The Dirtbag Diaries

Life was good. The approaches were short. The routes straightforward.  The work wonderfully mindless. After a long dry-spell of writing, a job as a climbing guide at Smith Rock was like a vacation from life. I was 22 again, not a failing writer struggling to pay the rent. It was too good to last.

Through the years, I’ve tried to escape words and journalism, but the writing life always has a funny way of creeping back into my world.  This time it came in the form of a 230-pound cameraman with a fear of heights, a fast talking New York producer and a 30-year-old broadcaster trying to return to her childhood.  It turns out you have to earn your 15 seconds of fame.

you can stream the cuts by clicking on the song title...I love this cut by David Karsten Daniels.

David Karsten Daniels
"Martha Ann" (mp3)
from "Fear of Flying"
(Fat Cat Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody


Golden Shoulders
"Golden Soldiers" (mp3)
from "Friendship Is Deep (Reissue)"
(Welcome Home Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody


Gregg Yeti & The Best Lights
"Laughter Be Your Slave" (mp3)
from "Heart Palpitations of the Rich and Famous"
(Eskimo Kiss Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody


Monk
"Santa Ana Murders And The Neonlights Of Love" (mp3)
from "The Man Who Sleeps On His Breath"
(sevenahalf records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody

What defines you? Is it your past? How you look? I doubt it. It’s the course we chart from dawn to dusk that makes us who we are.  Seventeen years ago, Sean O’Neill – artist athlete and big brother to pro climber Timmy O’Neill – lost the use of his legs after jumping from a bridge into the Mississippi River. After the accident, Timmy dreamed about helping his older brother climb El Capitan.  In 2005, the brothers decided it was time to act.

Reporter and podcaster James Mills brings us a story about two brothers, one very big cliff face and a 17-year-old dream.  Sometimes climbs don’t end with summits. They can extend on into our lives.

here's the music from the show. You can listen by clicking on the song...

Cake
"Ruby Sees All" (mp3)
from "Motorcade of Generosity"
(Upbeat Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody


Beatundercontrol
"All The Way [To Heaven]" (mp3)
from "Cosmic Repackage"
(Malicious Damage)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody


The New Rochelle Rotary Club
"Air Currents" (mp3)
from "Air Currents"
(Radar Recordings)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody


Daturah
"Hybrisma" (mp3)
from "Reverie"
(Graveface Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody


Museum Pieces
"Eye of My Mind" (mp3)
from "Nor You, Nor You"
(Youth Club Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Stream from Rhapsody

Great outdoor writing lacks ego. When listener Andy Guinigundo’s email appeared in the inbox on a rainy spring day, I read through it, read it again and thought “Damn, I wish I could have been there.”  That’s because no matter where you ski, whether it’s the Alaskan steeps or a local hill in Southeast Indiana, a powder day is a magical thing. That’s the great thing about skiing, climbing or mountain biking – you don’t have to be a professional playing beneath stadium lights to understand the crowning achievements of our sports.

Andy has been skiing for decades. During the gray and often rainy Midwest winters he works ski patrol at Perfect North Slopes, a small resort across the Indiana border from his home in Ohio. Until a March blizzard, a powder day was something he had only heard about. I’d been wanting to create some smaller shorts between feature episodes, so Andy joined us in the Dirtbag Diaries Midwest Studios, a.k.a. his walk-in closet, and gave us his own farewell to an unforgettable winter season.

                                   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Bradley Carter claims to be a reformed rock climber. He's found music and changed his ways. Joined a band -- Max Gross Weight. He's traded dirtbag living in Yosemite for the life of a hard working professional musician. He swears it. Personally, I don't believe him for a second, mostly because he talked me into to playing hooky from work tomorrow to go clip bolts...oops did I say that out loud.

Also music by....
The New Rochelle Rotary Club
"Air Currents" (mp3)
from "Air Currents"
(Radar Recordings)

Buy at Rhapsody
Stream from Rhapsody

Theatre of Disco
"OKE" (mp3)
from "Theatre of Disco"
(Risky Disko)

Stream from Rhapsody
Buy at Rhapsody

In spring of 1991, Tom Broxson survived a 200-foot fall – a full rope length -- off the top of Yosemite Valley’s Washington Column. To this day, Tom, his climbing partner Pat and the rescuers who saved his life aren’t exactly sure what happened. There are guesses and conjectures, but the exact moment that changed Tom’s life will always remain a mystery.

