Webster Art

Spring 2025 Indian Creek

Health Scare or if you prefer: (skip to climbing)

Before I left town I fell off my 1972 ten speed twice in 3 days. Once I was zig zagging up a steep hill. My tire slipped and down I went. Another time I was pressing a crosswalk button. Both times I’d expected my foot to come out of the toeclip and it didn’t. I need to go back to flat pedals since I never pull up anymore. Or remake my bike shoes. I need to have the shoe metal embedded, instead of protruding.

Unbeknownst to me, I bruised the inside of my lower leg in the calf muscle, up against the bone. I swelled up a third bigger than normal. (took a month to heal) Clint said I should get it looked at. “You could get a clot that could travel to your lungs and kill you.”

I went to Urgent Care. They did an Ultrasound and said the baby looked fine but they were still looking at the X-ray. Finally the doctor came in and asked: “Have you ever had cancer?” When I said no he said he’d seen something that looked like evidence of cancer in the bone and that I needed to have it looked at further.

“It might be cancer, or it might not. I don’t have enough information since I can only see the one leg x-ray.”

I was supposed to leave on this climbing trip on the eighth but they were able to schedule an MRI on the ninth. I got the MRI on my still swollen (hematoma) left calf at 7AM then left for Utah at 10AM. I was like fuck it, if I’m going to die, at least I’ll get some climbing in first. Or, as Fletch put it: “First things first, priorities.”

By the morning of the 10th I was driving somewhere north of Salt Lake City when I saw a new My Chart message come in. It was the MRI report from the radiologist. Our doctor left the practice so we’ve been seeing a variety of stand in people: PA’s, new rotating doctors, phone visits. Seeing a real doctor in the flesh is like scheduling a visit with the Pope.

Fortunately I am friends or related to 4 different doctors and a dozen nurses, including my kids. I texted the MRI report to several of them from a windy gas station and waited. They all confirmed what I had concluded: I was fine, case closed.

I pulled into Creek Pasture to find Fletch in site 21. It is a very quiet site far from the noisy party areas. We began to meet his Santa Barbara friend Peggy every morning at the Meat Basin outhouse. This has become the informal meeting place for folks camped up the basin, or really anywhere. It reminds me of the Camp 4 bulletin board, and without cell service it is the only way to communicate for many climbers. NOTE: AT&T has weak service at both Super Bowl and Creek Pasture campgrounds, and the Donelly parking lot.

Peggy, Fletch and I all know Julian and Maria from last summer in Leavy. Through him we met the rest of his Access Fund trail crew: Adam, James and crew leader Jeff. They all like small hands cracks, which began my week of frustration. Every crag we went to featured cracks that fit them, but not me.

4-11-2025 Fern Gully on day 1. Peggy took us to this new crag. I think you park at Fist Fight then walk North. When you are at Fern Gully, you are looking directly across to the North at Hot Sex 5.9 on Nuclear Wall. Fletch led a red splitter called Got you Cornered.

I led – aided a fist crack to the right. It has a name but I don’t have the new book and it’s not on Mountain Project. There is a bigger than fist overhang at the top which Fletch had to finish for me. I aided it twice this trip. The second time I took four number fours and found the French freeing easier.

4-12-2025 Fist Fight Wall. As it was only day 2 I was very hesitant to lead the name sake route called Fist Fight crack. There had been no time to build creek power. But there I was standing at the base of a crack almost as pretty as Super Crack. It was definitely my size and we had a dozen blues and plenty of yellows. I knew it was perfectly safe. There was no compelling reason not to climb it. But still, day 2!

Fletch: We’re right here looking at it. It’s your size, we have the gear. You kind of have to climb it.

Me: I know, it’s obviously got my name on it. Will you rescue me if I can’t finish it?

