Climbing – The RV Project

A New Video! Norman’s 13

By SpenserAdventure, Climbing, Stuff We're Psyched On2 Comments

It’s been about 4 months since we last updated the blog. The pandemic was in its infancy, and Bishop was starting to get unpleasantly warm. Now it’s August, in this foul year of our Lord 2020, and trying to summarize the past quarter feels like a hopeless task. It’s also hard to concentrate on much of anything right now, thanks to the unbreathable atmosphere hanging over California. Times like these make you grateful for your friends, and at this moment in particular, I’m thankful my buddy Ryan Tetz for an excuse to update this space with some words and images that have nothing to do whatsoever with Covid19, the election, mass protests, or any of the other crap I’ve been dwelling on lately. Y’all might remember me talking about Ryan Tetz in the past. He’s an ER nurse, and was working at the ER in Bishop when I went in for a broken foot way back in ’12. We’ve been friends ever since. The last time I wrote about him here, he’d just pioneered a bike route across California (it took him about 27 1/2 hours to go from the ocean to Nevada). Since then, he’s bettered his record on the human-powered Badwater to Whitney (13 hours 16 minutes), done the first known triple-Sierra-crossing on a bike, set the record for all California 14ers human-powered, and a host of other very absurd challenges. Go check out his blog, where he introduces himself thusly: When I was 9 years old we…

August 26, 2020

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What I Love About COVID-19

By SpenserClimbing2 Comments

Kinda nothing, but at least I appreciate the novelty of this whole lockdown thing. We are the caged birds, finding our singing voices. We are training as if it’s only a matter of time before we’re either back on the rocks, or dead from Coronavirus, and we are going to be either fit as fuck, or dead but beautiful. Fifty (50) 3/8” bolts should arrive today, and the sun’s out. Escapism: it’s never been more important. This morning’s toilet reading included a few articles from the National Review, because I wished to know what the poly-syllabic conservative punditry thought about things. In an all-too-familiar manner, the Andrew McCarthy’s of the world are lashing out at the prognosticators. The push right now is to discredit (and direct vitriol toward) the IHME, because they had the temerity to attempt to model the outcomes of this pandemic, and because they have now twice revised the model’s results to predict fewer American deaths. Back in my science days, the battle between those attempting to sound the alarm over climate change and those attempting to discredit the entire concept of science was at its ugliest. There were hacked emails and snowballs in Congress, and all the while we kept destroying coral reefs and driving to work. If we just grow the economy, the Right said, then technology that we haven’t even dreamed of will rescue us…besides, they said, clutching their pearls on behalf of the poor, it would be unfair and even racist to try…

April 10, 2020

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How About a Climbing Update?

By SpenserClimbing, MusingsNo Comments

Ain’t no climbing! F’reals. The gyms are closed, Owens River Gorge is closed, the Happies and Sads are closed, and the Buttermilks are about to be. As I’ve said before, I’m on Team It-Don’t-Matter, since I’m also still on Team Rehab. I would never wish for good people to be prevented from climbing, but I am definitely benefiting from the absence of envy. I may not be doing Soulslinger this season, but neither will anyone else, haha! Talking to my parents, who are in quarantine in the Bay Area, it sounds like the public there is quite panicked, and very wary of each other. My mom tells me that people aren’t smiling at each other in the grocery store anymore; her observation is that those who choose to appear friendly these days are almost exclusively ethnic minorities. I can’t really comment on that aspect; around Bishop, people seem to be pretty friendly while keeping their distance. In the first 2 weeks of March, barely anything had changed at all in terms of folks’ behavior. The last 2 weeks we saw checkout queues with zones taped on the floor 6’ from one another, and Main Street has hardly any pedestrians at all. So, here in RV Project world, we are climbing on the trailer-woodie waaay more often than we ever thought we would. The weather this week is warm and sunny, and when there’s no wind, we can lower the wall without losing all of our important documents. In fact, when…

