Another Bumble

Finally, Some Clouds

Finally, Some Clouds, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

Clouds are a rarity for most of California during the summer. The climate just doesn't allow them to form...

...which is why I was excited to see a few cirrus cloud catching the light of the sunset the other day. The sky was beautiful, with much more color than usual. To all you Midwesterners and East Coasters, us Californians envy your clouds!

Carving in Tree

Behind the church in Old Town is a very big, old cottonwood tree. About 10 feet up the tree is a tree bole as is common in cottonwoods. Someone had taken the time, and talent to carve a old-style catholic saint, (I guess that is what it is as I am not catholic and not into the old art that much.) I do know it is very unique.

Memorial Day :: Remembering

My grandfather Rolland Victor Phend, shown in a 1983 photo with his WWI portrait, enlisted in the United States Army on September 19, 1917 as a substitute for a man who had been drafted. He was very proud of the fact that he had enlisted rather than waiting to be drafted. Grandpa was sent overseas shortly after his basic training and served in France with Company C, 309th Engineers. By the time he was discharged on June 19, 1919 he had achieved the rank of Sergeant. Grandpa suffered from the affects of gas poisoning for the remainder of his life, astounding physician's who said he wouldn't live beyond the age of 30 - he passed away on June 18, 1991 just one day before his 98th birthday!

Stories about Grandpa:

• Two Fellows Home From Camp Taylor
• Vic Phend Writes From France
• Grandpa Vic :: a Biography
• Grandpa Vic and Some Grandkids
• Grandpa's Candy

Grandpa is buried at South Park Cemetery in Whitley County, Indiana next to his parents and two brothers.

My Grandfather is just one of the many ancestors and relatives who have served their country in the military. The post, The Veterans in my Family, briefly describes my ancestors and their siblings who served during nearly all of the wars in which the United States was involved.

Last year I went through my genealogy database in an attempt to find all relatives that had served in the U. S. military, these are the ones that I know of, I'm sure there are others.

• War of 1812 and the Civil War
• Spanish American War and World War I
• World War II, Korea, and Vietnam

This past Friday, I took my Mother to visit the graves of family members buried in Whitley County, leaving little bouquets along the way. She tires easily, so after taking her back home, I continued my cemetery tour into neighboring Kosciusko County visiting the grave sites of ancestors on my Dad's side of the family. We really couldn't have asked for a nicer day with a cloudless blue sky and temperatures in the upper 70s. It was a perfect day!

Exquisite Beauty

Friday, September 24th - - Words cannot describe, nor photographs convey completely, the simplicity and incredible beauty of this place... Crater Lake National Park.

Christmas :: Past - Present - Future

=+==+==+= Christmas Past =+==+==+=



When I was younger, before the teenage years, my family always got together at Christmas time with my mother's sisters and brother and their families – usually at my grandfather's house.



As we got older it became more difficult for all of us to get together at Christmas - there were really too many of us to fit in anyone's home. (My mom had three sisters and one brother and altogether they had 19 children.) Then the years went by all too quickly and we all went our separate ways, some got married and had families of their own, others just went away! But as many of us that could, still got together at Christmas. Sometimes it was just Mom and her siblings, but there was almost always some kind of Christmas gathering.



In 1980, after being diagnosed with cancer and having her leg amputated, my Grandmother decided that it was time for the entire family to get together again for Christmas! My mother and I were living in rural Noble County and the township had a community building that we rented and we made all of the arrangements. By this time there were about 75 family members in four generations.



The biggest family Christmas dinner was held in December of 1983 – 28 years ago! It would be the last time this many of the family was together. I think there were only two cousins who were not able to attend. The picture below was taken at that dinner and includes almost everyone who was there. I was taking the picture. (Better double-click on the picture to see all those smiling faces!)





My grandmother is in the wheelchair (she passed away the following May), her sister Jane is sitting beside her, and my nephew Jason is sitting on grandma's lap. Jason was five years old then; he is now 33 years old and has an eight year old daughter of his own. All of those little kids have grown up and many now have families. It is more than a little sad to think about those who are no longer with us – Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Jane, Uncle Bob, Uncle Walt, Aunt Phyllis, cousin Mike, my sister, and my mother. But it is such a pleasure to think of them and remember the good times we all had together.



=+==+==+= Christmas Present =+==+==+=



Christmas this year was spent in northeast Louisiana with extended family members. Twelve of us gathered together on Christmas Eve to celebrate. After a very good dinner of spicy Jambalaya we moved into the living room to continue one of their traditional events – caroling by telephone! As each family member who could not be present was called we all joined in with a hearty rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” I lost track of how many people were called... East Coast, West Coast, and places in-between as well as one couple who was on their honeymoon on a Caribbean Island (they had gotten married earlier this year) and another couple who was vacationing in Thailand! It was a lot of fun.



