When we had time because we were young and stupid

Yes, before children there was a period of time where we had huge amounts of time and we did essentially nothing with it, which seems pretty inconceivable now - although my friends with more than one kid tell me that when that happens the time I spend writing this blog (which lets be honest has not been all that much recently) will also seem like time I was wasting since I will really have no time at that point.

Anyway, to illustrate my point about doing nothing, I will return to one of my friends who makes periodic (yet memorable appearances) ....

Here is Neal, 15 or 16 years ago, with enough time on his hands to badly imitate Jesus .... I mean can you imagine having enough time and energy to create pontoon shoes out of old water bottles ...

California for Christmas

I missed the snow ... again. Last week, while New York was suffering under the onset of Snowpocalypse, I was visiting friends and family out in the Bay Area. This is the second year in a row I have missed a massive snowstorm, last year we were in Thailand and this year in California. One of the best parts of the East Coast is the weather, and while not everyone agrees, I think the snow is a major part of that ... Still, Cali was sweet this winter, and I was happy to be there ... as always the purpose of the trip is to see as many of my people as possible in as short a time - well, not really but it often feels that way. Still, I was really lucky and got to see everyone I wanted to, although not for as much time as I would have liked. I got out late on Christmas eve, and spent the next morning eating breakfast with with my Dad and Peg before heading up to SF on BART to spend the day eating, drinking and watching movies (Return of the Jedi and Southpark; Bigger, Longer and Uncut - I had actually never seen Southpark and, as expected, it was hilarious and quite beyond the bounds of any kind of taste) with Dave, his new fiance Lindsey (who is awesome and was definitely the highlight of the SF trip), Danny and some of Dave's friends. A generally great day, punctuated by delicious ham and mustard sandwiches and a good number of delicious whiskies (I find that the Macallan 18 Fine Oak is quite nice).

I headed back down to Dave and Em's place to spend the night, so I could wake up Sunday morning and play with their son Ethan and their new daughter Allison (not so much playing with Allison as looking at her - she is 10 days old, but quite cute as you can see in the picture to the right). But Ethan, he is up for playing, and walking all over the place, so that's what we did, as you can see in the pictures scattered throuhout this post - we walked all over the neighborhood, up past Broadway and back down, and spent some time teaching Ethan about rocks and leaves and drains, ending up at the neighborhood park when Neal and Terri showed up. Neal, being infallible, taught Ethan a little about riding a motor cycle and we all just kind of appreciated being around each other ... and appreciated the brilliance of making a line-of-sight park. The rest of the day was pretty much just hanging out around Burlingame, although we did (sans Emily and the kids) head over to the Steelhead brewing company for lunch. In the late afternoon, Jane and Glenn, Dave's parents, also came by and we all hung out with the kids for a little while longer until Neal and Terri dropped me off at my Dad's for dinner and yahtzee.

The next two days were taken up with my fathers storage locker and our past, as we spent time looking through dozens of albums and lose pictures, books and all kinds of memorabilia from the last 20 years, such as swords and war maces, seder plates and the Lord of the Rings books on which I learned to read. We went through everything from years of cub and boy scout pictures to the framed pictures and certificates hanging on the walls of the house I grew up in to the old artwork friends of my parents did for movies that never got made in the '60's. It was a pretty emotional set of days, punctuated by a burrito with Ryan and dinner at Max's Opera Cafe (which, I discovered with my new-found East Coast savvy, is essentially a diner).

It was actually a pretty tough thing to do, and it often felt like we were throwing away the past ... although I know what we were really doing is looking at a lot of identical things we had not touched in 10 years + and picking out a few that were meaningful. And we did keep a lot, but still, it was tough. Tuesday night, after going through everything and sending several boxes back to NY for me, my Dad and I made stuffed portabello mushrooms for he, Peg and myself to have for dinner, then my parents went to a movie while I went out for a drink with Dave in Burlingame. And then Wednesday I got up and with only a few delays, got back to NY late but still fairly easily ... as always when I visit California, I am tremendously sad to leave and the whole flight back is always filled with the formulation of different strategies by which my life could take me back there to live. It was a really fun, but really tough visit in equal parts, but I am so glad to have been able to go and only hope to make it out again soon ..

