I’m back in Bozeman after a visit to the East Coast. . It was a wonderful visit with the time going by very quickly. It was awesome to see my family and friends I hadn’t seen since Christmas.

Here are a couple of shots of the Sulock’s kickin’ it extreme on lake Chatuga in northern Georgia. .

Tubing rocks!

.

We’re not in Bozeman anymore. Going back to my childhood sumer vacation roots with a few days in Ocean City, NJ. Visiting family, eating caramel corn, doing a little surfing. It is a rough life.

.

Hot off the presses folks. These are chronological and the ones at the end were taken mere hours ago . I am burning the midnight oil in the lounge of Davy’s building as I attempt to deprive myself of sleep in order to gain it back on the flight back to the states tomorrow. Apparently there was a substantial earthquake today north of Tokyo, Davy says he felt it in his class but I think I was still sleeping. There was also supposed to be a typhoon yesterday but the only thing I noticed was that it almost seemed less rainy than usual. I better get home before a volcano erupts .

It is late Thursday night in Tokyo. We just got back from a baseball game. It was a good time with quite an enthusiastic crowd. I was very impressed, the Japanese are serious about their baseball. The following pictures are in chronological order from a couple days ago up till tonight. Hope everyone is doing well.

Here are a couple pictures. Everything is going great. The city is a contstant mass of movement and lights. It is really quite amazing. I’ve only been here a few days but I feel like I’ve seen so much. I feel very fortunate to be able to spend two weeks here.

Tomorrow at this time I will be on my way to visit Davy in Tokyo. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing this trip, however the whole concept is a little surreal to me. I’m leaving Bozeman for the most populated city in the world. It will be fascinating though, I have no doubt. However, before I leave there are a few details I need to take care of today.

Emily Gentholts was born 7 years and 1 day after me. She was from Bozeman, and going to college in Minnesota. She was in Bozeman for the summer doing research and playing Ultimate. She died last Sunday in a car wreck coming back from an Ultimate Tournament in Salt Lake City. You can read her obituary from today’s paper here I had played Ulimate with her a handful of times and talked some at an Ultimate Party a couple weeks ago. She struck me as being extremely pleasant and thoughtful. The type of person who was usually smiling with positive things to say. The Wednesday before she died we were playing Ultimate on a typical pleasant Bozeman evening and I was complimenting her attire of grey sweatpants rolled up above her knees with tube socks.

The tournament in Salt Lake City was a tournament I was seriously thinking about going to. There was a car full of Bozeman Ultimate Players behind the car Emily was riding in who were the first on the scene. Apparently an animal was involved, and Emily was sleeping in the back seat without a seat belt on. Thankfully the driver of that car is very much ok. The driver of the other car was 8-months pregnant,she deIivered her baby by c-section that night. Last I heard she was in the hospital in critical condition. I was told the impact literally split the car Emily was riding in the backseat of in half.

In case you forgot, cars are dangerous. I had not really been giving that a lot of thought recently but this has certainly brought it to my attention. Please be careful.

It seems like I’ve known more people to die in this past year than the rest of my life combined. Most of them did not have the chance to grow old. Grandma, Eben’s friend Wade ( I did not know him but I do know he was way too young), my friend Joe’s father, who was also Kezia’s uncle, passed away a few months ago at 52, and now Emily. It is very easy to forget that people don’t live forever. I wish people would be nicer to each other sometimes. I don’t understand why that is so difficult.

For all you inquring minds out there losing sleep thinking “well what else did those crazy Sulock’s do in Montana?”. A better question would be “what did they NOT do”. The answer to that is “nothing”. We did everything possible. It was a serious vacation and not one for the faint of heart. Here are a couple of photos in case you’re interested.

I found this website, www.summitpost.org that is a networking site for people who go like to play outside.

I made a picture gallery there here.

Its kind of nice because I know people are looking at these pictures and hopefully enjoying them. There are a lot of amazing pictures other people have taken from all over the world as well.

Mom and Dad have been out west for a week now. We spent 3 nights at Coulter Bay in the Tetons with Kezia joining us for the first night. Then it was taking the scenic route through Yellowstone on the way back and since then Bozeman. On Wednesday we are going to drive up to Glacier for a couple of nights.

Mom and Dad are in Anaconda outside of Butte playing a the Old Works golf course which Dad first mentioned to me a number of months ago. The weather seems to be cooperating so I hope they are having a good time. It wasquite chilly at the Tetons and in Yellowstone. Mom and especially Dad would probably use a term along the lines of “Artic”. The 2nd night we were there it started snowing and we woke up with some snow scattered on the grounds and the moutains with a fresh dusting.

