I am knot a mod, but was made an admin back when I was writing articles here.

Been honing mah canyon-yoga skillz awl summer.

jez-ust! yore still here?!?

In other news... my uber-sandbagged gym training seems to be paying off. Ramping up for a weekend at the Gunks and then a week at the New and the Red.

Was planning on using this last weekend to throw myself at a bunch of hard shit at Rumney. (Don't get excited, carny-hands was not there - does he even climb any more?) Had no projects, so everything was new to me (well, some stuff I had flailed on once a decade ago.) Thinking of it as more training for real climbing, I expected to do a lot of flailing. I failed to flail, and sent almost everything I tried, first go. Including one route which is supposedly at the same level as the hardest grade I've ever sent, period.

This means two things, 1 - I got really lucky, and 2 - I have to get on harder shit.

That is awl.

GO

Nice work!

I spent the weekend mostly not-climbing (aside from a day trip to Columbus gym on Sunday).

Went dancing Friday night with Ed (one of the more-horrible live "swing" bands that I ever had a pleasure dancing to... they played a lot of rock-n-roll-type not-at-all-swing music. but there were many good leads there, and surprisingly few good follows, so I had fun)

Went to see The Martian on Saturday. It was good, except for a really stupid finish (there really wan't any need to change the book finish, it was exciting enough). I heard a lot of people hyping it up, but I thought the movie was just decent, not excellent. Really enjoyed the book...

Planning on seeing the Martian this weekend, hopefully. Saw the Everest movie last week, was actually excellent I thought. Great portrayals of Krakauer, Boukreev, and Scott Fischer. Excellent scenery, and it got the intricacies of climbing pretty well.

Definitely interested in both movies, but I think I'll wait to get 'em on Netflix.

Hey, so we'll be in your hood next weekend (the weekend of 10/17). Would be great to climb with you!

How 'bout you Lena - any chance you'll still be at the Red that Monday?

GO

Planning on seeing the Martian this weekend, hopefully. Saw the Everest movie last week, was actually excellent I thought. Great portrayals of Krakauer, Boukreev, and Scott Fischer. Excellent scenery, and it got the intricacies of climbing pretty well.

Definitely interested in both movies, but I think I'll wait to get 'em on Netflix.

Hey, so we'll be in your hood next weekend (the weekend of 10/17). Would be great to climb with you!

How 'bout you Lena - any chance you'll still be at the Red that Monday?

GO

For those of you who do not know, Jasper is currently in a cone.
Jasper managed to shatter his cone on day 5.
Luckily, he is cute enough*
That the PETCO(C) ladies gave me a free new one.

#goodstorybro

*and, my masculine rugged homeless bum appearance didn't hurt

I think my biostatistician Is taking hallucinogenic drugs.

I send him links to two different DNA regions.

He comes back and says, they are the same.

I click on the links I had sent him, in case I made a mistake... they are different! So I tell him so.

He sends me back screenshots of the links, saying, look, they are the same.

I dutifully look at the screenshots... and they are DIFFERENT!!!!

This is seriously hilarious.

I don't think teh word "different" means wut ewe think it means?

Yeeeeah, Karen wuntzed to go climb moderates and had never been to Bubba Shitty. I sent a proj on Saturday, so she knew she could convince me to go there on Sunday.

Have never had my balls cupped so hard. That Russian guy who knew you was like, "are you camhead? why are you climbing here!"

and then when I offered some advice about lowering off of routes, he was telling his crew "listen to him, he's the closest thing to a pro climber that you'll see at Bubba City!"

Oh dear.

The day we did NFoC is boring - everything went according to plan. Here's a better story:

This is back in Hart's Draw. Kinda like the Creek, but with very little documentation. A lot more figure-it-out-as-you-go kinda place. No crowds. Actually no other climbers at all.

Woke up one morning after a cold night (it was down in the 20s - I planned on 40s) and it's cloudy and windy, so we're looking for maximum sun. My partner knows a cliff with a bunch of new routes on it, at moderate grades. It's a long approach (like an hour), but it should catch full sun (to the degree that we get any) all day. Only trouble is that he's only heard about which buttress it's on, and that's about it. So, he figures it might require "around a half hour of time to track down the routes once we get there."

There also might be potential for new routes in that area, so in addition to the rope, haul line, five sets of cams, we throw in the bolt kit. Did I mention the hour approach? It was a long slog with those packs.

After the bushwhacking trudge and loose talus slope with fifty pound packs is finally done, we wandered around for an hour before deciding, definitively, that this cliff has zero established routes. So we picked out the best line - what looked to be a sixty foot finger crack in good rock. Only trouble was that it was still freezing. Mmm, cold fingers in cold rock. We flipped for it, and I got the lead.

I planned to most likely aid through the crux, because near the top it looked like the crack narrowed to green and then maybe even blue Aliens, and there was a huge stack of detached rotten blocks teetering just a foot from the crack. Turned out I was able to hang on and keep my feet to the other side of the crack. Onsight! Pulled up the bolt kit, and... one hanger short. D'oh!

So my partner blames himself for not checking the kit, and runs(!) all the way back to the truck to grab more hangers and bolts, while I get in the first bolt and chain, drill and prep the next hole, clean and jug, and trundle the route. What a guy!

Turned out to be a pretty sweet climb, too, which I named "Bolting for Hangers".

With the additional bolts, he did another route next to that one. By then the weather had deteriorated, and it started snowing. Not quite as good a route, he named that one "Cold Leftovers".

Not the sunny day of moderates we had planned, but two good new routes, and a good story!

GO

So I've been getting moar serious about this hangboarding thing. Adding/subtracting weight, etc. While I'm still not feeling so trashed after a workout that I need 72 hours of rest, I'm definitely getting a better workout now.

I think I mentioned that I've just been doing the beginner workout out of the Manderson book, at least until my fingers didn't feel so tweaky anymore. I was thinking of moving on to the intermediate workout later this week though now that I'm getting stuff sorted out. There's no benefit to sticking to the beginner workout instead of moving on to the intermediate workout, is there?