Neal's Wedding

I have written before about my friend Neal, that he is not infallible and how he almost killed himself training for a marathon ... but this time I want to tell you about a more joyful experience in his life, because last weekend Neal got married. The wedding, as it would have to be, was in Yosemite valley, where Neal and Terri got married on Sentinel beach in front of about 60 family and friends and in the shadow of thousands of tons of granite ... being such avid climbers (that is of course what they did on their mini-moon after the wedding), I was kind of surprised the wedding was not on a rock.

Although I am told that they did take some pictures wearing harnesses in their wedding outfits.

Anyway, the weekend was fantastic, not just because of the great joy Aviva and I got seeing Neal and Terri get married, but also because many of Neals best friends are my best friends, so I got to spent the weekend with about half of my closest friends and their significant others. And I got to do while showing Aviva one of the most beautiful places that I can think of.

The details of the weekend were pretty unimportant, there was wandering and hiking in Yosemite valley, a beautiful ceremony on sentinel beach, a viewing of the giant redwoods in Mariposa grove on the way out of the park on sunday and just generally wonderful hanging out and merrymaking.

Oh, and I got to give the toast at the wedding, which was really and honor ... I think I did an alright job, but you can judge for yourselves since a friend of mine recorded the whole thing ..

PJ's Toast @ Neal's wedding from Dave Fisher on Vimeo.

Bachelor Party At Shuteye

So last weekend I learned, painfully, that I am no longer as young as I used to be. I took a red-eye back from California on Sunday night, a 5 hour flight, and then went straight to work. I was returning from Neal's (he of the infallibility) bachelor party in the Sierra National Forest, just south of Yosemite, so the pain was definitely worthwhile, but still .... I know that there have been times in my life when I did not need a lot of sleep, but apparently I am no longer in them, as I was a disaster on Monday. So now, after sleeping for 13 hours last night, I can reflect back on the weekend with a little more lucidity.

While I arrived in California Thursday night, the weekend really started on Friday around 3 when we rolled (quite slowly given the rough dirt roads) into Gaggs Camp, a primitive (meaning no potable water) campsite in the Sierra National Forest at about 5700', just south of Yosemite and above Bass Lake. The campsite was beautiful, situated in a grove of redwood trees with a small stream running alongside several of the campsites (two of which we occupied). The vegetation is so different on the West Coast, instead of the floor to ceiling foliage I am now used to in the east, the ground is dusty and dirt covered emptiness broken up by shrubs, and the rich but not quite lush canopy starts several stories above ones head. I had definitely missed this ...

After some frisbee golf we settled down around the fire pit at about 630 pm, cracked open some beers and contemplated dinner. We had chicken sausages, burgers, tri-tip, Hebrew National hot dogs and an almost infinite amount of fruit and snacks. However, we had no grill, spatulas or any other type of cooking implements. After about an hour we had cooked several sausages on sticks and performed some experiments frying our burgers on Neal's 10 year old cook kit. This worked to a degree, resulting in my sloppy joe type burger thing, 2 successful burgers and a severely blackened cook kit.

Chris, then Brandon and Ryan showed up. Chris had the portable grill, which was key for further cooking, although Neal's cook kit was already black beyond redemption. Ryan had been a bit lost, inexplicably blaming Miller for poor directions despite the fact that I was the one to convey Brandons directions (which ended up being entirely accurate). Ryan had been able to find the campsite when, stopped on the side of the road, he saw someone (Brandon) driving in with a large, inflatable sex doll in the front seat. The doll was christened Paris and quickly became a central feature of the weekend, accompanying Neal all over the place.

