If you have to, put this under New Years Resolutions.

How 'bout to Portland Mountain Rescue (or whichever group it is) to have the wherewithall to make STONE COLD CERTAIN that absolutely no more self absorbed climbers in 2007+ attempt a Mt. Hood climb...without a chip / beacon / locator thingie?

Not knocking climbers BUT what is it going to take to get these people to respect their sport more by actively surrendering first to their own vincibility?

News flash - we unknown strangers do actually care about you and want you back down after the climb, safely.

Somebody posted here a few days ago...this week's news rips a new insult to the people who died a few years ago in that big accident. Nineteen people met tragedy following which technology was created to avoid any future death. So what happened? This week's victims by their behavior ignored their legacy and the price paid. Not only that but also ignored was the clearly made pleas of those surviving families that have been trying to get along without their loved ones in the years since.

Sorry but that's pretty much the line that I've been hearing all over town today. Hope this doesn't come across as harsh. Went to 3 meetings and 2 receptions today and these aren't my thoughts they are the ones that eventually came up in every conversation.

I bought an additional sleeping bag for my stray man. I left it out at his spot earlier tonight. Then just now, I learned that this one stray man had been replaced by another. And that this other stray man had supposedly stolen the first stray man's other sleeping bag. Wow!

A friend of stray man one came by the spot to check, whereupon I got the details of a little lady just South of me who has momentarily given him shelter, and the friend fetched the new sleeping bag (I had seen him come by regularly in the past to check on stray man one and heard them gab about life, in a timeless and seemingly futile effort to help).

My stray man story, as it developed, was supposed to be about a generic universal sort of stray man, undifferentiated from other faceless folks. That sure did not last long, as a valid notion. My picture of the mess, the last one, is not attributable to stray man one but to stray man two. Who would have known?

Hum? What to do now about stray man two?

From the picture I can see too that indeed stray man one never got the blanket either, or even knows about it today, as the second stray man got it. It was dark the other night and I did not want to be rude by flashing a bright light in the eyes of someone, like a threatening policeman, as I quickly just offered the blanket to my universal ubiquitous stray man.

I was wrestling today with the notion that giving was for the benefit of the giver, for their own reasons. I just could not put it into words. (Perhaps an Anthropologist might have been better at spotting the clues that stray man one was replaced by stray man two just from the stuff left behind; while I held fast to my idea on the moment.)

(I would of course like to mock non-profits for their claim of offering tax breaks to donors and instead direct any extra to the little lady that has given refuge to stray man one, without the offer of any tax deductibility on donations. Indeed, without donations other than her own. There are some things that the tax man need not know about. Be a rebel; with a cause. My only way of locating her would be to go door knocking, in which case I like the swank suggestion offered about Sisters of the Road as an alternative.)