What should I be paying attention to here ?

Honest question.

They look like regular cumulus clouds.

I count the climbers with their lights on El Cap at night.

There were a lot of lights (not stars) in one photo. Might have been a party of climbers who reached the top.



I heard all your records, Spike!

I got to know Jim Bridwell and partied with him a lot. I was a fair climber, but a very good partier and was one of the few guys there that had access to money and the party goods that could buy. Jim was working on a route up El Captain that he said he was going to name Tangerine Trip after the color of acid he was taking. It was my acid.

Years later I looked up the climbing routes on it and there are several route variations with the word Tangerine, but Jim was not noted as putting any up, so perhaps he did not finish it. I just now looked and there is a route called Tangerine Trip, but no first ascent info. I am sure that all those Tangerine routes refer to Jim’s intended route and the acid. (My lasting contribution to rock climbing in Yosemite Valley.)

Spike Jones is a “forest name” I chose during the War of The Woods here in the pacific northwest in the 1980’s and 1990’s. As a teenager I memorized Spike Jones songs and sung them to myself as I cut grass in the summer. I still know all the words to “Pal-Yat-Chee.”

I hadn’t heard that. My previous favorite opera send-up was/is A Night at the Opera with the Marx Brothers. Love that spoof on (mostly) Il Trovatore. Of course, they had the visuals and the physical schtick.

Start with the best. My most memorable Spike Jones tunes are the Derby Race, and of course, The Fuhrer’s Face.

My uncle worked at a radio station and had a stash of records in his basement, so my Dad latched onto a bunch of them.