M.I.A.'s Best Story Ever

she's so cute!

Yosemite trip report

Whew!  So I haven't been blogging about my own climbing lately, mostly because I've been spending more time musing about climbers and climbing in general.  My climbing hardly seems that important.  But rest assured I have been climbing a ton and enjoying the fall season.

This past weekend I started by climbing at Jailhouse on Friday with Dr. Rob.  I hiked the warm-up (always a good sign), got on Whipping Boy, which I hadn't been on since it was trundled and drilled, went up Soap and then Common Thug.  It was fun to get on a bunch of different routes.  I think I'm more psyched on doing actual rock climbing and laps than I am on projecting stuff right now.  The thought of long-term projecting makes me want to curl up in a ball and die.  

After I left Jailhouse I drove up to Yosemite and was shocked by how cold it was.  Not only that, but as I was driving through the valley, it started snowing!  I looked up through my windshield in astonishment and felt a huge grin spread across my face as the swirling flakes engulfed all of the classic valley landmarks.  I can't even remember the last time I saw snow...it's been a while.

I hung out in the Caf and visited with a friend and sipped some hot chocolate...it was nice.  The I headed over the the Pines to meet up with Drew and Alice to talk about the next day.  Which was going to be cold.  The original plan was to do the Rostrum, but the forecast was for arctic temps and possible snow, so we decided on the Cookie.  

On Saturday we headed to the Cookie and warmed up on Outer Limits, then I belayed Drew on Crack a Go Go, which I'd toproped before and remembered as being hard.  Drew got pretty worked on it, but made it to the top so I could toprope it (what a gentleman).  I was psyched to TR it clean!  I ended up just using the right crack and making moves between finger locks.  It was snowing again by the time I was near the top, so we went back down to the car to make sure Alice was still alive after a hypothermia scare, and then decided to do Catchy and Catchy Corner.  Again, I took the easier lead (Catchy) and made Drew lead Catchy Corner.  I'd tried to lead Catchy Corner before, but ran out of gear and ended up lowering down to get more.  I was curious to toprope it to see how it felt now.  It felt hard.  It made me not feel so bad about getting gripped on it before.  Again, I was psyched Drew put a rope on it so I could TR it clean.  HA!

Sunday I met up with Dan and we had Plan A and Plan B.  As we were 3rd (me) and 4th (Dan) day on, we decided to do Astroman but potentially just do the boy.  We woke up early and it was COLD.  My car thermometer read 29 degrees in the Caf parking lot around 7:15.  But we figured that it would be nice on A-man in the sun, so headed up to the base.  Sure enough, it was gorgeous over there, with no wind and crispy temps in the sun.  We linked 1 and 2, 3 and 4 (the easier boulder problem allowed this with minimal drag), and 5 and 6.  By the time we got to the top of 6, the temps were arctic and the shade had hit the wall, so we decided to bail.  This went fine until Dan rapped the Enduro Corner and forgot to hang on to the other line because he was so excited about single-line rapping.  I looked up at him and said "DAN!  WE NEED THE PURPLE LINE!"  To which he responded "OH SHIT".  I always rap with a gri gri so I always single-line rap, but Dan had a reverso,  so I just assumed that he would double line rap and hang on to the purple (tag) line.  

So Dan is halfway up the Enduro Corner, and the tagline is fairly far left, a bit tangled and over the edge of the corner.  Crap.  By this time it's shady, I'm stuck on the ledge below the boulder problem sitting next to someone's dried-up shit, and I'm FREEZING.  Dan says, "I might have to climb it again..." and I said "yeah but we have no lead line!"  

Dan goes in direct so that I can give him some cams to make it back up to the anchor, which is probably about 35 meters away by that point.  So Dan starts futzing around with the reverso and I yell up "why don't I give you my gri gri?"  So I send up the gri gri.  Fortunately however, after about 20 minutes of struggling, the capricious Gods smile on us and blow the purple rope right enough so that Dan can grab it.  Then Dan starts futzing around a bit more and I yell up "dude! what are you doing?"  He says "I'm going back on the reverso cause I'm afraid of losing the tagline"  I respond "DUDE!  WHY?  Stay on the gri gri, drop the rest of the tagline and I'll fix it to the anchor.  I WANT TO GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"  He listens and pretty soon Dan and I are at the anchor, and then on the ground.  Yay!

