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New & Old Stories from the Road

On Dreams and Family

By Road Trip Beta, Trip Journal5 Comments

This past weekend, Vikki flew to Phoenix for the weekend to help her college friend Anna celebrate graduation from medical school. I drove her to the airport in Salt Lake City, and rather than drive 2.5 hours back to Joe’s Valley, I stayed until she flew back on Monday. During her absence, I was graciously put up by our friends Max and Emmy, whom we met in Las Vegas through Alana, whom we met in Colorado. Max and Emmy are about my age, married, and living in a home they own in Salt Lake City. They have a dog named Sampson and five ducks in the backyard. They have a circle of friends, they have people over for BBQs, they go bouldering on the weekends, and they make long-term plans. They “have their shit together.”  Visiting and talking to people like this used to make me uncomfortable. The twenties has been called The Defining Decade, the period when you’re supposed to achieve all sorts of lifetime milestones like settling into a career, settling into a house, and intentionally building toward some grand future. We are not really doing any of those things. Vikki’s friend is now Dr. Ward. My best childhood friend just earned his Master’s. I ran away from academia 6 years ago. Vikki let her GMAT scores expire. I don’t have to tell you that things are changing from the white-picket-fence dreams of the past, that our generation is more capricious than any previous one. The New York…

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May 10, 2013
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Commitment

By Climbing, Trip Journal2 Comments

Today I fly out to Phoenix to reunite with some of my closest friends from college, all of them my sorority sisters. In college, I was in a sorority. I also used to have long hair. I think that’s it for the confessions for today. Let’s just safely assume that I was a different person before I began climbing. Scratch that, less a different person, more that I had different interests. Our mutual friend, Anna, is graduating from medical school this weekend. Medical School. She’s going to be a doctor. I’m living in a trailer. The only reason that this actually affects me is that Anna and I used to be on the same path. Anna was the first person I met in college. We met in line waiting for our dorm room assignments, ended up living across the hall from each other and even joining the same sorority. We have been good friends since that very first day that we met, when I was wearing a bright pink Juicy Couture jumpsuit. Okay, that was seriously the last confession. You should definitely Google my outfit choice if you’re not sure what I was wearing. Nevermind, I’ll just post a picture below to give you an idea. So where/when did Anna and I diverge?  We can go into all the differences that we have, starting with the fact that I’m a brunette and she’s a blonde, but the only difference that matters is commitment. 9 years ago, Anna committed to becoming…

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May 3, 2013
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Midnight Enlightening

By Bouldering, Climbing2 Comments

If you haven’t heard by now, a friend by the name of James took the drastic step of erasing the lightning bolt on Midnight Lightning. As you can imagine, this caused quite the stir. Facebook comment strings, Reddit threads, and of course the comments on James’ blog post (not to mention on his Facebook wall) indicated, for the most part, that people disagree with what he did. Some were vehement, some were articulate and well-reasoned, and some settled for pithy insults. After a day to marinate on the event and fallout, I’d like to jot down my thoughts before they are lost, swept away by time like the chalk was brushed away from the Columbia Boulder. Upon first reading the post, I felt ambivalent towards the action itself. I did feel admiration for someone who would dare to remove such an icon and then claim responsibility. I felt there must have been some strong justification for it, even if it was not well articulated in the blog post. I also enjoyed the photo of Nik Berry climbing ML, but with the caption “Nik Berry on an unknown problem.” James is a witty writer and I’ve always enjoyed his blog. I want to point out, for those unaware, that James has some cred in the valley. He’s not a nobody, he’s not a misguided gym rat. He earned a Valley nickname and has established big wall routes. I respect the hell out of his climbing life. Perhaps it was this respect…

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May 1, 2013
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Settling Joe’s

By Bouldering, Climbing, Staying Healthy, Stuff We're Psyched On, Trip Journal2 Comments

