You should write your congressman about the debt ceiling

Y'all should call/write your congressmen/women about this whole debt ceiling impasse.  It doesn't really matter what you say - stress you want compromise and you want it raised. Calling Democrats isn't that useful, they're all already on board - find some nice republicans and bother them.  DEMOCRACY. 

Here's what I wrote:

"This is getting outrageous.  I'm a corporate attorney who has had the luck to survive the horrendous economy of the past 3 years relatively unscathed.  You, your boss (the Speaker) and I all know that allowing this debt ceiling charade to continue will plunge us back into a recession - everyone with an elementary knowledge of finance knows this. Please have the Speaker stop attacking the President's good faith efforts to get to a resolution to this made-up issue immediately.  Raise the debt ceiling now. I support a balanced deficit reduction plan (and by "balanced" i mean with major spending cuts and minor tax increases, but you need the tax increases to bring the Democrats along - it's called compromise). But more importantly, I just support raising the debt ceiling now, as it has been 30 times in the past 30 years.

You're about to lose my financial support for your party if you can't get your caucus to the right side on this."

See what I did at the end there?

A new GartMedia Production

An old GartMedia Production

This one has been in pre-production for almost a year. Time to share it with the public. Lots of exposition in the beginning but things really pick up about 3 minutes in.

Indulge me

Back to politics for just a quick mo but this is a fantastic distillation of how politics works when you are not crazy (i.e., certain members of the GOP)

GartMedia Production

Not my best work, but still ok given the turn-around time.

The End

Sniffle. Trip OVER. I'm blogging from my plane back to NYC/real life. I'm bummed and hereby refuse to say anything funny in this post out of protest. This is how I feel:


I will post a few good final pictographs though:


Those are our shadows. Lily is making a C and I am making a T - but we really don't know why we chose those letters.


This picture supposedly captures how dirty I was, but I don't really look that bad. Basically, it was impossible for any more dirt to fit on our bodies.


Right before our last hike.


Bryce Canyon hike.


We clean up nicely, if I do say so myself. This is our first time showering in like 5 days. Lily is such a debutante.


View from our hotel in Vegas. Lily's awesome brother-in-law got us a baller suite. No big deal.


Lydia's dance moves.


We spent our last morning at the pool. It was cleaner than the Colorado River by a bit.

Well, I suppose that is all for now. Gartmedia Productions are in the pre-production phase, but I'm sure a trailer will be posted here soon.

Total miles: 3,200
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Location:Airport Sht Term Park,Las Vegas,United States

Fitness

You may think that after all this hiking and nature and exercise, I would be getting in pretty good shape.

You'd be pretty wrong. This is what I look like after climbing a small mountain (more like a hill):


I hate you, lily, for taking this picture.

Miles: 2,900
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Location:E Center St,Cedar City,United States

Dirty

Well we made it to Bryce Canyon National Park, and you know what? We are FILTHY. haven't showered in four days. Have hiked and gotten super sweaty every day. Swam in a lake. Here look - this is a splash of mud that has been on my leg for literally three days:


We've* pretty much stopped changing clothes too. This evening, we even took pictures of each other's awesome gross hair. We are both developing dreds. Dreads? Hm.






*I use we there as the royal we - lily changes her clothes often, it's just me who doesn't. Heh.
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Location:N Camp Ground Rd,Tropic,United States

Neck Spring Trail

Sniff. We had to pack up our campsite today to hit the road again. We've really grown attached to our lil primitive site on the river these last two nights.

Anyway, onwards, to Canyonlands National Park! The great thing about the Utah NPs is that their names tell you everything you need to know about them. Guess what Arches NP has a lot of?

Yup:


And canyonlands has a lot of these:


Nailed it, God. (that's one of our inside jokes from the trip. Other things God has nailed include panda bears, the Rocky Mountains, and the Simon & Garfunkel song "Bridge Over Troubled Water," but He dropped the ball on polar bears).

Anyway. Good hike! Maybe the nest yet! About 6 miles of solitary desert hiking first through a canyon:


And then up along a ridge:


Good views, and that takes us through our third National Park of the trip, and third day of camping, and, most importantly, fourth day of not showering.

