R.I.P. MEGASPLITTER (2012-2022)

In the fall of 2012, I started an outdoor blog called #dirtbagswag. I wrote dumb essays about sleeping in cars, pooping in the woods, and climbing with my shirt on. I eventually changed the name to megasplitter and shifted my creative energies toward my teaching job. After a hiatus, I committed to writing two essays a month and have done so ever since. I love being outside. I love writing. And even though I am mediocre (at best) at both, it has been a joy to use this waste of internet space as a creative outlet for the last decade. After ten years of posting, I'm calling it quits.  

I've churned out some real drivel over the years. But I've also put out some things I stand by and even one or two pieces that I'm genuinely proud of. And some of you goobers actually read along. Maybe you still have an old Nalgene with a #dirtbagswag sticker. Maybe you just recently subscribed to the newsletter. Or maybe you're one of those weirdos who, according to google analytics, stumbled onto this page because you have a disgusting pooping outside kink and you helped make "5 Ways to Poop With Your Ice Ax" go viral back in 2014. 

Regardless, thank you. 

Thanks for letting me take up some of that precious real estate in your inbox twice a month. Thanks for reading and sharing with your friends. I hope something I wrote made you laugh or feel seen or feel inspired to go do something cool outside. 

I've been trying to think of a closing catchphrase to say, like a cool greaser guy in a leather jacket walking out of a drive-in juke joint at the end of a coming of age movie that takes place in the 1950s, but it's hard to be embody a granola Fonzie. Instead, I'll try a few different catchphrases and you can pick the one you'd like to close out this blog with forever. 

Stay munchy! (wall graffiti in the Wilderness Expeditions guides' bunkhouse)

Shut up and get rad. ("Skate or Die" - Teenage Bottlerocket)

Skate mean, live clean. (Henry Rollins 1979 senior yearbook quote) 

Waste your brain. Pray for waves. (Earth Girls Are Easy, 1988)

Live fast, pie young. (the instagram hashtag I used when I went through a pie baking phase) 

I'll see you in Valhalla. (Eli, before starting a scary rock climb)

Let the ponies ride. (me, before starting a scary rock climb)

"You can't achieve your goals if you don't take that chance, so go pry open that trunk and get those amps." ("Trying to Find a Balance" - Atmosphere) 

Goodbye (this blog, right now).

ANALYSIS: How to Have a Rich and Meaningful Life

Here's what I know for sure: the entire lyrical database of the Coheed and Cambria discography, how to build an equalized rock climbing anchor, and the secret to living a rich and meaningful life. I didn't know I already knew the meaning of life until my friend Josh pointed it out to me last month; I'm a pretty happy guy so I guess I've had it all figured out this whole time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1. Laughter: a rich and meaningful life needs joy and silliness. Refuse to harden your heart. Be an easy laugh. Laugh at your farts. Laugh at Johnny Knoxville getting hit in the nut sack. Laugh as your friend tells a story about a coworker stealing another coworker's pickle recipe and selling it as their own (#picklegate). Life is absurd, man. Take the barbed wire off of your heart and approach it with joyous whimsy.
2. Adventure: give your life some color. Pick a human-powered activity that's moderately hard for you, go to some destination, and sleep outside. Bikepack. Backpack. Climb to a big ledge on a 5.6 multipitch route. Sleep there. Make coffee. See the sunrise and go home. Now you have a story to tell.
3. Doing good: we are not made for ourselves alone. Make other people laugh. Take someone who never thought they could go on an adventure on an adventure. Organize a block party. Know your city council member. Replace people's tail lights for free. Raise a child. Plant a garden. You can't save the world but you can't neglect it either. 

Your mileage may vary. That's cool too. 

