Stories [Blog] – The RV Project

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 SpenserMusings10 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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A New Video! Norman’s 13

By SpenserAdventure, Climbing, Stuff We're Psyched OnOne Comment

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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Love and Laughter in the Time of Corona

By SpenserEthics, Food for thought, Trip JournalNo Comments

So, I woke up the other morning, had some coffee, sauteed some kale and garlic and eggs, and watched the president address the nation. Could someone please help me figure out why the news media, in this critical time, actually directs questions to Trump? How much time have we wasted digesting his bullshit, filtering the garbage to arrive at the inevitable conclusion, time and again, that he says only what will might improve his standing as compared with 5 seconds ago? The wife just helpfully said that it may help to think of Trump as a jester. He’s a rodeo clown, with full make-up, doing a TeleTubbies’ interpretive dance of what a toddler in a Serious Adult suit might behave like (in another blow to the economy, Trump obviates the existence of satire; many hilarious people are suddenly destitute, trading cheap jokes for smack in back alleys). Nobody knows anything in this crazy, crazy world, but I tell ya what, I know a perfect slab of rock when I see one. All photos were taken before the Inyo County Sherriff put the ol’ kibbosh on the klettergartens. To sum up the day, I finished breakfast and Trump finished talking. The stock market started to glissade again, and had to self-arrest. Then Trump was asked if he thought that we’d be seeing the effects of Covid for 12-18 months, like all of the world’s experts have been suggesting, and he flatly denied that it was possible. He was asked about his…

March 22, 2020

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The Invisible War

By VikkiFood for thought, Staying HealthyOne Comment

Yesterday, the Imperial College released its report on COVID-19. The report reveals massive, frightening predictions – underscoring the importance of the actions we are taking to prevent the anticpiated spread of this new virus. I’ve been spending the last few days going back to my public health roots and digging deep into the novel coronavirus. And I felt compelled to share the points I found salient from the above mentioned report and otherwise. Compelled enough to write my first blog post in…years? Anyway… COVID-19 is not the flu. It is most closely related to SARS. The mortality rate is lower than SARS but it spreads significantly faster. This is why there is such a strong worry that the public will not take it seriously enough. Other names for COVID-19 that you might see: novel coronavirus, coronavirus 2, SARS-CoV-2, HCoV-19. If we treat it like the flu, or go about business as usual: 80% of Americans would get the disease and an estimated 4 million will die. In a span of 3 months. We [the world] have failed at containment so we have two options: mitigation and suppression. Mitigation = isolating all symptomatic cases in the US, quarantining families of those cases, and social distancing for those over 70. Suppression = isolating symptomatic cases and quarantining their family members, social distancing for the whole population plus preventing all public gatherings which includes shutting down the majority of workplaces, bars and dine-in restaurants, closing schools and universities. Mitigation is not enough. We…

March 18, 2020

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In the Time of Corona

By SpenserClimbing2 Comments

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 Pacific Ridge : 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…

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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