5/20 Drive to Columbus, OH. Meet up with Guy.

5/21 Guy and I drive to Red River Gorge and head to The Shire. We start on Bulldozer (5.10a) and then we lead The G-Men (5.10c) which I find tricky because of confusing sequences and lots of red herring holds. I climb it again on TR after. Next we climb Audio (5.8) and finish the day on Amarillo Sunset (5.11b) which Guy leads up to the previous party's bail biner, and I climb on toprope.

5/22 We meet up with Alana and Stephen and head to Long Wall to climb Autumn (5.9-) and Rock Wars (5.10a). Alana starts up Rock Wars, but comes down and Guy finishes the lead. I'm not particularly motivated, and I've done these climbs before, so I spend the day cleaning the routes. Which is fine with me.

As massive thunderstorms approach, everyone departs and I continue driving West.

5/23 Driving all day. I finish The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

5/24 Drive to Sedona and spend the night at the Cathedral Rocks trailhead.

5/25 My original plan for a climbing partner has fallen through. Hanging out in the parking lot, I meet John and Kevin who are setting a highline. John is happy to climb The Mace (5.9) instead of jugging their fixed lines, so we set off together. We swing leads with me getting the fun odd numbered pitches, and John getting stuck with the offwidth even pitches. But John likes leading offwidths (with no draws... oops! sorry) so it is all good. Atop the formation we hang out with a bunch of people setting the highline until eventually the sun gets the better of me and I rappel down, hike back to the car, and start driving West again.

5/26 Finish Chuck Palahniuk's book Survivor during the drive to California. Reach Whitaker forest and take a well deserved shower!

5/27 Hanging out with the COE Redwoods class, I'm happy to be ground support. Jake, Molly and I pull a rope from tree 236 and use it to climb tree 155. The evening is filled with a few rounds of Bananagrams.

5/28 Spend the day climbing tree 287 with Dave and a bunch of students.

5/29 Students leave at 3:30am... or so I'm told, I sleep through their departure. They get out of the mountains just before we get 3" of snow, so that is a lucky turn of events. I spend the day relaxing with Dave and Collin. Mark returns in the evening with Tammy who has just arrived. The five of us kill an entire flat of strawberries in just a few hours.

5/30 Up in tree 236 all day collecting seed cones. Getting cones out of the Giant Sequoia is nontrivial. We have this plan for sending the cones down via zip line... and this is the result. We transition to a system of lowering the cone sacks along the full circle line (also nontrivial because of all the branches in the way). In our defense, we did have some successful zip line drops which didn't make it to youtube.

5/31 Up in tree 155 all day collecting seed cones. 155 has a huge bounty of cone. Probably hundreds of bushels. I take this video of what the world looks like from the top of an old growth Giant Sequoia.

Then on the way down from the tree I decide to shoot a rappelling video. I don't particularly enjoy rappelling, and I don't find rappelling videos to be even remotely interesting. But in this case I make an exception. The rappel is well over the 200' maximum that most rock climbers will do in a single rappel (we have 600' static lines in the trees). And you get to see the trunk of a 300' tall old growth Giant Sequoia zip past. Still, it is a rappelling video... I edited it to run at 4x normal speed. That makes it 75% less boring! Ok, without further ado, here is the rappelling video. And, yes, the camera was really tucked under my chin the entire time.

6/1 Back to 155 for another day of collecting. The morning fog is thick and being up in the tree is an isolating experience. But we get into the groove and Dave quickly has a full bag of seed cone to send down. In the afternoon Ricky, Ariel and Ken arrive from Berkeley with Terri from CAL FIRE. We are collecting cones for their seed bank and a few bushels to check germination rates of immature cones and cones past their prime.

6/2 I spend the morning working as ground crew on tree 155, then in the afternoon climb 236 to collect cones.

6/3 I spend all day in tree 287 picking seed cones. That's five days in a row up in the canopy of a Giant Sequoia. Our team finishes collecting cones today with a total of nearly 30 bushels! I relax back at the house and finish the book Deep Survival.

6/4 Vacation day! Dave, Mark, Collin, Tammy and I head into Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks to do the tourist thing and take a nice five mile hike.

6/5 We all depart Whitaker. I drive to the Outward Bound base at Midpines to hang out with Dave.

6/6 Enjoying a rest day in Midpines. I meet tons of cool people, help service the bike fleet, assist in cooking a meal for 30, and catch up on email and phone calls.

