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Spenser

Elbow Tendinitis- Searching for the Magic Bullet

By Staying Healthy, The Interior4 Comments

Elbow tendinitis. Like I said, it totally wasn’t worth it. Sitting around Bishop and not climbing on some of my favorite boulders in the country is lame, but if there’s a silver lining to this whole elbow thing, it’s the fact that I’ve learned quite a bit about what to do if the demon gets you. The last post (linked above) admonishes those who might be tempted to ignore the pain and/or live with it. This one sums up what I’ve learned so far. I should mention that I got in this mess by ignoring about 2 years’ worth of elbow inflammation. If you are just getting started with your “itis,” you’re in luck. A little bit of care will see you through. But if you’re a chronic patient like myself, you might need to throw the whole kit at the problem. Strength gains happen much, much faster in muscle than in connective tissue, so idea behind most of the following advice is to isolate tendons, relax muscles when they aren’t being used, and increasing vascularity in the joints. As a disclaimer, I’m NOT a doctor and you should probably seek real medical treatment. The purpose of this article is to show you what happens when your injuries get the best of you, and what might be done about it. Also, if anyone reading this has any expertise, please leave a comment. If you’re getting the first signs of medial epicondylitis You’ll probably want to read this article by Dr….

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March 26, 2013
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It Wasn’t Worth It

By Staying Healthy, The InteriorNo Comments

Good news: my broken heel is no longer broken. I’ve been walking now for about three weeks, hiking and biking for two, and I ought to be back to powerful lowballs and sport climbing now. I should have cranked out a storm of vengeful conquest on Saigon Direct. But I can’t. I have another injury, and it’s my fault. This whole road trip has been a façade for me, a thin patina of improvement protecting a fragile, rotten, slowly deteriorating core. Even before the trip, I maintained an uneasy truce with that infamous and ubiquitous demon from the first circle of climbing hell, medial epicondoylitis (or climber’s elbow or golfer’s elbow or “why does it hurt when I do deep lockoffs?”). I paid lip service to antagonistic exercises, to an icing ritual, to stretching, to rest, but it never got so bad that I couldn’t just climb through it, try a little harder, and feel hardcore for wearing my throbbing badge of overtraining like so much finger tape. I come to you now bearing the gift of wisdom hindsight. Had I dealt with my tendinitis aggressively long ago, or maybe just not tried to climb at my limit 3-5 days a week, I would likely not be in the situation I am in now. With the first niggles following a few too many lockoffs, I should have banished the demon once and for all. I should have developed the good habit of doing those boring exercises in the last 10 minutes of the…

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March 14, 2013
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Daniel Woods on Lucid Dreaming

By Bouldering, Trip Journal4 Comments

Unexpected messages pop up sometimes. It could be an old Facebook friend, a spam phone call, a LinkedIn invite. This time it was Beau Kahler, our friend from Fort Collins whom we also climbed with in Joe’s Valley. He knows photos, and is now trying to know video. He hit me up on the ‘Book on Monday, asking if we had any extra Organic pads. The skinny: He and Daniel Woods schmobbed out to Bishop from Boulder in a 15 hour push with the singular goal of climbing (Daniel) and filming (Beau) the second ascent of Paul Robinson’s Lucid Dreaming (V15/8C). They had three days. I offered my help on camera #2. We met up at the boulders on Tuesday morning. We snapped some photos and got some video of Daniel trying the standstart, Rastaman Vibration (V12). He quickly did the crux jump move, and we moved into position to film the attempts from the start. Daniel had more trouble that expected with the sit-start moves and transitioning into the stand. The crux consists of the first four moves: a hard pull into a sharp, tiny undercling with the right hand, coming in to match on top with the left, standing up tall on the undercling to reach up to the infamous glassy left-handed micro-pinch, and finally the hard move from the pinch to the crimp that defines Rastaman. After watching several attempts, it was clear that grabbing the tiny, sharp, toothy undercling from below meant that he was holding it in the…

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March 8, 2013
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Bosavi: Changing the Headlamp Game

