First off, I take some time to go climbing. Since the outdoor season is in something of a hiatus (just got five fresh inches of snow last night), I'm patiently pulling plastic, trying to get strong and stay motivated until I can start on real rock again. At this point it's almost more about the good company than training hard. And by a stroke of good fortune, there are plenty of good people to run into down at the Wall:
There's also a competition every month or two, which is a great oppurtunity to climb brand new problems, meet up with all the climbers, engage in some friendly rivalry and maybe win some stuff. I missed the start of the comp this Friday, so I didn't place, but I did win a shiny poster in the raffle and got to climb with cool people. Check out the whole album Dan shot -- note the "pure dumb strength" vs "actual climbing skill" difference in approaches -- and/or these highlights:
I tried out some circus tricks, as well:
Finally, in up-and-coming sports news, I'm going to Disneyland! Or rather the crack climber's equivalent -- Indian Creek. I never made it down there during the Fall, much to my dismay, but I finally found a partner in crime who is just as enthusiastic about it as I am. It's funny how things work out sometimes. I had all but given up on the idea -- none of my regular partners seemed interested in going -- when I ran into Anneka just before the UW Cowboy Chase (see below). After cracking some jokes about needing EMT attention after the race -- sadly prescient, see below again -- I happened to mention that the Creek loomed large in my mind. It took her all of half a second to get really psyched about the idea of going there, and hey presto, new climbing partner and Spring Break trip arranged! As you can see, we're pretty stoked already, just looking at the road map:
If you're somewhere in the West and you're interested in going, shoot me an e-mail or something. More company would be great, and it'd mean lower gas costs and more cams for all. Not to mention more fun around the camp fire!
So, uh, yeah, that ski race. With Joe enthusiastically cheering me on (and as usual painting reality slightly pinker than it really is), I signed up for this year's Cowboy Chase. Having skied classic before, and being a fair skater on other types of foot-mounted forms of transportation, I was thinking "Ah, how bad can it be?". Pretty fucking bad, as it turns out. Although I looked fabulous in the Spandex outfit, that didn't matter much after the first few kilometers. Within 20 minutes or so people started lapping me so often that I spent more times off the tracks than in them, and after completing lap 1 (of 3!) I was seriously contemplating unconciousness as a good solution to my problems. But I sucked it up and inefficiently carried on. Big props go out to everyone in the crowd, who indisciminantly cheered me on despite the fact that I couldn't actually ski. Wouldn't have made it through without you, guys: thanks! When I finally crossed the finish line, the boys and girls in EMT suits were thinking I was due for 220 volts straight to the heart -- but I stood up in time to avoid that. After 15 km (about 1 h 45 min) of clawing my way across the snow on skis that seemed waxed with either teflon or superglue, depending on the slope, I was ready to acknowledge Nordic skiing as the most exhausting sport in the world. It certainly whopped me good.
But being an idiot, I decided to keep on keepin' on and showed up for the classic race the day after. It turned out to be way mellower, though, clocking in at 7.5 km. And besides, classic skiing I can kinda do. I finished third from the bottom (not last, yay me!) but felt pretty good about finishing at all. Full of piss and vinegar I proceeded to the lab for a ten hour work day... and promptly ended up in the sick bed for my efforts. Moral of the story: don't start in sports you don't know jack about by competing in back-to-back races.
("Where are the pictures?", you ask. I honestly don't know. People were snapping shots every so often -- there should be some Gunde Svan-quality portraits of me -- but I have no idea where they went. I'm as bummed out as you are...)
And finally, I've also done some Honest-To-God Manual Labor. Since my regular job consists mainly of thinking, reading, thinking some more, programming, debugging, cursing loudly, debugging again, feeling relived, printing the graphs and showing them to the PI, I rarely get any sort of physical indication that I've done anything. If my Mac in the lab blew up tomorrow it'd take every shred of my work with it. So to unwind I often go for something that takes a lot of bicep grease and produces very tangible results. Back home I used to make like a lumberjack and chop up a few hundred pounds of firewood every so often. Wyoming doesn't have any trees, so that won't work here. Instead, I fixed up my bike and unclogged a stopped-up drain. Not only did the latter involve a lot of yanking, whacking, pulling and squishing, but it also produced a very noticable benefit: I can pour water down the drain now. Of course, the incredibly nasty contents of the stoppage also presented visual (and olfactory!) confirmation that I'd accomplished something, but I could've done without that. Nevertheless, most satisfying. Maybe I should take up plumbing for shits and giggles? Can't pay much worse than my current gig does...
(P.S: Whoops, seems Kodak Gallery doesn't like me leeching their bandwith through Blogspot. Bummer. Try a link straight to the album, which might still require you to register. The pertinent photos are (in order of appearance) #'s 34, 38, 92 and 94. Too bad it ain't Flickr)
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