Just recently I purchased the Trango Cinch from eBay for $37.00. Ive done climbing in the past but not with automatic belaying devices. I first looked at the Petzl GriGri it looked liked a great device. But in the end I just went with the Cinch. Now why did I go with the Cinch? The Cinch looked functional, easily functional actually. It takes 9.4-11mm rope. My rope of choice is usually 10mm dynamic rope. I do a lot of top roping so I found the dynamic rope to be the best. When belaying with the Cinch you just feed the rope through the device –which is clearly marked with a man and hand and your ready to go. All you do is wrap your hand around the device, your thumb goes on the pivot hole and index on the back. In order to have the rope feed through you just pull your hand back and it simply feeds. When you need to catch a fall the Cinch will jump right into action and help you out. The Cinch will automatically lock for you but just in case the hand that is wrapped around the device also acts as a brake hand. When your ready to bring the person your belaying down all you do is pull the handle back and you have great control over how fast or slow you can bring them down. All in all, I found this device to work absolutely great. I would recommend it to anyone ever looking for a automatic belaying device.
After much perseverance I have finally got my club at school accepted and rolling! It has taken me about one year to find a moderator and get all the planning done. I submitted an impressive proposal today check it out:
The students of (My High School) in coordination with (Teacher Moderator) would like to start a High Adventure Club. The High Adventure Club would be a student club focused on, and encouraging participation in, adventurous outdoor pursuits to challenge students to experience the outdoors in new and exciting ways. This club would hold many activities such as rock climbing, indoor skydiving, kayaking, biking, water sports, backpacking and a variety of other activities. This club will not only focus on the activities themselves but all aspects including safety techniques, activity preparation, but most important a learning experience for each member. Our vision is to first bring together the students who love and have a passion for the outdoors and high adventure activities. Second is to create a fun and safe environment for the students to immerse themselves in adventurous activities. Lastly to encourage students to push there limits to new and exciting outdoor pursuits.
I thought starting this club would be a brilliant idea because we really don’t have an outdoor club or something along the lines of an outdoor club. So I decided to start one. So far the interest is huge. I think this could possibly become the largest club in the school that would be a huge accomplishment. I’m not the kind of person who takes “baby steps” to complete a goal I just go for it. Sometimes this is helpful sometimes its not. In this case my “jump right out and go for it” technique worked great.
Last week at school we had the epic spirit week. This week is crammed with all kinds of cool events and activities usually closing with the homecoming game. Monday we had pajama day which was absolutely awesome one of the favorites at the school. So I got on my moose pajama pants and white t-shirt. Tuesday was flashback day. A day for everyone to go retro or just flashback to the weekend. I preferred the weekend. Wednesday was Disney day. I tried to go all Aladdin but couldn’t really find the Aladdin costume. So just got myself a Disney shirt and I was set. Thursday we had inanimate object day. I wasn’t feel’in to creative so I just threw on a Dr. Pepper t-shirt and boom I’m an inanimate object. To finish out the week we had spirit day. Each class had to wear there class color sophomores were gold. But this day wasn’t only a day to wear your class color. This was also pep rally day. One of the most exciting days of the year. Its run and planned by the super amazing student council — this was awesome because I got to miss all my classes!
The set-up started around 6:30am I got there around 7:00am to start helping. The rally is in the gym so we first had to put the tarps down to cover the gym floor so we don’t scratch it. After 30 minutes of laying the tarps we got to the exciting stuff. I mainly went ahead and helped out the theatre tech people set-up the audio because that kind of my thing because I’m a DJ. We ran a daisy chain of a few fenders and JBL’s which was an impressive set-up from last year. We got full room coverage but some of the songs didn’t come through all that crisp and clear wasn’t a big deal because again it was a great improvement from last year. Once all the audio was set-up student council started to run through there skits. The theme was YouTube. It was pretty good we did everything from Bon Qui Qui, Grape Lady, Angry German Kid and Turtle boy. It was pretty funny although people did think the last pep rally was better. In the end it all turned out great. Everyone had a great and energizing time and that’s all that counts.