6/7 Off to Yosemite with Josh. We climb The Great Escape (5.11c) with Josh leading every pitch. I'm psyched just to not have to prussik up the rope! It is a stellar climb. I'd love to be strong enough to lead it some day. The last pitch is wet, so we come down after p4. Josh heads back to Midpines with Caitlin (who had come to Yosemite to run 19 miles!) and I meet up with Jeff and Ernesto in Camp 4. I can't get a spot in Camp 4 tonight, so I cruise The Pines and meet a wonderful bunch of older women who ditched their families to have a girl's bonding experience in the park. They are kind enough to let me share their site in return for moving the heavy cooler around when needed. Apparently that is the drawback of ditching your husbands... you need to find someone to move the cooler.

6/8 Jeff, Ernesto and I climb After Seven (5.8) to the top pitches of After Six (5.6). I link p1 & p2. Jeff takes us 200' to the middle of p4. Ernesto goes another 200' to the top of p5. Then I get p6 to the top of Manure Pile Buttress.

6/9 Jeff and I climb Super Slide (5.9) with him taking the odd pitches and me taking the even pitches. I get off route on p2 and have a miserable time of it, but the rest of the climb is fun. I get to lead a bit of p3 on the way down when the rappel rope gets stuck. A good day, made better by intense face washing in the lobby of the Ahwahnee Hotel.

6/10 Rest day! Luxurious shower in Curry Village. Enjoy overhearing a tourist make this wonderful comment in Camp 4: "I'm sooo jealous. She is soooo pretty! Except her face... Mostly I'm jealous of her clothes."

Spend some time developing webbing shaped calluses on my feet. Meet a bunch of SCA interns who are working for Yosemite Search and Rescue for the summer. We slackline for a bit, then head to Swan Slabs for some easy topropes. After dinner I play Skip Bo with Tracey and Rebecca. My first time playing cards this trip!

6/11 I spend the morning on a photography walk offered by the Ansel Adams Gallery. Always interesting to see how other people give photography seminars. In the afternoon I slackline and boulder with Tracey and Ben.

6/12 Hike up the Mist Trail to take pictures of Dan and Allison on Liberty Cap, but I don't find them. Dave arrives and we climb Sunnyside Bench (5.4) looking for the pools above Lower Yosemite Falls, which we never find. What is it about me not finding things today? Early dinner and bedtime because...

6/13 ...we wake at 5am for Snake Dike (5.7R). A long, fun day. About 13 hours car-to-car. Maybe two hours faster than when I first climbed it with Ryan and Jess. Only about three hours on the route itself, the rest of the time hiking. About 17 miles total with 5500' of elevation gain and loss, eight technical pitches, and endless slabs. Because of the snow on top of Half Dome, the cables are still down. Which means the only people on top are a handful of climbers and a bunch of idiot tourons suffering from testosterone poisoning. The most difficult part of the day is getting down the cables without getting killed by someone trying out for the Darwin Awards.

Dave captures a bunch of video during the day and has it all edited and posted to youtube within 24 hours. He is a cinelerra master! The result is right here for your viewing pleasure!

On the way down we stop in Little Yosemite Valley to say hi to the SAR interns. By the time we reach the car I'm definitely feeling under the weather, but that's just exhaustion from a long day and not foreshadowing any illness. Right?

6/14 Dave leaves as Jeanine, Brad, Jesse and Jayce arrive. I'm taking a rest day. Of course that means a shower in Curry Village. And plenty of water and food. I seem to be more fatigued than I expect... food and water should help.

6/15 We wake at 5:30am to get spots in Camp 4. I'm suffering from alternating chills and sweats which I'm trying to control with ibuprofen. In the afternoon, Tracey, Rebecca, Brad and I head to El Cap to try the alcove swing. I've just got to say, if you are a climber and have never done this you are missing out. It is a huge rope swing attached to bolts about 200' up El Cap. The swing takes you way out over the valley. Soaring in space above rock and trees. Awesome! We finish the day with a pineapple mango stir fry, one of the best camping meals I've ever had.

6/16 Jeanine, Brad and I wake at 5am to climb the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral (5.9 A0). I'm definitely sick and really shouldn't be doing this climb. I think that 3000mg of ibuprofen will get me through it, but that's just stupid. Classic judgement error... proceeding with a plan even when all evidence points to the need for a change in plans. The day goes reasonably well. There are three parties ahead of us and four behind us (including Dan and Allison), but everyone is moving steadily. I lead most of the pitches and we reach the summit around 4pm. I nap while Jeanine and Brad scout the descent. With everyone's help, I hobble down the descent gully and collapse into Jeanine's car.

