Conundrum

The Lady Antebellum concert is on a Thursday. This poses a problem because I teach my college class on Thursday. So cancel class you say. That would be great, except I may have to cancel class on that Tuesday so I can attend an After School and English Language Learners symposium. The choice then comes to this- would I rather sit through 6 hours of After School and English Language Learners or Lady Antebellum. If I can find someone to go with me to the concert, I'm choosing the concert! Class canceled.

I bought Outside magazine today because it has an article about a 13 year old kid who is going to climb Mount Everest this season. He would be the youngest to do all Seven Summits. Chaddie actually met this kid's folks at a party in Big Bear. (You're thinking the exact same thing as me, why didn't Chaddie invite me to Big Bear on that evening?) Crazy. What's really insane is that I know the stories of all the high altitude climbers mentioned in the article. Also there's a picture of the kid at Bootleg Canyon, which is a mountain bike playground outside of Vegas. I've been there twice-once with Bill (retired Bill- not dead gopher Bill) while we were waiting for Chad and Kent to finish the 12 hour team mountain bike race and then once with Josh, where we had a unspecified, but easily $200 bar tab, but the bartender liked us so much he just comped the whole thing. Both times I did not ride that much because Bootleg Canyon is freaking ridiculous. The easy trail is called Girl Scouts. Girly my ass. It's stinking hard. But quite pretty. This is a picture of where we walked because riding would have been too hard. Chad said this kid's "a pretty good downhiller." Whatever. He's 13 and not worried about breaking a nail. (Note, it's not the rocks, the exposure or the decline that make this particular section difficult- it's the sharp right hand switchback as you go down the decline, over rocks on an exposed portion of the mountain.)



New habitants at the Saratoga Animal Shelter: