Your guide to the perilous waters of the internet

10-18-08

Had my first dizzy spell in two weeks yesterday. It happened at 5:30 at my desk in the office on a Friday after a long week. Monday and Tuesday I'd worked until 4:30 teaching web design to junior high students in a new experimental program from 3:30 to 4:30. I climbed Tuesday and Thursday, then worked late Friday evaluating job applicants for a positition at work. (Remind me not to volunteer!) I am also buried under about 150 assignments that need grading because I am doing other things than grading after work. So, there I sat, stressed out and I felt something letting go in my ear. There was a brief sensation of dizzyness, and then the spins came on like gangbusters. As always, the questions was, could I drive through it if it happened there? I got up and walked around while the walls spun in front of my eyes and thought about whether I could have driven. I think I could have, but it would have been challenging. Oddly, I wasn't dizzy, it's just that the room was spinning. I walked back and took a couple dizzy pills and the spinning stopped after about 30 seconds.

I was mildly dizzy for a couple hours afterward, but it was so minor I could safely drive home. I was depressed for a while afterward as it had been so long since an attack that I'd thought I was back in remission. I really shouldn't complain since the attacks are so far apart, oh well. I guess we live with the hand we are dealt.

10-15-08

I am so buried in work I can't see daylight. I foolishly agreed to teach 8 one hour lessons to a junior high school class after my college day ends. What was I thinking?!!! There is no way I can give them anything but a sampling of what we do here in the media program. It's frustrating to have eager young minds and not be able to teach them anything substantial due to the time constraints. Meanwhile, as I grapple with the impossible situation and 16 new students, I've fallen way behind on my grading. I need to stop assigning so much work...talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Climbed Givlers dome with Sue, Mark L. and Marty Saturday in great weather. That crack has got to be one of the best cracks in Leavenworth. The second pitch goes on and on and eats gear, very high quality rock. The hike up is brutal...and I swear I won't do it again...but the beauty of the rock may suck me back up there. I need to remember to take up only a few small camalots for the start, and then a bunch of mid sized stoppers with maybe a red and yellow camalot. It's so easy up there you could safely solo it. Do take up lots of slings as it is a full pitch.

Fletch and I both cruised up meatgrinder. That route is a cakewalk after Yosemite. At the crux, don't fill the handholds up with pro!
Place a yellow or blue camalot, then get a hand jam and a fist jam on the outside of the crack close together. With those two jams, you can cut loose with your feet and, by crunching, get the left foot out on the stem hold on the left wall. At that point, stand up and go for the higher jam and it's much easier after that.

Next we thrashed around on z-crack, which was a hang fest for us both. After that, we cruised up cocaine connection to cocaine. We simule climbed the second pitch up to the cocaine belay. I thought about leading it, but Fletch wanted it badly, and I was nervous about it so I offered it to him as I was at the belay anyway. It was lovely finger jamming in a stellar crack. When it got vertical and the feet disappeared, the jams became sinker knuckle lockers so I think I could have led it. The exit move under the roof was horrible to follow. I had to pull the pro and then follow on 10a holds that were manky side pulls and rounded sandy edges with non-existent feet. It was just one move like that stepping on a 3 mm flake on a vertical wall. There was just enuf' friction to swing over to a good step and then it got easier. Still, scary to follow. Leading would have been safer. I was scared I'd fall down onto a vertical blank wall and have to prusik back up. We raced up r&d after that and finished our day at 4:30. Awesome day!

10-4-08

It's a rainy Saturday morning. Outside it looks like summer is done and gone. In looking back over the last couple weeks since I've written nothing too dramatic stands out, though I have had more flareups of dizzyness. They started back up again on the first two days of school this week. My body clearly does not like the stress of teaching. I even had a semi-drop attack during my second lecture. I was sitting on my chair lecturing when suddenly I lost my balance and lurched forward onto the desk. The room was spinning violently. I told the class that I was having a dizzy spell and paused for about 4 seconds to get my bearings, wondering what would happen next. As the spinning slowed down, I continued my lecture...albeit more slowly than before and the students attention returned to the projector screen and the details of table data cells. It was gone completely in a minute, and I'm sure I could have safely driven through it. I don't lose conciousness, just lose my balance suddenly and have to grab hold of something. It's clearly related to work stress.

I had another one, though much milder on the drive home, though thankfully Sue was driving as she usually does. Prior to that, I'd had such a long streak of health that I thought the steroid shot had begun to work. On the Wednesday following about a week after returning from Yosemite, I drove up to exit 38 and led the second pitch of the chossy 5.9 left of Bliss and felt tentative, though I led it clean. We hiked up higher to interstate park to escape the freeway bee's nest where I led the roofy 10a and did that cleanly for the first time. As I lowered off I commented to Bobby: "That's the climber I thought I'd be after a trip to the Valley!"

On Saturday, Sue and I drove up to Index where I took Sue up to Breakfast of Champion via Taurus (5.7) . Taurus hadn't been climbed in some time and I had to garden my way through a couple ferns and dirt filled cracks before gaining access to the lovely flake crack that passes through the moderate roof. It's quite stiff looking from the bottom, but takes 10mm to .75" cams very nicely and has some nice toe rests, though it can seem sustained if you don't stay calm.

Breakfast of Champions (5.10a) spanked me hard. The bottom is only slightly easier than Libra. There are a couple foot holds, but the crack is so sustained and overhanging that I fell back on my old technique of placing gear, and hanging on it for the first 30 feet. Twelve feet from the belay there is a moderately good hand jam, and they gradually get more secure after that, but the bottom is .75" to 1" (purple, green and red camalots) and feels very insecure in the hand jams. I'd hoped that my experiences on 5.9's in the valley would carry me up the route, but it just wasn't so. I'd like to go up and try it again now that I know what to expect.

I was supposed to go to Tieton with Paul, but he bailed at the last minute when someone called him about buying his pimpmobile. So here I am, sitting around at home on a rainy Saturday. Oh, Clint passed the last hurdle to becoming a registered nurse. He and his girlfriend both passed the state licensing exam after sweating about it for months. Tacoma General Hospital obviously had total confidence he would pass the exam because he has been working there in the nursing residency program for a couple weeks. He is pumped up about passing it and told Sue: "Isn't that cool? I'm a nurse now!"

It's fun seeing him realize the power of hard work paying off. He earned that job the hard way through 4 years of careful and persistent study. I'm proud of the way we raised such a responsible young man. Lisa is in the program now, following in his footsteps. She is saving tons of money by getting his hand-me-down nursing books. Her classmates are giving her grief about all the money she is saving following her brother through the program. All those years I spent working swing and grieving about not being around to raise my kids appear to have been not based in fact. Sue was there for them the whole way, and my presence on the weekends must have been enough.

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