Drinking the Koolaid

 

Zi on the first crux of Technorigine (5.12c)

I was lucky to spend yet another fantastic weekend at my favorite local crag World Wall 1.  These kind of weekends just don’t get old no matter how many times we end up in the same positions, playing on the same routes, or making the same dumb jokes and drinking the same overpriced IPA’s.  This shit is life, it’s beautiful, it’s imperfect and hilarious, frustrating and ego-destroying, painful, joyful, introspective and spacey.  It doesn’t really matter how many people are on the ledge or how long I have to wait to try a burn on my project, as long as I’m surrounded by friends who encourage me, make fun of me, promote me, and inspire me, it all feels like a family reunion at the end of the day.

I was having a hard time getting the motor started on Saturday; it probably had something to do with being endlessly frustrated with how many people consistently decide to hike this shitty little trail each and every weekend.  In turn it leaves me circling, like a shark, the upper and lower lots praying to Shiva, Buddha, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Allah, Osiris, Jesus and anyone else who would listen, to get a fucking parking spot before my patience imploded and I was left in smoldering black circle on the side of the road. 

And that wasn’t the end of it either.  The walk up to the crag (sans headphones and music) was blisteringly aggravating as well.  The smell of dog shit wafting up from the sun baked ground, fat day hikers waving trekking poles about as if they were conducting traffic on a busy New York intersection, gobs of giggling teens immersed in the flashing lights of their tiny digital screens held aloft by weak wrists and an even weaker interest in their surroundings, snot gobblins strapped to the backs of sweaty overweight moms shoveling processed sugar at their ankle biting spawn with a look of exhaustion and sexual depravation so intense as to shrivel the girth of a hefty Virginia peach freshly plucked from the tree, and hordes and hordes of gawkers and bystanders and pseudo outdoor enthusiast in new lycra and enough synthetic material to make a new ‘breathable’ yet insulating toga for the Statue of Liberty.  Do these people not know about other trails?  Every weekend they descend upon my little paradise in numbers so great you would think they were giving away bags of money at the summit.  I don’t get it!! 

Warming up in my new shoes.  First pair of Miura's, they are pretty damn awesome.

 

I turned my anger into laziness once at the wall and sat around like a cat that just got out of rehab and was plotting their next move in order to properly re-pay its owners malfeasance.  That is to say, I was tired and not exactly motivated. 

When it all turned around for me was when I one hung Pornstar for the first time this season climbing into the brick sloper and incut crimp on link.  I hung briefly and then fired the crux and it didn’t feel that impossible anymore.  I know one hangs can be misleading but honestly, I know I can do this route now.  I don’t when exactly, but I know it will go and I know it will go this season.  It may take me all summer, hell it may take me well into Fall, but I know it will go and THAT, my friends, is one of the best feelings EVER.  I came down from that particularly good burn and was able to breathe in the feeling of renewed psyche once more.  I have my goal, it’s clear, I know what I need to do in order to reach it and that feeling of intense focus, of clarity and direction, well, it’s extremely freeing.  But I also don’t anticipate every session to be so ground breaking.  I know there will be ups and downs to follow, but I also plan on mixing it up this season.  I don’t intend on beating my head on the same route over and over until I develop some weird Freudian complex and end up fleeing to Tibet to become a monk in the face of failure. 

Sunday morning was like this weird yet amazingly light hearted gift.  As I sat on the deck overlooking not just my back yard but four others backyards as well, the sky framed by several towering pine, cherry, and London plane trees; I was ensconced by what could only be described as my own personal urban aviary.  Black capped chickadees sung and hopped from branch to branch, red breasted finches sat on baking roof tops and pondered their next meal, Rufus hummingbirds whizzed by and stopped in midair before sipping the nectar of the nearby blossoming cherry tree, and all manner of junco’s, house finches, and robins squawked and chirped with social delight as they plopped about the branches of the arboristic amphitheater plucking off fresh blossoms and chasing each other about the matrix of twisted branches and open air. 

I could do nothing but relax and observe, and this was EXACTLY how I wanted to spend my morning. 

 

Paul coming close on Psychosomatic (5.12d)

I got the itch around noon and scooped a good friend of mine up.  We headed to the World Wall with sore tips and muscles but it turned into one of the best sessions I’ve had out there.  Nothing cataclysmically mind-altering happened in terms of sends, but I was able to tap into that special place climbing takes me at times and hang from jugs effortlessly and gaze out over the valley that eventually spills out onto the I-90 corridor lousy with dark green conifers and lime green deciduous spring buds. 

I made another highpoint on Pornstar and somewhat of a breakthrough being able to actually shake out on the brick and the incut before launching into the last crux.  I fell two moves in but pulled back on and clipped chains again.  I think I’m in line for doing this routine quite a bit before anymore ‘progress’ can be made, but it’s a victory nonetheless.  I also cleaned up yet another ‘extension’ in the form of adding 50 feet of climbing on top of the original Californication by doing the Extendorigine extension.  I had actually been trying this line for the last few weeks giving it random warm down burns here and there and agonizingly falling just feet below the anchors.  This time I sacked up and burled through to the top which felt quite good.  It’s a weak FA, but still, it’s kind of a cool line.  Like everything at Little si, it grew on me in the end.  If the rock was slightly better it could be quite a good marathon route.  I have to give a shout out to E for the 45 minute belay.  As a thank you I gave her back to back belays on Californicator, she did it two times in a row without resting, I think her endurance is pretty good (wink wink). 

Now I’m going to take a small hiatus from the Wall to go and try my hand at bouldering.  As soon as I wrote that, horrible images of me falling off an easy top out and breaking my leg in three places flashed through my mind.  Yikes.  Wish me luck.