Today I decided to test out my new climbing harness by climbing some trees in the backyard. It was so much fun. So I did some video taping check it out!
Over the weekend I headed down to Myrtle Beach, SC to catch some waves, sun, and actually did some shopping. We stayed at a fairly new place called Dunes Village Resort. This was my first time staying here and I have to say I was impressed. The last time we tried staying at a new place it was horrible. The room wasn’t clean, refrigerator smelled bad, and the service wasn’t all that great. Here was the exact opposite. We got there on Thursday around 3pm checked in and got to our room. It was a one bedroom –with a pull-down bed in the living room, partial ocean front view. It had wide-screen TV’s and DVD players. So it was actually quite nice. We really were to tired to explore the resort and find out everything we can do. So we decided to head to dinner and the grocery store. For dinner we went to Friendly’s a family restaurant right down the street. I got a combination dinner of steak, shrimp, and some patatos. Wasent bad but not the best. After dinner we headed to the Food Lion to grab some groceries for the weekend. Didn’t get much because we were planning on eating out for dinner every night. The next day was beach day. My mom and bro headed down around 8am –i was still sleeping. I got up around 10am and was ready to go. Got a shower and headed ou the door and to the beach. Stayed on the beach for about 30 minutes until I got board –i get really board really fast if nothing exciting is happening. So I headed to the next big thing the Resort had and that was there indoor water park. Got to park and found that they had free ping-pong and pool tables. So I got kind of sidetracked and instead of enjoying the wonderful indoor water park I played lots of ping-pong and pool. Which I thought was pretty exciting. After about an hour of that I then finally got to mess around in the water park. It had a wicked fun water slide, intense rapids ride, and a good old lazy river. Another hour passed and I decided to get some chillin’ time in. So I went up to the pool deck and got myself a nice tanning chair and ordered some soda o yeah it was totally chill! At around 1pm I went back up to our room to grab some lunch. It wasn’t a very exciting lunch just a quick one. Once lunch was finished I pretty much just ran around the resort looking for stuff to do and finding cool places. I swear the staff there must have thought I was crazy because they were always seeing me around everywhere. That night again we got some dinner but this time at Philips. This was my first time at Philips so I didn’t know what exactly to expect. I ordered a stuffed Carolina flounder stuffed with shrimp and king crab. Wow, I have never had better fish, crab, and shrimp in my life this place was amazing. A little on the expensive side but it was worth it. We finsihed dinner and once again headed to the room. For the rest of the night I watched my totally favorite show Burn Notice on USA. I got to see the season finally which was sweet. I’m already excited for the next season. But anyway that’s pretty much what everyday was like. Which was fine with me because I had a blast. But one of the greatest things I loved about this place were all the other guests. It was hilirious when I was on the elevator with other teens who looked my age because they would be so enthusiastic even though you have never met them before. They would be like hey! whats your name and it would just take off from there. So I got to meet all kinds of cool people. All in all I thought the trip was great! My brother, mom, and I all had a blast and hopefully we can head over to that same Resort again.
Today coming home from school had a quick traffic stop in my neighborhood. Actually the first one that I have seen for a long time. I was totally legit so I got let through. But the unfortunate person in front of me got pulled for invalid registration. Our main street in the neighborhood has a huge street racing problem. Daily there are these pimped out cars that totally roll it out on our parkway. Its fun to watch but when the cops show its a whole different show. So that’s probably the reasoning behind the stop.
Its so exciting to be back on the web after about a year break from blogging. I can’t even wait to get started on the more interesting posts about life and whats happening. I’ll be blogging about everything from music to movies and much more. Since ive stopped blogging my once budding company Dynamic DJ has taken off and is now the most active DJ-ing business among the schools in North Carolina. I am now also now a sophomore in High School and having a blast. Last time I blogged I was in 8th grade… haha. Im also into high adventure activities such as outdoor and indoor rock climbing, mountain biking, backpacking, and hiking. Well thats all for now stay posted!
