The Fans Speak

Bond's record breaking home run ball will be sent to Cooperstown with an asterisk. All in all, this is a funny story, especially after Bond's called Mark E an "idiot". I can image this move will get under the skin of Bonds, much more then any other steroid accusation over the past few years.

Conversation at the movie store

I ran into 2 friends at the movie store yesterday on my way home from the climbing gym. I was talking with a friend when a second mutual friend walked in the door. The conversation went something like this:

Girl: Hey, good to see you guys. What are you doing here - no one actually goes to the movie store anymore. I have watched all of my Netflix movies so I figured that I would pick-up a movie.

Me: Funny, I am on the way to the Post Office to send back a movie to Netflix that I watched on Saturday. I figured I would grab a movie during my 2-4 day Netflix turnaround.

I assume that movie stores have taken a large hit from Netflix, but perhaps a portion of the loss has decreased from the gain of business during the Netflix "turn around" time. This might especially be true in a small and rural towns similar to Jackson, WY where the turn around time is generally 3-4 days.

Bears in the yard

Last week 3 bears were treed in our backyard. The workers building our garage were the first to notice the bears who climbed a tree about 30 feet from our new garage. The game and fish department arrived 30 minutes later to dart the bears and relocate them to a remote section of forest.

Jackson and the greater Yellowstone area has had a record number of bear encounters this year and I was surprised to find 3 in my yard. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we missed the entire episode because we were looking at cabinets in Driggs, ID.

The Last Laugh

The last laugh on Barry Bonds will be determined by the public. The people who won his tie breaking and record setting balls have decided to let the public determine how they will be remembered.

Tie Breaking: http://www.endthedebate.com

Record Breaking: http://www.vote756.com/marcecko/

I suggest clicking on the Record Breaking link. Marc Ecko paid $750K for the ball and has setup a funny poll with a few unique options. The Tie Breaking link is simply a ploy at generating advertising revenue -- at least Ecko has a facade hiding his true motive.

Illegal Cutting

I came across a story on Lou D's blog about some locals at Jay Peak who cut a ski trail in the backcounty down Big Jay.

I spent 4 years skiing Jay Peak in the late ’90’s before Big Jay exploded in popularity. Generally you could find fresh tracks 1 week after a storm on Big Jay. What surprises me the most about this story is that the run was perfect and did not need any trimming or cutting. It was a classic Northeast ski run – steep with perfectly spaced trees. Some of my best memories from Jay are skiing this run in neck deep powder with a small group of close friends.

On a side note, I seem to remember in 1999 the Ski Area cut a trail to the top of Big Jay without obtaining proper approval from the group managing the land. If I remember correctly the resort was fined for each tree that was cut down (this was a 1-2 mile - 3 foot wide trail — lots of trees were cut).

Does anyone have a picture of the damage on Big Jay? I hope this does not threaten the open boundary policy at Jay and general backcounty access in Vermont.

Here is a link to a news article covering this topic.

This morning was the first frost of the Fall

I also recieved my ski pass in the mail today. Winter is on the way to Jackson, WY.

Hanging Canyon Bear

BEAR
Originally uploaded by krughb

This is a picture of the bear that we saw while hiking last week in hanging canyon in the tetons. The bear was HUGE and a small cub was following the mother through the bushes. The area where the picture was taken was a large berry field and the bears were too busy eating to worry about us.

After a quick detour off trail we managed to avoid any sort of close interaction with the bears. I'm glad they were busy eating!

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