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2022 Favorite Things

Reid and Josiah at Coffey's Cliff

Happy Thanksgiving, splitterheads. Here are the year's most-loved routes, places, gear, albums, books, and other assorted favorite things. I love how this year's list features a lot of stuff close to home. And a lot of them can be enjoyed together. For example: playing Magic: The Gathering while eating a Murder Burger at Lo Main? Or a power hour ride with a King Dewey enjoyed at Coffey's Cliff? These are Holy Trinities of favorite things. Let's get to it...

Coffey's Cliff

A dumpy limestone outcropping overlooking the tracks; popular with trainspotters and spotty youths. A great and grimy mid-ride chill spot. "Long live Coffey's Cliff" is graffitied on a bench and I agree. 

Magic nights

Magic: The Gathering

In this trading card game I am a powerful wizard traveling across a universe of elaborate fantasy worlds, summoning creatures, casting spells, and vanquishing my enemies. Magic has engaged my imagination and expanded my friend group. It's seriously one my favorite parts of 2022. 

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert 

I have loved reading the Dune series and completely nerding out in a way that I have not done since I was a ten-year old using our family's free AOL trial CD and dial-up internet modem to browse the Star Wars Expanded Universe databank. 

X-Tiger Polarized Sports Sunglasses

Handsome. Powerful. Self-confident. Elegant. Tiger style, baby. 

Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind (2022) - Coheed and Cambria

If the opening tracks of the second-installment to the Vaxis saga are too "popheed" (Disappearing Act is as dance-worthy as a good Robyn tune), then the backend (Ladders of Supremacy, Rise Naianasha, and Window of the Waking Mind) will hearken you back to the days of the roman numeral'd prog suites of Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV.  SO GOOD. 

Traverseroids at the St. Elmo Boulders

St. Elmo Boulders 

Unlike the world-class stone at the top of the mountain, the rock near St. Elmo is coarse, sandy, and more than occasionally "cursed." Your feet could explosively blow off at any moment and your finger tips may not last a full day. But if you're willing to make peace with the choss, then you're almost guaranteed to have a good time.

Lo Main

A good neighborhood bar simply cannot be beat and this one is .2 miles from our front door. Cheap beer. Good food. Great vibes. *The chef's kiss of all chefs' kisses*

Metempiric (2022) - Knoll 

Pummeling grindcore from Tennessee. It's creative chaos. It's blast beats and death growls. It's music to make you feel like you're being curb-stomped by Dolly Parton. 

Dirty Pecan 100

A hundred miles of red clay (and sand) roads through canopies of White Oaks, pines, and pecan trees. 

PBR + Lime

"Have you had a PBR with lime? It's the reason I still go to church." - my friend, Payton. 

Brooks at Stringers

Tuesdays at Stringers

Our local urban wilderness, Stringers Ridge, rides best CCW (Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday). The initial downhill of Double J is the most fun you can have on a drop bar bicycle, IMO.

Baby Elmo Loop

A perfect after work 5k that links up a variety of trails past Glen Falls on Lookout Mountain. 

Plantgazer (2020) - Show Me a Dinosaur

Post-black metal shoegaze from Russia. Their socials have gone radio-silent since posting a rehearsal video with an anti-war statement on the eve of the Ukraine invasion. This album is as good as anything from Deafheaven. Listen to it.

Seeing MxPx + Teenage Bottlerocket in Milwaukee

Rebecca surprised me for my birthday with tickets to see a pair of my favorite punk bands. Unreal level of kindness. MxPx CHANGED MY LIFE when I was in seventh grade and Teenage Bottlerocket was on my very short list of bands I still had yet to see live. So this birthday pretty much ruled because of the amazing human I married. 

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Bike Rides and Swimming Holes

Most days this summer were spent riding bikes or going to swimming holes and often combining the two. Pretty perfect. Highly recommend. 

This Danzig + Bullwinkle crossover T-Shirt

The iconic heavy metal design mashed up with one of my favorite childhood cartoon characters and adulthood favorite animal. I saw Kody Templeman (Teenage Bottlerocket) wearing it and I had to have one for myself.

