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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Down at Castle at the bottom of the hill
There’s a big genius airman named Climber Bill
He has a white rope and some tennies to match
And when he’s climbin’ the cliffsides
Is he hard to catch!
Climber Bill, climbing on the Big Hill
Climber, climber
Climber Bill, oh you thrill
Chill, chill, chill, chill Climber Bill
I saw him one day climbin’ up the Nose
With gallons of water and two gallons of rose
I knew where he was headin’, tryin’ to make
The playground of the climbers, named Texas Flake
Climber Bill, climbing on the Big Hill
Climber, climber
Climber Bill, oh you thrill
Chill, chill, chill, chill Climber Bill
He went up to Arrowhead one October week
For the first ascent party with some Nancy-boy geek
He was jammin’ like crazy and he got ‘em to the top
And when they were done they hit the coffee shop
Climber Bill, climbing on the Big Hill
Climber, climber
Climber Bill, oh you thrill
Chill, chill, chill, chill Climber Bill
So Jay and I made the lunch scene at the 510 and then adjourned to Middle Earth to view the photos from the tour. First, we went to the cigar store for postprandial pleasure.
We sat and maundered over our pasts and pretty much killed another wine soldier before we headed back to the Bistro for steaks. I have found the perfect wine, but perfection never lasts. I'll have to go back again and again. It's the way we are wired. You find a place, a person, a wine, and you stick with it until it's a dead horse. Then you move on.
I'm just as bummed as y'all that The Dolt couldn't wait.
As I told Jay today, had he just held out a bit more, he might have made a lot more Friends and a tidy fortune.
And beggars might ride.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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I spent my youth around heavy aircraft, in Sacramento near McClellan AFB and Mather. Then in Merced under the flight paths of heavy planes of all types.
The Farmers Insurance Company had a regional office on Hwy 99 which was lit by an array of lights that the Castle pilots used to line up their approaches to the runway S-N; and when the company decided to cut their costs by eliminating the Hwy 99 lights, the Base Commander requested they rethink their decision and the lights came back on.
One thing that impacted me when the base was closed in 1995 was the closing of the local climbing/backpacking store, Tuttle Outdoor Equipment, TOE. Mark Tuttle's retail trade slumped bigtime and he was forced to move his trade to a shop in Winton, just north of the base on Santa Fe. We called him, hoping to visit, but he said he was in the middle of some thing.
To wit:
Dave Y. is having a haul bag sewn for an EC attempt and the shop was in disarray. I took the hint and we hit the strawberry stand on our way back to town.
It was a good day.
Ciao, Mark!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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It is a very rewarding visit, should you decide to make the trip to Atwater on your way to or from Yosemite, to the Castle Air Museum, unique in the State, for sure. The displays are hard to tend, as birds do their thing, and weather takes its toll, but the planes are still there for now and have plenty to offer.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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This is how the day seemed after our wine and ceegars.
This is the excitement we witnessed on the way over to the Bistro.
Good eats, decimally.
Good booty!
Jay, my boy, you forgot to take your share. I think that I'll be able to find room for them...
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there say, mouse... wow, thanks for the great trip report...
wow, and a NEAT missions for lilabiene...
say, i too, am on a mission of sorts, for ol' lilabiene :))
mine is a SECRET mission, :))
yours was a SEEKit mission, ;)
and--man oh man, are YOU soon to be a surprised but happy mouse...
:) have a few surprises to add to your painting package this week...
as you can SEE i missed mailing it out this week...
seems, i as lost in a hair'o'ing adventure of childhood, :O
but it grew into a better stroke of locks...
man oh man, this code talks sure is fun, this word babble of neat
bables... :) they shine so, though at times, CAN be confusing :O
when folks are ON a different subject (that's when it accidently
turns into code--sure do NOT mean to keep anyone out of the banter) :))
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Mouse, you are hereby commanded to return to base and suss out the whatfor
of how that 'Canuck' wound up at Castle. My Canuck bro-in-law wants answers!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Si, mi capitan! Sah!
Christmas presents, Easter bunnies. Sah!
Bucky Beaver, Playboy funnies. Sah!
How it got there, why it's still there. Sah!
I'll clear the air and then I'll share. Sah!
(I'm pretty sure it's not Big Mike's little toy plane he lost on his trip to quakeland last year.)
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zBrown
Ice climber
chingadero de chula vista
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Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors”.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
courtesy of Robert Frost
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zBrown
Ice climber
chingadero de chula vista
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It is up to you to be a good neighbor- a fence cannot do that work for you. I think we can all learn a valuable lesson from Mr. Wilson from the show Home Improvement! Was he a good neighbor because a fence separated him from Tim “the tool man” Taylor? NO- it was because he looked over the fence at the real person on the other side.
No tripods were injured or damaged in the production of this photo.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Cowboy Larry.
the honest Rev.
The shithouse Mouse.
We all used the phrase, "Well, I'll just adjust a green-tail duck!"
