Socks

           Recently I realized that all my socks have holes in them. I do not wear my socks on my feet while I'm outside, or purposely in any way create holes in the bottom of my socks. Holey socks are extremely frustrating because of the uneven feeling that I get while I'm wearing them. I think it's time for me to get new socks.
           I figured out one cause for holey socks: the woods. I commonly go out into the woods. In the woods I climb trees, knock down semi-dead trees, and cross rivers. After I got back from the woods I took off my shoes. Debris from the wilderness poured out of my shoes. I looked down at my once clean and nicely woven socks and saw a terrible thing: a big hole.
          Due to the fact that there are many different types of socks, there are also certain socks that are comfortable and certain socks that look/feel right. For me the socks that look right and the socks that feel right are not the same. I personally like the above-ankle socks for comfort and overall feeling. I think that those socks are extremely unfashionable and just don't exactly look right. Ankle socks however, look better. When I wear the above-ankle socks with shorts I always think that they look like they shouldn't be there. Ankle socks are also more of a summer sock and they are almost more comfortable on those extremely warm days. The reason I think that ankle socks are less comfortable because they always slide down to the bottom of my foot and that position of my sock is uncomfortable.


In class today Erin Palmer contributed to this blog by providing the idea to write about socks; however, all of the content was supplied by yours truely, Grant Johnson.

Steamboat Springs

            Over spring break my family and I took a vacation to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Overall my vacation was a great success. I spent the majority of the vacation skiing and hanging out with my relatives. We stayed at my relatives and drove out to Colorado with our skies in a torpedo shaped object strapped down to the top of our car.
            The first day we skied without my good local skiing cousins. We skied instead with their dad, who is also a pretty godlike skier. As a local he guided us down the main resort mountains best runs. We mainly skied upper mountain because that's where the good snow was at. To me the snow was either 3 categories, powder, (the best for skiing, fresh snow) ice, (slippery and a workout to ski on) and normal snow (no ice just snow but it's not fresh snow, been skied a lot). All the time i there it was just normal snow. The day right after we left they got two feet of snow, which would have been awesome to ski.
            The extreme part of the trip was when my cousins come in. Both of them are around my age and they're really good skiers. They go straight down even the steepest runs and call people "moving gates". They also know all the good back country skiing routes to take my brother and I on. The last day their we went back country skiing in trees, by all sorts of cliffs, and steep parts. It was really sweet to have a local skier to take us skiing that way. I had a tremendous amount of fun.

Don't Have Kids

            Why on earth would anybody want to have kids? Sounds like a tremendously terrible idea to me. My aunt and uncle came up to visit tonight. During dinner their youngest, who is about a year old, sat in his high chair randomly yelling and screaming the entire supper. He would also cry for his water bottle, take a drink, and then throw it on the floor. The best part? My aunt and uncle buy that kid everything he needs. I could not pay for something that's annoying. That's like buying a TV that ALWAYS plays a loud screeching noise that only actually works as a TV once in a great while.
            Kids are also extremely stressful and provide much less entertainment then they're worth. I know for a fact that my brother and I combined produce at least 90% of the problems in my parents life. Also, if I choose to  not have kids I would need to work much less than somebody with kids for the same amount of money. So, I plan to not have kids and to travel the world with the money I save not raising kids. My parents always ask me who will take care of me when I'm older; my response comes easy and swift, "Money."
           Teens also break your stuff and don't appreciate anything you do. Parents have to work all day to provide for their families while their offspring are at home breaking stuff  and making a mess. Plus, the things that parents want their kids to do, is the exact same stuff that they despise doing. DON'T HAVE KIDS and you surely can't go wrong.
          