Survivor Season 42

The forty-second season of Survivor ruled. I thought it was a strong rebound from Season 41 and the best all-new cast since Blood v. Water 2, IMO. So many good players that I hope return. 

"The Power Hour Loop"

A 16-mile loop ride around the city that takes roughly an hour. Witness the fitness of raw pathleticism as I blast around the South Chickamauga Greenway and Tennessee River Walk. 

Bedrock Sandals

Life after Chacos exists and it's better. 

Squishy Fork!

I'm a real MTB boy now. My Redline Monocog has seen many variations and this is its best. Catch me over-biking chunky gravel and under-biking the hardest lines on the trail. Ride it like you wanna rebuild it.

Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park

PROS: Rebecca and I spent a week peakbagging, gravel biking, and lobster roll eating in the ancestral lands of the Wabanaki. CONS: Despite Maine having the highest population of moose in the United States, there are none native on the island. 

King Dewey

Or, as I like to call it,  Appalachian Baby Formula. Equal parts (1:1) Budweiser and Mountain Dew. Don't knock it till you try it. 

Parksville Lake Loop

25 miles of Appalachian gravel: lots of climbing, lots of descending. Never too much of it all at once. You'll either love it or you'll hate it. 

Ergon GP3 Handlebar Grips

I was sad to ditch my drop bars when I put on the squishy fork; I like having options for my hands on long rides (and short rides too because I have so much metal in my wrists and hands). I added these and they're amazing.

the Murder Burger @ Lo Main

Murder Burger @ Lo Main

Two delicious patties -- not too thin, not too thick -- cooked to perfection, coated in American cheese, crema, kimchi, chutney, and mayo between two brioche buns: arguably the best burger in town and it only costs $8. My dad said it was one of the best burgers he's ever had. 

The Lookout Mountain Mini-ATB Loop

The perfect after work 10 mile bike loop that links up a six-mile gravel climb with a quick 1.5 mile blast down a mountain highway to some fun, DIYish singletrack and then a neighborhood bike path back to the parking lot. 

Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (2022) - Kendrick Lamar

I love hip-hop but I'm not quite enough of a hip-hop head to wax eloquent about this one so I'll just say this: this album is good. Real good. Like good kid good but more grown up. 

Currently Reading: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

 The Dispossessed checks all my boxes: anarcho-syndicalism, sci-fi world-building, and words strung together with care. The Dispossessed gives us a chance to imagine a world outside capitalism. Another world is possible.  

Gravel Camp 

Gravel Camp 2022

Reid brought together an amazing group of people for a fun weekend camping and gravel biking around the Hiawassee River in east Tennessee. The route was killer and the crew super fun. 

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

I've always sensed that I was born in the wrong region of America; I think I was supposed to be born somewhere cold and grey. Walking the snowy streets of Milwaukee passed old cathedrals and glowing Schlitz Beer signs confirmed this suspicion. 

we're having a baby

yessir. 

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5 Rules for Car Camping

car camping at the Cowell boulders, Arkansas (photo by Josh)

There is a certain kind of freedom that comes with sleeping in (or near) your adventure vehicle, be it a Sprinter van, Toyota Tacoma, or Honda Civic. Ask any American what's the best part about America and they'll likely respond, "freedom." But hardly anybody really thinks about what that actually means. 

Most people think about freedom negatively: freedom from things. But you can't do whatever you want. The way I explain it to my students is this: your right to bear arms, freedom of speech, and other civil liberties are like swinging your arms around. You are free from restraint to swing your arms around all you want. But when you start windmill throat-punching your neighbor, we have a problem. You're not free to do that. We also explore civil rights as a more positivistic understanding of freedom. These are freedoms to do or for things -- equal rights and equal protection and all that stuff. 

What's this got to do with with car camping? Well, there's rules for that too. Some are freedoms to do things that you may not be able to while participating in other forms of camping, like backpacking (rule #1). Others are restrictions (rule #2). But enough about political philosophy, let's talk about car camping.

