A mad farmer, with a mess to clean up.
Kids with lab coats can come up with the greatest things. Turns out, Steve Wynn paid way too much money for his Belagio fountains.
From www.eepybird.com
This is a Cow Fish trying to get away from my camera. These are oddly shaped fish, like a triangle in section... with lots of various fins. These are pretty abundant in Curacao, and through out the Caribbean, we saw several of these every dive.
These are my mother's favorite fish to watch.
Thought I would throw up a video of some squids we found in Curacao. Squids are cool....
Just returned from a week in Curacao, N.A. It was a pretty relaxed time, mostly made of diving, and napping... both of which are pretty fun. Curacao is a little island in the Netherland Antilles... just north of Venezuela, with some awesome people, and some awesome diving. The capitol is Willemstad (the typical postcard photo of it here). parts of the family were there, and we stayed at Sunset Waters resort, which is towards the north of the island. Sunset Divers is attached to the hotel, and have some pretty nice dive sites to see... and some pretty fun dive masters to hang out with.
The diving was pretty good... and very easy. This is one of the easiest places to dive I have ever been... there is no current, and the dive boat is very well setup. The sea life is very good, and coral looks to be in good shape... but there is a noticable lack of larger life, such as shark, or rays. I only saw a single stingray in all of my 15 or so dives. There are some unique things though... this is the first time I have ever seen a seahorse, and there are more eals here than I have ever seen. There also seems to be alot of Christmas Tree Worms everywhere... more than anywhere I have seen before.
You can go visit my flickr page to see more photos from there if you'd like. Below are two videos from the trip. The first being an eal which was swimming from one coral head to another one. Rarely do you see eals leave their hiding spots. The second video is of my favorite fish, one I could watch all day long, but I do not know what sort he is. It is also a part of a new series I am going to do called "27 seconds" which will be videos of various subjects which are all 27 seconds long. Why 27 seconds... sounded cool.
Swimming eal, Curacao, N.A.
27 seconds - Favorite fish
My favorite fish... I wish I knew his name... but he is cool. This little dude has some parasites on him.
Last Friday a few climbing buddies of mine and I went to the Red River Gorge to do some climbing. We got to the Red by about 10:30pm... after making a few directional errors. Instead of camping in a normal camp ground, we went up to the Fortress Wall and climbed Bed Time For Bonzo (5.6)... then dragged all our camping equipment up, and slept atop the wall. It was a gorgeous camp site... very exposed, with some good tent sites further back. It was a beautiful night.
The next day, all 5 of us climbed 2 multi-pitch routes. The first being a 5.7 route, still on Fortress (which is an all trad wall) called Party Time. The first pitch of this 2 pitch route ends on a small ledge... with hardly any room for 5 people to hang out on. The whole climb ascends a dihedral which varies in width quite a bit. The summit gives a beautiful view.
The second climb for the day was one of the classic climbs in the Red, Caver's Route (5.3 R). You can actually free-solo this (no ropes or protection) if you want... but as it was my first time on this route... I roped up for one of the pitches (its a 4 or 5 pitch route). The thing with Caver's is the compression of the crack... it is so tight, that in a few parts you have to just wiggle your way vertically up the wall. Its is entirely possible to get completely wedged in a few of the cracks, and get stuck. Luckily, that did not happen to any of us.
More photos to follow (as soon as Matias and BJ get them up on the net).
Lastnight was the ceremony for the Dayton Canstruction 2006 event... held at the Dayton Art Institute. It was a good event, with a big turnout, some local personalities, and some really good wine (who ever did the ordering is cool). There were 7 total sculptures entered into this years event, 4 of which had various levels of collapse. I forget who got all the awards, but I know LJB got several for their Pirate ship... which was pretty cool. Notably, they recieved the "Structural Ingenuity" award... ironically, part of their sculpture collapsed just after the jurors picked it for this award.
Our team did not fair so well, the jurors had to fabric an award for us... and I don't think it even had a title. So, we are the grand winners of the "Short Bus" award... the sort of award you give to the kid you feel bad for, and who needs some encouragement. I don't think the team was after awards (we made a cube...), so it is all good. We helped raise a huge amount of food for the food bank.
