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11-25-08

The ax is falling at work. I guess Rossi was right when he said that there is going to be a huge state budget shortfall. The latest letter from our esteemed college president said that we have to make a total of about 5 percent cuts in our budget in the next couple months, with up to a 30 percent cut in the near future. He has already laid off about 11 people, one in our little department of 6 people and 1 in the college tv station, who have an office next door to mine.

But before I start bemoaning the oncoming worst depression in 80 years, let me first talk about my fabulous weekend of climbing. Christine and I went to Vantage again, second weekend in a row. Both of our spouses were getting irritated with us for climbing so much. I hadn't even mentioned it to Sue until Friday because I was sure she would be pissed and wanted to delay the inevitable explosion.

Christine texted me Friday night asking me how Sue had taken the news that I was leaving to go climbing again. When I told Sue, and then texted Chris back about the minor explosion, Chris called me and said we should cancel because her husband was also not happy. The trip hung in the balance for a while as we negotiated with our angry spouses for just one more trip.

Then, on the way over Saturday morning I accidentally insulted the female species again by saying that all of the good women climbers I'd ever met had a male climber in their backgrounds. I was speaking generally of people like Lynn Hill, who I met at Smith Rocks back in 1979, and a few other women over the years. It wasn't meant to be an insult to women in general, just a simple observation of my experiences. Still, Chris, with her ultra sensitive bullshit antenae picked up on my unintented insult to womenkind and began heatedly ripping my logic apart.

"So, let me get this straight. You're saying that women are too weak to become strong climbers without men, right?"

"No, no no", I said, "I'm just saying that of the women climbers I've met, who were really good, once I get to talking with them, there is always a couple men in their past with whom they learned to climb. The only time I met a woman who learned to climb with women, she was a lesbian, and even she had climbed with a lot of men."

Well, that just made Christine even angrier and she proceeded to shred all my poorly configured logic into little strips of empty words while the lovely desert morning sped by our car windows. I eventually gave up on my argument as I always do with Christine and sat there quietly as she fumed. She is always right, and I am always wrong. Sigh...

I try to keep my mouth shut most of the time because it just gets me in trouble. Anyway, when we got to the cliff she was still so pissed off that it was a very quite pair of climbers who stepped out of the car in the frigid 45 degree morning air in Vantage. Finally she turned to me and said,

"You have to take it back."

" Take what back?" I said.

"What you said about women climbers."

"Oh, are you still thinking about that?"

"Yes, I don't think I can climb with you anymore if you really feel like that. You are negating everything women have fought for over the last hundred years".

I'm thinking to myself...we just drove 3 hours to get here. My firebrand partner is ready to drive back home because she thinks I am a sexist pig, which, sadly, I probably am.

"Ok, Ok, I apologize. You are right, I am wrong...as usual."

"Ok, lets go climbing," she said with a relieved smile. We warmed up quickly hiking up the steep trail and by the time we got to the cliff a mile away, we were stripping down to our long john tops. We warmed up on the aptly named "seven virgins and a mule" 5.7 route which Christine led. Talk about a climbing area with sexist route names. Vantage has got to have the worst names of any area anywhere.

After that, we both led Air Guitar again and a couple others. Christine was leading much stronger this last weekend. Instead of hanging on the first 5 pieces, she only hung twice. When we got to George and Martha, which gave her a lot of grief last time, she didn't hang at all. Well, she did take a short fall, but never simply gave up and hung to rest. The fall was honest, and she jumped right back on and sent it cleanly. It was like night and day, her two leads over the two weekends. She is getting so strong!

I felt very tentative as I roped up for George and Martha. I had no idea how well I would climb it. I'd climbed Air Guitar cleanly the day before, but it wasn't a pretty ascent. I'd backed off one move so quickly Christine almost gave me tension thinking I'd fallen, but no, I'd just stepped down quickly in terror at the difficulty of the move. So it wasn't a real smooth, "float like a butterfly" kinf of ascent.

Once I started up George & Martha, I was surprised to feel myself entering that rarest of climbing states: "the zone". I powered through the first 40 feet with hardly any difficulty at all. The awkward jams I remembered from the week before seemed much more secure. The feet are so good there it's like a slender ladder. If you can keep moving up and not hang around on the awkward hands you soon find yourself in the solid hand jams that last for the rest of the climb.