Jamie hogging all the shade while car camping at Shelf Road, CO

1. Bring it!

When it comes to camp stuff carrying capacity, nothing beats car camping. A giant Yeti cooler? Yes. Extra pots and pans? Bring it. A giant bin of rock climbing gear? Even better. 

Before a recent car camping weekend, my wife asked me if we could bring a mixing bowl for scrambled eggs. I was dumbfounded. I've never brought a mixing bowl camping before. Befuddled, I stared at her considering if we should or not. Lovingly (but in a way that still felt like Ja Morant posterizing Malik Beasley in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs), she said, "it's not like we don't have space, right?" Of course we have space, we're car camping.

2. But leave your guitar at home.

Don't be that guy. (It's almost always a guy.) Unless somebody specifically asked you to be the Guitar Guy (and almost certainly nobody did), don't. 

gravel camp 2022 at Lost Creek, Tennessee (photo by Reid)

3. Share

This is Humanity 101 stuff. I don't want to get too in the political philosophy weeds again, but imagine camping with Ayn Rand. You'd blow your head off. "Hey Ayn, can I use this headlamp for a sec?" "Only if you adequately compensate me for its battery use you freeloading, second-handing, collectivist swine." I just gave myself nightmares. But collective property and planned mutual giving are what make camping (and equitable societies) work. Read G.A. Cohen's brilliant little book, Why Not Socialism? The whole first chapter is about camping!

Consider a recent weekend riding bikes and car camping in the Appalachian woods. Betwixt the six goofy men who attended "Gravel Camp 2022," more than 84 beers (and Twisted Ice Teas) were brought, shared, and consumed. Open-source. Fair game. My PBRs are your Rolling Rocks and so on. I think I speak for everyone when I say that a highlight of the trip was Luke joyfully sharing out of the goodness of his heart a dozen donuts DIY-made in his JetBoil camp stove. 

car camping at Lost Creek, Tennessee (photo by Leah)

4. You still have to LNT

Pooping responsibly doesn't end just because you're sleeping in a Sprinter Van. 

If you packed it in with your vehicle, pack it out with your vehicle. This includes but is not limited to: beer cans, food wrappers, and the forty-year old, hand-me-down, Coleman two-burner camp stove your dad gave you that exploded in a massive ball of flames in the back of your truck while cooking beans at the mouth of Diablo Canyon, New Mexico. 

Josh making breakfast in Diablo Canyon, NM

5. Enjoy it!

This blog wholeheartedly endorses all forms of camping. Whether bivying mid-route on a multipitch climb or casual car camping at a local state park, sleeping outside is food for the soul. Car camping is fun and relatively easy. The amenities to suffering ratio weighs heavily in favor of comfort. And as long as we don't have an affordable cross-country rail system in this country, then your car is an incredible conduit to some of America's most amazing spaces. Get out there and enjoy it. 

my feet (please don't sell) at San Isabel National Forest, Salida, CO

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Gear Review: X-Tiger Sunglasses

not Nick Offerman

What's more important in life than shredding? Looking good. I may not be a dentist with a bike that costs more than a 2005 Ford Focus and I may never win a lottery spot in Mid South Gravel or huck a suicide no-hander over a double gap. I don't even know what those words mean. But I can look cool. Like Macho Man Randy Savage cool. And for the low cost of $20.99, you can look this cool too with X-Tiger Polarized Sports Sunglasses.

These sunglasses are so cool that my wife says I can only wear them while biking. Too much sauce for the grocery store  I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Once, my friend Alea saw me riding across town and she said, "Wow. Those glasses are... something." And you know what? They are something. They're like Pit Vipers but for a fraction of the cost and without the cringey lax-bro-in-a-MAGA-hat-and-Reagan-Bush'84-t-shirt kind of vibe. X-Tiger sport shades are lightweight, low-cost, and keep the sun and mud out of my eyes. What more do you need to know? 

