Whatever Happened To Leopard Man?

Back when I was sixteen years old I was a regular climber at "The Front" gym in South Salt Lake. The Front's patrons were an amalgamation of squeaky clean Mormons, super mellow potheads, gothic social outcasts, and just about anyone in between. This being the case, I got to climb with some really interesting people. There was Devon, an emo/semi-goth who loved animae, slurpees, and listening to the Gorillaz. There was Josh, a 17 year old literal hunchback, who was strong as an ox, had huge dreads, and would drink Coke and Vodka from a two liter bottle. And then there was Leopard Man.

Leopard Man was tattooed from head to toe with green tinged leopard spots. When I say head to toe I mean head to toe- There wasn't an inch on his exposed body that wasn't made to look like a bizarrely colored predator. It didn't stop with the skin, either. He had each of his canine teeth extended so that his mouth replicated that of a wild cat.

The funny thing was that Leopard Man acted nothing like what you'd expect a Leopard Man to act like. To be fair, I am guessing very few people have a predisposition for what a Leopard Man should act like. Clearly anyone willing to undergo hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars of physical alteration to look like a murky green jungle cat is someone who goes beyond the pale of most of our understanding. Even so, I think it is fair to say few would expect the pleasant, soft spoken, encouraging, and slightly bashful person that Leopard Man turned out to be.

Leopard Man just so happened to climb right at my ability level and almost by accident, we started climbing together. It turned out Leopard Man was a lot of fun to climb with. He was always in a good mood, loved giving beta (climber jargon for advice), and I really liked the fact that he was a Leopard Man. If you are into juxtaposition, I think you can also appreciate the visual of a squeaky clean, short haired, pierce-less tattoo-less, pre-LDS missionary swapping stories and advice with a Leopard Man. We must have looked so strange to anyone who walked into the gym.

Unfortunately, Leopard Man's and my friendship was short lived. Shortly after I started climbing with Leopard Man, I got a job working at a climbing gym close to my home. I stopped frequenting The Front, and lost track of Leopard Man all together.

Why am I posting this blog? Just this last week I started wondering about Leopard Man. I wondered what happened to him. Who does Leopard Man hang out with? Does he have a Leopard girlfriend, or even Leopard kids? What does Leopard Man do for work? Does he have a serious job and wear a suit? Does a recession affect Leopard Man harder than the rest of us? I don't know the answers to these questions, but it'd sure be fun to see what happened to the guy. So if you come across this blog, Leopard Man, shoot me a line, and maybe we can get a day of climbing in for old time's sake.

A weird picture, and a story

Quick Story Behind the Picture
Actually, I reconsidered. I think the picture is pretty self explanatory.

Mrs. Awesome

This last weekend Scott, Johnny, Rob and I headed down south to do some riding and hiking. On Sunday we joined up with Scott's sister Christy to hike Angel's landing. About 3 in the afternoon we were all sitting at the saddle of Angels (right before the landing) when Mrs. Awesome, a middle aged woman dressed in full Utah State warm ups and Oakley sunglasses, comes running literally running up to where we are sitting. First thing out of her mouth is the exclamation "This is just AWESOME!!!"
She immediately looks down at her watch to check her split-time. Then she turns around to the apparently empty trail behind her and yells "24 minutes! The guide said 3 hours. Pshhh!"

A few seconds later a gasping Mr. Awesome lumbers over the horizon and explains, in between breaths, "Well the guide probably didn't expect you to run the entire way, Hun"

Mrs. Awesome then turns to us and asks us "Is this the top?" We shake our heads and point her towards the network of chains that take you to the top of the landing. At this point she tries to wait for her husband to catch his breath but she just can't contain the bursting fireball of energy that's inside of her.

She starts heading for the top. This marvel of a woman is definitely too entertaining to get left behind by, so we follow. We make it up the first set of chains, and it is clear that Mrs. Awesome is completely unaware that Mr. Awesome has thrown in the towel. She keeps shouting to Dennis how awesome it all is, but Dennis is camped at the bottom having none of it. We decide to politely point out the fact that Dennis is at the bottom and not heading up.

She looks back and rolls her eyes, and says "I bet he's mad at me, but I don't care."
"I am always trying to get him to do adventurous stuff like me. I even made him run up the entire trail"

What do you even say to that?

A minute or two later we get to a section of the trail where Mrs. Awesome starts to struggle a bit, so we move on ahead. We make it to the top, chilled for a while with some cool chipmunks named Petie (Pee-tee), and headed back down. About half way down the landing we run back into Mrs. Awesome. And even though she has completely stalled, her motor is still going full tilt. She tells us that she got freaked out a couple times, but she is not giving up. It is her 4th try and she is determined to summit. Then almost as a passing thought, she says "Tell Dennis that I am trying again, and this time I am going to make it!"

When we got to the bottom we looked for Dennis, but Dennis is nowhere to be found. Did he head to the car? Was he taking a nap in the bushes? No one knows. And no one can know. But Mr. Awesome, wherever you went and whatever you did, I'm cool with it. Because when you're married to Mrs. Awesome, you deserve that break, no matter what you did with it.

Destination: Rich Island

Rich didn't make it to Rich Island. But he did break through the ice, immerse himself in terrifically freezing water, and almost killed several friends with laughter. Now is the Choose Your own Life Analogy Adventure section of the blog post. Your job is to construct a fitting analogy by piecing together the segments below

Sometimes in life
a. you want things to work out a certain way
b. you completely ignore the fact that what your are going to do is a really bad idea

but that doesn't mean that
a. you can escape impending doom
b. your friends weren't right

for example this last weekend at Bear lake I
a. nobly
b. idiotically
c. bravely
d. tragically

set out to slide across a patch of ice to reach the uncharted Rich Island.