After a few more hours and a number of drinks, and our enjoyment at watching Johns burgeoning pyromania, we crashed out and got up around 0730 the next day. After a prolonged breakfast, we piled into Chris and Brandons trucks and headed up to Shuteye Ridge. The road was pretty rough up to the climbers camp .. particularly for me since for some reason I ended up in the bed of Brandons truck ... but up until this point there were only two or three places at which we had to drive over large granite plates and rocks in the road. At least they looked massive until we got past the climbers camp, at which point we started up the roughest road I have ever driven on. Huge piles of granite lined the road and massive rock formations highlighted the route as we drove over tire sized stones, across large dips and pits and around huge boulders. After maybe a quarter mile Brandon had to pull off, so we piled into Chris's truck and onto the bumper and drove the last 1.5 miles. We stopped along the way at a particularly beautiful rock pile to fool around on the rock and take in the view ... and for Chris to slash his forehead with some falling rock. It was just a flesh wound, and once bandaged we got on our way, hiking down to the site of the climb that Neal, Brandon, Chris and Paris were going to do that afternoon.


It was a gorgeous setting, a massive rock pile stuffed into the side of a hill, set above a beautiful landscape overlooking much of the Sierra south of Yosemite. It was so clear that we could see all the way to Mammoth mountain. Chris, Neal and Brandon prepared Paris for the climb and headed off, and the rest of us dispersed, with Ryan, Alan and John climbing up to the fire tower by way of the ridge, while Miller and I stayed at the rock for a while and then headed back to the truck.


I had originally wanted to take pictures of the climbers, but I could not actually find the climb after they left, so I spent a remarkably pleasant afternoon taking pictures of the gorgeous view. Once the hikers returned to the truck, I hiked back down the hill a ways with Alan and John before we saw Neal fly by us on a mountain bike, wearing Paris.


Soon after Chris picked us up in the truck and we headed down to camp, dropping Brandon, John and Alan off at his truck .. which happened to be next to one of the most incredible rock formations (a giant hunk of exfoliating granite) I have ever seen.


After returning we mounted a 7 hour assault on the food, polishing off the pastrami, tri-tip, sausages, cheese and a vast amount of snack food, as well as a huge number of guinesses and a bottle of black bush. Although much was made of the hustlers, the anal beads and the stories we passed around, the theme of the night was definitely the fire. Chris, Brandon, Ryan and John, but mostly Chris, spent some time chopping wood ... but at some point we decided that the six or seven huge logs we had chopped up were not enough. So we started a volcano.

There was a large, dry stump with a hole in it being used as a seat at the campfire, we gingerly placed this on the fire pit, little knowing that it would provide literally hours of entertainment. As the stump began to burn, flames began to spew out the hole, providing a kind of amazing spectacle. Over the next few hours, food, beer cans, forks and all sorts of other things were placed in, across and around the fountain of flame. During this time we finished the handle of Crown Royal, the bottle of black bush and much of the remaining beer. Neal used the spurting fire to cook several sausages and melt a fork and made a brief return to the realm of fire-jumping. Ryan lost his tofurky dogs, pickles were incinerated and launched and we discovered that potato chips make pretty remarkable kindling. This continued until around midnight, when we all found our way to bed.


The next morning we woke up around 8, ate a motley breakfast of muffins, sausage, cheese, pickles and whatnot and then played an excellent round of frisbee golf ... yours truly was the winner with an overall of -7. After golf we packed up and Alan, Ryan and I left, leaving the rest of the guys to have a special celebration to say goodbye to Paris. Overall a humorous, fun weekend full of fantastic activities in a beautiful setting ... an ideal bachelor party.

PS - Here is a picture of the route that Neal, Brandon and Chris climbed during the day while the rest of us hiked. Note how far down the start of the climb is, this is why I could not find the climbers ...

Neal regains some infallibility in the sky

So by now those of you who avidly follow my blog (those one or two of you), have read a couple of things about my buddy Neal, who is both an extraordinary and an extraordinarily crazy human being. His most recent hobby is skydiving, because kite-boarding and rock climbing are quite enough. Apparently all the maneuvers we see in the movies, the somersaults and flips and whatnot, are not that easy to do and in the video below we see Neal learning to flip a little bit ..



