This has been around for a while. I don't really condone entering private property for the purpose of thrill seeking but I have to admit it looks like fun.


The group goes into urban tunnels, caves and sewer systems and creates a documentary about the adventures. Eventually they get caught and because of the equipment they have they become suspected terrorists in the wake of 9/11.


Check out the trailer!


http://www.urbanexplorersfilm.com/trailers.htm

By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON – 2 days ago

LOS ANGELES — A 13-year-old California boy plans to try to climb Mount Everest in a quest to reach the summits of the highest peaks on all seven continents.

If Jordan Romero succeeds, he’ll become the youngest person to conquer the world’s highest mountain.

Jordan will attempt the ascent to 29,035 feet with his father and his father’s girlfriend, both experienced outdoors people who have helped train the teenager for top-level mountaineering.

When Jordan was only 9, a school mural of the seven summits inspired his ambitious goal.

“I told my dad about it and he didn’t say no. He just explained the difficulties and what I’d have to do. We started training right away,” said Jordan, who was scheduled to depart for Nepal Monday night.

At age 10, he became the youngest American to summit Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest peak. He’s steadily checked off four of the tallest peaks since then, including Alaska’s Mount McKinley, which many climbers consider to be a more technical climb than Everest.

Despite his penchant for tall mountains and thin air, friends and family describe Jordan as unusually grounded for a 13-year-old. He said he understands the risks of climbing Everest, which kills climbers almost every year.

“Mountain climbing requires a lot of mental training and making smart decisions. It’s a metaphor for life,” he said, sounding wiser than his years.

The teenager’s planned Everest ascent is making the mountaineering community think hard about how young is too young to climb such a dangerous mountain.

Jordan’s father, Paul Romero, said he wants nothing more than to make his son’s dreams come true.

“It’s his quest and we’re just along for the ride,” said Romero, a helicopter paramedic who lives in the San Bernardino Mountains ski town of Big Bear Lake. “We may or may not reach the summit this time. It might be a dress rehearsal.”

Romero and girlfriend Karen Lundgren are adventure racers, competing in weeklong endurance races that combine biking, climbing, paddling and climbing through wilderness areas around the world.

Jordan’s mother, Leigh Anne Drake, said she supports her son but she also sees her ex-husband’s influence in the project.

“He went to his dad’s for a weekend and came back with a new goal,” to be the youngest to reach the top of Everest, she said. “If you’re going to do it, you have to foot the bill. But if you set a record, you can get sponsorship.”

The trio’s Everest expedition is costing $150,000. Jordan, his father and Lundgren will be making the ascent with three sherpas.

Temperatures at the summit can plunge to 100 degrees below zero and hurricane-force winds blow much of the year. Atmospheric pressure at the peak is about a third that of sea-level, which can lead to breathing difficulties, mental sluggishness and other serious medical problems. Climbers usually use bottled oxygen.

The extreme cold, lack of oxygen, falls, exhaustion and avalanches have killed hundreds of climbers. Many of their bodies remain beside the trail.

Guides who have experience with Everest say Jordan will probably be safe, as long as he and his team pay close attention to how their bodies are reacting to the high altitude and low oxygen conditions near the peak.

“After doing five of those peaks — I’ve done them, it’s hard — that means he’s a tough kid,” said Jason Edwards, a guide with the Seattle-based International Mountain Guides. The outfitter has a minimum age limit of 18 for Everest expeditions because of liability issues.

But Gordon Janow, a guide with Alpine Ascents International, also based in Seattle, said there’s not a lot of research on the short- and long-term effects of high altitude on children, whose brains and bodies are still developing.

“We’re in a day and age where parents are pushing kids to extremes so much. It’s very hard to disentangle the parent from the kid these days,” he said. “But with mountaineering, the kid can’t just go through the motions. They have to do a lot of physical training and really want it.”

Janow has turned down 14-year-olds who wanted to climb Kilimanjaro without their parents.

“Jordan’s probably a better bet than some 68-year-old guy who’s only done two mountains,” he said. “These days it’s moving so fast, it’s a 10-year-old sailing around the world this year and an 8-year-old the next. What’s reasonable anymore?”

During the frenzy of packing, Jordan’s mother said she is bracing herself for two long months when the only news of her son will come from a blinking dot that represents his GPS device on a topographical map of Everest.

“I’m on a roller coaster,” Drake said as her voice cracked with emotion. “From the second he leaves my arms until he’s back, it’s like I can’t breathe and I can’t cry. But at the same time, I’m so overjoyed that’s he’s getting the chance to do and see all of these amazing things.”

She said her son is taking two months of homework to Nepal so he can keep up with school.

The current record holder for the youngest to climb the peak is Temba Tsheri of Nepal who was 16 and lost five fingers during his ascent due to frostbite.