I suppose you could take the time to read the nearly 7,000 gushing reviews on Amazon and you could see that Outdoor Gear Lab gave X-Tiger Sunglasses 4 out of 5 stars and a "Best Buy" rating. But why would you waste your time when you can imagine me pulling these bad boys down over my sweet baby blues, doing slow donuts in the trailhead parking lot while blasting Iron Maiden's "Wrathchild" at full volume? 

Eat your heart out, Pit Viper. Let's shred.

(EDIT: due to the rising cost of living in our ever collapsing hell world, I regret to inform you that these glasses are now $23.99)

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*~*GrAvEL cAmP 2022*~*

It's Sunday afternoon. I just returned from the Cherokee National Forest where a bunch of friends, new and old, camped and rode bikes. The fall foliage was stellar and my belly is more sore from laughing than my quads are from climbing. Huge kudos to event planner, Reid and route master, Tyler. It was a weekend for the ages. The following photos are a work of the people. 

the steep climb out of Lost Creek CG

Tyler looking contemplative on the banks of the Hiawassee

Tyler and I taking the fun way by a river outfitter 

Tyler and Luke letting one of the very few cars we saw through

the gang takes a snack and pee break

the gang takes a burger and beer break

Josiah and Reid at another scenic overlook

"if you ain't the lead dawg, the scenery never changes" pt. 1

"if you ain't the lead dawg, the scenery never changes" pt. 2

The end. 

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5 Hills I Am Willing to Die On

Before I fell in love with my wife, I thought it was okay, noble even, if I died while rock climbing. At least that's what I thought when climbers and alpinists I admired lost their lives in the mountains. "They died doing something they loved," or some nonsense like that. Nowadays, I'd really rather not die doing something so silly. And rock climbing is silly. There are, however, still some hills I am willing to die on.

Though technically a mountain, Lookout is not only a hill I am willing do die on, I'd actually prefer to die there. Not in a "my belayer and I miscommunicated about how I was going to lower from the top of a rock climb" kind of death. Lord, no. I'm thinking more of a, "I have one hour to live so I am going to the top of my favorite mountain in the world to say my final goodbyes" kind of way. Is that morbid? I don't think so. Spread my ashes from these sandstone cliffs, okay? (And pour some out at the Wacissa River back home). 

Don't tell my employer that the coach of their rock climbing team doesn't think so, but it's not. I mean, it definitely is. Rock climbing is in the olympics now. But it shouldn't be. Why? Because rock climbing, at its best, is a mystical union between human and stone; "the freedom of the hills," if you will. It is, at least, an act of rebellion, an eschewing of societal norms and constructs to retreat to the mountains or woods, doing something that has absolutely zero productive value. Grades and points and comps ruin all that. There's a reason John Sherman, who developed bouldering's V-Scale, later lamented grades as "the excrement of rock climbing." I want the kids on my team to fall in love with the activity and, more importantly, the outdoors. That's it. Seeing former students getting out there, sleeping in the dirt, eating Vienna sausages like a dirtbag, and sending the gnar, whatever "the gnar" is for them, is one of the things I'm most proud of. I don't care about winning competitions or "making the playoffs;" I've never even looked at our scores. Leave points and scores to the meat-headed, thick-necked jocks. Go rock climbing for the sake of climbing a rock. 

Relax, e-commuters. I'm talking about six-figure salaried, able-bodied goonies taking the easy way to the top of the MTB trails so they can blast back down. The only acceptable reason to ride an E-bike on trails is if you're eligible to receive Medicare and Social Security from the federal government. Otherwise, learn how to pedal uphill. Or get off and push it, like me. 

Refusing to leash your dog on public trails is anti-social behavior. You are a trail-runner. I am a mountain biker. It is our common interest to be outside. We are responsible to one another. That responsibility is our freedom. To avoid it is to lose our freedom. (Yes, I'm plagiarizing Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed.) We should build a giant crane big enough to hurl all the people who don't leash their dog into the ocean. Simple as that. Keep the dogs. Fling their owners into a deep watery grave. 