April 4, 2020

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Contrast

By SpenserClimbing, Food for thoughtNo Comments

The first time I picked up a camera, it wasn’t called a “phone.” It had weird numbers all over it, and when you got near the end of a roll of film, you were never sure if you’d get a free extra shot or two before having to rewind the roll and get it developed. Now we’ve all got cameras in our pockets, and software on those cameras for image editing. Photographs can be awesomely powerful. Indeed, they can change history. The Vietnam War is, to me, an incredible example of how a few images can tell a deeper, more visceral story than the finest wordsmiths. There are plenty of other examples throughout history. Another that leaps to mind is the work of Dorothea Lange in Manzanar. What are the first sliders you tweak when editing an image? We all have our own workflows, but it’s likely that “Contrast” comes to mind. What a concept, eh? The farther apart we pull the luminance values of highlights and shadows, the more distinction we get between objects in an image. Conversely, an image with very high contrast (how about that photo of Tommy jugging on El Cap during golden hour, while Kevin sits on the portaledge scrolling Pornhub Instagram?) grabs the attention a certain way, and only after some time spent with the image can the viewer begin to integrate the light and dark portions into an interconnected scene. There has been much contrast in the world lately. Contrast is good, because…

March 27, 2020

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Thoughts from Lockdown

By SpenserClimbingNo Comments

Not a whole lotta climbing going on. Not a whole lotta taking pics or making movies. A lotta reading the news. A lotta home improvement projects. A lotta getting better acquainted with our bikes. We’ve almost finished watching the Ken Burns docuseries The Roosevelts on PBS. We highly recommend it. Now, I know it sounds kinda boring…lots of photos and old-timey voices reading old-timey letters…but what we were not prepared for was the shock of seeing what strong leadership in times of crisis can do. FDR took office when 100,000 people were losing their jobs every single day. He was in office during Pearl Harbor. In neither case did he A) minimize the problem, or the challenges ahead, B) Speak to Americans like we’re idiots, or C) Ignore expert consensus. He was able to rally the nation by listening to people (he and Eleanor famously toured the country, seemingly non-stop, to try and understand the daily lives of Americans), identifying that which we do have to fear (you know, fear itself), and setting solid and appropriate expectations about the path ahead. What kills me about this moment in time is that apparently more than 50% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the crisis, and saying that it’s the fault of partiers in Florida, or beach goers, or whatever. How are we supposed to take self-quarantine seriously when our elected officials can’t (and continue to sicken each other)? Or how about when Trump gets in front of the microphones to…

March 24, 2020

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In the Time of Corona

By SpenserClimbingOne Comment

Not sure what to say to mark this occasion, but it felt important to mark it somehow. It’s Monday, March 16, 2020, and I think it’s fairly obvious by now that this Corona virus thing is going to be wildly transformative. It’s also terrifying for obvious reasons. Being in Bishop is a tremendous blessing, as most of our daily activities here fall squarely within the recommended social isolation parameters, and as of this typing the county of Inyo has yet to see a confirmed case. If there’s a downside to being out here, it’s the anxiety from not being around to help the old folks in the Bay Area and San Diego. At least it’s not too long a drive. I was a 17 year old high school senior on 9/11/01. I remember the panoply of chaotic emotions the country collectively went through, and I recall feeling distinctly that the world would never be the same. Between the Patriot Act and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (the former on pretenses of such obvious and flimsy bullshit that the mere fact we managed to hold our noses and swallow it was a grave indication of the lessons unlearned from our numerous tragic attempts at imperialism), it was pretty clear that the changes the world was going through were not, on balance, in favor of freedom and equality and transparency of government. It’s obviously way way way too early to know anything about how this whole pandemic thing will progress, much…

March 17, 2020

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Rebuilding in Bishop

By SpenserClimbing, Trip JournalNo Comments

Hey before I get into the update, I want to mention that Vikki put a whole bunch of her pictures from her years as the Head Photog at the Women’s Climbing Festival up at Berkeley Ironworks, the day before leaving for the east side. They look RAD. If you’re in the Bay, give ’em a look-see before they come down at the end of March. Greetings from our little garden on Grove Street! We’ve placed the trailer in a friend’s backyard in Bishop, CA. If we seem elated, it’s because we are. Bishop has long been a favorite climbing destination for us. I’ve probably spent close to two years here in aggregate. It’s within a half-day’s drive from the Bay and LA, has most of the big-town stores and amenities, and is within striking distance of just about anything you can imagine when it comes to outdoor recreation. A full price ticket at the movie theater is $8, and there’s rarely a line at the DMV. Granted, there are unsavory corners and incidents unbecoming of an idyllic mountain retreat (I just heard about this one from a few weeks ago…), but one needn’t get involved in any of that if one chooses not to. We made it here on Tuesday afternoon, and spent the first few days in town taking care of life logistics. I bought a bike at the Gear Exchange, an XL Stumpjumper 29er hardtail for $350. It needs a little TLC, and I want to add a…