It was a useful phrase, poetic and full of imagery at any level of literary endeavor.
Building walls or walking halls.
Climbing calls and Mousie falls.
And the others take up the slack.
I read once about a China duck on a sea of Commie red.
It was in an old album of Deram's, but not in Days of Future Past by the Moody Blues.
Maybe it was the Grateful Red.
Thursday Morning by Giles, Giles, and Fripp. Not Gil Dolte, sorry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UXNX6c5YpA
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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As they trod across the thick carpet Buck Mulligan whispered behind his panama to Haines. – Parnell’s brother. There in the corner.’
http://www.audiobooksonline.com/9626343095.html
We lay our words atop nothing more than earlier words.
They make useful, labor-saving gates, just as they make effective walls.
Rock 'n' roll and music of all sorts doesn't care who will be listening to it, I note, casually observant.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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North Korea
South Korea
Fort Worth, North Korea
Portmouth, South Korea
Terpsichorean harmonies
Chic Corean melodies
Corey and Corey maladies
[Click to View YouTube Video]
sing to the tune of "Clouds"
Flux Korea Pork Chop Pill
Kim and MIGs and frying pigs
We did it once in days of yore
We're doing it again
We really don't know beans about rice, anymore
Even after all this "peaceful" time
After having drawn a line
Can't they come to some accord
Frankly, gents, I'm getting bored
Please try to get along
You owe it to your kids is why, stupid Gooks
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zBrown
Ice climber
chingadero de chula vista
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not sure where the Hoover crips are (I think Texas), but
crip stackin 5 duce Hoover..3GP
is stackin'
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Mouse,
Yes! great time. Right above Snelling on 59 stopped and looked down towards Merced, Lights hitting the clouds to the left then stopped and then clear dark sky, no clouds with a couple of hundred colouriful bright stars.
Still couldn't figure out why I did not get into the museum and had problems walking, thought for sure the girl spiked my glass of wine when we had lunch then thought: no the walking problem started at Castle, Maybe the Cigar?
It was not until I downloaded my photos today found out why. Did not have the truck brake on and with all the engines noises from them firing up those "B"s There was no way of yelling so stayed like that till you came back
Walking back to normal.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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The truth, now.[Click to View YouTube Video]
When I moved from Sack of Tomato to near At Water, the family crowded into a two-bedroom apartment on Barney Street, a U-shaped court next to the Santa Fe, which connected on both ends to 23rd Street, now Twenty-turd Street, an honor bestowed by the city council on streets specially selected by a commission headed by Werner.
This apartment lay directly across the RR tracks from OLM Elementary School and OLM Central CAtholic High School, both staffed by the order of nuns dedicated to the Immaculate Heart. They're gone now, replaced by lay teachers. The high school folded in the seventies, now known as the 70s, and the elelmentary school has been kept active.
Down Two-Three Street, as it was sometimes known then, and still today, sometimes, lay the vile pile, Hoobert Heaver Junior High School, AIWKBITD. Today they call 'em middle schools. They don't teach Middle English, howhoover, only middling English. Some want ebonics. A long row of very tall eucalyptus trees grew along the tracks. They're gone now.
This all happens at or near the corner of Santa Fe and Glen Avenue. It was named after some old boy in the Sierra Club RCS, I believed at one time, but no longer--that idea has been dealt with. There was a Glenna in our eighth grade class, and my sister Lenna in the fifth grade class at the same time. Glen probably never met either one.
Glen at Twenty-first Street, six blooms from however.
Dublin' that gives one twelve. Halve that and one'll get fifty-six and I think that's a great deal.
Buy me a Chevrolet, dammit!
Or at least a canned ham.
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zBrown
Ice climber
chingadero de chula vista
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RIP Roger Ebert.
Born in 1942.
When were you born? Me - 1946.
Two thumbs down.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there, say, mouse...
surprise is IN the mail... so keep a look see for it in the week...
painting goes out tomorrow, :)
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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For once I'm speechless.
For all the others, I never agreed with Siskel on principle.
Ya have to bump the chump, though, because he always made it interesting with the dull comments, to my mind, like, "You think you know it, but you always find out new stuff."
Roger, though, he lived longer.
No thumbs left, neither left nor right, nor up nor down.
Just a photograph of an icon.
On the other hand, the other side of the coin, there's the flip side, the B Track, by Alternative Lee, the Up Side of the Down Low.
Does anyone remember the Duncan Hines rating system?
I didn't ask you to look it up. I asked if your rememory is that good.
Or is it this good?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1-MRrRljgo
Better like this?
[Click to View YouTube Video]
In my experience it's not. It's groovy, but there's better, much better.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there mouse... oh my.... just now?
there was a few other tricks in there as well,
forgot what there were at the moment... :))
here:
seems, i as lost in a hair'o'ing adventure of childhood, :O
but it grew into a better stroke of locks..
to cut it short, my first attempts, took wrongly too long:
the child's hair turned out awful with each stroke of the locks
:(
it DID get better, :)
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