The last move at the top is difficult because the crack opens up to 5 inches and overhangs slightly so the foot jams are below a gentle bulge. I reached in with my left hand for the layback edge and did a short, two move layback, at which point I could move my feet up and it was all over. I only backed off once, getting it on the second try. It was a clean send, no hangs. I felt very proud as I lowered off, that is a hard 10a!

We also led "Party in your pants", "Throbbing Gristle" and a couple others I've forgotten. Throbbling Gristle is a very nice bolted face climb. It's 13 clips of 5.9 edges. The feet are huge and everywhere. Occasionally the hands go down to one quarter inch edges, but they are very sharp, positive edges and my gym trained fingers gripped them like steel hooks.

The sunset was so beautiful that night as we led our last climbs. I wished that Sue could have been there to enjoy it. I know she would have loved the stark, lonely desert beauty. I get so much joy out of climbing, and it saddens me that it causes my family pain when I go out and pursue the sport that gives me so much in return. When we got back to camp we set up our tents and drove into town to get some wood, and I bought a couple wine coolers.

The fire made the frigid air night much more tolerable and we sat around the fire as climbers do everywhere, marveling at the milky way and solving all the worlds problems. When it burnt down to embers, I crawled into my bivy sack and fell asleep staring up at the infinite universe rotating slowly above me. God, I love sleeping under the stars!

So I was thinking about what I could do for a living if and or when I get laid off. Hopefully it won't happen, but it is interesting to think about my options. I fell into this teaching job like a leaf, washing up on the bank of a river after a flood. I had no intention of becoming a teacher, but it turns out I'm reasonably good at it. I've gotten excellent job reviews from all of my deans. Just today I spent a full hour helping get a student back on track after he had become hopelessly confused. When we finished fixing his website, he asked me to take a look at his laptop as it wouldn't display the webpages he was building. To fix it I had to install firefox as ie wouldn't open html pages on the hard drive. When I got it working he was so relieved he stuck out his hand and I shook it warmly. It reminded me of a couple guys working on cars together. We fixed it!

So, If I get laid off, what do I do? I could paint, I could study php, or flash, or post my illustrations on icdsoft.com. I could master the difference between position: relative and absolute...always wanted to figure that one out. I could sell my prints online, I could build a real ecommerce site, I could go back to printing...I could look on craiglist.

 

11-21-08

Lot of time has gone by since I last wrote. Well at least I have lots to write down. A week ago I went to Vantage with Christine, Kirsten (pronounced Key air sten) and Eric. I jumped on Air Guitar first thing in the morning after Chris climbed it and did it clean. I also climbed tangled up in blue and george & martha, all clean. Oh, and ride em cowboy as well, but that was a sport route, so it was a lot less work. George and Martha was the hardest at sustained 10a. The lower section is a bit of off hands for 30 feet so you just have to keep moving as the pro is great. The next 50 feet is solid hand jamming, no problem. The last 10 feet is offwidth and that is the crux. There is a bulge at your waist, and a 6 inch crack above, with nothing to grab but a hidden flake way back in the left side. The bulge makes it very hard to move up as the foot jams are overhung. The pro is right there at chest level so it's quite safe.

I didn't sleep well both night and had a long moderate dizzy spell when I got home, actually barfed finally, though I wasn't spinning...just a really stuffed full stomach or something, weird. Tuesday posted my latest website live. My client neglected to tell me that his domain name was hosted on one server, but his email and non-existent website was hosted on another. When I went up to check it out, he only gave me paperwork and logins stuff for the server who owned his name. I saw he owned two names there, and neither were active. I chose to make one active, it threw an error about dns switching which didn't make sense. Instead of stopping and calling customer service to ask how to proceed, I pressed the button and shut down the email service for an entire building full of lawyers.

They didn't even realize I was the culprit for 3 days at which point I got a frantic phone call from my client. Yikes! I spent a couple hours on the phone with some geeks at both companies before figuring out how to switch the name servers back and get his emails working again. It was partly his fault for keeping me in the dark about the hidden company handling his site and email, and partly my fault for not recognizing a minefield when I stepped on a bomb. I felt so bad I offered to not charge him for the last 9 hours of work on his site. That will cost me dearly, but it was the least I could do. That freaked me out so bad my menieres acted up for a few hours. It is so predictable how it acts up when I am under stress. I didn't barf, just got unsteady for a while. I climbed through it at the gym no problems, but it was not fun.