March 8, 2020

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Rehab Time

By SpenserClimbingNo Comments

It seems like a lot has changed in the realm of rehab since I last got serious about the topic, which would’ve been around winter/spring 2013. Say goodbye, they say, to lotsa lightweight reverse wrist curls, and toss that twisty rubber bar thing aside. Graston? Gone. When you absolutely need to safely stimulate and strengthen your connective stuff, it’s time for some isometrics. Isometrics: The art of trying really hard and not moving. You could think of a yoga pose as a full-body isometric, but in my case the target is the elbow that recently got jabbed with a needle. Isometrics are the best way to rebuild the connective tissue around my medial epicondyle, according to Dr. Tyler Nelson, my trusted physical therapy doc in Salt Lake City (we do our sessions remotely). I won’t recap the science here, as I suggest taking a look at the Camp 4 Human Performance blog if this stuff is relevant for you. I also received valuable input and support from two other awesome climber/PTs, Drs Natasha Barnes and Carrie Cooper. Anyway, it’s a little more than 5 weeks post-op, and I have 3+ weeks of isometric pullups under my belt. At first, holding a 2-arm lockoff on a pullup bar with elbow at 140° for 30 seconds was excruciatingly hard, but it quickly felt easier and after 2 weeks I was adding 30-50 pounds. The elbow feels pretty good overall, but it sometimes will ache and feel stiff. I’m pretty sure that’s mostly…

February 22, 2020

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As the sun sets on the volcanic tablelands, the sun shall also set on an inherently unjust system of economics

Massage Guns and End-Stage Capitalism

By SpenserClimbingNo Comments

I am somewhat happy because I’ve started rehabbing the elbow. Now it feels like I’m Doing Something, instead of actively trying not to while watching my arms wither away like the delicate flower petals they are…Like I said, I’ll have a more detailed post about the rehab soon, but right now I want to indulge in a little bit of ranting. First: How do you feel about Bernie Sanders? (What about #berniesenders?) Does the word “socialist” scare you? Remember that the news you read probably comes to you via social media, and is published by one of a handful of Very Big Corporations which, thanks to Citizens United, get unlimited say in our political machinations, and thanks to Corporate Personhood, get access to an unnecessarily robust set of protections. None of those big corporations are going to “want” to spread the good word about wealth redistribution. It’s much easier and more beneficial to allow the intellectually vacuous voices of the punditry to make unchallenged false equivalencies (looking at you, David Brooks). “Socialism and Stalin are synonymous,” they disingenuously say. I don’t know if there is a difference between “democratic socialism” and well-regulated capitalism with a strong safety net. I do know that whatever world Amazon seems to be ushering in is utterly terrible…The warehouse jobs would make Upton Sinclair despair, and the fact that it’s painfully difficult to know who you’re actually buying something from robs everyone of the human connection that used to be an inherent part of exchange….

January 28, 2020

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I Got An Elbow Tenotomy

By SpenserClimbing, Staying Healthy, The Interior, Trip JournalNo Comments

This won’t be a very involved or long post, because typing is really awkward. I just got out of my very minor elbow surgery, and I’m not supposed to really do anything for the next week or so with my right hand. It was performed by Dr. Chad Roghair with Cal Sports Sports and Orthopaedic Institute. Both my mom and brother have had their shoulders put back together at their office, so they come with plenty of trustworthy testimonials. The procedure went as well as can be, and in a week I can start what will hopefully be a pretty quick and aggressive rehab. Right now, it’s a little achey and sore, and I’ve got a sling to remind me not to do anything with it. Not doing anything totally sucks, but it’s quite precisely what the doctor ordered… I hadn’t really thought about the implications of a bum arm. I’ve broken my right hand a few times, so I’m pretty accustomed to brushing my teeth and wiping my butt with ol’ Lefty, but I didn’t really think about the fact that I can’t really wash dishes, or drive a stickshift. I guess I’ll be doing a lot of abs. As I heal from the surgery, I’ll start gathering some of the resources I’ve been looking at to gain a better understanding of the latest in tendon repair. Dr. Natasha Barnes, Dr. Carrie Cooper, and Dr. Emily Noe have all sent me stuff to look at, but it’s a lot…

January 14, 2020

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