I must have taken a wrong turn in Albuquerque

So yeah...I'm in Albuquerque, NM for a conference.  The Western Division of the American Fisheries Society.  Exciting note: next year's WDAFS is in SALT LAKE CITY!!!  I think another spring climbing trip is in order.

Funny story: I got the Sunport shuttle from the airport to the Hyatt Regency where the conference is, and where I'm staying.  Five people were going to Hotel Albuquerque (their website has music) and I was going to the Hyatt.  I started talking to the guy next to me...older fellow, alone, white, bald, kinda heavy - but not THAT heavy.  Anyway, somehow I mentioned that I was going to a conference, and he said that he TOO was going to a conference.  I'm like "oh yeah? what conference are you going to?"  He's like "overeater's anonymous...it's a business meeting."  I'm like "...oh cool...so I guess you aren't anonymous anymore are you..."  "well I didn't tell you my last name".  Fortunately he was a jovial fellow.

Anyhoo...makes me wonder if I shouldn't ask people what conference they're going to...but how often is it something awkward like that?  I mean come on?!  He didn't seem too embarrassed.

Tonight I went to the student worker's orientation, then a bunch of Oregon State MS students, an MS student from Barcelona who's now in Peter Moyle's lab in Davis and I went to a pretty cool restaurant called the Flying Star.  I had fried feta on a Greek salad.  FRIED FETA!!  It's like fried fat...but on a salad so you can feel healthy.  I love it.

Albuquerque, or at least this little corner of it is kind of interesting.  It's kinda dirty, there are a lot of homeless people, and a lot of Mexican women wearing really really short shorts (all I really saw was cellulite...I'm a little traumatized), and a lot of Mexican dudes wearing cowboy hats, and driving lowered pickup trucks...'cause you know, the way you buy them off the lot...the clearance is just too high...TOTALLY not practical to have a pickup truck with clearance.  I'm still waiting for the day when I see a lowrider stuck on a speedbump.  And I saw spinners for the first time in a while (click on the link to check out the wheel visualizer - what would YOUR car look like with spinners?).  

Part of this cultural experience could be due to the Cinco De Mayo festivities.  When I checked into my room there was BLARING rancheria music in honor of ...the 5th of May.  I guess they were celebrating early so that they could party on the weekend.  Should be pretty interesting when Tuesday rolls around.  Fiesta!!!

As it turns out, Cinco De Mayo commemorates the Battle of Puebla (1862), when a small group of Mexican soldiers  defeated a much larger French army.  I can't think of a better way to celebrate than to show off your cellulite.  

Tomorrow I'm doing some AV stuff to knock $100 off my registration, and then there's some sort of banquet.  Tuesday I just don't know.  I should probably finish my talk that I'm going to give on Wednesday.  Is it bad that the abstract I submitted isn't really what I'm going to end up talking about?  I mean sort of, but I kinda changed it?  Oh well. Maybe no one reads those abstracts.

I think I'm cruxing

So I think I might be cruxing a little bit.  I haven't been sleeping very well lately, my stomach is in knots.  I know why, but I don't want to write about it on the interwebs.  

You'd think that after almost 30 years of thinking and interacting with people and learning about myself I could make good decisions regarding other people.  But as it turns out, I can't.  I have crappy taste in men.  It's time to face it.  Ok, I'm facing it...facing it...ok faced.  Now can I feel better?

No?

FUUUUCCCKKKKK!!!  

GOD.

One of the things that keeps me from spiraling into a permanent abysmal depression is being excited about stuff.  Being excited about people, doing things, climbing trips.  Sadly, I rarely get excited about work.  Work is just the wallpaper that makes the exciting things stand out.

I'm not excited about anybody or anything right now.  Hence, bummed.  I feel like all I need to put some shit behind me is something new.  Where is it?

Leary interpersonal behavior circle

I like this

from an article in Discover Magazine by Jared Diamond:

Commitment is incessantly urged upon us fin de siècle twentieth- century Americans. Commitment to our spouses, our children, and our careers is held to be virtuous; lack of commitment is a common criticism. Yet commitment should be seen as morally neutral. After all, what one is committed to might be either good or bad; commitment to a destructive relationship, an unsatisfying job, or alcoholism deserves no praise. Often, commitment can mean nothing more than an involvement that has outlived its original justification. All of us have at one time or another felt trapped by such a commitment, longing for a happier, though uncertain, state of existence but fearing the short-term pain required to reach it.Commitment is a big issue not only for us as individuals, but for us as a culture as well. All human societies have many apparently arbitrary practices that persist for centuries or even millennia--writing systems, counting systems, sets of number signs, and calendars, to name just a few examples. At one time there existed alternatives to the system that we eventually adopted. Were some of these alternatives better than others? Did we in fact end up committed to the best ones? Are our alphabets, decimal counting, Arabic numerals, and Gregorian calendar really superior to Chinese logograms, Babylonian base-60 counting, Roman numerals, and the Mayan calendar?

professional development

Haven't felt much like writing since I got back from Indian Creek.  I have a to-do list that's longer than I can ever remember it being, but mostly with little things that need to be done, like getting my car serviced, fixing my camera, etc. Stuff like that.

