Todd Skinner, a great rock climber, died a few days ago in Yosemite while rappelling down Leaning Tower. According to his website he was with Jim Hewitt, and while descending, “Skinner went first and suddenly fell; his rappel device and locking carabiner remained on the rope.” From the sound of it, either his harness failed or he failed to properly clip his carabiner into his harness. More than likely it was the latter… which is quite sad. A man that spent most of his life dedicated to the art of free climbing (climbing sans ropes) dies during a procedure that put his life completely in the care of a single rope. I’ve had climbing partners that just couldn’t understand why I was more scared of rappelling than of any other part of the sport. Yeah, it’s easy, that’s what makes it scary — fear is what keeps us safe in climbing; if you have no fear, you make mistakes.

I’ve been tight on money for school lately. And my policy of live it up or die is starting to hurt me too: this winter I’m hoping to ski myself to death, so I bought a set of skis, bindings and boots in preparation of my demise. Though I did it on the cheap, I’m now having to skip meals (not really, I’ve just been eating really cheap, don’t worry) in order to guarantee that I can cover my rent at the end of this month and still have fun this winter. The things we do for our hobbies.

So… first the skis… then I’ll get into the plans. I picked up a set of the latest Rossignol Bandit B2’s with Axial 2 SPS bindings from Al’s Ski Barn in Maine. Why Al’s? Well, if not for the name alone, then for the fact that they have free shipping, and this pair was a slightly used demo pair. From the catalog entry:

These skis are slightly used skis that are in excellent condition…they came out of the Rossignol Warehouse, skis used by employees, in ski tests, media reviews, etc. These skis are free of base defects or blems (unless otherwise noted), and may have minor topsheet blems, nothing more than you would do after a couple of days skiing. We will contact you if there is anything more than what we just described, should you order a pair. Obviously you may return the skis for full refund should you not be pleased with their condition upon arrival.

For the price, you can’t beat it. $550 for the best powder / groomed ride. After getting them and looking them over, I can tell they are well cared for, still sharp, and look as if they’ve only had a week or two on the slopes — if that. Normally this setup would have run me over $300 more! And to top it off, REI was having a sale on last years Rossi Bandit 2 boots in my shoe range! Evidently there are advantages to having a rather large foot size, as they only had them in a 30.5 (a 13 in American men’s). I think the original price range was somewhere around $450 last year… but I got them for $200! I made out like a bandit this season (pun intended).

Plans: June Mountain has a deal going on for students. We get an unrestricted season pass for $125, but their season doesn’t start until mid December… so I’m going to be bumming around everywhere else until then.

For Thanksgiving, seeing as how my family is all gone now, I’m driving up to Mamoth, since June will be closed. I may have a friend or two that’ll be going with me, in which case we’ll get a hotel room… but if I go it alone, I’ll be camping. I’ll be just fine in a tent, thank you.

I thought it was the geo-coding stuff that I added a while back to provide my maps and locations, and whatnot… but it was the upgrade to the latest CoppermineSC plugin that did me in. Months of messing around with this thing trying to figure out what was slowing it down so badly. I’ve disabled it for now… so no images, just the tags, until I get time to optimize the code.

Not that I’m really writing a lot for you all to read, but some of my not writing was the fact that it would take forever to login — ten minute logins tend to make things hopelessly time consuming; hopefully that will change.

[UPDATE]: I should add that the gallery is still available… and will be throughout this issue with the plugin. Oh and two thumbs way the hell up to the Firefox crew for putting a spell checker in the browser! Brilliant, but why’d it take someone so long to do it? I know it’s not for the lack of the idea, it’s probably the most requested feature by anybody who does enough writing online.

I finally got my dot com back. So we’re officially back on danegardner.com instead of dot net. I only had to wait a year for those ass-holes to drop it! Must really piss them off that I bought it two days after it hit the market… can’t hold my name for randsom anymore jerks.

If you have ~any~ issues at all with the transition let me know so I can fix them.