DPS so can't say how them compare but based on talkingwith those that own them they either come with a lifetime supply ofcocaineor are some of the best skiing boards out there. (DB sez: Its true, the DPS do ski well ;-) For me and how and whereIlike to ski the Lo5 is going to be fine. I spend more and more time in the BC taking tours and skiing open faces and tight chutes. This ski is goingtoreplace my BDs, save weight, and give more float skinning and skiing -what's not to like?

J.



Here in the PNW, on Cascade Cement much of the time I have been using the Hi5 for the last two seasons going on three now. I still haven't found anything to replace them and I have a a few more pairs of skis now. So it isn't without trying. More on the Hi5 here:



http://coldthistle.blogspot.com//10/la-sportiva-hi5-rock.html



http://coldthistle.blogspot.com//06/la-sportiva-hi5-skis.html

Mt. St. Helens, Worm Flows

Foursquare Mountaineering split up and climbed 2 different mountains on the same day. This group went south and climbed the St. Helens winter route. What a view!






Pete M. and Dan on top.



Brian, Matthew, Diane, Andrew, Todd and David on the summit.

It was a great day to climb a mountain!

You can call me Crazy

I've been called that as well as many other things in the past! This time, it is well-deserved. And if you've been wondering why there haven't been any posts here on Kinexxions since the first of June, read on...



If you recall, back in December of last year, I began "cleaning up" my Legacy database. By the time I left on my travels at the end of January, some progress had been made but not much was done on it again until I returned to Indiana five weeks ago.



In the process of moving information from notes into events and sourcing it, I came to the disturbing realization that my sources were an absolute mess! There was no consistency in how the citations were entered and none are even close to "the standard" or any standard for that matter. I could come up with several excuses for this sad state of affairs, but what good would that do?



I have so many documents from my several visits in the last two years to Salt Lake City that need to be reviewed, analyzed and entered... but I made the difficult decision to not enter any new data until the "old" source citations were reviewed and standardized. All of them. So, yes, I must be crazy. Especially after I found out how many sources I have entered and how many individuals use those sources. Rather mind-boggling actually.



The other "big" decision made on the first of June was to begin using Legacy's SourceWriter. I understand there may be some issues with transferring sources via GedCom but using that feature would (hopefully) force me into a standardized format. That and I finally purchased the digital version of Evidence Explained. I figured it might help me to understand why a source had to be cited in a certain way ;-)



As might be expected, I had a few questions. I had recently joined the Legacy Virtual User's Group Community (LVUG) on Google+ (G+) so posted a question there. You can find it as well as the responses by clicking on the "Sources" link on the left hand side of the G+ LVUG Community landing page.



Some good ideas and information was offered by JL Beeken, Tessa Keogh, Monique Riley, Marla Larson, Richard Hallford, Melanie Armstrong, and Linda McCauley, all of whom I would like to thank for their ideas, suggestions, and input. It really helped me make a few decisions as to how I wanted to do the sources.



With over 7200 people and more than 700 sources in the database this is a monumental undertaking. But it really needs to be done. The number of individuals using a source varies considerably. Quite a few (probably more than half of the sources) are used by under 10 people while about 35 are used by more than 200. The source used by the most people is the Social Security Death Index with close to 1500 people - and each of those individuals has 2-3 citations for the SSDI (birth, death, and the event). Thank goodness for the source clipboard and Legacy's tagging feature! It would be an impossible task without those features.



On June 1st I started working with the source citations from Ancestry.com and FamilySearch databases and have gotten about 2/3 of the way through that list, eliminating about 15 duplicate sources. I've been working on the SSDI source citations for most of two days and am about half-way through with it.



I will be holding off on updating sources for census records until the Legacy team releases version 8 sometime later this year. It seems they may be implementing a feature for "shared" events such as census records that sounds rather intriguing. I sure am looking forward to the new version of Legacy!



Blog posts will be few and far between for the next month or two, as if they haven't been already this year! Most of my time for the next month will be devoted to this project. I will be attending G.R.I.P. the week of July 21st and (very optimistically) hope to have much of it completed by then. And, sometime the end of July or first part of August I'll be moving into my new apartment! And then there is the FGS Conference in August, which I am also looking forward to attending.



I hope that when this project is completed (or as complete as it can be) that I will still have a few faithful readers left. Thanks in advance for sticking around... and wish me luck!






At the end of the day, what's done is done.

Happy New Years Day ice climbing...

Happy New Year to all! Hope everyone survived the welcoming of . My New Years was much like the rest. Laura and I stayed home, didn't do much. We stuffed ourselves with some Kielbasa, Hot Dogs (veggie dogs), Sauerkraut, and some New Years Pretzel Bread that Laura baked up (see photo) which was bomb diggity! We rung in the New Year and made our way off to bed to rest up for my annual New Year's Revolution ice climbing! The temperatures weren't very favorable the previous days up to New Years Eve, but we still kept our spirits up as the weather forcast was for below freezing temps by morning with it going down as the day went on. Well it did just that. There was also a small amount of snow on the ground. A welcome sight from the dreary day before. We loaded up the gear and made our way to Secret Cliffs II. As we neared the cliffs, the snow deepened and winter seemed to be back in action. We hiked down to the climbs, only to find that the ice was still EXTREMELY wet and not very well bonded in most places. We seriously debated for a while whether or not Called on Account of Security would go. I'm sure it would've, but the delaminated ice at the top looked way too unsettled to rappel down from and we opted to let it go and continue to build for the upcoming cold week. After leaving Secret Cliffs we opted to continue our quest. We decided that to surely get in some climbing we should go to Lower Meadow Run to get on the mixed lines. We found that the ice there was in reasonable condition. I'd been itching to get back on Caveman and try to get the redpoint. I tooled my way up to the crux (3rd. bolt) and made it to the ice. I couldn't pull up around the corner and came off. The ice was poorly bonded and was washing out as I was climbing. I pulled back on and clipped the 4th bolt. The section above the fouth to the Rhody was very unstable as was the mucky topout. Given a little more attached ice and I think I would've got it. I can't wait to get back on it again. Laura gave it a quick go. Despite having a severe reach disadvantage she gave it her best. Captain Caveman proved to be more suited to those with long limbs. We roped up Anger Managment and took some turns on it. We did much more climbing than initially thought. It wasn't the best New Years Revolution conditions, but we climbed what we could and had a great time doing so! -As always climbing is a great way to bring in the New Year. Welcome !