Want to work your way up to doing 100 push-ups? Visit the 100 Push Up's Challenge website. They have initial testing standards and 6 week programs that can help you reach your goals in 6 weeks.


The site also has six week programs for 25 sit-ups, 205 squats and another one for 25 pull-ups on the way.


Visit the site and complete the challenge.


http://www.hundredpushups.com/

I made a strap for my cross-country skis so I could bike to the ski trails near my house. It works very well and stays in place. The bottom of the skis stay in the air away from the bike when I'm bent over holding the handle bars and riding.








This is pretty simple. I basically used an old piece of retired climbing webbing, some old bear bag string, a bit of Gorilla tape and a couple of old carabiners.







I made some loops out of some bear bag string and used Gorilla tape to attach them to the poles. Then I grabbed an old carabiner to connect the webbing to the loops. The carabiner in the center is so I could fine tune the length of the strap and easily disconnect it when I want to take the skis off.





The pole straps slide over the top of the skis to hold the pair together.





The ski poles I bought have a slot on the bottom large enough to slide the ski through but only to a certain point. At the point they are at in the photo they will slide no further because the skis are too wide. You might not have the same type of poles that will allow this but I'd be willing to be you could make something that would work.


You could probably put loops on the bottom of the ski poles first. Then make a strap that connects to the loops that has a loop that is large enough to get both skis through but make it so the loop is only wide enough to slide up as far as my poles go.

Great video from the Access Fund of Erik climbing a 5.11b in Eldorado Canyon.

A New Zealand company has hired drillers to dig out bottles of whiskey that were left behind in a cache under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.


The cache was from the Endurance expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. The Endurance became ice locked in Antarctica forcing the captain and crew to abandon the ship when it began to get crushed in the ice flow. The journey from there is one of the greatest survival stories of all time. It's about time they went back for the whiskey!


Check out the full story here.

LANSINGBURGH -- High school senior Matthew Whalen is the kind of student any parent would want.

He's an Eagle Scout, on the honor roll, taking Advanced Placement classes, and never been in trouble with the law. He's received commendations from the City of Troy and the Boy Scouts of America for saving a woman's life, and this past summer, he completed Army basic training. All of it was accomplished before the age of 17.

"I'm just trying to do what I can while I can," Matthew says.

His goal is to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a dream since he was in grade school.

"I have a first-grade yearbook that says I want to be driving tanks in the Army," Matthew says. "I mean, this is something that I know I've always wanted to do."

But the dream could be in jeopardy, thanks to a two-inch pocket knife that officials at Lansingburgh Senior High School found in Matthew's locked car last month. The pocket knife was a gift from his grandfather, Robert Whalen, who's the Hoosick Falls Police Chief. Matthew says he kept the knife in a side compartment and never tried showing it off or threatening anyone with it. Instead it was a part of the survival kit that was his car.

"My car is designed in a way that if I ever broke down, I'd be OK," Whalen explains. "I have a sleeping bag. I have bottled water. I have an MRE. I believe it's better to be prepared and not need it than need it and not have it."

Matthew says school officials approached him on Sept. 21, asking if he had a weapon on him. When Matthew answered he did not, he says the officials asked if he had a knife in his car. Matthew said it was a pocket knife, and took officials to his car when asked. He also turned over the pocket knife when asked.

The Lansingburgh Central School District has a zero-tolerance policy on weapons. According to the district's Codes of Conduct, students are not allowed to have "a weapon of any kind" on school grounds. Even though a pocket knife is not considered a weapon under New York State penal code, the district also prohibits students from possessing anything "that reasonably can be considered a weapon."

According to Matthew, the school suspended him for five days, during which time a Superintendent's hearing was held to determine the extent of his punishment. Matthew's family contends only the high school's principal and athletic director were present, not the Superintendent or the assistant principal who initially suspended Matthew. And despite a letter from Matthew's Scout Master explaining how a pocket knife is a common tool for scouts to have, the district suspended Matthew for another 15 days. The Whalens say they received no explanation as to why, and they claim there was no opportunity to ask.

"I want him to have fair treatment based on his character," says Matthew's father, Bryan Whalen. "It just totally baffles me that they would go after this when they have much bigger fish to fry."

The Whalens say during the Superintendent's hearing, officials admitted that Matthew cooperated fully, didn't have the pocket knife on him, had no intention of using it, and never threatened anyone with it. "They'd already made their decision," Whalen's father says.

In a statement to NEWS10, Superintendent George J. Goodwin says, "We do not comment on discipline related to an individual student. Our policies are clear that weapons are not permitted on school premises and subject to disciplinary consequences."