Steamboat SpringsBREAK

            The plans official, I will be going skiing this spring break. The destination is Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The time is over spring break, believe it or not you can still ski there in march. I can't complain. I find it funny that other people commonly spend spring break trying to snag a tan or enjoying the snow that is finally melting while I will be in Colorado hoping for snow every night.
            My parents believe that I should be the one to drive there. I only want to drive in Colorado because there are mountains. Mountains are supposedly really scary to drive on. My mother can only go 20 miles per hour without freaking out, but my dad likes to go really fast and drive just next to the edges of cliffs in attempt to scare everyone. I think it would be fun to drive in the mountains because I do things for the thrill of it, If it can't kill you, it's probably not fun. Take school for example, a persons chance of dying in school is very low thus the level of entertainment it provides is also very low.
            Anyways I am extremely excited to go skiing. I will leave the Thursday before spring break, be gone all week, and be back the next Sunday. I plan on skiing the most challenging runs with my dad, my brother, and my two uncles, who are my age, Taylor and Austin. Taylor and Austin are both extremely skilled skiers and it's always a struggle for my family to keep up. My mom just rides down the easiest runs the entire time.                 

Video Games

          It's been said that video games make people stupid. While this may be true, you certainly can't be stupid and good at video games. Starcraft II, a game by Blizzard Entertainment requires tremendous amounts of skill. The skill is required because this game is a real-time-strategy game. Games of this genre usually involve a player creating massive armies and using war techniques to beat the other player.
         The techniques are very similar to fighting strategies that may be used today. In one game, I may hit and run my opponent, expand my base to boost my economy and produce more units, and destroy my opponents economy. Professional ( yes people make money by being good at this game) players have up to two hundred actions-per-minute. That means that the player is clicking his mouse or using key binds more than once every second.
         Real time strategy games are very skill dependent unlike a majority of video games. For example, Farmville, a game that can be played on facebook, involves planting various plants on a farm, letting them grow, and coming back to check on them later. A game like that has no skill required and could easily be used to teach a young child what various plants look like. There are other genres of games, one is called massive multi-player online role playing game. A person who enjoys playing games of this type are judged by how much time they spend playing the game. The more time one spends playing a game of this sort, the more levels they acquire. Levels make players stronger and are symbolized by a number. The higher the number the stronger any given player is. People who play these games are commonly considered "nerds" and "no-lifers". So before you judge a video gamer, make sure you figure out which type of game he plays first.

Colds, Melting Snow, and Indoor Rock Climbing

    

              I absolutely hate being sick. I hate being weak and achy. I would rather have the flue than the cold because the flue is just like one and done. The cold is like a slow death... the flue is like a quick and painless death. I also dislike missing school because I'm sick. I have to work on all of the assignments that I've missed and sometimes the extra work is stressful. A perk of being sick is that my mom will cook or buy me pretty much anything to make me feel better though.

              The winter's snow is finally melting. I can see the grass in my backyard. I just hope that mother nature doesn't pull anything crazy and whip up a blizzard anytime soon. By the time spring break comes around there will be no more snow in Iowa. My plans to go skiing over spring break still hold. There will still be snow on the mountains but my dad said that there will be people skiing in T-shirts, shorts, and bikinis. That sounds completely awesome to me.

              This coming weekend a few friends and I are driving up to Minnesota to a place called Vertical Endeavors. I am pretty excited to try indoor rock climbing on this scale. The website for it brags about 18,200 square feet of climbing surface. There are even rocks on the ceiling but, I cannot even imagine how that is maneuverable. Just hope I don't suck and/or bust my body up by falling and slamming into the walls. I am excited though!


  

Goat Milk

         Has anyone ever had goat milk? I've drank goat milk for the as long as I can remember and I believe goat milk isn't just good, that it's better. My reasoning goes beyond the taste. My unpasteurized milk is far better than your processed milk. Goat milk proteins are more like human body proteins because goats weigh less while cows weigh a lot more. Some lactose intolerant people are able to drink goat milk. The reason for that is because goat milk contains less lactose too. The fat molecules are also less complex and digest easier than cows milk. Goat milk is also more popular across the world than cows milk, completely opposite of american belief. The places where goat milk is more popular is places such as India and China.
        There is also economic value. Just for producing milk, goats are cheaper to make milk. They eat less and take up less space than a cow. Also for some families in america a backyard goat supplies milk for the entire family. Goats are increasing in popularity in america for these reasons.
        Last but not least, I could not forget about the taste. "Normal" pasteurized cows milk tastes like cardboard to me now. I just want to know where our region of the planet went wrong when picking a milk. Why not peek the animal that eats less to supply us with milk? Could it be for cows beef potential? I would believe that, but why not just have two animals one for milk the other for beef? I think it is time that Americans should change to goat milk for the better!



p.s. I'm sure it's really not that big of a deal though.

