Rock Climbing on the Cheap

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It isn’t easy being a spontaneous family. We were exploring around Marble last Sunday when we decided to climb this cliff. The youngest one in this picture said “Hey, if you stand on her shoulders, then I can stand on yours, and we will probably be able to make it to the top.”

I was dubious, as a father should be, but it sounded good to me.

The barn boots on the one on the bottom weren’t the best item for climbing mountains in, but she seemed to do ok.The middle person hooked his nose onto a ledge (called in climbing lingo a “nose smear”) for added traction and holding power.

The little guy in red scrambled up like a monkey and summited with no problem.

Before you go calling the child welfare department, you should know that for this particular photo, I tilted the camera.

Exclamation Point

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Can you see the cave tour guide and the tourists in the photo?

This is my favorite part of being a tour guide at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park: Bringing people out to a cliff 1300 ft. above the Colorado river.

People never expect to end up on a precipice, let alone so high up the canyon walls.

When I follow the group out onto the platform, I say, “Thank you all for coming on the tour, today. We will be issuing parachutes so you can go home now.” (Nervous laughter.)

The original platform was built around 1898 by Charles W. Darrow, brother of Clarence Darrow, the famous lawyer and Scopes Monkey Trial lawyer.

The original platform had no guardrail.

Instead of calling it “Exclamation Point”, I would have called it “Perspiration Point.”

Even a Four Year Old Can’t Go Wrong

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How beautiful is Colorado in the fall? This picture was taken by my 4 year old son, Josiah last Sunday.

Through a cracked, dirty windshield, on our Suburban. While moving on the fly. On the ugly part of our trip.

Say “Cheese!”

Rock Climbing Steep and Cheap

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It isn’t easy being a spontaneous family. We were exploring around Marble last Sunday when we decided to climb this cliff. The youngest one in this picture said “Hey, if you stand on her shoulders, then I can stand on yours, and we will probably be able to make it to the top.”

I was dubious, as a father should be, but it sounded good to me.

The barn boots on the one on the bottom weren’t the best item for climbing mountains in, but she seemed to do ok.The middle person hooked his nose onto a ledge (called in climbing lingo a “nose smear”) for added traction and holding power.

The little guy in red scrambled up like a monkey and summited with no problem.

Before you go calling the child welfare department, you should know that for this particular photo, I tilted the camera.

Heat Your Home With Plastic Bags

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Many of the world’s great scientific discoveries came quite by accident. Remember “Come here Watson, I need you?” Then there’s the discovery of Wheaties. A cook at an institution was making gruel for breakfast when the porridge was spilled on a hot stove, making a crispy flake. The cook ate the flake and , viola, Wheaties was born.

In the same spirit of serendipitous invention I have discovered how to heat your home using plastic bags. Not just any plastic bag, but the kind you put broccoli into at the grocery store.

I was at work recently and accidentally let my plastic bag come in contact with the drywall. When I let go of it I noticed that it was sticking to the wall just like a booger.

In the photo above, the little speck on the right hand side is a booger, not a bug. Apparently, where I work no one does a “Booger Background Check” and they hire people who wipe boogers on walls. Come to think of it, they don’t even have a question on the job application that asks “Do you ever wipe boogers on your employers walls?”

But I digress.

Anyway, the bag stuck to the wall because of static electricity. The bag had rubbed on my fleece coat and decided to hang out with the paint  and gypsum on the drywall.

So I got to thinking, “What would happen if you took all of the plastic bags out of the recycle bin at the grocery store, rubbed them on your fleece coat, and stuck them to the walls of your house? You’d get more dead air space and as we all know, that translates into a warmer house.

By my estimates, 5000 plastic bags in an average bedroom would raise the temperature by 3.5 degrees Celsius.

You would need to acquire a lot of plastic bags, and go to the Thrift Shop Second Hand Store where you can buy old fleece coats that say “Aspen Police Department Ski Team” for a dollar.

Let me know if you are having trouble attaching the bags to the walls of your home. I can probably get that mystery employee to come over to your house and attach the bags using boogers.