Stories [Posts] – The RV Project

Australian Vacation: Feels Good, Man

By SpenserAdventure, Climbing, Trip JournalNo Comments

The wife and I have been bummin’ around Down Under since mid-August, and it’s been a hoot, a ball, a real blast with some elements from the past. Vikki had never been to Australia before August 17th of this year. I have spent, in total, the better part of a year here, over the course of three visits. I spent 6 months in Townsville, QLD as an exchange student in 2006, came back for a couple of weeks in 2007, and for a few more weeks in 2011. The 12 year lapse was too long, but there was pressing business to take care of, you see. Life can be like that. So it was with great excitement, anticipation, and jetlag that we arrived in Sydney, the premiere city of this sparsely populated island off the coast of Antarctica. Sydney, a City Like Many Others We had a pleasant 4 nights in Marrickville, a hip little neighborhood a few train stops from the famous Opera House. We were 10 minutes’ walk from a very lovely climbing gym called the Boulder Haus, and within the same 10 minute radius were more cafes than I have ever seen (and not a single Starbucks). We ate rather well, and discovered some utterly incredible coffees at a place called Roastville. Speaking of coffee, Australia still insists that the term refers to the range of beverages based around espresso shots, and has yet to embrace the drip method of brewing. The downside is that free refills…

September 18, 2023

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Time to Mourn

By SpenserEthics, MusingsNo Comments

I was an A’s fan. What happened? Fuck John Fisher, the spoiled bitch-boy son of the founders of the obsolete clothing store that charged $45 dollars for jeans all the way back in the 90s, The GAP. That’s what happened. My anger at one man’s greed, and a society that apparently allows rich assholes to shit all over everything (see: the 45th president), has finally overcome the irrational attachments that one has to their favorite things from childhood. My dad took me to games at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, and I took home souvenir cups with Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Dennis Eckersley, and Rickey Henderson on ’em. There was no Mt. Davis, and there was iceplant where much of the outfield bleachers would’ve otherwise been. One of my earliest memories is of the ’89 earthquake, which happened shortly before the A’s swept the Giants in the World Series. Last year, my brother and I scattered a small portion of our dad’s ashes in left field. In high school, my best friends and I would take BART to games all the time, despite often getting home late, and despite the summertime fog keeping temperatures in the 50s (but feeling much colder). We joyously celebrated the start of the Moneyball era, when blue-collar journeymen at the end of their careers, like John Jaha or Olmedo Saenz, could have a shot to be difference-makers and fan favorites. The bleacher fans were legendary, as were the signs and nicknames they created for the A’s…

May 11, 2023

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That Time The Mountain Called My Bluff

By SpenserClimbingNo Comments

I’m a boulderer, and unapologetically so. That said, I also like being on top of mountains. Sometimes, I go for long outings in the mountains that are hybrid hike/scrambles. I wrote about the WURL, Tenaya-Matthes-Cathedral, and Mt. Emerson, if you wanna read those trip reports. Previous scramble outings have always gone well for me. Weather has been generally good, routes uncluttered, and companions have been awesome without exception. And, most importantly, everyone has always gotten home safely. I knew it couldn’t go perfectly well forever, but I told myself that I would always be in control. I’ve never soloed anything I couldn’t downclimb, which meant that if I got off-route or got spooked, I could always bail by simply turning around. That had never been tested, until I decided to go for a stroll up the awesomely named Cloudripper. Most of my summer was spent recovering from an ankle injury, so I didn’t get to spend as much time in the mountains as I might’ve liked. I hiked up Mt. Tom (Winuba) and the ankle felt alright, so a couple of weeks later I decided to go for Cloudripper. I didn’t know much about it, except that it had a reputation as a fun scramble. A quick internet reading suggested that the obvious route was the West Chute, a 3rd-class romp on clean rock to a ridge just below the summit, with an easy walk off the north side of the mountain. The photos of dad-bods in New Balances told…

