14th Annual Yank-N-Yard

I was joking around with some friends that with taking care of Dylan most of the time I actually earn about 25% of my yearly income in the couple of weeks a year we bring in reinforcements to watch him.

Well the second week of October was one of those weeks. My parents came out to help watch Dylan so I could help get everything ready for the Yank-N-Yard competition that was in it's 14th year. I got to spend maybe only 10 hours with my parents in almost 10 days while they were out, but w did have dinner and dessert for my mom's birthday.

Linda competed on Friday night Open qualifying and missed finals by one spot. Pretty great considering she is twice the age of most of the competitors and has very little big competition experience. Then on Saturday she easily won the citizens competition by about 3000 points which means that she did not even need to do all her problems to win, she could have counted just her top 3 and beaten everyone else counting their top 6.

After the citizens competition on Saturday the Open Finals happened. The link below is to a video put together of the finals.

Yank-N-Yard Finals Video by Alstin Films

Needless to say,with how much of a show it was Linda is kind of glad that she did not make finals. Pretty good competition all around. I managed to pull together about $8000 in raffle prizes for the citizens competition and the gym gave away $4000 cash to the open competitors.

Photos from Sitting Bull Falls

Here are some photos from our second weekend at Sitting Bull Falls. These first ons were taken by Matt Menotti who came out with Katie from Austin to meet us for Labor Day weekend. This is me hanging the draws for everyone on Counting Coup 5.12, which is one of the best routes of its grade in the state. Linda sent this on her first try one she gave up on the very reachy short person beta and used a real hod that made the moves shorter. This is at the start of the route just getting up to the rest before the hardest moves.
Her I am in the middle of the crux.
Counting Coup is a great route and very fun. Linda was quite pleased with her success and it started a string of days out climbing during which she climbed a 5.12 every day. including the next day when she did the 5.12a to the left in 2 tries.

This second group were taken by our friend Matt Moore who works with me at the climbing gym and the are on Kootenai Cruiser which is 5.13+ and I managed to do on my second try.

There is some physical climbing on underclings to get up to the hardest section.
Followed by a very physical clip,
And capped by a pretty long throw to a good edge,
Which I barely caught.
Then a ways to the anchor on easier 5.12 climbing.
Finishing off Kootenai Cruiser means that I've finished off the cliff, except for the undone project right out the middle which has some very viscous looking holds on it and will probably require someone with much stronger tendons than mine. Something about the shallow sloping two finger pocket and V slot mono that is only a pad on a 45 degree wall with poor feet is unappealing to me, though if we go back I need to try something....

Dylan's 3rd Birthday

On Friday the 22nd Dylan turned 3. We had a little birthday party for him, inviting his class mates and some of our climbing friends that have kids. We started in the park which was great for the little ones as they got to run around but was probably a bit cold for the adults since it has cooled off in the last few days. After eating a bit we headed back to the house for cake and ice cream and to make a mess. Here is Dylan and his birthday cake.
Among the guests was JaxsonWest and his little sister Bridgette. At 9 months Bridgette is really mellow and all the kids seemed to know to give her some space, she never got knocked over or anything and Dylan was even good enough to share toys with her...and the other kids as well.
We only let Dylan open a couple of gifts on Friday night and on Saturday night he got to open the present that Linda and I got for him.
Buzz could use a "to infinity and beyond" button. As it is it is one of 6 lines he says when you press a particular button and Dylan will sit there and push that button until that line comes up and then run around making Buzz fly and repeat. Dylan even read Buzz a goodnight story that night.

Some photos

Well it has been awhile. Here are some photos.
This was camping for the weekend A Datil with Mark and Debi. They have a cab over camper that Dylan loved, it is just his size when it is collapsed.
That same weekend Linda got stung on the lip by a bee that was trying to drink from her water bottle at the same time she was. Nothing happened the first day but the next morning it looked like she had gotten a botox treatment for lip enhancement.
We headed to SE New Mexico to climb at Sitting Bull Falls on the first weekend of September and meet up with some friends from Austin to limb then continued on to Austin for the rest of the week. Here Dylan and Noah are stealing Thu's food. Dylan will attach himself to anyone who has food and is willing to part with it.
After being in SE NM in the 95 degree heat with not a cloud in the sky, by the time we got to Austin the remnants of a tropical storm were just starting to roll through and it rained for about 36 straight hours causing tons of flooding. Later in the week when we headed out climbing it was back up to 90 degrees with 70+ percent humidity. Conditions that put you at risk of heat stroke with physical activity.

Here is a shot of Dylan attempting to brush his teeth.
And here is Dylan after eating a raw steak...actually waking up with a bloody nose and this is after I did a first wipe down.