A Sad Sad Day.

Below is my first time listing anything on craigslist:

It is with a pit in my stomach that I list my 1970 VW bus. LOLA as she is affectionately known is a not your average VW bus. Not only is she a looker but she is loaded with personality and always the life of the party. She has a hightop and sectional seating inside. She was once a full on camper version and still has a bench that folds flat in an instant and the stove that stores under the seats and hooks up to a propane tank on the undercarriage. She has a 1776cc motor that I recently spent $2200 to have rebuilt and now my wife won't let me forget about it. She has dual carburetors and really has good power for a bus. It has seat-belts for seven but has carted a record 18 high schoolers to school, two of which were Tongan.

If you want to make your high schooler the coolest kid in school this bus is the ticket. Trust me I teach high school and the kids love it. Or if you just want to be the coolest dad on the block, it will do that too.

She runs great but the clutch is going out. She is still drivable but it is getting hard to get her into first. My mechanic quoted me 455 to do the clutch. The alternator is weak and so I throw her on the charger once a week. With those two fixes she is a daily driver.

To begin an online relationship with Lola click below.
http://rangismart.blogspot.com/2010/10/8-cow-woman.html

Sharing the Stoke!

We spent last weekend doing one of our favorite family activities, beach camping. The waves were a little small for my taste but they were perfect for the kids.

Caroline never misses a chance to go out and get some waves with Dad. It is one of my favorite forms of Daddy-Daughter dates.

Me extending an invitation to get a dose of "the stoke."

Caroline has a lot of trust in me. Carrying her out through the rocks and shore break makes me more nervous than it makes her.

The water was freezing. Caroline hasn't grown into the garage sale wetsuit I bought her yet, but she doesn't let that wipe the smile off her face.

Here is the sequence of our best wave together.

Notice the similarity in our facial expressions.

Taking off on the wave.

Lips sealed and eyes closed battling the white wash to get to the wave face.

Emerging victorious on the wave proper.

Adjusting the trim to get lined up with the wave face, anticipating the best to come.

Smiles on, sharing the stoke!

Pulling out of the close out, lips and eyes sealed again.

When Caroline got out of the water she boldly declared,

"When I grow up I am going to be the best surfer in the family!"

Big Bro had to disagree with that statement.

These are his best arguments.

I have bad news for both of them: The old man is still planning on being the best surfer in the family for a while yet.

Finding a Climbing Partner

Since I started climbing a few years ago the most challenging thing about it has been trying to find partners to go with. Other outdoor activities I don't mind going alone but climbing solo isn't a very wise option.

Recently I was out climbing with someone I had recruited to the sport just for the sake of having a partner. As I impatiently watched him struggle up the first pitch of our two pitch climb I thought to myself, "I bet Rigdon can climb as well as this guy."

When you are picking a climbing partner there is one thing that is a non-negotiable, trust. You have to trust the person, as your life is going to be in their hands. I already trusted Rig as I was the one who talked Sara into giving him a chance to babysit. If I could trust him with the lives of my three little girls I could trust him with my own.

It is nice if your partner lives close. Downstairs is perfect.

It's a bonus if your partner has a similar schedule as you and since Sara does both of our schedules they usually come out pretty similar.

It is also nice if your partner has a sense of adventure along with an appropriate fear of danger to keep the team safe. Rig has always had a good sense of adventure but only recently was I convinced of his appropriate fear of danger. It was well documented at Magic Mountain. You can see for yourself below.

For Rig's B-day we took him to Magic Mountain, just Sara, Rig and I.

I can honestly say I thought I would never buy one of these pictures, let alone two in the same day, especially one where I look like a totally idiot but they were priceless.

In this one Rig is clutching for dear life. In his defense, it is a freaking scary ride.

So Rig and I went out on the climbing wall and he practiced belaying me and catching me on falls. Pretty quick I was convinced that Rig was ready. and was going to be even a better climbing partner than he was babysitter.

Rig and I started our climbing partnership with a nice easy two pitch, 200 foot, 5.5. I anchored Rig to this tree to offset the weight discrepancy and we were ready to go.

Rig cruised up the first climb with only some very mild trepidation.

Luckily he was already well practiced in clinging for dear life.

The picnic tables got pretty small when we were approaching the top.

But the view at the top was cool.

Our next climb I found another 2 pitch, 200 foot, climb. This one rated at 5.8.