Dr. R. Adams Cowley, the physician who pioneered our modern Emergency Medicine System, once said, “There is a golden hour between life and death.”  His theory that a patient who survives a grave trauma has 60 minutes to reach the operating table was the guiding axiom in emergency medicine for decades.

In these precarious, defining minutes between life and death, patients fight to live, rescuers put themselves in harm’s way and decisions are made in an instant. Sometimes rescues don’t go all that smoothly. Today, with the help of Yosemite’s first responders, we bring you Tom Broxson’s story of survival, recovery and will. It turns out an hour can last a lifetime.

                                 CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Sorry for the delay....here are the cuts.

Bradley Carter is a reformed rock climber turned musician. You can hear his guitar work throughout the episode. It's fitting too -- Carter was actually on YOSAR.

Friend Ken Christianson keeps bumping the cuts here at the Dirtbag Diaries.  Ken provided the music for All These Things.

Son Lux
"Break" (mp3)
from "At War With Walls and Mazes"
(anticon)

Buy at Rhapsody

The Out_Circuit
"Across The Light" (mp3)
from "Pierce The Empire With A Sound"
(Lujo Records)

Buy at Rhapsody

Dengue Fever
"Seeing Hands" (mp3)
from "Venus on Earth"
(M80)

Buy at iTunes Music Store

Southerly
"How To Be A Dreamer" (mp3)
from "Storyteller and the Gossip Columnist"
(Greyday Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store

Why?
"The Hollows" (mp3)
from "Alopecia"
(anticon)

Buy at Rhapsody

The Weather Channel’s Local on the 8’s. NOAA. Surf cams. We’ve all been there – staring at the places we would like to be through a computer or television screen.  We shut our eyes at our desks and try to imagine the feel of cutting through powder or climbing on a sun drenched cliff.

Success in the high country requires early starts and leaps of faith. The same can be said of careers, school and family. Our dreams in the flatlands take nurturing. They require our love and time, and when our personal goals grate against the pursuit of summits, glassy waves and powder days, our heads can fill with a feedback loop of tough questions about where we’ve been and where we’re headed.

Today, I’m proud to present a new voice. Becca Cahall brings us All These Things – a story about getting older and skiing faster.  We’re headed for British Columbia’s Selkirk Mountains – an incredible range of open alpine faces, perfect tree skiing and tight chutes that every backcountry skier dreams of visiting. When the life’s pressing questions mount, the only antidote is the inner calm found in cold wind, burning lungs and the hiss of skis sliding across snow. Enjoy.

Great friendships often begin in the most average ways. Sometimes just a simple introduction during an after work climbing session can lead to a lifelong friendship. 

Since that first handshake, Anya Miller has become a collaborator, a climbing and ski partner and precious friend to both Becca and me.  She’s continually made my text look better with her unique illustrations and even helped drag me out of the Joshua Tree backcountry after I busted my ankle. I’ve watched her grow as both an artist and athlete. Now, I’m excited to have her join the Dirtbag family. 
 
“All These Things” provided the perfect opportunity for Anya to design for us. Becca’s old sledding hill is less than a mile walk from Anya’s home. An architect by training and a designer at heart, she gathered together old photos of Becca and integrated them into the design.  In the last year, Anya launched her own design company, Mindful Creative, and quickly followed it up by starting a subsidiary greeting card company, Ewe Me Us, which features eight different designs. If you like what you see, you can reach her through Mindful Creative. Click here and here for more greeting card designs.

Indie music – who knows what that term means anymore? About a million musical pundits have offered unwanted opinions. I’ll let it rest, but I do know is this – I know true indie music when I see it.

Los Angeles-based musician, Ken Christianson lives in Hollywood, but life isn’t glamorous. He shares a small studio apartment with another musician.  His “room” is the closet, which he has partitioned into two stories.  The upper level of this spacious abode is so small that Ken has trouble sitting up right. Every night after his nine to five at a rug store, Ken goes to work on his passion – music. The result is his musical journal, a carefully crafted assortment of music. Every plucked string, note sung and key pressed is Ken. You can stream or purchase his cuts, which range from polished tracks to tiny sketches. Expect to hear more in coming episodes.  

