Lunch With George!

Greatest Hits
November 1, 2002 thru December 4, 2002

Agenda

This is the third (and definitely final) installment of "Greatest Hits" of lunches we enjoyed from November 1st thru December 4th.

• November 1 - World Noodles
• November 15 - Charley's Steakery
• November 21 - Tony Roma's
• December 4 - Chili's

November 1 - World Noodles

George on the 1st Pitch

Well, George and I have really been climbing! We were part of an 8-person team (four students, four instructors) which completed a 3-pitch climb to the top of

AMC Climbers atop the Praying Monk

the Camel's head on Camelback Mountain. This was our "grad" climb, and Rogil (the leader of our climb) awarded us all with AMC patches when we reached to summit.

It all started with us hiking up the Echo Canyon trail before dawn. As we reached the vicinity of the "Praying Monk", we left behind the trail used by early morning hikers to ascend to the top of Camelback. Instead, we headed South toward the rocky "head" of the Camel. Rogil started the climb (she was the lead climber-- this means she free-climbs the route, clipping her rope into safety bolts every fifteen feet or so.) before the Sun rose.

Once the leader reaches the top of the "pitch", he or she sets anchors using boulders, trees, or pre-installed bolts. Then the remaining members of the expedition climb the pitch one by one, belayed from above.

As the last of the climbers are ascending one pitch, another lead group will begin the next pitch.

The Big Rappel

To keep everything moving smoothly, there were as many ropes as there were climbers. Each climber would be belayed on one rope from above, but they would also trail a rope behind them, tied into their harness. This rope would be used to belay the next climber (most of the ropes we used were sixty meters in length).

At the Summit: Kareen, Rogil, James, Keith, Jennifer, George

The route we climbed was exciting because it involved multiple pitches, we had a real destination, and the views were great. It was also an enjoyable route because it was so darned easy! The Hart route is rated 5.2, which is almost as easy as a climb gets. The perfect first big climb, in my mind!

Another group of AMC students climbed to the top of the Monk, and I guess I wouldn't mind trying that some time. We went a lot higher, though.

To get back down, we scrambled around to a ledge on the East side of the "head", where the instructors set up a double-rope rappel for us to descend. While waiting, we avoided boredom by watching a Phoenix Police helicopter fly below us, heading toward the top of the main mountain where a casual hiker had broken their ankle.

I have to admit that the 100-foot rappel freaked me out initially, but I was able to relax and enjoy it... mostly.

Several grad climbs were rained on last Saturday, but the first drops fell on us as we retrieved our packs from behind some rocks. Cool! We were at it for eight hours, and the rain storms just kept blowing around us.

For a complete visual tour of our climb, check out the photos here.

November 15 - Charley's Steakery

Queen Creek

Charlie's was as great as usual. And I noticed that they simplified the menu-- one price for all sandwiches of the same size.

Hannah does a foot jam!

I related to George my experiences of the weekend: Emily, Hannah, and I attended the Queen Creek Clean & Climb (an outing sponsored by the Arizona Mountaineering Club).

We met up with about 30 AMC members in the parking lot of Mesa Community College just after midnight (OK, it was actually 8:00 am). From there, we convoyed out U.S. 60 to just past Superior (we got to drive through the cool tunnel!). We parked at the Oak Flats Campground entrance, and proceeded to pick up trash along a mile-long stretch of the highway. 62 huge garbage bags in all!

After a very quick lunch eaten while standing at the tailgate of the CRV, the whole group headed off through the campground to a canyon I didn't even know was there. We scrambled down a trail to an area halfway down the canyon wall, and found several top-roped climbs ranging from 5.4 to 5.10.

The only down side to the outing was the number of people vs. the number of climbs... it was like a busy night at the climbing gym. We had to get in lines at least three climbers long at each rope. We only got to climb twice before heading out.

George and Toni's Mini Cooper S

It was wonderful to see Emily and Hannah get out on real rock! They had a great time. They were lucky to get pointers from Rogil, who also lead our grad climb up the head of Camelback.

The other big news of the day: George took me for a ride in their new Mini. It's amazing how much passenger space it provides (in the front seat that is). And the GPS navigation system is so cool! George entered a destination, and it displayed a "You are Here"-type colored map on the LCD display with our route highlighted. I was even more impressed when a young lady with a British acccent said "turn left at the second street!"

The Mini Cooper S is just beautiful. Photos don't do the car justice-- you need to see one up close.

