Summer Stole My Apple Pie

Summer is creeping in. 

The usual shenanigans were seen on the ledge this weekend, and by usual I mean sadly that chuffers, gumbies, and just straight up idiots are starting to invade MY space.  I think my favorite gumbie sighting was the guy on the ledge who brought a stove and entire hot dog set up.  Its 78 degrees out and this guy has a propane stove out and is roasting hot dogs.  I don’t know whether that’s awesome or horrifically unacceptable.  But at least Forest got a dog and it must have been a good one because he was able to send his project Californicator after suffering from a severely bruised/broken foot for the last five weeks.  I feel like people have been getting hurt, taking time off, and then coming back stronger than they ever have; it’s fucking awesome!  Congratulations to Forest, it was good to see him climbing strong after his foot injury, he’s definitely knocking on the 5.13a door.

Saturday was probably the last of the truly good temperature days; but I’m sure I’ll eat those words later on in the summer when a freak cold front caused by global climate change and denied by the idiot party sweeps through like a twirling ballerina and blesses us with unusually good sending temps.  I also felt stronger than I usually do and actually made some progress on the 5.13c front where the war has gone from stagnant to slightly raging yet again.  After a wonderful warm up on Techno I threw the pistol at the sheepherders feet and decided to try on my big boy pants.  You know that feeling you get when you start to feel really lonely and uncontrollably horny and you just have to call that old girlfriend up to see if she’s into maybe taking a ride on that roller coaster you call yourself?  Well, my relationship with Flatliner is akin to that kind of relationship.  You broke up for good reasons, time passes, you forget those reasons and then all of a sudden you find yourself four beers deep in a dank juicepig cave and in the middle of a sexting romp that would make Miley Cyrus blush.  I hadn’t been on the rig in a month or so but the lines, the contours, the feeling of the holds, ahhhh, it all came back.  I climbed strong but not efficiently, and managed to press into the gaston and actually bring my hand up statically to the credit card but kept hitting it low.  FUCK!  I even had a super close one hang attempt where I fell going for the credit card, hung for a bit and then stuck the move!!!  But then fell going to the fucking undercling!!  GAH!  I have to see the forest for the trees though and realize that this is H-U-G-E progress for me.  One month at a time, one inch at a time, one move at a time.  It will eventually come to fruition. 

I put Flatliner back in its box for the day and decided to go after a new link up I’m calling Power Bottom, which is essentially Propaganda into the Bust The Rhythm extension. Now, it’s been close to eight years since I’ve been on Bust The Rhythm which just coincidentally happens to be the very first 5.12c I have ever done so needless to say my beta was ‘rusty’?  Or nonexistent, one of those will do.  But it’s a stemming corner, how hard could it be???  Well, fuck me right?  It was harder than I remember and after pulling the ‘crux’ I fell after the holds dried up like California and my feet danced on nothing smears until Fred Astaire was doing 720’s in his grave.  GAH!  AGAIN!  As frustrating as that was, it was still really fun to get on a ‘new’ route, the stemming corner is actually quite challenging and a good lesson in technical smearing and trust.  I tried it again the following day with the same result, it feels much harder in the sweaty greenhouse heat of pre-teen summer angst.

I ended my day with a warm down on Californicator even though I was actually going for Californication, I was pumped out of my mind and my skin hurt.  I’m going to blame it on the warmth, ha!  Take that Sun! 

Sunday was a mess of sending, wacky gumbie sightings, punting, and yet still very good times.  Jimmy finally sent Vanilla Ice (hooray!) and appears to be DONE with little si.  Kevin materialized out of the wood work after his little adventure at World Wall 2 with Erich and looked completely worked and soon after he arrived, he left.  I don’t blame him either, the gumbie parade started around 3 with people kneeling on the abo ledge to clip draws, roasting hot dogs (as I mentioned before), yelling things like ‘You need to teach me how to back clip someday!!!’ while back clipping the entire way up Reptiles…ugh, these things just make me sad inside and I really wish they would take this madness back to the gym where it belongs. 

I felt pretty low energy the entire day, and didn’t warm up well nor did I feel like giving anything 100% of my effort.  I sweated off Power Bottom and belayed Forest on his send of Californicator.  Some other good friends showed up and it was a good balance between super crushers, good people, and the whacky gumbie parade.  I’m sure things will calm down but for now I’m retreating to the solace of Equinox in order to close out some unfinished biz.  I guess I won’t see world Wall for a couple of weeks but I’m psyched to get on some new routes, revisit old projects, and head to Squamish for a weekend or two.  Let’s go Summer!