My Dad turns 60!!!!

I am usually very lucky where my Dad's birthday and my fantasy football drafts occur on the same weekend. This year we celebrated with family fun and a great trip to the best restaurant in the world (The House of Prime Rib in San Francisco).

The Highest Place in the Bottom 48 States!!!

Ashker asked me in January if I was interested in climbing Mt. Whitney over the summer. He had a group of his hiking buddies that were going to tackle the monster. So, on August 15 we drove out to the middle of nowhere on highway 395 and stayed in a hotel near the base of Mt. Whitney. On August 16, 2007 we completed the monster. Here is a short version of how the day went. If you want a long version, I would love to tell you all about it. We woke up at 1:30 AM and drove to the base of Mt. Whtiney. We were on the trail by 2:55 AM with our headlamps and ready to go. Unfortunately, after about 60 minutes one of the four of us was not feeling well and turned around. We continued to truck up the hill with great pace. It's pretty amazing to be 8 miles into your hike as you watch the sun rise. After some insanely long periods of uphill and the elevation affected you more and more we finally made it to the mile 9.8 marker (only 1.2 miles to the top). This is the first time you can see both the east and western valley's below Mt. Whitney. At this point we met some Boy Scouts and chatted it up with them before we headed to the top together. 7hrs and 33 minutes from when we left our car we were standing at the tallest piece of land on the lower 48 states (14,505 ft). We stayed on top of the mountain for 47 minutes taking pictures and enjoying the beautiful sights. After being harassed by the Boy Scounts for wearing a Broncos hat and being from SD, I signed the guest book go Chargers and we headed down the mountain. It took us 6hrs 8 minutes to get down the hill for a total time of 14hours 28minutes and 5 seconds. We were laying down in the parking lot with our backpacks off at 5:23.05 PM and couldn't believe what we had done. Climbing this mountain was beyond amazing!!!

Keller's Bachelor Party - Vegas Style

After many discussions on where the grand event of Marcus' bachelor party should happen, we finally decided on Vegas. We were going to stay in style, so we stayed for 3 nights at the Bellagio. We had great times gambling, consuming beverages, joking around and giving Keller a great party before he left the single life for a better one being married :) One of the best parts of the bachelor party was having so many Keller's buddies show up. Thank you Vegas for stealing way too much of my money :)