Launch Party!

Thanks for visiting the land of the tall.

Please find me at my new domicile:

NealYoungCreative.com

GETSOME!blog

So I’ve decided to give my new blog, on my new and unpublished (got the domain names - just trying to find the right hosing service) site, a new name.

“6foot6” was kind of a half panic-half dismissive move when I rushed through the blogspot registration process, so eager was I to start a blog I wouldn’t ever keep up. When I was prompted to enter a name for my blog, I thought, “well, what defines who I am, and what am i passionate about?” “PizzaAndBoobs.blogspot.com” was already taken, so I just threw down a name representing my height, not taking into account that I’d really want to change that later. (Don’t think that my height doesn’t define me, or it isn’t something I’m passionate about. Oh no. It goes beyond passion and into “conspiracy.” Alas, for future posts...)

As for the new name, well, unless you’re blind to the oh-so-soothing color of tealish/powderish/skyish blue, you’ve already seen it in the title. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the GETSOME! blog.

Why GETSOME!? Well, first of all, it’s probably one of the greatest rallying cries in history and I can’t believe it isn’t yelled with more frequency. It can be used to fire you up to do anything. When it’s time to jump out of a plane, to offer up encouragement, demands and sushi, to challenge someone to a round of croquet or hand-to-hand combat, to drop in on a wave, to shoot tequila at a bar or water buffalo from a huey, to demolish a wall or a plate of nachos, and to instantly start a speedy car chase (scientifically proven to work 5 out of 10 times - the other five chases are instigated by the equally exciting but limited “step on it!”). When it’s time to embrace the moment and live stupidly. That state of mind is easy to attain; all you have to do is tell yourself and anyone who’s listening to GETSOME!.

It also nicely captures a little bit about me. I couldn’t think of a good name for my old blog because there wasn’t one thing that defined me or I felt passionately about so much more than anything else. There are a lot of things I’m into that define me. As long as it feels good, tastes good, sounds good or looks awesome, I’m probably going to dig it - not too hard to please. And that’s my life - getting into a lot of bitchin’ hobbies, people, movements, gadgets, styles and situations. And when you feel like reading about some of that - any of that - you can come here and GETSOME!, too.

Life is out there. GETSOME! blog.

(And get it at www.nealyoungcreative.com/getsomeblog/getsomeblog.html)

Creationism

On the first day, Neal created a template.

I woke up this morning, went to grab some coffee, and decided, “I need to change my life forever. Hmmmm. How ‘bout a website?”

How ‘bout a website! So i cracked open the ol’ MacBook, opened up iWeb, and waited for it to scan my brain and create a manifestation of my website ideas. Turns out, it’s not that easy. But almost that easy.

A day later and I’ve got the basics set. I still need to load the thing with content and, oh yeah, get it live, but I figured I had to commemorate the day of conception. I can see it now; years down the road I’ll embarass my website with stories about where and how it was conceived.

Here are rough drafts of the tentatively titled, "DayOfCreationMedia.com" (story about the name coming soon).

Click to see the enlarged view:

From the Retro Files - No Sleep 'til Denver

Last weekend Abby and I loaded up most of our belongings into a moving truck and drove it from Denver to Colfax, CA (long story - details to come in a later post): the exact opposite route I took a year ago almost to the day. Anyway, it reminded me of the little diary entry I wrote after that fateful trip but never posted. From the Retro Files...

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Tales From The Road: No Sleep ‘Til Denver

It was Wednesday morning and I had until Friday afternoon to pack everything I owned (including my Jeep), everything my girlfriend owned, fit it into a 10 ft moving truck, and wagon train it from California to Colorado. It was a straightforward mission – I had a checklist of things to do and a deadline by which to do them.

As I look back on that morning, the last morning I would ever wake up in that bed in Berkeley, remembering my ignorant, optimistic state of mind as I lay there casually planning my attack, it’s clear to me now that I had, without a doubt, no clue what I was about to get myself into.

I drove an hour east to Davis to pick up the moving truck, because it’s $300 cheaper to pick up in Davis than in Berkeley. Okaaaayyy. (This would be the first of many signs I encountered that Moving Half Way Across The Country Requires A Belief In Another Dimension In Which Things Make Sense.) They were 2 1/2 hours late with it. I decided to leave the Love Tractor (my trusty’n’rusty Jeep – see The Love Tractor post) in Davis with the intention of picking her up on the way back after getting packed. No sense in towing the girl any more than necessary.

Back in Berkeley four and a half hours into my day, I’d already driven 150 miles and wasn’t one inch closer to Denver. I was minus one Jeep, plus one moving truck which had anyone told me had one cylinder and 7 horsepower, I wouldn’t have argued. I commissioned Fatty, Manny and HipHop for Crap Load duty before saying goodbye to the San Francisco Bay.