Miles: 2,500
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Location:BRYCE,United States

Hydration

After completing our first desert hike, we sure were thirsty - so we went to hydrate with some margaritas at a Mexican joint.


We continued our hydration tour with a stop off at the Moab Brewery - at which point there was a tsunami for about 20 minutes, which was odd, because we had just discussed how if it ever rained in the desert, it would probably be front page news (it is very dry there).

We returned to our campsite on re Colorado river with Moab Giant-Jug-of-Beer in tow.


We then broke park rules and took a dip in the Colorado. This was very refreshing and definitely made us much cleaner, if you define clean as "covered in mud." And we spent the rest of the day sunbathing, reading, drinking, and campfiring.

Not bad, us.


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Location:BRYCE,United States

Devil's Garden

One of my fave hikes in the US of A is called Devil's Garden in Arches National Park. 7.2 miles, 4 miles of which are classified as "primitive," with 7 major arches along the way, like:


We murderized this hike in about 3 hours - and we somehow drank less than a liter total (out of three liters). I don't honestly have much to say about it now that I think back on the hike. It was good. I had some dried fruit. Lily declared that she loves desert scenery. No mountain lions attacked us.

Here are some highlights:


Lily loves clouds.


That's me! My beard is unimpressive. Lily told me that it was "dense, populous, even, thick, and copious." She was really tired.


Scenery. Nice.


I love this sign for obvious reasons.

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Location:BRYCE,United States

Camping on the Colorado River

Last night was an adventure.

Actually, let me preface that by saying this: Lily is a natural camper. In fact, I think I am literally watching her devolve from civilized member of society to cavewoman right before my eyes. For one, she keeps commenting on how long it's been since she's showered with a strange sense of pride in her voice. But even more importantly, she gets super psyched when the only campsite we can find is "primitive," and lacking in water and electricity. All I can say is, good job, Lydia, and keep it up.

Anyway. We arrived in Arches National Park to discover that all the campsites in the park were full (this was unsurprising - it was already 7pm). We proceeded to get some more campfire food/supplies and drive up the east bank of the Colorado River until we found our primitive spot. It is - legit - gorgeous. Check it out:


That's taken this morning immediately following me exiting the tent.

Anyway, despite the site's aesthetic bona fides, some problems cropped up. First, I failed at making a fire. This was mostly because we didn't have enough kindling or small wood for me to get one going, but I'm still ashamed about it. Second, and more importantly...well, let's just say lily and I consumed lots of beverages until, when it wad pitch black outside, we realized that our tent was about to blow into the Colorado River. It was really windy! Here's basically how it looked AFTER we repaired it, so imagine how bad it was before:


Double-fail. The best part of this story is when we noticed the tent was about to become airborne, we ran over to it to secure it, and I exclaimed, "WE NEED TO TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY!!!" Lily then shined her flashlight in my face to expose me chugging a beer. Apparently, that was my idea of action. Anyway, we managed to both secure and sleep in the tent and everything turned out swimmingly. See? Happy in the morning.


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Location:N Main St,Moab,United States

On the road again

We departed RMNP. It was grand. Originally, we planned to spend the day taking scenic tours of Colorado, but after a midday picnic and some tumultuous thunderstorms, decided it would be better to just head straight to Utah, land of a thousand Mormons or something. That meant that within a span of a about three hours, we went from landscapes that looked like this:


to this:


We both like Utah a lot. It's red.

Miles: 2,300
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Location:Unnamed Rd,Moab,United States

12,000 feet

That's how high Lily and I got as we drove the Trail Ridge road through RMNP. That is high. It is higher than trees grow. It meant that the terrain we were in was the same as you'd find in Alaska or the North Pole - the arctic tundra.


How many trees do you see in that picture? Exactly. (the answer is zero, smartass)

We did a lil hike high into the tundra to take in some mountain views.