By Stuff We're Psyched OnNo Comments

I currently have, in my possession, what just might be the world’s most intelligent headlamp. Several months ago my friend Evan sent out an email about his friend’s project on Kickstarter. This friend of his, Dan Freschl, had a design for a headlamp that would be USB rechargeable, ultra-bright, and full of all other kinds of smart features that most other headlamp designers either never thought of or never implemented. (Also, Dan climbs at Touchstone’s Berkeley Ironworks, so he’s a gym homie). Like most people being solicited, I was skeptical, but for $65 I was able to not only support a friend-of-a-friend, but also guarantee delivery of the first edition of the product at a lower-than-MSRP price. Hell, I thought, if it’s all he says it is, then $65 is a steal. Months ticked by, and I was steadily reassured by the over four dozen update emails Dan wrote to his backers, detailing all aspects of the design and manufacturing process. Finally, my Bosavi arrived. How do I love it? Let me count the ways… It’s USB-rechargeable Virtually everyone has a half-dozen micro-USB cables laying around. The Bosavi comes with one in case you don’t, and this means that you can charge it with a laptop, car charger, or your non-Apple-smart-phone charger. When I think of the price of batteries, which always seems higher than it should be (not to mention the stress of disposing of used batteries properly), I already think of my investment as a good one. The…

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February 25, 2013
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Creating a Base

By Bouldering, Climbing, Trip JournalOne Comment

We’ve been in Bishop on and off since Thanksgiving and I have sent ONE of my projects. I’ll also admit that the single project came very easily. I know I’m not supposed to care about sending specific problems, but I do. I’m also going to be honest about the fact that it totally sucks feeling like you’ve not progressed. I had big plans for Bishop. I thought I would be sending everything. Well, at least everything in the V5 to V7 range. After our two week trip to the Bay Area, I was ready to come back with renewed vigor, but I arrived back in Bishop unenthusiastic and unmotivated. Then our visitors from Indiana arrived: Byron and Matt to the psych rescue, right? Wrong. Don’t get me wrong, Matt and Byron were not lacking in motivation. I was. Maybe I needed a new project to work on? As I fell off the second move to Milk the Milks repeatedly while cursing the slick foot that I was unable to make proper use of, Max’s advice from our trip to Red Rocks in January burst into my mind. The advice that had made so much sense to me at the time, but that I had promptly forgotten about. I needed to create a base. How did I expect to be able to use a tiny glassy nubbin on a V6 move, when I was not comfortable using glassy feet on the V2s in the Buttermilks? Suddenly, I felt quite silly. I had been…

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February 22, 2013
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Rest, Recovery, and the Return

By Staying Healthy, The ExteriorNo Comments

It’s Saturday, February 2nd, and we have been here in Kensington for a bit over two weeks. This brief return trip was for the purposes of R&R, as well as celebrating my father’s 66th birthday, and sending off my little brother Eliot to Miami for his first big-boy job. Congratulations Eliot! It’s been just over 6 weeks since I broke my heel. I think I went through the typical stages (Kübler-Ross) of: Denial- “I think it’s just bruised…” Anger- “Ah shit. I think it’s broken” Bargaining- “It’s okay, I’ll just do lowballs” Depression- When I realized that crutches were becoming a regular, accepted, and even familiar part of my life, I started to get really depressed. Acceptance- This stage should’ve come sooner, but I think it only really came today. I wish I could inspire you with this post. I wish I could tell you that my time off the rock was productive and instructive. I wish I could tell you I trained my weaknesses, learned a foreign language, edited ten videos and had time to campus train. I wish I could write a post about how to stay positive when the main purpose for your trip, indeed, your greatest passion in life is snatched from you in a freakishly mundane accident. For the first few weeks, I weathered the storm pretty well. I drank what must be record volumes of coffee at the Black Sheep. I mastered my crutches. I won $50 playing Blackjack in Las Vegas, and another $50 at the Paiute Palace. I…

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February 2, 2013
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The Tale of the Burning Man Wall

By Stuff We're Psyched OnNo Comments

We are still in the Bay Area. Vikki’s got more work hours this week than most 9-5 people do, and I’m almost to the point of walking without crutches, so we’ll be back on the road soon (Sunday is the new goal). Bishop awaits, and the infamous Byron Wolter will be flying in this weekend for his birthday challenge, which we’ll of course be there to support. In the meantime, the exciting news (besides almost being able to walk again, woohoo!) is that Dead Point published a little article I wrote up about that time we took a climbing wall to Burning Man, in 2011! We even made a video about it. It’s at the bottom of the above article. Click on it. Read. Watch. Also, here’s a link to our blog when we were building that wall. Even now, two years later, it’s fun for us to look back on. In other news, we’re still crunching away at the video of Elliot Faber doing ZAP. It promises to be a good one, just need to get some more B Roll footage when we return to Bishop, and we’ll be all set. TTFN! (Ta Ta For Now!)