Spenser and I have been in a back-and-forth injury competition for months. I guess I have the heads up right now, though this is one competition I want both of us to lose. Currently, Spenser is back in action and gaining strength back rapidly. His progress has been raising my spirits and giving me something to look forward to when my pulley injury fully heals. It’s been exactly two weeks since the pop and my finger is feeling much better, although not close to 100% yet. I just received my Acupressure Massage Rings in the mail yesterday, so I’m hoping a daily rub-down with these babies will speed up the healing process. If you are a climber (or someone who works with their hands frequently), these rings are a must! The rings range from giving you gentle to greater pressure, depending on your needs and finger size. I ended up buying a pack of 3 from Amazon since I wasn’t sure what I would prefer (I think I like them all, depending on my mood for massage). From my research, it seems like you can use them as frequently as you would like to increase circulation while breaking up scar tissue. You won’t believe how good your tired fingers will feel… I tried climbing for the first time a couple days ago. Sadly, my finger is not ready to hold onto anything except for a sloper (no jugs, no crimps, no flat edges). I taped my finger for support while…

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April 30, 2013
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Recovery Road is a Long One

By The Interior, Training, Trip JournalOne Comment

Until our last day of climbing in Red Rocks, Las Vegas, I hadn’t bouldered since December 21st. That was the day I somehow fell from the pinch on Saigon Direct, missed the pads, and cracked my heel in two. I wanted to use the forced rest period to address another injury of mine, that being chronic tendonitis of the right elbow, or medial epicondylosis if you’re inclined to use specific terms. Nearly 4 months and hours and hours of physical therapy later and I cannot say that it’s gone. I can say, however, that my condition has improved, and I am now back to trying hard. Except for a couple of days of sport climbing, I didn’t climb in Bishop after the foot injury. Three months later, As a reintegration to movement, Evan Ludmer and I did a little bit of trad climbing in Vegas, ticking the incredible classics Epinephrine and Sour Mash. At this point, my elbow wasn’t really hurting, but still made the crepitus-like noise that it has been making all year. I figured that keeping the climbing to a vertical 5.9/5.10 level would be okay, and it was. I decided to try some easy bouldering. For the purposes of this blog post, I’m using grades to discuss relative strength within one person (me). It is not my intention to use grades as ego markers. They are brought up here only to illustrate a point, and in our idiosyncratic sport, grades are the best approximation we have for a standard rubric. For the first couple…

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April 25, 2013
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Blogpost Challenge: Go Outside

By Bouldering, Climbing, The Interior, Trip JournalNo Comments

As soon as I walked into the Food Ranch this morning, I realized I had made a mistake. Since popping a pulley, I’m keeping my hands off the boulders for the next couple weeks. I tagged along yesterday and snapped some photos while the gang went bouldering, so I thought I would go do some work on the computer today. Now, I’m alone upstairs at the Food Ranch and it’s really depressing. I should be outside. Why am I not outside? I made that mistake again. When given the choice between hanging indoors versus outdoors for the day, I chose indoors. Oof, what a fool. So today, I challenge everyone to learn from my mistake. If you have the chance to be outside, take it. If you don’t think you have the time, make it!! I’ll leave you with the lovely musings of John Pels from Timothy  McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (click on the link to be able to read it a bit easier on the site). Spenser just called and is coming to save me from my Food Ranch prison! Yes, going outside! …Might tweet about it 😉

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April 20, 2013
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In Celebration

By Bouldering, Climbing, The Exterior, Training, Trip Journal4 Comments

Last week, we met Katie and Niko at the local Joe’s Valley watering hole, The Food Ranch. The similarities were pretty conspicuous from the get-go: another couple on a year-long road trip, blogging and videoing their way through the experience. The main difference is that they are 2 months in, while we’re on year 2. We immediately got along great and became fast climbing partners and even (gasp) friends. As the amiable couple left to Moab for the week, Spenser and I mulled over a large realization they had brought to our attention: we’ve been on the road for almost 14 months! This awareness was a bit shocking to both Spenser and I. The year-mark came and went, without the least bit of recognition. It was an organic occurrence for us, it didn’t mean nothing to us, but it didn’t exactly mean anything either. Why didn’t we celebrate? Wait, celebrate what? “Congratulations on living your life,” seems very silly to me. I should mention I’m also not much for celebrating birthdays. Celebrating a year of being on the road is along the same vein. At least now I know why Spenser and I have been having such a difficult time answering people when they keep asking us how much longer we’ll be on the road for. The short answer is, we don’t know. We can’t really think about it. This is our life. We’re happy, much happier than we were in the Bay Area. We still enjoy gong back to…