Legal expert Thomas Carr, of Tully Rinckey PLLC, says school districts are within their rights to impose and enforce safety policies, even if a pocket knife is not considered a weapon under New York State penal law. But he also says such school rules can quickly become so-called "gray areas" that leave the meaning of what's considered a weapon open ended.

"If this 17-year-old is driving his car to school," Carr says, "let's face it, the tire iron in the trunk to change the wheel is much more of a deadly weapon than a one-and-a-half inch blade knife."

Carr also says the Whalens might have grounds to pursue legal action against the district if Matthew felt he had no choice but to allow school officials to search his car.

At this point, the Whalens are not sure when or if they will sue the district. Instead, they want the district to reinstate Matthew immediately and remove this from his official student record.

"He needs to be doing the application for his admission to West Point right now," Bryan Whalen says. "They're delaying that, and that could be very costly for him."

Matthew says he wants to follow in the military footsteps of his father and grandfather. His grandfather, Robert Whalen, received two Purple Hearts for his service in the Vietnam War. Bryan Whalen served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and at Ground Zero, as his unit was on the scene by the evening of Sept. 11, 2001. He's also received the Soldier's Medal from the U.S. Army, and he pulled survivors from a burning helicopter that had crashed at the Stratton Air National Guard Base during an air show crash in 1991.

Matthew guesses a student must have told school officials, but he doesn't know who did it or why. His father thinks it might have been a prank to see Matthew get a little heat from administrators and that the intent was for it to never get this far.

"It's just plain wrong of what they've done," he says. "It isn't a weapon!"

But the family feels the district overreacted, if not for suspending Matthew in the first place, then for adding an additional 15 days to the original suspension.

"If they had told me, 'Take this out of your car,' I would have said alright, and it never would have been an issue," Matthew says. "I was upset with it, but I can understand that. They have the zero-tolerance rule."

The district provides a tutor for Matthew for 90 minutes every day; he's banned from stepping on school grounds for any reason whatsoever, including assignments and sporting events. Matthew says it's hard to cram more than six hours of work into his tutor time, and he says his work is not being graded until he returns to school. All he wants is to return to class.

"The rest of my life could be affected by this," he says.

"Joe Mallahan admits to 43rd district Dems he drives six blocks to work, loses endorsement."


That's an actual headline in the Seattle Times News Paper today. I don't care if its a Prius. It's six blocks! Seriously the average person can easily ride a bike at 12mph. That's actually pretty slow. You'll likely have roller bladers passing you up.


At 12mph (providing you don't have to stop) it will take you 2.5 minutes to get to work on a bike. Last winter I caught an express bus in downtown Minneapolis for work. My bike ride down Hennepin Avenue to get there in the morning was about 2 miles and it took me about 12 minutes. It's one of the busiest roads in all of Minneapolis.


There is the possibility that he needs to drive during the day though. So the jury is out on this. If he doesn't have to drive anywhere? You'd have to be seriously lazy to drive that far.


Link to article

For those of you who don't know I had a bit of a spill on my bicycle that landed me in the back of an ambulance and kept me at the hospital for about 12 - 14 hours.


I was taken out in a bicycle derby (What does a bicycle derby look like?) because someone in the crowd decided it would be fun to jump out and shove riders. He shoved a rider who was to the right of me on the outside of the circle. That rider went flying into me and I landed on my face. Then the other rider landed on top of me.

Result: Stitches above a black eye, fat lip with a nasty gash on the inside from my mouth from my teeth cutting into my lip and cheek, separated shoulder, bruised collar bone, bruised ribs, smashed set of prescription glasses and one hell of a headache.


Link to gruesome photos


So, all that's left me out of work for going on three weeks now. I've had some time to redesign some of the content type models and few other things on the site. Right now I'm learning php and working on the new events listing system before I implement the new design we started working on in secrecy a few months ago.


There have been some big changes over the last few months here. I'm really excited for things that are coming up with all that. I've completely dumped the previously developed event finder and I'm working on one that will be more easily integrated into the main site.


Generation Outdoors also moved to a new hosting company. We now have unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth (at a fraction of the cost!). I did however find one issue with the content management system. The maximum allowed file space a particular user id can occupy is 97 GB. I don't know what flicker allows before they start charging you to upload photos but something tells me it's much less than 97 gigabytes. (wink, wink, hint, hint) We also have slide show capabilities.


Once I upgrade the content management system the file space limit for a user id will no longer exist but really it took me two years and hundreds of photos and some rather large sized video files to get to that point. If you happen to find that you've reached that limit before the upgrade? Make another id!


So back to the events programming. Wee!

This is pretty cool! It's a bike tree bike rack. You put your bike on the hook and it pulls it high in the air out of reach of thieves. The Bike Tree also runs on solar power and has an automatic security camera. :)

Check out Bike Tree here!