Nice Melon!

Crazy Unidentified melon
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

My old college buddy Colin happened to be passing through town the other day and so I let him and his now-fiance Petra crash at my place. After spending a good week and a half in the Utah wilderness they came through Colorado again on their way back to Chicago. The gave me this melon, acquired in Green River, Utah, as thanks for my hospitality. Green River apparently has a huge melon festival about this time year celebrating the annual melon harvest. This melon, a Casaba Melon, looks awesome. It looks like something that should only exist in Dr. Suess land. I think tonight I shall cut it open and see how it tastes.

Talk like a Pirate

It's Talk Like a Pirate Day again! This video will give you the essentials you need for this fine day.

Hard Corps

Hard Corps
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

Last week Andrew and I made an attempt on Longs peak. Longs Peak is the only 14'er in Rocky Mountain National Park, and is the peak featured on the Colorado quarter. It is both challenging and accessible. The standard route is about 15 miles round trip and and about 4000 feet of elevation gain. In order to make a serious attempt, one has to get started on the trailhead by about 3 or 4 in the morning. We started just minutes after 4:00 after a good breakfast of bacon, eggs, and cinnamon rolls. We almost made it to the top before some weather moved in and forced us down so we wouldn't die on the class 3 part (slightly dangerous, especially when wet). We did, however, get this photo of us with the NOAA Corps flag at the keyhole.

Moveon.org should be ashamed of itself.

I'm a liberal through and through. I wear the label with pride. I refuse to treat it as the pejorative term that certain talking heads try to make it out to be. Which is why it makes me so sad when a liberal organization like Moveon.org stoops to such new lows in an attempt to make a lousy argument. To coincide with General Petraeus' testimony today, Moveon.org took out a full page ad in the New York Times with a picture of said general over the text "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?". This personal mudslinging is the worst element of what has become of political dialog in this country. Please, let's discuss ideas and bring back accountability. Let's passionately argue about the direction this country is going. But please let us not make personal attacks against a man doing a difficult job in a poisonous political climate. A man who swore an oath to country and constitution. A man whose uniform should put him squarely outside of any idealogical debate or diatribe.

Moveon.org, you should be ashamed of yourselves. If this is the kind of activity you sponsor then I refuse to be any part of it.