For Thanksgiving we (Mom, Dad, Ron, Esther, Ingrid and me) went down to the beach to eat the turkey. My mom beat us all in Mexican Train, like usual.

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I switched jobs last week to Oracle. The office is back downtown in the Pac West building. Besides being a nice switch in work, there are showers, a bike room, free parking and free Mountain Dew.

An Saturday Ron, Dan and I went up Angel's Rest as a small training hike. It was sunny out until we got to the hike and then it started raining and hailing. After the hail it was awesome out and we had rainbows and fog.

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For Keevin's 26th birthday we all went over to his house to pre-funk it and then over to Montage for some grub. Afterwords we swung by Voodoo Donuts. Keevin had a good time running around as The Dude in the Big Lebowski.

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Over the weekend Jill and I went down to the beach to hang out. I'd never driven around the town itself so we went off in search of the house and cool bridge in the movie. We found neither but went over the Astoria Bridge and up to the Astoria Column (with its $1 seasonal parking pass.) After having some kickass fish&chips and chowder we browsed a cool bookstore and an art gallery with Halloween themed paintings. I was going to get one but it was pretty spendy. I made up for it by getting The Hobbit for $2.

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Last weekend Ron, Esther, Dan and I went over to Smith to climb Monkey Face. While Ron and I did the Pioneer Route they did the West Face Variation. I made Ron, me and Esther some aiders with webbing as we're not sure if aiding is our bag or not. First pitch

On the first pitch of the climb I pulled on some rock and showered Ron with dirt and rocks. Well, mainly rocks. He says I just yelled "Don't let go!!!", but I'm pretty sure I yelled "Rock Rock!!!! Don't let go!!!". This set the tone for the climb so I had a hard time leading the rest of the way up. I ran out one section a bit too much so that if I were to fall my last protection would just stop my body from hitting the ground not from crashing into the notch we just came through. Bolt ladder

The aid section was really awesome. It took just a few moves to get into the rythym of clipping, standing, using Fifi hook and resting. I screwed up a few times and would get it backwards and fall onto my daisy chain, but that's why it's there. Aiding

Once I was in the mouth of the Monkey I belayed Ron up. He cut his hand on the route and started dripping blood, so that was cool. Once we were both in the mouth we went over to the beginning of the 5.7 pitch. I kept telling myself to not look out and down, just to look up. That didn't work and I got freaked out. It's called Panic Point for a reason. It took a while to get up the balls/nerve to step out and start the route. I would make it to a bolt and yell at Ron. I thought it came out as "Ron I'm clipping now. Okay now take please." Or as he says it came out as "Clip Clip Clipping Clip SHIT!!! CLIP!!! Shit Take TAke goddamnit TAIEEEKKKEEE! shit fuck shit shit." Then I'd slip down a 1/2 inch and continue yelling at him. 5.7 pitch

I eventually scrambled up and belayed Ron to the nose and we jumped over to the summit. We nerded out and called people on our cell phones and ate M&Ms once Dan and Esther got up. We hung out for a bit but started to get cold so we headed down.

Esther was brave enough to be the first to do the rappell down. I say brave because it's about a 200 foot free rappell. As she went down some guy hopped up onto the ledge after clipping his rope into a quickdraw like a ninja. He didn't say anything as he walked by in his loosely tied AIRWALKs. Dan, Ron and I stared at each other wondering if we saw that right.

A minute later his partner came up to our ledge wearing jeans and no real equipment besides her wonder bra'd cleavage. She at least had real rock shoes on so we didn't feel like complete nancy boys. I thought it'd be bad form to take her picture, but I should have anyway - for you people.

We did our rappell as fast as possible, which meant it took me 5 minutes to get down as it's a bit airy. Once you were committed to the rappell it was pretty cool - 200 feet straight down with nothing around you but your adrenalinized sweat and air.

The Airwalk Ninja and Cleavage used our ropes to come down. Of course they showed us up by doing a simul-rappell. Then they walked out in the dark without any lights and beat us (who had lights) back to parking lot.

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Esther, Dan, Keevin, Matt and I went up to The Tooth in Washington over the weekend for our last alpine climb of the year. It was pretty dope. The approach was pretty, and pretty stupid, lots of hiking over boulders and scree fields. I've decided that we have to learn how to hang-glide so we don't have to hike back out anymore.

The climb itself was very cool. It was pretty easy climbing, maybe 5.6, but the views and exposure were awesome. We could even see Mt. Stuart off to the east and Rainier just to the west. Dan and I climbed on half ropes so I could practice on those, which I kinda didn't do so well. But the views were awesome. We got to see clouds whipping over the summit while we ate cookies. On the way out Keevin and I saw our sun halos on the clouds coming up from the valley. That made the trip.

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Last weekend Dan, Angel, Ron and I went over to Smith Rock to do some climbing. It was bad ass, as usual.

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A bunch of us (Angel, Jen, Ron, Matt, Esther, me, Scott and Jami) went over to Smith Rock to climb in the 90 degree heat and complain about our shoe rubber melting onto our feet. On Saturday we climbed Rabbit Stew (5.7 trad) and Bunny Face (5.7 sport) - very manly type climbs. It got too hot in the afternoon to do much more climbing. I as usual freaked out on lead, but I'm getting used to it.

On Sunday Ron and I got up earlish and ran over to Spiderman. We were going to do it "quickly" so we could meet up with Jen and Angel over near Cinnamon Slab and get them up a few routes. It took us like 4 hours to top out and walk over to rapell down to the ladies who were waiting in the heat. The climb was great going up and Ron was psyched to do it.

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For the Labor Day weekend Ron, Angel and I went up the South East corner of Beacon Rock. I thought we'd fly up it as I now know the route, but it actually took us like 8 hours. Good thing we brought a lot of water and grub this time. At top a few hikers thought we were kickass as we had come up the 'face'. We lucked out with weather as it wasn't too hot and had a nice breeze.

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