February 21, 2023

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Hello Again, World

By SpenserMusingsNo Comments

Hey World. It’s me, Spenser. Are you there? For the past 6 months, the days have been getting longer and the nights have been getting shorter, and all the while this blog has stayed the same length. The reason? Well, that’s complicated, but it’s in large part due to how much of a pain in the ass it was to put up a new blog post. You see, we weren’t satisfied with so many of the plug-and-play website themes, so we tried to customize things to our liking. This road leads to plugins and workarounds, and ultimately compatibility issues. The backend of RVproj.com probably resembles a hoarder’s basement. It got to a point where every time we wanted to post some writing, we’d have to spend half a day getting the PHPs and the SSLs to HTML the right CSS, and we had such a mess of bandaids on top of the wound that we never got around to excising the infection. OK OK, that’s horrible metaphor-craft, but I hope I’ve conveyed something about what a mess our WordPress-GoDaddy lovechild has become, attributable mostly to our utter lack of understanding in the realms of coding, hosting protocols, or really anything to do with this current iteration of the World Wide Web. I’m hoping to tackle that issue with an online course or two, but I’m also hoping that what we did this past week was enough to let us input words and images and publish them without as much drama…

June 21, 2022

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7 Years of Joe’s Valley Fest

By VikkiBouldering, Musings, Trip JournalNo Comments

Coming back to Joe’s Valley after a 2 year hiatus felt like we had come home, after what felt like significantly longer than 2 years. I have missed the people and the place like a piece of me was misplaced. Sunrise from Horn Mountain from our last trip to Joe's in 2019. Vikki photo. Taking a selfie while pretending like we don't know each other. Food Ranch, circa 2012. Missed 'em like crazy. Spenser photo. Them, too! Brief aside as I'm rolling down memory lane, but this still is some of our best work. 😂 Inspired by our first trip to Emery County, and capitalism. This year was the first where I was able to fully step away from my roles as Marketing Manager and Sponsorship Coordinator. Patrick and Katherine are in the drivers' seats, respectively, and I took on a Master’s in Public Health program. I still don't have the words to encompass how honored I felt to witness where the Fest is at now. On the drive back to Bishop, Spenser and I looked back to the beginning. How the Joe’s Valley Fest came to be feels like a series of disjointed events: a bunch of boulderers living in the dirt, a town clean-up, and a message from Amanda to the Joe’s Valley Bouldering Facebook page. With this message, Amanda reached Steven Jeffrey and his then-girlfriend, now-wife Adriana Chimaras. I’ve never looked back on these messages until today. I thought this one below is particularly hilarious. Just goes...

October 8, 2021

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Something Not Terribly Difficult: A Stroll Up Mt. Emerson

By SpenserAdventure, ClimbingNo Comments

Mountain scrambling is rad. It’s also dangerous. The objective hazards-loose rock, weather–change the risk equation. By “not terribly difficult,” I’m referring to the experience in a very subjective way. Consider yourself disclaimed. I’ve dabbled in some big stuff before, but don’t consider myself an endurance athlete per se. I just think there are some awesome ways to link up features by traveling quickly in the mountains, like the Tuolumne Tenaya-Matthes-Cathedral day. My brother and I have done a couple of big ol’ hikes in Yosemite, one of which I’d be surprised if anyone else has done it (Curry Village to Mt. Hoffman via Cloud’s Rest, then back to Curry Village via Snow Creek). I proudly claim the slowest known time for a single push on Utah’s infamous WURL. And of course, hiking across the Sierras to go bouldering just sounds cool. I can’t say as I’m interested in endurance racing though. It’s more about sharing a special effort in special places with special people, or, if solo, it’s about the solitude. It’s not about slotting into a ranking of people doing the same thing. (Nothing against FKTs and all that jazz. I think it’s an awesome semi-formal competition that rewards creativity as much as athleticism. Part of the fun for me is not taking the time aspect too seriously.) Anyway, my FKT buddy Ryan Tetz (we did a video last year) and I had been talking during quarantine about getting out to do some mountains. For a Bishop resident, Mt….

July 18, 2021

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Now & Then

By VikkiStuff We're Psyched On, Trip JournalOne Comment

I guess it’s pretty telling that the last time I was compelled to add to this blog was when COVID first came around, over a year ago. I wrote, “Most of us don’t know it yet, but society will be dramatically different when the crisis is over. I believe, like Spenser, we can all work together to make it an improved one. To me, this feels like a restart, a second-chance – for each community, and our entire globalized world.” And I guess I went all in. 2 months ago, shortly after moving into our new home in Bishop, I started an online Master’s in Public Health program at UC Berkeley. As Spenser mentioned last week, he’d rather have a father than a house, and I would also rather have a father-in-law. But, I am nonetheless grateful for our newfound stability. In preparation for the workload, I’ve left most of my duties at Joe’s Valley Fest (in very capable hands, I might add). I’m still on the Board, but no longer manage Marketing or Sponsorships, this is done by a new guy who works with experts from indexsy. The RV Project is still a production company, and we are still working on editing the now-infamous-to-all-our-family-and-friends Steve Project. The stability has allowed for progress that needs to be appreciated, even though we habitually feel years behind. Years behind what you might ask? Yea, exactly… Photo and video work is evermore important. COVID has amplified how significant the role of misinformation is…

