Monthly Archive for August, 2005

Cotopaxi… Conquered!

I climbed all the way to the summit of Volcan Cotopaxi today. “Today” as in 1am this morning until sometime after 11am. 7 hours up, 3 hours down. 5911 meters (19,393 feet). We started at a refuge around 4800 meters.

It was pure hell but I’m glad I did it. Definitely, without a doubt, the most physically and mentally challenging thing I’ve ever done. And I had an excuse — finally! — to use the Ice Axe loop on my backpack. Nice.

I didn’t get a chance to take many pictures since we were hanging on for dear life on the sides of the glacier most of the time… but I got a couple from about half way up and a half dozen or so at the summit. Will post tomorrow.

Right now though, my legs feel like they’ve been run over by a tractor and my arms feel like jello. And I’ve been awake for 32+ hours. It’s going to be an early night. Time to get off the computer.

When in Rome…

Ever since, oh about 5 days after I arrived in Ecuador I haven’t been vegan anymore. Chicken, Beef, Pork, Shrimp, Fish, Cow Tongue… I’ve had it.

Shock.

I never thought I would go back to being vegetarian (from vegan), much less back to eating damn near everything. But you can’t get Tofu here. Well, you can, but it’s the shitty shelf kind and it’s unrealistically expensive. And there is nowhere for me to cook it anyway.

Plus, I figure they probably don’t inject their animals with hormones and antibiotics. Everything seems really fresh, so that knocked out one of my primary objectives against meat eating.

Then, as well, I’m doing a lot of physical activity and I need some sort of protein. Bell peppers and onions do not a complete meal make.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making a habit of it. There’s a great vegetarian restaurant here and I eat there almost every day when I have the chance. Their veggie burger is killer. And I’m not giving up Veganaise anytime soon.

But maybe, just maybe, when I get back to the states I’ll go to Chick-fil-A. Or maybe I’ll just go to the Daily and stock up on Tofu. Only time will tell.

Depeche Mode

Okay, if something was going to shit on me today, it’s this:

[from depechemode.com]

Depeche Mode will be playing the following North American cities during October, November and December of 2005: Atlanta, GA

No date is listed yet, but if they hit Atlanta, or anywhere on the east coast, in late December I’ll be damned if I’m not changing my plane ticket and coming home when the Costa Rica program is over on the 6th.

Either that, or I’m maxing out my credit card and going to see them during my spring break, when they play in Austria on March 13th. It’s not like I don’t have a place to stay. Maybe it’ll be my birthday present.

Update: I bought DM tickets for Austria. I guess Elke will find out that we’re going to see Depeche Mode once she checks her email after returning from the Galapagos. Yay! Spring Break in Europe. Jesus H Christ, I’m impulsive.

I can’t miss them, especially since there’s a good chance this will be their last world tour.

Cotopaxi

So I’m all set to climb up Cotopaxi on Tuesday night.

Nervous? Yes.

Scared? Not right now. But that might change when I’m hanging off the side of a glacier.

Details, and hopefully pictures, when I return on Wednesday night.

Yes, This Is Nerdy, But…

For some reason I’m amused that when I type my name into Google, the first page of results are all random things from the past few years of the internet that have to do with me.

Follow the links and you may learn something new about me, like the fact that I used to run a small Mac-based internet publishing empire and sold it over 5 years ago to a larger company. The site is apparently still up and running although they’ve plastered it with more ads and botched up the display of things. However, I think you can still read the articles and post comments at the bottom of each using custom programming that I wrote… this was in 1998, before there were blogs, and before articles on every website had a “reader feedback” feature. I’m pretty damn proud of it. Also, what you can’t see is the automated publishing system behind everything… I wrote a program where you could input the articles through the website, and it would automatically add the article to the site, put a synopsis on the front page, and send out a notification email to subscribers with one click.

Even though I don’t remember how to code in Perl anymore, and only write web pages when I really really have a lot of motivation, I’m still proud of all the work that I put into making that site what it was. Too bad I burned all the money after I moved to Vermont. I’m not going to tell you how much I sold it for, because it’s embarrassing that I don’t have any of the money left (although I do still have my $700 stereo monitors that make me really happy). I could say, well, I was young and stupid and I’d probably be right… but at the time, I had a hell of a lot of fun spending the money while I lived in New England and I don’t regret any of it.

I also used to dabble in electronic music and owned a Roland Juno-106, Korg M1, and a Future-Retro 777 among other pieces of electronic instrumentation, hence the link to one of my posts years ago on a Logic user group.

It’s also worth mentioning that I modified the electronics on my 777, and had the link to the photos of the mods featured [link to internet archive] on the F-R website up until sometime in the last year or so when they redesigned their website and removed the page. It’s a shame that you can’t get the 777 anymore, because it was a damn fine analogue synth.

I don’t usually tell anyone these things, at least not for a while. Or unless they are particularly nosy. No reason… it’s just my past, and I tend not to talk about it, because there are so many other interesting things in the present and future to discuss. But hey, I have a blog, I’m bored, and now you know.




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