Politics and religion. The best burger in town. Hurling selfish dog owners into the sea. "I reserve the right to be wrong about everything." The highlight of my teaching career is a graduating student using this as her senior quote in the yearbook and attributing it to me (I heard it from Will D. Campbell). 

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A Place Called Providence

Providence Canyon, Georgia

Between Chattanooga and my hometown, I drive a long stretch of Highway 27 through the prosaic farmlands of southwest Georgia. In the early 1800s, plantation owners and other farmers clearcut the native forests of Stewart County to grow cotton mostly, also peanuts. Being the big-brained geniuses they were, they failed to consider rain runoff, which cut the soft soil like a hot knife in butter. By the 1850s, a vast network of ditches 3-5 feet deep ran throughout the county. By the end of the nineteenth century, those ditches became gullies, and the gullies became canyons that now descend as deep as 150 feet into the earth.

They call it Providence Canyon. It's a state park now; considered one of Georgia's "seven wonders" with hiking trails, scenic overlooks, and backcountry campsites. All of this, even though there is nothing naturally wonderful about the place. Georgia's "Little Grand Canyon" is the product of human activity: the forced removal of the Muscogee by European settlers, the destruction of native forests, and the short-sighted implementation of unsustainable farming practices. 

It took God, the Everlasting Song of the Universe, eons to carve the many canyons of the world. It took careless Georgians less than a century.

Without getting too deep in the theological weeds, certain reformed protestant traditions understand providence to mean that God governs the course of nature and history down to its minute details. I think this view of things is bogus but it is held by a great many people, both in its hardline Calvinist and slightly softer Augustinian formulations. 

According to this view, God orchestrated (Calvin) or oversaw (Augustine) the Creek Wars of 1812 and 1836, the clear-cutting of native pine forests, and the implementation of unsustainable farming practices fueled by the horrors and human misery of the Atlantic slave trade. And finally, God pushed the rainwaters through the fields in such a way that a canyon worthy of a spaghetti western formed in the coastal plain region of southwest Georgia.

If this view of things is correct, then it would also be true that God breached the human-made earthen work dam on Pennsylvania's south fork of the Little Conemaugh River that killed 2,200 people in 1889. The private owners of the dam even argued in court that the dam's failure was the product of divine providence rather than human negligence, despite overwhelming evidence of the latter. They won. Think about that. Their legal defense was "God did it" and they paid zero dollars in legal compensation for the losses. If folks want to fill up the Sunday morning pews to worship a god like that, I cannot stop them; but I will not. 

It seems much more likely, moral, and coherent that God's initial aim for the world is one of beauty and flourishing for both the human and non-human world. Humans inhabit a space of open possibilities and may accept this aim or reject it. Because God is love and love, by nature is noncontrolling, then God needs humans to actively participate in working towards that aim or expectation of wholeness, order, and flourishing -- what the Hebrew writers called shalom.

Pope Francis wrote in the 2015 encyclical Lautado Si that "The present world system is certainly unsustainable from a number of points of view, for we have stopped thinking about the goals of human activity." He continues, "If we scan the regions of our planet, we immediately see that humanity has disappointed God’s expectations." We often reject the "initial aims" or "goals of human activities" for short-term gain, private interests, and profit margins.  

Hence Providence Canyon, hence the Johnstown Flood, hence a lot of things. 

The walls of Providence Canyon are diminutive compared to the canyons of the Four Corners region. The destruction is also small compared to the man-made disaster of the Johnstown Flood. But Providence Canyon does bear witness to the awful potential of human ignorance and avarice. That's not to say you shouldn't visit it. It is truly something to behold. So go. Hike. Picnic. And when you do, consider the irony of its name because Ignorance and Avarice Canyon State Park doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well.

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