November 21 - Tony Roma's

George's niece Nina was here in Phoenix visiting. Wanting to entertain her adequately, George planned a whirlwind agenda spanning two states. Here's a sampling of their adventure:

• SEDONA
  Red rock country on the Oak Creek
• GRAND CANYON
  A quick visit to the South Rim.
• LAS VEGAS
  They stayed at Paris, Las Vegas, a casino/hotel which attempts to recreate the experience of being in Paris. There's an Eiffel Tower, an Arch d'Triumph, and a really good bakery. One of George's favorite things had nothing to do with being in a faux French locale: the hotel rooms had a separate shower stall! The shower head was mounted a delightful seven feet above the floor. A welcome surprise for a tall fellow, indeed!
• LAKE PLEASANT
  Why, they went sailing on the Persistence, of course. The wind was very strong, and not much fun.
• PHOENIX ROCK GYM
  Somehow, George managed to get his niece to accompany him to the Phoenix Rock Gym! I don't think I've been there in a month...

I was telling George about a very cool web site forwarded to my by Corey. Astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics have been pointing their telescope at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, hoping to make

observations which reveal the presence of a super-massive black hole there. Well, they found it! There are stars in the galactic core which are clearly orbiting (and rather quickly) around an empty spot. It may not be a black hole, but it is very masssive and is not visible. It also happens to be the long-observed radio source known as Sagittarius A.

Please visit MPE's Galactic Research web site to read more and SEE THE AMAZING MOVIE.

December 5 - Chili's

George also reported on an article he read in the New York Times which discussed (among other things) a way for meat producers to treat their animals better. An Animal's Place, by Michael Pollan (author of The Botany of Desire), descibes a new kind of farm where the animals are allowed to pursue their own interests-- chickens roam and peck, pigs wallow in manure, cattle and goats graze. Here's an excerpt from the article, describing Polyface Farm in Virginia:

But before you swear off meat entirely, let me describe a very different sort of animal farm. It is typical of nothing, and yet its very existence puts the whole moral question of animal agriculture in a different light. Polyface Farm occupies 550 acres of rolling grassland and forest in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Here, Joel Salatin and his family raise six different food animals -- cattle, pigs, chickens, rabbits, turkeys and sheep -- in an intricate dance of symbiosis designed to allow each species, in Salatin's words, ''to fully express its physiological distinctiveness.''

What this means in practice is that Salatin's chickens live like chickens; his cows, like cows; pigs, pigs. As in nature, where birds tend to follow herbivores, once Salatin's cows have finished grazing a pasture, he moves them out and tows in his ''eggmobile,'' a portable chicken coop that houses several hundred laying hens -- roughly the natural size of a flock. The hens fan out over the pasture, eating the short grass and picking insect larvae out of the cowpats -- all the while spreading the cow manure and eliminating the farm's parasite problem. A diet of grubs and grass makes for exceptionally tasty eggs and contented chickens, and their nitrogenous manure feeds the pasture. A few weeks later, the chickens move out, and the sheep come in, dining on the lush new growth, as well as on the weed species (nettles, nightshade) that the cattle and chickens won't touch.

Meanwhile, the pigs are in the barn turning the compost. All winter long, while the cattle were indoors, Salatin layered their manure with straw, wood chips -- and corn. By March, this steaming compost layer cake stands three feet high, and the pigs, whose powerful snouts can sniff out and retrieve the fermented corn at the bottom, get to spend a few happy weeks rooting through the pile, aerating it as they work. All you can see of these pigs, intently nosing out the tasty alcoholic morsels, are their upturned pink hams and corkscrew tails churning the air. The finished compost will go to feed the grass; the grass, the cattle; the cattle, the chickens; and eventually all of these animals will feed us.

I thought a lot about vegetarianism and animal rights during the day I spent on Joel Salatin's extraordinary farm. So much of what I'd read, so much of what I'd accepted, looked very different from here. To many animal rightists, even Polyface Farm is a death camp. But to look at these animals is to see this for the sentimental conceit it is. In the same way that we can probably recognize animal suffering when we see it, animal happiness is unmistakable, too, and here I was seeing it in abundance.

George is a proponent of such an approach, as am I (we discussed the humane slaughter of cattle and how activists had pressured McDonald's to clean up the act of their beef vendors at the May 9th, 2002 Lunch). He wondered whether a certification program which could alert consumers to food producers who treated their animals humanely, so consumers would have a choice (and hopefully pressure other meat producers). Well, it turns out there is such an organization!

As a consumer, you can now keep your eye open for the Free Farmed seal of approval on food products. The Farm Animal Services organization has a set of well-defined criteria by which animal harvesters are evaluated. Those which meet the criteria can display the Free Farmed seal on their products. You can visit their website to identify specific products which meet the criteria, plus grocers which carry them.

Fred shared a website he discovered: The SportsML page. Yes, someone has created yet another computer language... the Sports Markup Language. This XML definition is being proposed as the standard for representing and exchanging data about Sports!