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January 30, 2013
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Back When Spenser Had Two Good Heels…

By Bouldering, ClimbingNo Comments

…he sent Xavier’s Roof! A nemesis rig from last year that went down quickly once we arrived back in Bishop late last year. Our friend, Jeramie Hildenbrand, from Project Wingspan did a fantastic edit: You have to watch the entire video, my favorite part is at the end (my best piece of filming work I’ve done to date, hehe). For a quick update, Spenser and I are back in the Bay Area for a bit. Oddly enough, Spenser was getting tired of sitting at Black Sheep all day, every day (and it was his Dad’s birthday on Saturday). Having both caught the flu, we figured we would take a hint and head up to Berkeley for some R&R. We’ve mostly been catching up with friends, enjoying his parents incredible cooking, and ending up pleasantly plump while not climbing. It’s time for me to get my lazy bum to the gym today, actually looking forward to visiting GWPC in Oakland! I bet all of the problems will be brand new to me! 😉 Hopefully back to Bishop this weekend (pending weather) with some renewed vigor to take down High Plains Drifter a la Miss Alison Bagby! AND Spenser should be losing the crutches in the next week or so, yay!

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January 23, 2013
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La Vie Sans Pied

By Staying HealthyNo Comments

After a quick tour of the bouldering in Vegas, we’re back in our lovely little trailer in the Pit campground in Bishop. I’m getting pretty used to the gimp life. My left heel has been broken for nearly three weeks, and I won’t be able to put any weight on it for another few weeks. Being injured on a climbing trip is not my first choice, but all things considered, I’m not too disappointed. The biggest change is that I’m not climbing. Instead, I’ll crutch out to the boulders and watch Vikki, Steve, Angie, and others trying their projects. I offer beta when possible, take photos, and read. When the urge strikes, I’ll hop around and fondle holds, but I’m being  extra cautious of climbing anything, for two reasons. One, a fall could be disastrous. Two, I’m taking this opportunity to give my elbow tendonitis some time to heal. I had never seen the boulders of Red Rocks before, and it was fun to hobble around and add problems to my mental ticklist. Due to the holidays, we encountered many climbers whom we knew from the Bay Area and elsewhere. However, seeing dozens of people doing what I couldn’t was almost too much to bear. It’s like Vikki hobbling around a non-gluten-free bakery: the torture of temptation. Still, it’s good to remind myself of what awesome climbs are out there. It would be easy to forget about climbing, to feel like my return is so far off that it doesn’t…

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January 10, 2013
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Into the New Year

By Climbing, Staying Healthy, Trip Journal4 Comments

When starting this post, it was only five days into 2013 and I was watching people all around me break their New Year’s resolutions already. I guess that’s expected in Sin City? Vegas can be fun, for a short period of time. And by the 5th of January, I felt like we had outstayed our welcome. The trip started out great, being able to catch up with Miss Alana and getting to know her Portland home-girl, Ashley made the first few days go by quickly (it also didn’t hurt that we had an apartment to crash at, thank you, ladies!!). Although it seemed like most of our group was ready to leave sooner, we ended up extending our trip through last weekend so that I could get my computer fixed (read: I spilled coffee on my laptop back in Bishop, which is the one we use to edit all RV Project photos and videos…everyone should get a plastic keyboard cover, could have saved me almost $400). After New Year’s, we stayed at the Palace Station for a few days: the dredges of the casino-hotels in Las Vegas. We crammed 5 people into a room for 2, and happily paid about $5 each per night for a warm space to sleep. Since the computer was not going to be fixed until Monday, we decided to upgrade to the Flamingo. The room was much larger and included a view of the Strip. The Flamingo is one of the only hotels on the Strip…

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January 8, 2013
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