And did you know that there are flowers in the tundra? Well, there are:


Also, Lily and I realized that we have taken almost zero pictures together as of yet. So here you go:


Lastly, I like posing like I'm king of the world whenever possible:



Miles: 2,000
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Location:Trail ridge road,CO

Hunt for Megafauna

Megafauna means large animals. It's one of my favorite words - I generally enjoy words with the prefix -mega.

Anyway. After the bear sighting, we were too psyched to go back to sleep, so we took a sunrise drive to search for wildlife. And we were VERY successful. First we found a group of four bull elks:


Then we stumbled across a mid-sized coyote:

We saw more deer and elk throughout the day.





Oh, and I don't want to forget the two giant bull moose:

Location:County Rd,Grand Lake,United States

BEAR!

I woke up early this morning (5AM) and had to pee, which is odd in and of itself because, as lily will testify, I litcherally pee about once a week. I think my bear sense was going off or something. When I exited the campground bathroom I saw...A BEAR ABOUT 30 FEET AWAY!

And it was walking directly toward our campsite. Unfortunately, I didn't get any great video or pictures of the guy because he proceeded to first sniff around our bearbox (where we keep all our food). This was a little nervewracking.



You can kinda sorta see him to the left of the bearbox. Then I stopped filming bc the bear literally walked right over to our tent - with lily still asleep inside. He got close enough to touch the tent, thereby awarding lily the prize of Closest-To-Being-Eaten-By-A-Beat. Fortunately, he then ambled away looking for more food. I woke lilster up and we had a nice lil gander of the bear a he moseyed along, but he was a skittish little fella and quickly hightailed it back to the woods.

Love bears.
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Location:Aspen St,Hot Sulphur Springs,United States

Campfire talky times

One of the best parts of camping is campfires. Everyone knows this. You get in touch with your inner caveman/cavewoman and harness the power of fire, like Prometheus.

You go from this:


To this!


See what I did there? Anyway, there are a few things you can add to a fire to make it better. These things include 1) beer 2) wine 3) whiskey 4) cards, and 5) marshmallows. Now, we are not flawless campers. We have forgotten such essentials as sponges, paper towels, and...plates. But we dang sure remembered campfire augmenters 1-5!


1) beer


4) cards

I don't have pics of 2, 3, or 5, but I do have a picture of me looking happy/proud of my campfire abilities.


We talked about lots of things, including pop psychology, how the sky looked like the ocean, a movie starring the moon - and most importantly, what to do if a bear tried to enter our tent and eat us during the night. Why was that important? Well, read on, faithful gartfollowers...
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Location:Glacier Pass Campground, RMNP

Smokin' Dave's

After our big ole hike, we realized that we were frikkin starving, so we headed to Smokin' Dave's BBQ & Taphouse. I have no idea what a Taphouse is, but that still has to be one of my favorite restaurant names ever. I consumed two margaritas and a chili cheeseburger. It was awesome.


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Location:Estes Park, CO

Hike #1

We did an EPIC 8.5 mile loop hike in Rocky Mountain National Park today (hereinafter RMNP). That's a long first hike! Good job, us!

Strike that - good job ME. Lily basically runs 87 miles a day, whereas I get winded walking from my couch to my front door when the pizza delivery guy knocks (ripped off HIMYM there). I'm just happy I kept up with her/didn't have a heart attack. Here's Lily looking not tired:


Here's me looking mostly dead:


Anyway, the rangers warned us that a section of the trail was mostly impassable due to excessive snow. Didn't stop us! We conquered those snow fields like we were...uh...Lewis and Clark? I don't know what analogy is appropriate there.

We did get lost for about half-mile but we recovered nicely. All told, we hiked around 6 alpine lakes with fun names (Bear Lake, Glacier Lake, Emerald Lake, Lake Haiyana, etc.). Here's Lily at Emerald Lake:



I know, it's not emerald at all. What a ripoff.

Oh and here's an avalanche that wiped away part of the trail. You can see Lily blazing her own trail. What a natural!


And here are just some standard pretty scenery shots:






And here's one of me standing on my head:



(I have no idea how that happened).

If your curious about our route, here's the map. Oh and for the record, yes, we hiked to an elevation of about 10,400 feet.



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Location:County Rd,Grand Lake,United States