6/17 Rest day. I nap and shower and watch Jeanine climb some single pitch routes with Jayce. I see my first bear this year. Apparently the park finally has the bears under control in the valley. In years past they would raid Camp 4 every night and I saw numerous cars trashed. This year the bears are almost invisible. Jeanine and crew depart. I'm still sick.

6/18 My fever is totally out of control even with ibuprofen. And someone's car alarm keeps going off all night long. And there are half a dozen screaming kids in the site next to mine. Fuck Yosemite. I'm out of here. I drive to see Jen and Lars in Mountain View. The line of cars driving in to the already packed valley stretches for miles.

6/19 Resting on Jen's air mattress. The fish entertain me.

6/20 Jen's doctor friend recommends I get myself checked. This leads to Eight Hours Of Health Care Hell. At Urgent Care: They measure my fever at 103F and I'm surprised because it feels much lower than it had felt the previous day or two when my chills and sweats were much much worse. I wonder just how close I came to denaturing the proteins in my brain. I wonder if it would make much of a difference. Urgent Care has a policy where they are supposed to check on patients every 20 minutes. I somehow fall through the cracks. I fall asleep on the exam table. The automatic lights turn off. I'm too ill to move or care. I'm finally awakened two hours later when the doctor comes in. She doesn't understand why the lights are off. She can't find my x-ray results. I haven't had x-rays. Oh. I'm scheduled for x-rays and left to go back to sleep. Finally, after x-rays are taken and reviewed and found positive for pneumonia, I'm prescribed an antibiotic which I have specifically told my doctor to her face (and on all the forms) that I can not take. Getting a new prescription, I'm told it will be electronically sent to the 24-hour Walgreens. They give me the address and phone number on a piece of paper (I note that they could have written it on the back of a pneumonia information sheet, but instead choose the tuberculosis information sheet next to it). I suppose I could lose a paper prescription traveling two blocks to the pharmacy, so electronic is clearly best. Also, I'm not a cynical, sarcastic bastard. Jen and Lars drive me to Walgreens. No prescription. Walgreens suggests I wait because computers sometimes take hours to transfer prescriptions. The pharmacist makes some heroic efforts, calls some other doctors she knows, and discovers that my prescription was sent to a CVS. Which is closed. As is Urgent Care. Two hours later the pharmacist has contacted the on-call doctor and had my prescription transferred. I have my drugs. I'm. Not. Fucking. Kidding.

The next day Urgent Care calls. They need to let me know that my x-rays are positive for pneumonia. They suggest I have it treated. Maybe start a course of antibiotics. I'm. Not. Fucking. Kidding.

Three days later, Walgreens calls. My prescription is ready. Yup, the one I picked up three days earlier. I'm. Not. Fucking. Kidding.

The worst part is that this could probably be considered a successful application of the medical system. After all, they properly diagnosed my illness (I think) and prescribed proper treatment (I think). And the eight hours of suffering when I'm feeling my absolute worst just gives me motivation to stay alive... "I want to write a snarky blog post, I want to write a snarky blog post." Medical System Win!

Interestingly, this is the second time I've come down with a serious respiratory illness just after being at altitude. While Half Dome isn't very high, and I've been much higher without any ill effects, it makes me wonder if in certain cases I'm suffering from HAPE which leads to some sort of illness that persists after I've descended.

6/21 I watch the fish and finish reading Word Freak.

6/22 The fish are really cute.

6/23 They have many different behaviors.

Jen and I have dinner at Facebook with Lars. The company looks exactly as it was portrayed in The Social Network. The cafeteria is really good.

6/24 The fish are starting to get boring. I might be feeling a bit better.

6/25 The three of us head to the beach with Alex and Elaine. We play some games back at their place and head out to dinner after. I've lost about 12 pounds, so feel comfortable ordering a milkshake at dinner. Come to think of it, I'd feel comfortable ordering a milkshake even if I had gained 12 pounds.

6/26 Jen, Lars, Alex and I head to Castle Rock State Park. I'm over my illness, time to try climbing again. I start the day leading Putrefaction (5.10) which is probably not the best idea, but I onsight the slabby route. I climb Degeneration (5.6) on toprope, then we head to the waterfall and get on Falls Route (5.8+) which I lead. I'm shocked that this is the area classic. The sparse bolts are in horrid condition, the sandy holds and wandering line don't make for great climbing. Maybe I'm still suffering from snark and cynicism, but I'm not impressed. Still it is fun to get back on the rock and to hang out with Jen and Lars in a non-fish environment.

