The Holiday Weekend We Couldn't Stick To A Plan

Our plans kept changing, but we kept rolling with the punches and still had a great 4th of July Holiday. Like I said in my post a couple weeks ago, our plans changed from climbing to going to the beach with a trip to Tampa. While we were in Tampa our plans changed again, but I'll get to that a little later.

First off, I'm sorry for this late post, but I was sick last week, yuck, and didn't feel like doing much. But without further ado, here's the update of mine and Alison's 4th of July Weekend adventures.

Rivers vs. Lakes

The start of summer means it's time to splash down and cool off. Where's the best place to go to take a nice dip to cool off and relax? You can read why a lake is a better swimming choice than a pool on Eagles Nest Outfitters' (ENO) blog. But what about a river or the ocean?

Over the next 3 weeks I'll talk about 3 different scenarios and which swimming destination is the best. For this week here's 5 reasons why I'd pick a river over a lake to go swimming. Before I go any further, I'd like to put a disclaimer that when I'm talking about a river, I'm talking about the kind where there's no boats allowed. That just wouldn't be smart swimming in the middle of a river where boats are flying down the river as well.

Do What You Love

We've all heard the saying "Do what you love and the money will follow" (if that's you're first time hearing it, you're welcome). So what happens when that day comes, but the money actually gets in the way? What do you do? Would you say "yes" to the money and in turn hav a miserable time or would you turn down the money, the sweet gig, and keep living your life the way you want?

For those who don't know, Andy Lewis was faced with that question almost two years ago.

Andy Lewis at the Slackline World Cup

Top 5 Reasons You Should Slackline

Ever since the 2012 Super Bowl Halftime Show, the slackline community has started to gain more recognition. While walking on some sort of wire, rope, etc. has been going on for centuries, slacklining wasn't actually brought to the limelight until 1979 when two climbers, Adam Grosowsky and Jeff Ellington, who were going to school at The Evergreen State College, started walking around on loose chains and cables they found on campus. They quickly got the idea to string up 1" wide climbing webbing to walk on. This gave them more dynamic ability to jump and do tricks and walk with more than one person on the line. It was a great in-between class activity that started to attract crowds right away.

Since then, slacklining has progressed, with a lot of help coming from Andy "Sketchy Andy" Lewis. We now have 1"-2" wide webbing and different types of webbing. For instance: some webbing is great for only 1 person to walk on, another works best for more dynamic aerial tricks, and another works out well if you want to have more than 1 person on the line at a time. When you go to a climbing spot, you're almost destined to see some climbers on a slackline to keep them occupied on their rest day. Likewise, if you're in a surf town, you've got a really good shot at seeing some surf bums on a slackline on a flat day.