The stakes were
a. high
b. certain failure with no redeeming upside

but I chose to press on.

As I started to slide across the ice, which represents

a. the impossible odds we face at times
b. the unbearably thin foundations of our life expectations
c. just a really bad idea

,the earth shook and I started to break through the ice. At the time all I could think about was

a. how badly I wanted to make it to Rich Island
b. how I was in great danger
c. nothing. Do you think someone who tries to slide across a sheet of ice that is less than 1/16th of an inch thick ice to make it to a chunk of ice that is less than 1/2 inch thick is thinking at all?

This thought, however, quickly vanished as the freezing dark water, which represents
a. the world stripped of its glossy cover
b. a shock back to reality
c. the natural consequence of a ridiculously bad idea

,enveloped my body. Cold, wet, and

a. disoriented
b. inexplicably giddy
c. wait, yes cold and wet pretty much cover it,

I plodded my way back to the shore. (Feel free to insert some shore analogy here)

I guess it just goes to show that even when you
a. do things that are incomprehensibly mindless
b. risk it all for
i. no explicable reason
ii. a great prize

such as try to slide for Rich island
you can end up
a. looking cold, wet, and foolish
b. looking freezing, drenched, and, well, foolish
c. just being really wet and cold.



Quick shout out for all my friends who made it up to Bear Lake- That was one of the most fun weekends I can remember! Good work team.

On other news







I found out this week that I got into Cornell's Applied Economics program! I wasn't offered any funding, but I'm so excited about getting in. It is a huge deal form me. It has been awesome to be able to share the news with friends and family. I was especially excited to tell my dad.

For some reason one of the things I want to do most is go rub this in Mrs. Cunniff's face. Back during my Junior year in HS I signed up for AP English Lit. The problem was that I hadn't taken Honors English the year before. The teacher was convinced that students who did not take Honors their Sophomore were much too inept to survive AP Lit. When I added the class, she told me that I was unlikely to get better than a C- in the class. I had read the summer readings, and was quite an avid reader anyways, so I figured she was just blowing steam and told her that I'd be fine. For the next two weeks I sat in the front row and looked at her with beaming eyes each day. My presence was obviously an eyesore for Mrs. Cunniff. Each day she glared at me with a stare would make death itself cower in fear. After two weeks she could take it no longer. When class ended she pulled me aside and told me that I was in the wrong class, that I wasn't prepared for the work and would not pass the class if I stayed in. During our conversation she even had the audacity to ask me if she was using too big of words for me to comprehend, snidely remarking that "sometimes people like [me] have a hard time understanding the words [she] uses." I decided that there was zero reason to stay in a class with a lady with such a clear vendetta against me, so I transfered classes. But, ooh, did she make my blood boil.

Am I still a bit bitter about the situation? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't. I can see it now. Me walking into the class room while Mrs. Cunniff is teaching, interupting the class to announce "Hey Mrs. Cuniff, remember how told me I was too dense for a high school AP English class? Well, I just got into a graduate program at Cornell. You know its one of those Ivy League universities on the east coast, just in case the word Cornell was a bit difficult for you to comprehend. How do you like them apples?!?"

Well that just about wraps up this blog post. I am tinkering with the idea of putting a song of the week here. Since I am going to an Andrew Bird concert this wed, I think this weeks song will be Andrew Bird-Armchair Apocrypha: Imitosis
link to cite with song, right click it and save as target once you get there

Claiming the Domain

So I was looking at my cousin Pat's blog, and decided that it was high time I got on this blogging train. I figured it was inevitable and now was as good a time as any, right? Plus I didn't want to get stuck with some crazy domain name like rich7pattersOn.whitepony_11@blogspot.com. That would just be ridiculous.

I am guessing if you find me here you already know a little bit about me, but given that it is a first post and all I think I have to say something about myself. So here it goes. Hopefully there will be something here that you never knew about me.
1. I didn't own a pair of laced shoes until I was in 3rd grade. It was something I was really self conscious about but felt it would be wrong to tell my parents. The first pair I ever owned were a pair of white, yellow, and purple keds. They were rad.
2. I have never liked a cat until last week. Last weekend when I was in Cali, Frac had a cat named sticky that just clawed his way into my heart. I am kind of convinced that sticky is a dog stuck in a cats body, so I am still very skeptical of the the whole feline species.
3. My favorite color, by far, is green. I said it was blue for most my childhood because my brother Dave had claimed green. It wasn't until I was 18 when I decided that it was actually pretty sweet to like the same thing that your younger cooler brother did. So I stopped hiding my love for green.
4. In order the best foods in the world are 1. Thai, 2. Mexican, 3. NicoItalia (a restaurant in Provo. yeah, it gets a whole category) 4. Sandwiches 5. Chinese 6. Breakfast foods.
5. My favorite places in the world in no particular order are: Interlaken Switzerland, Squamish British Columbia, Little Cottonwood Canyon UT, Park City UT, Bear Lake UT, Oahu HI, San Sebastian Spain, and NicoItalia Pizzaria.
6. In a contest reading wins.
7. My Family is sooo cool! Right now I am definitely missing Elisa and John, them being gone on missions, and all. But I'm pretty sure they are hooking me up with some pretty sweet blessings.
8. I have petted ("petted" looks wrong but "pet" seems equally wrong and a bit snobbish so I am sticking with "petted") sting rays, kangaroos, a tasmanian devil, and a cat named sticky.
9. My road bike is named Sophie, whose predacessor was named Phipher. Thankyou Kari and Heather for help with the names.
10. I have some pretty wild dreams. You should ask me about them sometime.

Ok. So I have no idea how often of an occurrence these posts will be, or who will read them, but if you find me here and like what you read, let me know.