Back to Davis to hook the Love Tractor up to the trailer. Only by chance did I notice the ridiculously small print on the side of the trailer wheel well that stated "disengage drive train of all four wheel drive vehicles." Hey, thanks for the heads up on that Budget Truck Rental guy! Slightly important detail that would be nice to include in the "here's your truck and trailer and I'm an idiot by the way" talk, not to mention a bigger god damn font on the side of the wheel well. So under the Love Tractor I went, SCALDING hot Davis summer pavement underneath me, to work through the built up grime and leaked oil that had caked the ol' Tractor's underside.

It was then that I realized I had NO IDEA how to disengage a drive train. Conveniently, a Jeep dealership is located right down the road, and I popped my head in to ask for a little advice. Not surprisingly, I got very little (Thanks, Jeep service guys!). So I ran back to the car, trying to decipher in my head what the redneck douchebag Jeep monkey mumbled through his hot dog. Under the oven again, and this time, success! My euphoria was short-lived, however, for as I was taking off the rear axl yolk I failed to realize that as you do that, the front axl yolk actually does come off! And sometimes, when your head is right underneath it, the entire drive shaft comes right off and onto your head! YAAAYY!!

Things were blurry after that. Could've been the heat, could've been the frustration clouding my head, or it could have been the CONCUSSION FROM THE THICK METAL SHAFT
LANDING ON MY DOME.

(I love my car, I really do.)

Time a wasting, I floored it up to Colfax. Zooming along at a steady 45 mph (woooo!), I made another realization - 1000 miles to Denver from Tahoe, drive time about 15 hours. In a car. In a fully loaded shitty truck towing a Jeep Cherokee at a max speed of maybe 55? Thaaaaat's going to tack on a few minutes. By my concussed calculations, I figured it would take at least a "god damn long time." (Once the head swelling went down, that figure got coverted into 23 hours). With my deadline in Denver being 4pm on Friday (to sign the lease so we could move in over the weekend)...let's see...carry the one...fuck a duck, I had to leave Thursday morning. And probably not stop. It was already Wednesday night and I hadn't even gotten to Colfax, where I had to pack all of Abby's belongings. Just to clarify, she is a female. Make your own "how many freakin' pairs of shoes do you NEED!?" conclusions.

A few boring hours and mundane details later, I arrived at my folks house in Tahoe late Wednesday night.

Thursday morning, I ran last second errands and hit the road, with the same attitude that I imagine the 101st airborne had. "WHAT THE FUCK AM I ABOUT TO DO!?" Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. Yup. I stopped for an hour of sleep somewhere in WY, got up with the sun and made my assault on Denver.

And THAT was a beautiful drive - really. Coming down from Laramie into northern Colorado, along the bottom of the Rockies rising to my right...it put me in the mood - I was PSYCHED!

I steered the Insane Train into Denver at exactly 24 hours running time, PLENTY of time to spare! It was great to finally see Abby - we even got over the brief moment of simultaneous realization of what we're doing: "Oh my god, we just moved to Denver together." We headed over to our building, and I can only imagine what they thought of me. Not only was I past the point of exhaustion and pretty much drooling on the lease as I was signing it, but I also like to think that I probably looked like Chevy Chase coming out of the desert in Vacation - dirty, hair sticking straight up, wide, wild look in my eyes. They gave us the keys, and we went upstairs to find our KICK ASS loft in downtown Denver! The neighborhood is perfect - walking
distance to everything cool in this town: LoDo district (very Seattle/Portlandy), the 16th street mall, downtown district, all the stadiums, a flagship REI that would make Fatty foam at the mouth AND...(wait for it)....YES - the Six Flags located smack dab in the middle of downtown!!! (How cool is that?!) Seeing the Denver skyline - tall highrises, stadiums, Rockies in the background (30 minutes away - sweeeet), amusement park (still laughing about that)...it was a great moment.

The loft is fucking ridiculous. It's nicer than anything I ever thought I'd live in, and HUGE (read - come visit there's room). We're stoked.

So that's where we are now in the story. Unpacking and getting settled, figuring crap out, and slowly realizing that there just might be more to do here than we can fit in a year. And I know what you're probably wondering. "Wait, what happened to the LOVE TRACTOR!?!?"

Well, I'll tell you.

She's going to live out the rest of eternity sitting proudly on top of a tall random hill in the middle of rural Wyoming.

No, she's not. (Although that is a beautiful image). After re-installing the drive shaft (no shots to the dome this time, ha haaaa!), jumping the battery and refilling it with gas, all in the pouring rain, I've got her up and running, purring like the ol' emphyzemic and retarded kitten that we all know and love.