6/27 Depart California and drive to Ashland, Oregon.

6/28 Jeanine gives me the grand tour of Ashland. We see the farmer's market, the Dagoba chocolate factory, and the Shakespeare Festival. We see Bohemian Soul perform and then catch the main attraction: Love's Labor's Lost. A good production, and we are under the balcony therefore sheltered from the rain which falls all night long.

6/29 Drive to Vancouver. Get hassled only a little at the border.

6/30 Visiting with Joanna, Carl, Jasper, Joelle and little Joni. While Carl is at work, Joanna and I take the kids to the beach.

7/1 Happy Canada Day! Yeah, I didn't know either. But I guess they do have holidays in Canada. We head to central Vancouver and enjoy the sights and sounds and HUGE crowds of people. Carl is thrilled to be allowed into the new Convention Center (which looks to me like the world's largest game of Jenga).

7/2 Joanna, Joni and I spend the day tabling for NOWBC, the local food co-op that Joanna started back in 2008. Guy and I handed out flyers in her neighbourhood that year (it is in Canada, so it is a "neighbourhood," eh). By the end of the day, I'm speaking fluent Canadian and convincing every passer-by that they NEED to join the co-op. It feels successful.

7/3 We visit the UBC botanical gardens (with canopy walkway) and in the afternoon I setup a slackline for Jasper and Joelle.

7/4 One more run at the slackline before I depart and drive to Seattle. Get hassled only a little at the border.

I get to Jess's place in the evening and we immediately depart for Amelia's apartment which has a great view of the fireworks. It is practically a Cornell party... half the people in Seattle seem to be recent Cornell grads. Floris, Shawn and Willa are already there. Brad arrives a bit after me. Erika shows up in time to walk down to the water where we see one of the all time best fireworks displays ever. And Anastasia comes by late at night to tell us about all the fireworks related injuries she treated during her hospital shift.

7/5 We visit the Washington Park Arboretum... hmmm... this seems to be my summer of trees and Shakespeare. And rock climbing, but that is to be expected. We eat a lovely dinner on the roof of Jess's building, then geek out for a few hours editing her website.

7/6 Jess and I head to Exit 38 for a day of sport climbing. We start at Half Creek Rock, Left where we climb Erectile Disfunction (5.8) a stupid name for a stupid climb. Then we go to We Did Rock, Left where we climb Sobriety (5.9) and Absolutely Nothing (5.9) which are both excellent climbs. I manage to get five pitches in for the day by doing an extra lap to take pictures and squeezing a route between the two lines on We Did Rock. Still, this is my last bit of climbing for the trip. I don't even want to think about how far I am from quota.

In the evening, I take the ferry to the Olympic Peninsula where I visit Katie and Justin. We have a great dinner and eat nearly a bushel of Washington cherries. I take the new Tacoma Narrows bridge back to Jess's place. I cross it quickly... just to be safe.

7/7 Jess and I tour the Freemont area of Seattle. We visit a used gear store (Second Ascent) and spend way too much time in the Theo chocolate factory. Trees, Shakespeare and Chocolate Factories? We check out Gaslight Park and the huge farmer's market. I depart in the evening to get a jump on my drive to Montana.

7/8 Driving to Helena. A strong tailwind ups my usual 33mpg to nearly 40mpg for several hundred miles. Yea! I get to Anna and Devin's house in time for dinner and a visit to the ice cream shop in downtown Helena. Anna and I take Mackenzie for a walk that gives us a view of the entire city... what little there is of it. Helena might be the smallest state capital, though Carson City is tiny too. Ok... the google says that it is actually Montpelier. I've never been there.

7/9 Devin has a race to run in Missoula, and I have a wedding to attend in Ithaca. Time to start driving East.

7/10 Finish The Girl Who Played With Fire. Why oh why didn't I bring the third book of the trilogy!? Sigh. Thunderstorms all day long. And North Dakota already looks like it is under water. Meanwhile, Minnesota is addressing its budget crisis by closing every single rest area in the state... but at least they leave all the lights on. Good job, Minnesota!

7/11 Driving East. I don't have any cynical comments about Illinois or Ohio. I suppose I drove through Indiana too, but who can say for sure?

7/12 I finish The Drunkard's Walk just as I pull in to Ithaca. Eight weeks. 8500 miles. Dozens of friends. Scores of pitches. Lots of fun.