the weekend in the wild

as promised, here's the story on our weekend. it was amazing. most of the time there were 5 of us there, except for a short 5 hour period friday night. much like aj's report, here's the lineup of guys that went...








alan moise: always willing to lend a helping hand. also always willing to drive unnecessarily fast around sharp curves...thank the Lord for BF Goodrich all-terrain tires!
alan handled the responsibilities of making sure no one died this weekend while climbing or rappelling...well done, alan. no deaths. well done.









mark fritz: mark was only able to come up for friday afternoon/evening. he had a trip to go on with the fisheries department that was leaving at 6am saturday morning, but because he is so hardcore, mark rode the yamahawg all the way up to cheaha, helped set up the ropes, climbed, rappelled and did some belaying too. this is a picture of mark belaying while i was climbing. good thing he's not paying a bit of attention to me climbing. look up, mark, look up!












ben bonner: ben had never taken a trip with us to cheaha before, so he didn't really know what to expect. he fit in great, though, and it was as if he'd taken all the trips with us before. except he hadn't. but it seemed like he had. that's just how ben rolls.










aj hammond: everybody knows aj's the iron horse, but not everybody knows that aj can climb like a billy goat. in fact no one knew that until friday night when aj clipped in and dominated the wall on his first try. he and ben were the first guys to ever get that route on the first try. in the words of kip dynamite: "that's what i'm talkin about."



david quintero: david and i have been best friends since we met at a boy scout cpr certification in 6th grade (did i really just admit that?). i guess the embarassment of the career in boy scouts and the nearly 10 years of being my best friend had finally pushed him over the edge...here he is about to jump off the cliff. sike, he's just watching me finish my rappel. david got done with his fall semi-formal and got back into athens at 2am his time friday night, changed clothes, jumped in the car and drove all the way to cheaha to spend the weekend with us. he didn't get into camp until 4am our time saturday morning. don't worry, he caught up on his sleep in applebee's saturday during the notre dame - usc game.



it was an awesome weekend with perfect weather. we had some great time together talkin about the Lord, 'dreams' and life...it was much too short, but mostly because moise drives like a maniac on those back roads...
jdw