To the caf, where I eat a burger and fries, and then home to Davis.  So that is the Yosemite trip report for this weekend.

Ode to the tapeworm

My friend Vicken just G-chatted me;  he was super excited about his butt.  You see, Vicken has a tapeworm.  Actually, now he has half of a tapeworm, which may or may not be more exciting than having a whole tapeworm.

So I did a little bit of internet research on tapeworms and found The Tapeworm Page.  It has some pretty exciting animations and cartoons of tapeworms, guts and dog anuses.  Check it out.

Vicken thinks that he may have gotten the tapeworm over the summer eating an Armenian dish that is "basically raw meat", but he also grew up in the middle east and has visited African countries such as Egypt.  So who knows.  He doesn't know how long he's had it, and never knew until a violent bout of diarrhea caused the worm to emerge from his...ahem.  So naturally he freaked out, then he pulled about 2-3 feet out ("if that's only half of it, it's taller than me!!" he says) and put it in a container to take to Cowell Student Health.  Hopefully the rest of it comes out soon Vicken.  My thoughts are with you buddy.

Sam Harris on Sarah Palin

Check out this article that Sam Harris wrote for Newsweek.  It's called: When atheists attack: A noted Provocateur rips Sarah Palin - and defends elitism.

Pruning the tree

Someone mentioned to me that they had "pruned a dead branch off of their tree" and was referring to a person that they didn't want to see or talk to anymore.  I thought this was an amazing analogy.  

So I have decided to prune a few branches off of my tree.  I think it has finally occurred to me after this year that I have spent a lot of time climbing with people who suck, just because I want to go rock climbing.  On the flip side, I have climbed with a lot of awesome people.  So I want to put it out there that I love most of the people I climb with.  There have simply been a few notable exceptions.

I think that I am still willing to climb with people who aren't my best friends, but I'm trimming out the folks who are disrespectful to women, are flakes, and people who are unmotivated or negative.  Life is way too short.

Speaking of being disrespectful to women, I've noticed recently that some career climbers climb and relate to women with the same paradigm.  Women are like routes, you should attempt to do as many as possible.  "It would be proud to hook up with so-and-so".  Proud like doing a hard route.  It's kind of fucked, and I'm going to be more aware of it in the future.  

Alright, that's my rant for now.  

Fall is here!

I am so happy that the Fall season is here.  Hanging out in Yosemite on Monday, the air and the sun felt so good on my skin.  It made me catch my breath.  Plus the sound of the breeze drifting through the dying leaves on the trees brings me back to growing up on the East coast.  Not to mention the fact that mushroom season is coming up!  I feel the blood crackling in my veins.  I'm excited to take advantage of the shorter days, the friction and the physical relief of the crispy temperatures.

I hope to hang out in Yosemite until it gets too wet or too cold to climb.  The tough part is finding partners.  I'm taking advantage of the flexibility of my grad school schedule, and it is hard to find people whose schedule matches up with mine.  I don't mind hanging out by myself and scrambling for partners every weekend (I feel so lucky to be climbing at all!), but I do miss having a solid partner with similar goals.  

By the way, check out John's photos on Alpinist.  Here and here.  They are beautiful!  Plus, the second photo captures Justin in a rare moment clipping bolts.  Very uncharacteristic!

New York Times does Chongo

This is an amazing article by the New York Times on Chongo.  For those of us in the Sacramento area, we've been seeing Chongo in our local rock gym, Sacramento Pipeworks for a while now.  However I met Chongo when I first started rock climbing and was taking bouldering trips to Yosemite and staying in Camp 4.  This is where Chongo used to live.

Enjoy!