I might have jumped the gun in letting Rig lead climb but we practiced it at home and I think he was pretty keen on wearing all the gear.

He clipped two bolts and then in between the 2nd and 3rd he slipped and decided he had had enough of leading for that day.

The climb was windy and cold.

We had a tangle in the rope that Rig had to deal with.

But we finally made it to the top of the climb.

No matter how much you trust your son it is a little nerve racking watching him rappel over an edge.

We set up what we thought was the last rappel, but the rope didn't reach the ground. We had already been on the rock for over 3 hours and we were cold and ready to get back to the car.

It made for an interesting problem where I had to switch places with Rig on the rappel.

We were both relieved to finally be back on the ground after a cold 4 hours.

Our most recent climb was called Hercules Finger. It is a 60 foot tower in the middle of nowhere.

This is what it looks like from the base looking up.

This picture of my shadow is the only proof that I made it to the top.

Rig made it about two thirds of the way up, ran out of holds and decided he had had enough again. I offered him an "uppy." He didn't take it and he didn't make it to the top but at least he still has his pride.

Having a climbing partner is awesome. So far I do not know which has been more liberating, Rig starting to belay or Rig starting to babysit, but they are both awesome.

Livi's New Year's resolutions.

I know it is a little late for New Year's resolutions, but I couldn't let these go undocumented. These are the New Year's resolutions that Livi brought home from activity days a little over a month ago. I didn't have anything to do with them.

1. Reading the scriptures more.

2. Saying my prayers.

3. Serving others.

4. Climbing more mountains.

My gosh, does that girl know how to make her dad beam or what?

Breaking the Silence

You would think a trip to Europe would spark a blog post or two. Unfortunately it has put me into blogging funk. Not because I don't have anything to blog about, but because every time I sit down to blog about the trip there is so much to tell that I am overwhelmed and give up. I am not usually a quitter but I am finally throwing in the towel on this one.

This is my only offering, a slide show.

My French could have been better. My driving could have been much better. In only three days of car rental I had a hat trick: a parking ticket, a speeding ticket and a "fender bender."

That said, the trip was awesome, better than awesome. It was the trip of a lifetime. To call it anything less would be an insult to not only my trip planning skills but especially to my credit card bill. As long as I keep making my minimum payment I will have it paid off in a mere 23 years, but I promised to take Sara back within 5 so I might have to open another one then.

I uploaded it in HD so it's probably worth expanding it to full screen. (bottom right corner)

My most popular Halloween costume ever!

This year when the family was tossing around Halloween costume ideas, Rig threw out one he was excited about and I quickly shot it down.

"I want to be the Grim Reaper this year!"

"What, that's lame. Every fifth grader is the Grim Reaper, you should be something cool."

I immediately realized that I had hurt his feelings. I tried to change my tune and convince him that his idea could be cool, but the damage was done.

"Dad you always think up cool things I never do."

So I let him in on the secret of my inspiration- the internet. We went googling together and we came up with the inspiration for this:

An external frame backpack, some of Dad's clothes and a jar of pretzels from Costco and we had a masterpiece on our hands. I call it "boy with head in jar" and it is pretty creepy. I have never seen a costume get more attention than this one did. He easily won the costume contest at the Ward party.

When it was time to go trick or treating Rigdon got stared at, gawked at, poked and prodded, and had to take pictures with complete strangers.

After 3 houses of which Rigdon had been invited in to all of them and posed for pictures at two of them, he turned to me and said "This is going to be a long night." But just like his Dad, he is a ham and loved it almost as much as I did.

The costume is pretty hot and doesn't exactly excel in breathability. So after about half of our normal route he was ready to call it a night, but I wasn't. I was still enjoying the praise that each new doorstep brought. (For the record I am totally OK with living vicariously through your kids once in a while.) I compromised with Rigdon and let him take the lid off the jar to get some fresh air circulating and he finished off our neighborhood. It was a great night.

P.S. Sara is in charge of posting the cute pictures of the girls.

More High Sierra Action!