=+==+==+= Christmas Future =+==+==+=



Ah, the future. Wouldn't it be great to get all of my first cousins and their families together again? Some of us do maintain contact on Facebook so we have stayed in touch that way. But it isn't the same as being together, in person. Many of that next generation – the cousins' children and grandchildren - have never met some of their cousins. I'm sure that some have no idea how many relatively-close relatives they really have!



Of course, it would be a logistical (and financial) nightmare but I think it would be great fun to meet up, oh, say in Hawaii or perhaps on a cruise ship – someplace warm! Just spend a week together doing various activities and have time to leisurely get caught up on all the family news.



Written for the 113th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy, "A Charles Dickens Christmas."

After the Heat Wave

With July's heat wave becoming a memory, we look forward to cooler temps on the upper mountain. Freezing levels have dropped back down to ~12,000 feet. Check out the Route Conditions on your intended climb for updated reports.

Life Goes On

(Photo: X-Ray showing my broken ankle. Diagnosis: fracture- ankle, medial malleolus, closed.)

One year ago today, I broke my ankle rock climbing.

In part, I started this little blog in order to force myself to write about it. But I've been struggling with what to say about it for a year now, and I'm afraid that struggle isn't over.

My accidenthappened on a Gunks climb called Insuhlation (5.9). I fell justafter the final crux roof. I pulled over the roof with no problems, but there was a wet hold above the roof that I suppose I failed to use well. Or maybe my foot popped, I'm not sure. Truthfully, I don't know exactly why I fell. I had my right hand on the semi-jug above the wet hold. I was looking around for pro; my last piece was a green Alien a few feet below the roof. And then I was off.

I recall with vivid clarity the sensation of falling. Time suddenly slowed to a crawl, and I saw my half ropesin a parabolic arcabove me as I flew back outward from the rock. It seemed as if I had a good long time in midair to consider that this might not end well. I remember thinking "this is it!" ...but I'm not sure what I had "it" in mind to be. I yelled out "falling," and then things sped up considerably. I flipped upside-down and then the rope came tight on the green Alien, which held, and I came to a stop, hanging in the air with my head where my feet should have been.

As I righted myself, I realized I was injured. I couldn't understand why I'd flipped over. The rope wasn't behind my leg. And I hadn't felt a thing. There was no impact at all that I had sensed. So why was my ankle tender and starting to swell? I asked my partner N to lower me to the ledge. The pair climbing next to us onObstacle Delusion retrieved my gear on rappel and filledus in on what had happened. "You flipped over when your ankle hit the rock," one of them said. So it seemed there was an impact, but in the adrenaline-pumped moment I hadn't felt it. At least itall made sense now, even if the explanation didn't jibe with what my mind had allowed me to experience.

Thinking it was just a sprain, I hobbled the whole way from the High Exposure access trail back to the steel bridge, refusing numerous offers of assistance from concerned strangers. The best and the worst of the Trapps in autumn were on display. People were kind and supportive, but there were far too many of them. At one point I stopped to rest in the Uberfall area and counted over thirty climbers in my immediate field of vision, all of them looking at me in a pitying way that made me very uncomfortable. N thought we shouldsummon the rangers, but I insisted that if I could evacuate myselfwe shouldn't initiate a rescue. I now recognize that this was a stupidmistake. I really don't think it made my ankle any worse, but if I'd listened to N, we would have had the benefit of the advice of first responders, and I would likely have been taken to a hospital for an x-ray right away instead of waiting 24 hoursand only thenfinding out the ankle was broken and required surgery. It also would have put much less pressure on N, who ended up having the sole responsibility of babying me all the way back to Brooklyn.

In the aftermath of the accidentI was overwhelmed with guilty feelings. The source of these feelings was hard to pin down. I felt guilty about inconveniencing my wife.She'd have to pick up the kids every day and do all the cooking for months to come. I also felt guilty that I'd made whatever climbing mistake I must have made to get into this mess. I blamed myself for the accident, although I had a hard time deciding what it was I'd done wrong. I also felt a lot of guilt about imposing my injury on N. I entertained totally unfounded fears that she'd never climb with me again, and that all my other climbing partners might desert me as well.

Amidst all this I wondered if I really was feeling most guilty about climbing in the first place. Was I taking pains to find fault with my climbing on that fateful day because I needed to avoid confronting something harder to deal with? Was my accident really a reminderthat even if you do everything right when you climb, even if you place gear liberally and it holds, you can still get hurt? Was it a sign that I should quit,that climbing is unacceptably dangerous? Certainly a number of people, from my doctor to my mother to my wife's colleagues, assumed that my broken ankle would be thewake-up callI needed to make me come to my senses and stop this climbing nonsense, as any responsible husband and fatherwould.

I did not want to quit. Although I didn't know how I'd feel getting out there on the rock again, I was sure, as I sat around recovering and gaining twenty pounds, that I would missclimbing terribly if I stopped doing it. But I didn't want to be a bad husband and father. I had to ask myself if climbing could be done reasonably, or whetherthe dangers were such that no amount of rock climbingcould be consideredsane.

