Thursday, May 21, 2009

Low-Down

The truth is, if your kids don't change your life, you---and they---are completely missing out. If you choose to bring them into the world, children are the biggest adventure there is. You only hope you can find the strength and courage and grit and love to live up to the opportunity - paraphrased from the great adventure traveler and family man Mark Jenkins book A Man's Life: Dispatches from Dangerous Places

"The Outdoor Parent begins in earnest. Our goal: provide stoke. Stoke to get you out of bed before dawn for a long run through the woods or a solid surf session at a favorite break. Stoke to rally the kids out for a weekend of camping beneath dark, starry skies or just around the corner to edges of your local park. We celebrate skinned knees, hand me down jeans..."

I've been busy with the kids, this year I started coaching their youth soccer team so now the weekends are even more hectic, I haven't been running much since DRB50K which if you follow along know I didn't even finish, I'm starting to think Headlands Hundred will be my last big ULTRA, then in the fall I'm going to put more focus on climbing, maybe plan a foliage trip out to the Gunks or Rumney. The highlight of the week was meeting up with TuesdayNightClimbing associated with the Boston Chapter Mountaineering Committee. This is an impressive group of climbers who get together on Tuesday to do some fun tope-roping on the rocks around Boston. This Tuesday the group, including my brother and I spent a cool evening under Pushermans Wall in Hammond Pond, with a nice set up of 4 ropes along the wall I had the opportunity to practice climbing a number of interesting routes, Hammond Pond is a gem of a climbing area . Here are a couple mobile uploads -






"Boston Rocks" I'm looking forward to the next climb in Quincy Quarries.

Adventures
As far as grand adventures go I'm planning a Presidential Range Traverse in June. The traditional Presi Traverse end-2-end is a 25.5 mile trek in the White Mountains of New Hampshire from Pinkham Notch to Crawford Notch hitting up to eight 4,000 footers Mt. Washington being one, many hikers do this in a 4 day tour stopping to eat and sleep at the unique AMC Huts Madison, Lake of the Clouds, and Mizpah Spring but with limited time at hand the challenge for me is to do this in a day, my plan is to shorten the traverse to 20 miles and finish in under 10 hours. I have my routes mapped and dreaming of the fresh alpine air which there will be no shortage of since a majority of the traverse is above treeline.

“Life is just a minute only sixty seconds in it, forced upon you, can’t refuse it. Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it, but it’s up to you to use it. You must suffer if you lose it, give an account if you abuse it, just a tiny little minute, but eternity is in it” Dr. Benjamin E. Mays

With this in mind enjoy every minute this Memorial Day Weekend....