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April 16, 2013
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The Cat that Broke the Mold

By Bolt Clipping, Bouldering, Climbing, Stuff We're Psyched On, Trip JournalNo Comments

At around midnight last night, Spenser and I pulled into the familiar parking lot of the Food Ranch in Orangeville, Utah. It felt good to be back at Joe’s. I haven’t written in a while, so I guess there’s a lot to catch up on. Since I wrote last, we’ve left Bishop, released a video, blasted through Vegas, and arrived at Joe’s. In combination with work, I’m not surprised I haven’t been amped to sit on the computer and write up a post. I guess I also haven’t felt inspired. And there’s really not point to blogging sans inspiration. Now that we’ve returned to Joe’s, I have my inspiration. When we spent fall here last year, Spenser and I fell head over heels with a neighboring camper’s kitten (who we lovingly called ‘Kitteh’ as we did not approve of the owner’s choice of name). This was the first feline that I’ve ever become affectionate with. Sadly, her life was cut short by her owner’s incapability of taking care of a kitten on a road trip (she was run over by a car). Fast forward to Bishop. When we moved our trailer into the backyard of the Zoo in the middle of February, I was looking forward to more frequent hot showers and an easy place to cook. Never did I imagine I would also meet the cat of my dreams. Let’s just start with my confession: I am no longer adamantly a dog person. I fell in love with a cat. A…

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April 4, 2013
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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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Highballing Success and Failure

By The Interior, Trip Journal13 Comments

The day after the Luminance session, I was standing underneath Grandpa Peabody with a sea of people. Josh, Mark, Max and Steve were all looking into topping out Evilution, myself and a few others were trying to get to the lip, and several people were watching. Elliot, who was with us at Luminance, had been top-roping the old-school Dale Bard solo Transporter Room (5.12ish). Shortly before the sun went down, he stepped up and calmly waltzed up the climb. There is a nice crimp rail at about 20 feet that Elliot got to and stood on, hands-free. Then a couple of dicey slab moves followed. We, the spotters, were somewhat nervous, of course, but he was solid enough to make the entire climb seem almost trivial, as though going through the moves were pure formality. It was inspiring. A few days later, I read confirmation in Wills’ blog that Elliot had succeeded in putting up a new line to the left of Transporter Room, called The Elevator. Elliot told me he was working on yet another new line. I asked if he wanted to get video of his send, and he eagerly agreed to letting me film him. On Friday, December 21st, I jugged up a line and filmed Elliot as he cleaned the holds and worked the moves on toprope. The crux comes at about 20 feet or so, involving some tiny holds and hard-to-see feet that are needed to pull around the bulge and onto a scooped slab. He fell many times attempting the…

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December 31, 2012
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A Visit to an Inhabited Ghost Town

By Trip JournalNo Comments

The view from the cabin at Mono Lake. Needless to say, it was difficult to leave. As Spenser mentioned, we took a much-needed break from climbing for some R&R at a friend’s cabin at Mono Lake. The cabin is on Cottonwood Canyon Drive, the same road that leads to the ghost town of Bodie. Given the opportunity, we could not ignore our curiosity to visit this old town. After a bit of research, we took a break from editing our latest video (finished product below) to look for an adventure. A ghost town always equals adventure, right? It was a sunny yet crisp winter morning, so we bundled up and started the drive down the windy snow-covered road. Abruptly we hit a roadblock indicating we could drive no further. Sadly, the road to Bodie was closed for the winter. We could walk the 10 miles there and back if we wanted, when choosing to travel during winter season, let me recommend you this article about the Best Class B RVs for Winter Traveling. Spenser looked at me and said, “I’m down if you are.” I nodded, and we trundled across some rocks to the left of the roadblock. We saw tire marks where we left ours, so we knew we weren’t the only ones to have ignored the roadblock. Thoughts of us getting stuck in the mud a la Massachusetts popped into my head, but I quickly suppressed them. We were looking for an adventure, weren’t we? As we continued the drive…

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December 26, 2012
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