I read numerous classics of mountaineering literature searching for the answer, to no avail.Many great mountaineers have wrestled with the question of why we are drawn to climbing, and whether the dangers are worth it. Some embracethe risk, declaring danger to beat the verycore of the climbing experience. Othersfocus instead onthe many other wonderful aspects of the sport-- the scenery, the adventure, the physical and mental challenge, theconnectionwith nature-- but throw up their hands at the death toll and ultimately leave the question of whether it is all worthwhile to a higher power.

Of course, these writers are considering a different sport than the one in which I participate. They are writing about climbing real mountains and pushing the very limits of the possible. They choose to face objective hazards that cannot be managed, such as altitude sickness, avalanches, and sudden deadly changes in the weather. And in order toexpand the boundaries of what can be climbed, they deliberately go without reasonable protection on climbs that are incredibly risky,forging ahead on blank, smoothrock facesand through rotten bands of ice. These writers would think nothing of the climbing I do in the Gunks on a two hundred foot cliff that has been fully explored, with every route to the top exhaustively indexed by its difficulty and protection rating. To them the risks taken by a weekend warrior likemehardly qualify as risks at all.

And yet there are risks in any climbing environment, no matter how tame that environment is. In the Gunks, for instance, there have been very few fatalities over the years, but less than fatal accidents occurratherfrequently. Lapses in judgment lead climbers to forget crucial steps in the climbing process. Theyrappel off the ends of their ropes, or drop their partners. Objective hazards exist: rocks fall down. And no matter how much difficulty and protection grades may sanitize a climb, it is still easy to wander off route, to miss a crucial gear placement,or otherwiseto find oneself in territory where a fall could be disastrous. Gear that seems solid may pull out; it is hard even for experienced climbers to dependably judge placements of climbing gear. And finally, as my accident demonstrates, even if the gear is solid you can get hurt in any fall.

It is often pointed out by climbers that many sports carry dangers, and that climbing is actually less dangerous thancommon daily activities like driving a car. This may be true, but we are not forced to choose a dangerous sport in which to participate. We don't have to choose climbing just because it isn't as crazy as BASE jumping. We can shun all sports involving danger if it is the right thing to do. And while driving a car may wellbe more dangerous than climbing, we live in a world in which we can't escape the car. We have no choice about it. Climbing is different. It is a luxury we can well afford to drop.

But I couldn't bear to drop it.After my accident I was desperate to find a rationale for continuing to climb, a way to go forward but feel I was being reasonable and safe about it.

I wish I could tell you that I figured out the answer to this problem. I wish I could say thatI developed a calculus to determine how much danger is acceptable. I wish I could offer you a climbing plan that is 100 percent risk-free, or tell you that I located the perfect spot on the climbing danger continuum at which adventure is maximized but life-threatening hazards are minimized. But obviously I did none of these things.

Instead I decided to wade back into climbingslowly and to take it easy, minimizing risk by minimizing difficulty. Even this simple plan was a difficult one for me to execute, because I like to challenge myself. But aside from a few lapses I mostly stuck with it, avoiding leading harderclimbs all year, being willing to follow other folks' desires and ambitions more than my own, and repeating a bunch of favorite climbs instead of always seeking out new ones.

At first, I found that my accident had wreaked havoc with my lead head. I was tentative on the lead, becoming paralyzed at crux momentsI never would have worried about in the past. On more than one occasion this year I fell or took a hang because I simply couldn't commit to the move atthe crucial moment of a climb. The irony of this situation wasn't lost on me-- before the accident I pretty much never fell while climbing, but afterward, while trying to go easy and safe, I found myself falling or hanging on gear with some frequency. This seemed like madness, and made me wonder what the hell I was doing out there at all.

But I'm happy to report that over time my head improved (although not completely). I lost a good bit of the weight I gained and I alsotried through the year to become a better technical climber with a better awareness of balance and footwork than I had in the past. I see increased proficiency as a path towards feeling confident enough to progress back up the grades in the future. At some point this year I gave up on having any big climbing achievements in . It has been a rebuilding year.I haven't led a single pitch of trad 5.9 all year, and I'm fine with that. I recently followed a few, and they felt laughably easy. I take that as a good sign, and I plan to put that good feeling in my pocket for the winter, work really hard in the gym through the cold months, and emerge in the spring with confidence thatI can soon begin leadingharder climbsagain, breaking back into 5.9 and maybe even 5.10. And I hopethat whenI doso the climbs willfeel secure, and not beyond my limits.

So I have continued to climb, and life goes on. I can't assure anyone that I have made the right decision. But I can promise I'm more careful than I used to be, with the unfortunate side effect that I'm also more tentative. I am more willing to back off, and I will be much slower about working up the grades, more conscious of my limits. On the whole I believe I'm moving in the right direction. And that's the best balance I thinkI can achieve.