Skiing

          Another thing I really enjoy is skiing. I've been skiing like 20 times by now and I like to think myself pretty good at it. I've taken a few trips to Colorado to ski and been to Minnesota to ski their "ski resorts." Minnesota and Colorado are way different. In Minnesota you can go straight down all the runs and be okay, but in Colorado you need to make turns and not go straight down. You can't go straight down in Colorado because the runs are much longer and steeper so you'd build up a lot of speed and lose control, then hit a tree and break 15 bones. 
         This year I would really like to take another trip to Colorado. I have family in Colorado and it would be awesome if we went up and stayed for a few days and skied. My mom said something about going over spring break to ski but, I have no idea if it will actually happen or not. I like skiing because it's pretty easy and doesn't require very much work to go fast. One thing I don't really like about skiing is the cold.
         I went to Minnesota to ski with some friends this winter break. I have to admit it's a lot of fun skiing with people who suck because they crash. Watching people crash on skis is pretty funny. One of my friends went off a huge jump that he didn't even see... he got huge air and crashed. I was surprised to find out that he didn't break anything. That same friend went straight down every run and had no idea how to stop without crashing, sometimes he ended up in the parking lot of the resort. If you ever get the chance, ski with people who suck because it's tons of fun watching your friends crash.

Devil's Causeway

             When I went to Colorado again this summer we visited a sketchy place called the Devil's Causeway. The Devil's Causeway is probably the closest I have ever been to dying. I didn't even cross it. I wimped out because I love life to much. The causeway is in a area of flat tops in Colorado where all the mountains in the area are smaller while being longer and flatter on the top, some with enough room for football fields. The causeway itself is about 100 feet long and as wide as a sidewalk. On both sides of the causeway are cliffs, If you fell, you would surely die. No chance of living at all. I walked up right next to causeway and turned around. On top of being only as wide as a sidewalk, there are rocks and other obstacles that one may stumble on and fall to their death. 

             If you crossed it, you had to make it back. Like I said I did not cross it. My dad, my brother and my uncle did, though. All of them managed to maneuver back and forth on the causeway. When you look down standing beside it you can see things that people have dropped. Another thing, while your up there you can feel like wind shifting your balance. The wind up there comes and goes quickly to add to your chance of death. Even though I didn't go across, I had a great time and got to see my family cross it. I hope to sometime come back later in life and cross the causeway but, my time is limited because soon it will become impossible due to erosion.  

            

First Mountain

           Grant Johnson here, I am currently a sophomore in high school at Mason City High School. This blog was created for my composition class. I will be updating approximately once a week. I will try to steer my blog towards the main idea of mountain climbing because that currently interests me quite a bit.
           I have some beginner climbing experience. I actually wouldn't really consider it climbing so much as hiking a trail to a peak. I have climbed three fourteeners in Colorado. Fourtneeners are mountains that are 14,000 feet or above. I also climbed a peak that was under 14,000 but we climbed the harder side of the mountain, which was much harder than the fourtneeners I had climbed because the officials didn't waste the governments money marking and building a trail for a mountain that wasn't a fourteener. Anyways, my dad and I climbed straight up the side of the mountain... which was mostly all broken rocks. The standard technique for climbing fourteeners is by hiking switchbacks, which are trails that go upward to a slant and then go back the opposite way. This is easier than going straight up because when you climb straight up you can easily slide down and going straight up requires much more effort. The mountain that was under 14,000 feet was pretty sketchy to climb. Sometimes when you were stepping from one rock to another the rock would slide under your feet and even a couple times the rocks would be very unstable. It's sounds a lot scarier than it looks, when your climbing mountains like these, you can see down 5,000 feet and you think you're going to fall there but, really when you fall you just land right where you were originally standing. It was even sketchier going down but, by the end of the day my father and I made it out alive.