Tracks used today:

One Foot Out, Fire Diary, Five Little Men, Air, Dirtbag and Strange Hillbilly

As some of you may know, Walker Cahall handles most of the design work here at the Dirtbag Diaries, and as the name suggests, he is my brother – seven years my junior.  Now, all the older brothers out there know that complimenting a younger sibling is a risky and delicate business. Their heads may balloon with pride before eventually imploding like a dying galaxy. When Walker began destroying me in video games, I was forced to retire in order to save him from himself.  I may have to do the same with mountain biking if Walker keeps pedaling hard. It's just my little way of upholding the big brother status quo.  

Right now though, I’m going to put two decades worth of strategic dead arms and psychological warfare on the line and say it – little brother went big.  

While he works as a graphic designer and technical illustrator, Walker is first and foremost an artist with a strong environmental component to his work. His work -- especially his prints and experimental digital pieces – are awesome. The concepts so clever. Conflict of interest you say? As I clearly explained above, complimenting is not in my best interest, and I’m not the only one who thinks this 23-year-old’s work has merit.  In 1996 at the age of 10, Walker had his first gallery show. That same year, Art News ran a full-page article on the young prodigy. This week, Portland-based clothing company Nau has featured Walker’s series on sustainable energy on their web site. Completed two years, the series took months to create. I’d post it here, but I have to send you to Nau’s site – the Collective.

P.S. For those big brothers out there, relax. According to this NY Times article, we will always remain atop the dog pile, so have a little sympathy. I send this link to Walker at least once a week, so that he doesn't beat himself up too badly.

P.P.S. The next episode will be out shortly.

Today marks the first anniversary of the Dirtbag Diaries. Along the way, hundreds of you have written in offering words of encouragement, story ideas and suggestions for improvement. Some of you have even offered to donate money, which is so very kind, but totally unnecessary.  That said I have a way for you to help us grow and improve. While the Google machine is powerful, it can’t tell us everything. So in an attempt to pigeon hole you and get your feedback, we’re going to have to do this with a series of highly scientific questions presented in an audio file.

Our crack team of marketing and statistic analysis experts -- namely my wife Becca --have informed me that we will need at least 100 responses to get a sufficient sample. I think we can do it.  So if you want to help ensure the future of this podcast, go ahead, open your email account and address a message to our email. Click on the "Listen Now" button below and get ready to write. This isn’t an NPR pledge drive. There won’t be any tote bags or Dirtbag Diaries travel mugs.  The only reward you will receive is pride in supporting something that you care about. This is what independent media is all about.

Thanks for your time and effort.

--Fitz Cahall 

The photo-enhanced version of Datos Insuficientes is up and running. The Range Life’s Andrew Oberhardt and Todd Gilman milked their hard drives to come up with a set of images to fit with Shane’s words. It’s the only way to get a sense of scale. El Rio Apurimac, which roughly translates into divine oracle, is massive. Look for the details. Check out the high water mark on the canyon walls. It may take five to ten seconds to load.


You’ve got two options:

Click here for the full-sized version:

Or Click here for the pop-up player and continue your journey through the Google Machine.



If you liked what you see here, you should definitely check out this short movie on Shane Robinson’s Abysmo trip. Along with some epic whitewater, the short features what must be one of the world’s most burly truck rides.  Also check out the Vacation to Hell -- it's definitely one of the more creative expedition ideas out there.

In the summer of 2007, kayaker and blogger Shane Robinson found himself paddling down Peru’s isolated Apurimac River, one of the Amazon’s five major tributaries. Ahead of him lay the Abysmo – a deep, daunting gash in the earth. Thousand foot cliffs rose from the river bottom. Once inside, bailing would be next to impossible.  Shane and his partners, Andrew Oberhardt and Bryan Smith, knew two things about the stretch of river that they were paddling into. First, the Abysmo was going to be big. There would be miles and miles of massive slot canyons and fifth class white water. Second, the end of their journey would come in the form of a big, ugly, orange bridge named Puente Pasaje. Everything between was unknown water.  They had no map, no aerial photos and enough food for five days. Fifteen years of kayaking had led to this moment.

                                  Click Here to Listen