July 9, 2021

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Something Pretty Hard: Hiking Across the Sierras for Bouldering

By SpenserAdventure, Bouldering, Climbing9 Comments

As seems to be typical, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything here. Frankly, it’s been a while since I wrote anything more consequential than an email. There are reasons I haven’t been writing. Most of them don’t really matter for our purposes here. The main reason is I hadn’t done much that I wanted to write about, and so the things I would write about would be stuff I haven’t done. And as I speed toward the milestone marking the end of my 37th year as a breathing, eating, shitting clump of cells, I find less and less satisfaction in knowing my pockets are full of mumbles (such are promises). So, the big news is, The RV Project is now headquartered in Bishop, CA. From 30’ monstrosity to 10’ wooden box to 12’ metal box to, finally, a 1972 A-frame with 2 bedrooms (go to tv bed store to buy a bed for yourself as if you were at the hotel) and 2 bathrooms. The trailer is now parked in our own driveway which recently was refinished with a driveway sealer, and there’s a garage for our stuff. Home improvement projects outnumber climbing projects 10:1 right now. If you are finding home renovation and repair a nightmare, why not look here to get quality repair services? Overall, we’re incredibly happy with the place, and with the concept of home ownership in general, but it’s bittersweet. We could afford this in part because my dad died, and I’m getting…

June 25, 2021

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Choppers, Choss, and Chaparral

By SpenserMusings, Trip JournalNo Comments

The last time we caught up was before Halloween 2020. Aye, it’s been about 4 months, in fact. Jeez. The RV Project has been regrouping. The past 12 months have been hard and weird for everyone, and the 10 months before that were pretty fucked up for us too. As far as I am aware, I’ve never had a proper concussion, but if I understand the symptoms correctly, then it would be fair to say that we’re recovering from something of a Traumatic Brain Period. We’re a little disoriented, we’re a little more irritable and quick-tempered, and we fatigue easily. Sensitive to bright light, too. After spending the better part of 2 years helping my parents navigate Life With Cancer (and a few months helping my mom embark on Life as a Widow), we now find ourselves in sunny San Diego, La Jolla to be precise. We’ve rented an apartment a few blocks from Vikki’s parents for a few months, so that we can help them navigate Life As Lonely Immigrants. Let me tell you something: Fuck La Jolla. Yeah, it’s expensive, but it’s not that. It’s the way people scoop up their dogs when they see Little Dude, because they don’t actually have dogs, they have Urban Accessories, and accessories don’t need to socialize. It’s the way that store clerks, especially California Bicycles in La Jolla, size up your wallet with a glance and decide if you’re worth a smile or not. It’s the straight-faced existence of businesses like…

February 24, 2021

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Fuck Cancer. I Miss My Dad.

By SpenserMusings11 Comments

My dad never taught me how to ride a bike. At about 12 years old, I learned how to ride a bike that my parents had gotten for my little brother’s 6th birthday. Riding bikes became a big part of my life fairly quickly, and if it weren’t for the fact that climbing has my heart, I’d probably be either a spandex-wearing slick-tire racer, or putting together epic bikepacking journeys. As it is, I recently picked up a more aggressive, full-suspension rig off of Craigslist, and mountain biking is beginning to compete for my time in a very serious way. My dad never taught me how to ride a bike because he didn’t know how to ride a bike. His parents wouldn’t allow him to learn. I ended up teaching him in 2011, because my friends and I had organized a Burning Man camp and invited the family along, and without a bike my dad would’ve been severely limited on the playa. Lately I’ve been lingering on the little idiosyncrasies that made my dad who he was, both as an individual and as a pater familias. I had always enjoyed saying “I taught my dad how to ride a bike,” because it’s a reversal of a common sentiment (ie fathers teaching sons how to do basic childhood things) that feels almost like wordplay. Nowadays, it reminds me of how toxic and oppressive my dad’s mother was, and how unpleasant it was to visit the grandparents, and how little it seemed…

October 25, 2020

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