I warn you that the last picture is 3.3 megabytes. It is a panoramic of the Tetons I took with about 9 pictures stiched together.

https://michaelsulock.com/wp-content/uploads/Teton.jpg I don’t know why WordPress is being such a pain with with this picture but if you copy the address above and paste it into your browser you’ll get to the giant panorama.

I woke up this morning and there was snow on the ground and snow falling rather rapidly. That was certainly a first, in Breckenridge it snowed a foot when we left on May 1st but up until now that was the latest snow I’d ever seen.

The town hosted the 22nd Bozofest this weekend, which is an Ultimate (frisbee) tournament. Technically it is just called “Ultimate” because the word “frisbee” is copyrighted. Teams came from places such as Salt Lake City, Portland, and Edmonton (in Canada), quite a drive for some people.

It was a exciting (and tiring) weekend of Ultimate and revelry in 2 days of warm and sunny weather. This was mildly astounding considering that the weather was cold and rainy all last week. It then proceeded to be about as nice as you could possibly want for exactly two days, then Memorial day was cold and rainy, and today it was snowing. Mother Nature must have wanted us to play some frisbee!

There was a fun party for the tournament (this an Ultimate tradition) about 30 minutes outside of town with kegs of beer, a bonfire, a live band, and spaghetti dinner. It was out in the country with horses and cows, and anyone that wanted to could camp in a nearby field. I managed to get my honda stuck in said field after I slightly overestimated its off-roading capabilities. But luckily thats what teammates are for isn’t it? Especially largish Ultimate players. Thanks to all the Bozos that assisted in unsticking me.

Mom and Dad are going to be here in a week. Also of note I now have a plane ticket to go visit Davy during the beginning of July.

After that I’m going to be back in Asheville during the first couple weeks of August. It should be a good summer.

Here are a couple of totally non Ultimate related pictures of a hike Kez and I did last week up to the top of Baldy Moutain. The last time I was up there was in September of last year, it is a tough hike towards the end but once you get up there it has some good views.

I just got back from a trip to South Dakota to Kezia’s hometown of Rapid City, South Dakota. We did a little bit of horseback riding, were well taken care of by her family, and managed to get in climbing on three separate days in the very wonderful Needle formations.

It was a grand trip. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Here are the promised pictures from Yellowstone a little while back. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny. We drove past a lot of people watching wolves with high-powered telescopic devices, we walked amongst some Buffalo, thousands of tarny marmots (which is what Luke kept calling them even though they looked like squirrels to me. They live in the ground like prairie dogs in big communities and our trail seemed to go right through a rather large one.

Also, I am finally totally finished with school. Year one complete. All in all I am rather pleased with what has been presented me out here and what I have made of it. Huzzah! I about a week and a half of almost total freedom until summer session starts.

I went to Yellowstone over the weekend and took a bunch of pictures but the interweb is being testy so those are going to have to wait.

I’ll be done with my first year of graduate school in about a week. Which is an exciting thought, although it means that I have a lot to do this week. Then about a 10 day break and I’ll teach Stat 216 again for the first summer session, and then almost 2 months of freedom! Hopefully during this time I’ll make it over to see Davy in Tokyo and back to Asheville in August.

It has been warm here for the past week, the grass is bright green and the trees are finally starting to show some color as well.

I hope everyone is doing well and I’ll try to put those pictures up ASAP.

Michael

I was reading this article about the spring-loaded rock climbing protection piece known as a”cam”, and apparently this fellow, Ray Jardine, invented the modern version of something that has totally revolutionized climbing since then. Inventing the cam is something along the same magnitude with inventing the bicycle. It was really that ground-breakingof an accomplishment.

So I was impressed by this, and followed the link at the bottom of the rather limited Wikipedia article on Ray to his “Adventure Homepage”, www.rayjardine.com This guy is completely ridiculous. What he has accomplished in terms of seeking adventure, (which I don’t see as the ultimate goal of life by any means) is almost totally unprecedented. For example, taking 3 years to sail around the world or building your own kayaks which you then use to kayak 960 uninhabited miles in 38 days. He sells different kits for making your own homemade tents, sewing your own backpacks, your own hats, and more. He in a scientist, an engineer, and an inventor as well as a world-class explorer and adventurer. I think that is a really impressive diachotomy of books smarts and brave curiosity.

If you look out his webpage, in a column on the right side, you’ll see accounts of a lot of the things he’s done. I’m just putting this up because I feel like he is an interesting person and wanted to share some things I was looking at and thinking about. Ray reminds me of Uncle Sandy!

Love, Michael