De gustibus non est disputandum.

Christmas morning found us at Russ & Daughters on Houston. You go there if you want pretty good bagels with awesome cream cheese (I recommend scallion cream cheese) plus the best lox on the planet. Their lox is fresh and custom cut for you on site. We tried the salmon belly lox. It was like eating sushi. Damn, now I’ll never be able to go back to the prepackaged lox they sell in supermarkets.
If you do go, I’d warn you not to go on a holiday like Christmas where it’s the only thing open for blocks. They use a ticket machine and we stood there for an hour suffering through their service process which likely hasn’t changed since their founding in 1914. Basically, each person behind the counter does everything for your order. He takes it, prepares it, deals with your culinary foibles and indecisions, and then he acts as the cashier. This soup to nuts approach leads to you getting what you want but has the undesirable side effect of requiring you to wait an hour for your turn.
Above, Russ in gold frame (I'm assuming) continues to oversee his operations from his golden framed throne. It's ingeniously tilted downward to convey the sense of him looming over you.

It would be much more efficient, according to A, if they were to apply specialization, like having a dedicated cashier which would free up more time for the people behind the counter to concentrate on taking and preparing orders. Building upon that, I offered up the idea of using dwarves or midgets because you could fit more of them behind the counter. So instead of 5 guys, you could have 10 or 12 dwarves. And monkeys. Each dwarf could have a monkey on his shoulder which could retrieve jars and bottles from the tall shelves.

In sum, if Russ & Daughters were to adopt the B&H model (plus monkeys), we wouldn’t have to wait so f’in long. However, it’s part of the “new york” experience I guess… i.e. any quality or hip locale means waiting and dealing with a flock of other hip to the beat hipsters because you’re in New York- so of course there’s a mob of over-educated hyper-informed hep cats dressed in black just like you who know where the good stuff is!

Bellini.

Visited my friend Mr. Diggler in Chatham, NJ again. Belgian Ale? Check. Stone Nudes Calendar? Check. Mohawk? Check. Italian semiautomatic 12 gauge shotgun with ammo belt? Check. It's a pretty rough neighborhood surrounded by towns like Short Hills and Summit, so I was glad we had some stopping power.

Nockamixon state park - Haycock Mountain

It was a cold and wet Sunday in NJ and Masa's arms were hurting from climbing too much. What else was there to do but drive into Pennsylvania and hit up some diabase boulders? Above, M staying focused while piloting his Honda civic down 78W. Below, M continues his laser-like focus on Googy V5, an interesting and techy slopey slap problem that required faith in a left toe smear which most had trouble committing to. I believe in this photo M is using my beta of latching a pretty small crimp bump to sloper. The interesting feature to the right is a problem called Limp Dick V3, incase you're wondrin.
Below, a cute alternative to the traditional chalk ball. It also suited the area's name which was "Teddy Bear Picnic".
This fella below was a Upenn student from Japan who happened to speak catalan and spanish. I think he spent a lot of time in catalunya. It's funny who you meet in the middle of nowhere while intentionally seeking the hardest way up a large rock. We were also very fortunate to run into Paul and Justin, a pair of locals that knew the area so we wasted no time in the marshy unmarked maze. There's more photos and a video of Hematoma V3 at M's blog.

"Danger 2008"

Las Vegas got snowed this week, it mostly fell on the West side and Red Rocks is now White Rocks,  this time chalk can't be blamed for that. The aftermath of the storm was grandiose, for a photographer at least. For climbers it sucked, all the snow accumulated on top of the rocks has created a continuous cascade of water drippings, that will sip inside the sandstone and make it very fragile for awhile until it dries and is climbable again.

 The Mirage casino in Vegas might have it's own man made volcano, but can they top this scene from the Red Rocks loop road?

By the way, this is still Glen's blog and not another blog with pretty pictures...we'll continue with the scheduled programming very soon.

Hungry Hummingbird (Or Another Intrusion Into The World Of A Cosmopolitan Climber)

I was able to get this hummingbird on video this afternoon. It's a shy female,  compared to the flashy red chested males which are very territorial and are not  afraid of hovering right in front of your face like it happened to me yesterday.  She comes very early in the day, every 5 to 10 minutes to feed on sugar water, and then on the late afternoon around sunset.  It's even more fun to watch them fly away at the speed of sound,  how do they do it?

(Now we have pushed the masturbation story way down).

This is what Red Rocks looks like in November

Red Rocks, November 2008