I hadn't climbed outside either since IC, and had only climbed in the gym 2x.  I got back after a 4 week absence and there were only, I think, 4 new lead routes at Pipeworks.  Demoralizing and depressing.  I really do enjoy climbing in the gym, but the enjoyment is dependent on the number of new routes to try.  I'm not much of a gym projecter...1-3 times max is the limit of my attention span.  So I've been riding my bike, doing spin classes and pilates classes.

Last weekend I went to SF for a day to check out the Cherry Blossom Festival parade.  We biked from the Mission to Japantown and back, and everything went fine up until we were headed to Dolores Park to drink beer in the afternoon.  My front tire got stuck in the transit rails and I went down pretty hard.  Mostly just a few bruises and a couple of scrapes, but I must have whacked my ankle, sprained it or something like that on the way down.  I could barely walk on Monday, so I went in and had an x-ray.  Fortunately, nothing is broken, so naturally I didn't rest it but a day or two.  It kinda still hurts.

This past weekend I went to the Valley to meet up with Joe to do some routes.  It was kind of epic finding a partner, so I was psyched to get in touch with the crusher.  We went to the cookie saturday, TRed Outer Limits to start, and then Joe tried the Cookie Monster to the top...I guess the 13C section is all chossy, dirty, and glued together.  He figured it out on his 2nd go, but painful tips made him less psyched to try to redpoint.  I tried Cookie Monster 2x.  There are two big moves on it.  I fell there both times.  Blah.  I should try to get a little more sport fitness, but I kind of just don't care.  Then Joe ran a lap on Crack a Go Go with his Freerider soulmate, Nick from SLC. Then a TR lap on Red Zinger, which I was hoping to do clean.  I made it thru the tips section and fell in the .5 offset splitter section.  I figured out a way to get around that section with a face foothold and a big move into the pod...hopefully I can remember what the hell I did.  

So beer and pizza and Joe convinced me to do Free Blast Sunday.  Joe wanted to do the friction slabs and make sure they were wired so that he could feel better about Freerider.  I wasn't terribly excited about it...I don't think that Free Blast is a super classic amazing and delightfully enjoyable route, but whatever.  In the end I decided to just pull on gear to do it quickly and support Joe, which actually made it significantly more enjoyable. Sadly, Joe whipped on the first slab pitch and threw an amazingly impressive wobbler, after which I had to make fun of him.  He took it well, but was rightly demoralized.  Guy can crush 5.13 crack onsight, but can't do an .11- valley friction slab.  I empathize, but it is kinda amusing.

Fernando and this other dude were behind us, which was kind of cool. I hadn't seen Fernando in a while, and he's always pretty psyched.  At the base they were talking about doing the Salathe in a push...but they were moving pretty slowly.  Joe and I were definitely moving more quickly.  We said they could pass, but they never really caught up.  Oh well...it was cool to chat with Fernando at a couple of the belays.

So yeah, I don't really like the Free blast that much.  Perhaps if I could waltz up a friction slab, I might enjoy it a bit more.  But it's always fucking windy, it's typically a cluster fuck with other parties, 200 feet of friction slab wears me down mentally, and my feet are always killing me by the end.  I think I prefer rock climbs with holds on them, or if there is going to be a friction slab, maybe something easier and single pitch, or better yet a v0 slab boulder problem.  Mind you, a DO-ABLE v0 boulder problem and not a sandbagged one.

Oh yeah - and the half dollar pitch really sucks.  That pitch is so lame.  I freed it following with a pack on and a shit load of gear, which I guess was productive.  But it still sucks, and I was NOT in my happy place when I was in that goddammed chimney.

In addition, words of advice: if you book a site in the pines and don't show up the first night, call or they will sell your site for the second night, despite taking your money.  Fortunately this nice group of RVers let me pull into their site and sleep in my car.  So in the end it worked out.  I just felt bad because I told Lyn and company that they could crash in my site.  oops.

Today I'm pretty sore, despite feeling good after we got down.  I think that if I'm really dehydrated throughout a day of climbing I end up a lot more sore than I would be if I had been drinking a lot of water.

And now I'm in my cubicle, fantasizing about gym climbing and other such low-commitment endeavors.  I think I might be over trad climbing for a little while.  It kinda hurts.  

I'm working on my "professional development", something my advisor informed me I need to do.  This coming Sunday I'm flying to Albuquerque for a conference (Western Division of the American Fisheries Society) for which I earned a travel grant of $600.  I'm going to be presenting some trout work, so it's gotten my ass in gear to write this manuscript as well.  It's definitely coming along, which makes me happy.

Frustration

I'm starting to get very frustrated at the difficulty in finding partners to go to Yosemite.  After a dream trip to Indian Creek where finding partners is never a problem, it sucks.

What the hell?  Why is it that hard?  When people go to Yosemite, unless they are bouldering, they usually have a plan.  People want to get shit done.  This is why sport climbing and climbing at Indian Creek are so amazing.  There is something for everyone at every wall.  

I would boulder, except that I sprained my ankle in a bike accident and don't want to land on pads.  I think routes would be ok.

And continuing on my rant: It's freakin' impossible to find people to train on routes with at Pipeworks.  Even if I could find someone, they haven't set any new routes in over a month.  I was gone for 4 weeks, came back to the gym and there were only 3-4 new lead routes.  And they're by Peter, who typically sets crap.  It's frustrating being back.

9 things rock climbing has taught me about life

This video is completely amazing.  Thanks Townsend for finding it!