Neal you are awesome, keep living the adventure so I can continue to adventure vicariously with you.

Neal is Immortal?

So, I believe I have several times referred to my friend Neal, who is widely known among his friends for regularly doing things that are so far off the beaten path of normal life as to be in a separate reality. Things like climbing 3,000-foot rock faces while sleeping on tiny ledges and carrying tubes of poop, or free soloing the Grand Teton in 13 hours while other people need 4 days ... and ropes.

Despite his apparent belief to the contrary, I have often told Neal that he is not indestructible, and have previously discussed with you the fact that Neal is not infallible, proving it by relating the story of how Neal was almost killed by a running in a light rain.

However, it now turns out that Neal might in fact be immortal ... I knew Neal in 1998, and remember what he looked like and now I see that he is on the cover of the American Track and Field Magazine, fall 2009 looking exactly the same as 11 years ago (the skinny white dude ... okay they are all skinny and white ... the guy on the left in the UCSD jersey). Eternal youth? Maybe, or maybe he has simply greatly slowed the aging process ... whatever it is, I intend to find out ...

Neal is not Infallible

Recently, one of my best friends, Neal, just completed an epic three day climb up El Capitan with his friend. Neal is an amazing outdoorsman, excelling at just about any sport you can think of. Climbing El Cap is of course a ridiculously difficult thing to do, and it is just one of the incredible trips he has taken over the last few years.

We are all, as usual, incredibly impressed with Neal, it is awesome that he was able to summit El Cap (of course this is the same individual who runs a marathon after training for 3 weeks and breaks 3 hours ... eat that Lance Armstrong). He would of course tell you that it was not the most technically difficult climb he has done and that he was relatively safe the entire time.

This shows that Neal is brave, ultra-talented and hopelessly nuts.

During this amazing feat, Neal performed such insane stunts as climbing 14 hours a day on almost no sleep because he slept, harnessed in, on 2 square feet of rock over 1,000 feet off then ground. He also crapped and pissed in a tube which he carried with him for three days. He survived a 30 foot fall when he was over a 1000 feet up after his protection blew. On the way out to the base of El Capitan, the bag he and his partner carried out with them weighed so much that the person carrying it could not stand up. This is the bag they hauled up 3000 feet with them.

In honor of these and the many, many other insane, ridiculous (those non-superhumans among us might call stupid) feats Neal has accomplished, I have created this T-shirt ... anyone interested in honoring Neal with this shirt should let me know.


Update 1/9/08: Yet another example of Neal's now patented infallibility, Neal is training for the Boston marathon (yes, because he is that much of a stud). For his first long run he decides to run a 16 mile loop around Cowles mountain, encompassing four large hills. He thinks he should bring some food, so he brings a granola bar. During the run it starts to rain, and by the time Neal reaches the valley after the third hill, there is a river running down the center.

Never one to be sensible, instead of turning around and running the 6 miles back, Neal swims across the river and continues his run. As he runs up the last hill, he notices his arms are tingling, and by the time he crests Cowls mountain he is dizzy and can barely move his legs. He sits down for some time (he tells me he is unsure of how long) and then realizes that if he doesn't move he will die of hypothermia. He starts to walk but can barely move, and realizes his blood sugar is crashing and he needs food. Unfortunately he has eaten his only granola bar long ago.

So he starts going through any garbage cans he can find, lucking out in the sixth can to find a half used dipping tub of ranch dressing in a used McDonalds bag. Feeling a tad better, he moves back to his car, stopping to eat a rotten apricot and a moldy tangerine he finds on the ground. He is completely in the clear when he finds a half drunk bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red, which ups his blood sugar enough to get him back to the car.

And there you have it, Neal almost dies of hypothermia on a training run. Definitely not infallible.