RC cars are cheaper and quicker to fix than ribs

 it all started about 2 weeks ago when my wife started telling me that I was not allowed to get hurt prior to our week long trip to Vegas.. thus I went rock climbing for the first time in 10 years (led a 5.7 without a single fall). Then Saturday took my wife climbing the same route for her first climb ever.. and still no injuries.. Then we went to my in-laws and played with RC cars for a bit.. Well I ended up on the course where my brother in law was driving his RC and almost stepped on his car but instead decided to jump out of the way.. I did a beautifully controlled dive (as my wife and mother in law said) only to land in the most improper manner on my side with my fist between my ribs and the ground. Needless to say I heard a few pops and knew that something was wrong.. We left for Vagas on Sunday and I made sure to pack my 2 year old bottle of Hydrocodone and spent the week in sin city :).. came home and saw the doc yesterday.--2 cracked ribs and had 10 dislocated ribs--. needless to say I am mostly annoyed that I can't go running, climbing, hiking right now!

Rock Climbing - back at it

On Wednesday the 2nd for the first time in over 10 years I went rock climbing with my friend Tacoma - who you may remember from last years death hike 09. He also hadn't been climbing for at least 10 years as well so basically it was 2 old guys trying to relive the glory days HEHE. We went down to Ophir canyon just to the south of Tooele and climbed a route called 'poopy pants' a nice slabby 5.7 climb. Needless to say we both lead the route with very few problems and no falls. - hey after 10 years I think we did rather well.

On Saturday the 5th I was able to take my wife and little girls down and climb the same route. Michelle did a great job belaying for the first time while I lead the route. She then top roped the route for her first climb ever. She did a great job and I think she is even willing to go again YAY. After we both climbed a bit we put the girls on rope and let them climb up to almost the second bolt on the wall :) Well here are some pics from that day.. they suck as the sun was in the wrong position for good pics but something is better than nothing right :)

What is so wrong with being descriptive? -- (questions on the world series)

My 5 year old daughter has a fascination with the Spanish language, every time she hears a Spanish word or a person speaking the language she points out (usually in a loud voice) “They are talking Spanish”. The other day we were at the store and she heard some people speaking Spanish and did just this and my wife and my immediate response was to tell her not to point that out so loudly as it can be offensive.  This is the same child who a few days prior while we were in a restaurant said loudly “That dark brown girl has a beautiful necklace, mom” we also responded not to talk about the color of a persons skin.

Both of these incidents along with others made me start to think about what kind of society we live in where using descriptive terms to point something out good or bad is taboo. The black waitress had dark brown skin, this isn’t a bad thing nor a racist thing it is just a fact that gives us a way to describe the person who she was talking about, and the people speaking Spanish were speaking Spanish and it has nothing to do with something evil or wrong but in our society this is deemed as on the verge of being racist and bigoted to even point it out. It seems as though we are more afraid of being a seen racist/bigot than we are at being rude to others directly. I have no solutions to this or do I know if it is necessarily a problem per say but it is the world that we live in and at some point we need to decide what if anything should be done about this.

Camping in a Cave with girls

Friday night my friend Mason and our eldest girls (Maci and Kahlan) went for a short trip to Lakeside just to get away from the world. We spent Friday night in a large cave while avoiding drips from the roof. Saturday morning we woke up early and for the first time ever Mason was out of his Jeep before I got out of my sleeping bag. After breakfast we headed across the rail road causeway and checked out the pumps that were put in to help with the flooding in the late 80's and then went up to Hogup cave to check it out. From there we headed out the way we came and picked up parts of my jeep that had fallen off on the way in. Great trip with a good friend and the girls had a blast.