11-2-08

A week ago I had a great trip to Leavenworth with Christine. We drove over Saturday morning because she had been missing her husband, who works swing. I also enjoyed an extra night with Sue. We got there Saturday morning and hiked up to loggers ledge on Castle where we roped up for Cat Burglar. I led the boulder move off the ledge with only a few false starts. It's quite safe as you can top rope the move up onto the ramp. Their were wasps flying around the cracks, and I had to shoo them out before I could place my gear. The route is not climbed much because of the hard start so I had to do a bit of gardening in places, but overall it is still the sweet climb I first met back in 1980.

Chris led the second pitch very boldly, placing only one small wire at the crux and waltzing through the crux without difficulty. Once we came down and ate lunch, I led damnation crack 5.9. I'd looked at it a couple month before (pre Yosemite) and even bouldered the first few jams but decided it was desperate and too hard. Now that I'm warmed up from the valley, it looked reasonable, though the layback 8 feet up looked a bit desperate.

I jammed it straight on, placing a blue 3 camalot, and then the 4. When the crack got bigger than fist, I forgot to use handstacks and simply continued thrashing upward, sliding the 4 up with me. When the crack got bigger than the 4, I used a stem hold to brace my right foot on and dug out my big bro. Note to self: put the rack on my right side for Damnation Crack! The crack was too big for the cam, but too small for the big bro. I managed to just barely secure the camalot, and continued up in a very precarious movement.

Finally I reached a side crack on the left and slammed in a blue 3 camalot. It's a cruise up to the mid climb ledge from there and I rested a bit. I climbed up the body chimney from there for 10 feet before placing the bigbro, which was almost maxed out, though it seemed tight. Above that all the pro disappeared until I got to a big flake on the river side of the chimney. There was a two to three mm crack there that accepted several tiny small wired stoppers, though I wished I'd had a knifeblade piton to hand place in the slot...maybe even tap in with a hex. The chimney climbing was slick and precarious, and I was not at all sure I wouldn't take a gear ripping fall. A ten inch big bro would be very nice there.

It turned out that I just needed to tune up my chimney technique as I didn't slip and continued slowly up, eventually reaching some nice horizontal cracks that took good gear. At the top it eases off to simple jamming and I was a very happy camper when I pulled over the top of Jello Tower.

Sunday Christine took me up to Bale Kramer on the icicle. The first pitch had a tricky boulder move that took twenty minutes to figure out. I ended up laybacking off to the right, then swinging into the bolt. It zigzags up and left to a two bolt belay backed up with two big cams. Christine led the next bolted 10a pitch and did it very smoothly. Following with the rack, I was quite gripped. I need to practice my sport climbing and friction techniques. I've let them atrophy while I focused on crack skills.

The next pitch was the crux 10b crack section. It is only 60 feet, but it has a 20 foot section with no rests, and for 8 of those feet, it narrows down to one marginal hand jam, and one slightly out of reach finger lock, which I filled with gear. After hanging for a while to rest, I moved the cam up so there was room for both the cam AND my fingers, and after that it was a simple (if 10b can be simple?) reach up to the bomber jam above the thin section. I climbed the rest cleanly and felt good about onsighting a 10b with just one hang.

Christine was also feeling the Yosemite magic so I rapped down, pulling all the gear so she could lead it. She hung about 4 times, but seemed to enjoy herself and I was happy to see her pull it off. She has come so far this year having started in the spring as a sport climber only. Now, to see her tackle a 10b crack climb that scares me...wow!

Lisa is busy with nursing school and only works one day a week. Clint has passed all the tests for nursing and is a full time nurse at Tacoma General. He has stopped coming to the house and I've not seen him for about a month. I hope to talk him into climbing at the gym soon. I have an enthusiastic group of graphics and web students this quarter. They seem to genuinely enjoy learning how to build websites. I have 21 hours into a freelance project that is beginning to look pretty good.

 

 

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