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The drive back west passed smoothly without incident, and we flew back to Denver shortly after unpacking in Colfax (again, this will make sense soon, I promise). I even managed to sleep for a few hours along the way. I enjoy looking back at how optimistic we were about Denver...ahh, to be young and naive. Well, I'll be moving to Boulder next month, so hopefully we'll find better things...

Shooter

I'm not that big of a big baseball person. I used to be an obsessed Mets fan, so maybe that's why I'm no longer into the sport.

I enjoy going to the occasional game, but I'll never watch one on TV unless it's a pivotal playoff game. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I pay more attention to the backstory of the game than I do the actual playing of it. I find things like the steroid issue, team dynamics, individual characters, the A's and Moneyball, and insane fans who storm the field to beat up an umpire to be more interesting. You could say that the sociological study of the game is more my bag of chew.

I think a lot of my lost interest when it comes to following specific teams or players on a regular basis has to do with a loss of innocence in regards to professional athletes. I'm forming a jaded opinion of them, and it's not a pretty one. My reasons are fairly cliched, naively generalized, and definitely don't take into account the fact that no rational person alive would turn down the opportunity to be paid millions to play a game, so I won't rehash them.

On that note, a few days ago, a former professional baseball player died in his home, for as-of-yet-to-be-determined causes. Rod "Shooter" Beck seemed to epitomize the exact opposite of my ignorant opinions. My friend Alan summed it up much better than I ever could, so to quote him:

"A guy like this will probably never come along in baseball again. For starters his nickname was 'Shooter.' He had a mullet, and handle bar mustache, and the build of a Harley mechanic. He looked like the hood ornament of a Mack truck, but had a high pitched squeaky voice. He was kind to everyone, even the media. After games he would often sit around in the clubhouse with a few other players smoking cigarettes, drinking beer and talking baseball. I guess you could say he had a bit of John Daly in him, and, really, what's wrong with that?"

Not to mention that he was an incredible pitcher. Sounds like a guy I would want as my little league coach, and a guy who makes me wish there were more of, so I could enjoy the professional game as much as other people do.

I hope Alan's wrong.

Oops I crapped my pants!

I plan on having to say that often from now on. Why? Because while I was gone from the blog...I turned 30.

That means I basically wake up every morning wondering if today is the day I start crapping my pants, buying tapioca pudding in bulk, and mixing myself an Ensure and vodka as a way to wind down in the evening. Evening being 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

Overreaction aside, one needs to look no further for proof of my rapid decline than the differences in birthday celebrations between 29 and 30 (which someone actually tried to tell me was the "new 20." I can see how some would like to believe that 50 is the new 40, or that 40 is even the new 30...but please. I now actually wear underwear, eat vegetables and can remember where I took off my pants the night before. As far as you know. So don't tell me that I "might as well be 20!").

Last year? I celebrated another meaningless year on the calendar by jumping out of a functioning airplane.


This year, to commemorate "the new 20," I got called a "great big American pussy" while in Amsterdam by my Mom's cousin - a 54 year old married doctor with two kids who drank my ass under the table - because he was pissed I didn't want to continue partying. (It was 4am.)

New 20 my old ass.

From the Retro Files - The J Word

In an effort to make up for my lack of posting this past year, I'll occasionally hop in Doc Brown's Delorean and insert updates about my whereabouts in a retroactive fashion, starting today.

Our first blog pulled from the Retro Files has a lot to do with my disappearance from the webernet: my job. When I uprooted from California and blindly arrived in Colorado, two of my goals were to not only keep this blog current as a way to keep myself in the writing habit, but to also start dipping my feet into the freelance writing realm. In regards to both, I pulled a Munson. But only because I began spending the majority of my days in Boulder working for the Enthusiast Group.

Instead of risking the freedom, riches and fame that a freelance writing career might lead to, I decided to instead sign up for some stable indentured servitude as the Content Manager for their grassroots sports communities: YourClimbing.com, YourMTB.com, YourCycling.com, YourRunning.com, etc. My responsibilities range from general community oversight and website development to writing content and producing videos.

It's a start up with a lot of potential sparked from a great idea (I won't go into details - if interested just check out the website). It is the outdoor industry, though, so while I get to work within my passions everyday, the market is frustratingly thin and fickle. And sooooo behind the eight ball when it comes to web utilization. (The industry's manufacturers, NOT the users.)

So that's been the target of my focus, long hours, mental energy and the reason behind having time for little else. I'll post more of the work I've produced here and there in the future. In the meantime, enjoy this funny anecdote and video from a climbing competition I entered last month:

Competition round up at the USA Regionals in Boulder, CO

YourClimbing.com sent Brett Merlin and Neal Young to the USA Climbing Regional Championships at the Boulder Rock Club in Boulder, Colorado. This is their story...