I invited Bram and his boys out to do Mt. Langley with us in September but he couldn't make it. So we picked a different weekend and tried to find a different 14er to do. If you are only going to do one California 14er you might as well make it Whitney, but we didn't have permits. So I dug through websites and guidebooks until I finally found a route that was 34 miles and would give us a chance to bag 3 14ers; Whitney, Muir and Langley and most importantly didn't require a permit. Two thirds of the milage would be back country (no trail) and there would be some class 3+ scrambling, not to mention a lot of route finding. It seemed like a lot to bite off with the group we had, which included an 8 year old, two 10 year olds, and a 71 year old (Bram's Dad Ernie). However Bram and I are adventurers and so getting in over our head is part of the fun.

Same trailhead we had been at just a month ago but a totally new adventure.

Bram and I have a lot of things in common including good looking offspring.

The boys were stoked for any wild life.

The first day we carried our packs right past Langley and down the back side. It was a brutal day up over 12,000 feet and back down.

Rig posed with Upper Soldier Lake where we descended to spend the first night.

The meadow by the lake we camped at was beautiful.

The next morning we set out early in hopes of making it to Whitney and back.

After only hiking with us a short ways Ernie showed his 71 years of wisdom and decided to let us fools adventure out on our own.

I think we were all enjoying the freedom of not having a trail in the beginning.

The boys seemed to have plenty of energy especially since dropping their packs. Here they are stopped to throw rocks at a marmot.

The first part of the route finding had proved easy and we made the first 4 miles relatively fast.

Eventually the terrain got less friendly and the route finding less obvious.

Bram and the rest of the group trusted me to lead us as I was carrying the guide book. That was a mistake.

I made a horrendous orienteering error that led to me not being able to figure out why these lakes were not on the map. According to my poor route finding skills we needed to climb up what looked like an impossibly steep ridge. Forget me reevaluating our course and trying to determine if we were really where I thought we were. Instead I looked the direction I believed we needed to go and told the boys it was time to man up. I needed Bram to slap me upside the head and say "Are you retarded?" but that is not Bram's style. If Bram is faced with a challenge, he always accepts no matter how heinous it appears. People like that are not easy to find. Trust me I am always looking for them. This is one of the many reasons I am lucky to have a friend like Bram.

With no one to put me in check the group started up the ridge. It was soon steeper than class 3 which wasn't that bad until the rock got very loose. Then we all got pretty scared. Soon we were in over our heads. There were some tears that followed and those of us who weren't crying wanted to be. Despite our dyer situation it still didn't dawn on me that I had made a mistake reading the map.

We finally made it to the top of the ridge that was just over 13000 feet. We got our first view of Mount Whitney.

It was here that I broke it to the team that we were not going to make it to Whitney that day. For the record I still didn't realize I was lost. I just thought we didn't have enough time with the terrain that was still ahead of us. This was Rig's first time failing on a summit attempt and he did not take it well, there were more tears.

It was too steep and loose to descend the way we came up. We had to scout around on top of the ridge to find a portion that was a little less steep.

Everyone was pretty disappointed as we descended back to camp.

But we crossed this snowfield and the boys had a snow ball fight and that cheered things up.

Somewhere in our hike back my horrendous orienteering error became clear in my head. I stopped the group got out the map and came clean with them. This was again a time when I would have expected a normal person to slap me upside the head and say "Are you retarded?" but Bram didn't. Another reason he is a keeper.

Harry is a little daredevil. He is always finding something to challenge the older boys to.

Bram felt bad that Rig and I had been up in that same area just a month earlier but I could go there every weekend.

By the time we made it back to our camp that night, it was so dark that we hiked right by our tents and couldn't see them.

The next morning we broke camp and carried our packs to 12,000ft. We dropped them and headed up Langley.

Rig can be trudging along, barely keeping up with the group and then when he senses the summit is close, he is like a shark that smells blood and all the sudden he just wants to get to the peak.

First one to the top again.

Back again exactly 4 weeks after our last trip up.

The whole group made it including 71 year old Ernie, who actually did it twice. Once with us and once while we were all lost on a cliffside.

I am convinced there is not a more fun mountain to descend than Langley.

Rig getting ready for the base jumping merit badge.

Stockton going huge.

Harry with some Kung Fu flavor.

Rig with the method.

For the record Bram wanted to get a picture of me jumping off the rocks and after two mistimed attempts I finally said,

"Dude I am 36. I don't need a picture of me jumping off a rock!"

We finished our 3rd day by hiking all the way out. It was our biggest day and it really tested the boys. I was impressed with all three of them and with Ernie.

It was a treat to have Bram and the boys adventuring with us. I am sure we have many more adventures to look forward to.