I fought the good fight up about 50 feet and ran out of juice. It was blue cups with a couple yellows and number 4’s. I lowered off and Fletch bravely went up and finished it for me. Neither of us got it clean. It’s eleven blues arcing up and left. Your right foot is useless. The crack doesn’t see much traffic and is very sharp. Both Fletch and I had some bad road rash scars for the next month. I need to invent leather climbing gauntlets, or just tape my wrists and forearms.

4-13-2025 was a rest day. We found some cool petroglyphs North? of Newspaper rock at the square rock above the creek where you can bathe. In town we shopped and took showers.

4-14-2025 Trick or Treat wall was better on this, my third visit. I bailed on the Pony Crack right of Horse. I just ran out of rattly finger jam power. It didn’t help that I wasn’t jamming my left toe. Adam followed it nicely jamming both toes in like a real crack climber.

I passed on TR laps on Horse and Zits. My bicep injury needed a break from red hauling. Adam led the hands to off width right of Zits. A five will fit at the top. I got up it with a couple falls.

A note on Top Roping
On my previous trip in 2023 where I hooked up with a Squamish guide and friends, not only were they climbing 5.11 tight hands, they were getting on twelves. Naturally, I did a lot of top roping, more than on this trip. It’s not a coincidence that I became much stronger on that trip than this one. OK, possibly it’s because that was pre long covid (PMR) and I was only 67 instead of 71? For example I could have easily top roped Horse, and some elevens at Sparks. Fletch was grabbing all kinds of top ropes. I need to loose some pride and gain some power.

To the left of Horse is a lovely fist crack that I followed. It starts with a few reds that are easily avoided with great feet. You could place a 5 at the top plus a bunch of yellows and blues and a 4 or two. I’d like to lead this. I also followed a nice but vertical hand crack around the corner to the left. It starts with a bouldery move on a rectangular block. I need to lead that on a strong day.

At the car, Peggy, Fletch, Julian, Adam and I sat around in that companionable mood one gets after a long fun day of climbing. We were sitting in the gravel and dirt of the shoulder. Occasional cars would whiz by but we paid them no mind, enjoying the perfection of the moment. I could tell a couple of us thought about leaving to make dinner but the vibe was so perfect none of us made the move.

It’s magical when a group of friends is so well tuned into the same wavelength. I vividly remember that happening with Paul, Sue, Kathy and Lemon back in 1978 almost fifty years ago. No one has any cares about being elsewhere or regrets about the day. It’s perfection in the moment and seems to transcend time. Like a bunch of cavemen who just feasted on a juicy buffalo after a long hunt. But the climber version.

4-15-2025 Sparks wall was another matter entirely.  I tried to lead a ten minus called Sparkling Zygote. It is listed as a warmup but starts with a Bombay chimney into 5 feet of reds that I could not climb. I could have aided through, maybe should have, but chose to descend.

Fletch took over and promptly French freed the fuck out of the same section before getting to some nice hands. Red climbers should be required to wear a red badge on their shirt. This would serve to warn us yellow and blue climber not to follow them to their favorite crags. It’s not that the creek is all reds, it’s just that red climbers go to red crags. And sometimes those crags are predominantly, even exclusively reds or tighter. 

Fletch got on a bunch of TR’s and had fun. He does’t have to worry about a strained bicep. We bailed at 3:30 and just had time to move camp from 21 to 26 where there is room for 3 cars. Lisa and Brian are rolling in today or tomorrow unless they divert to red rocks like Joan. We are looking at some sketchy weather in the next few days. 

When we first arrived at Peggy’s 15 year old Bridger Jacks campsite it was just her doing yoga on the slick rock. In half an hour Adam pulled up in a Subie with James and Julian. Peggy was quizzing them about all the cool climbs they’d led. There were ropes on everything, including Go Sparky Go, Scenic View and Jupiter  Crack which Mike led and Jeff followed. Jeff is the trail crew boss.

Jeff talked about how the Access Fund used to hire couples like Kyle and Lauryn for the season  but that caused trouble when they broke up half way through (K & L are fine). Kind of like hiring married lighthouse workers who didn’t get along. 

They have recently gone to a system more universal to other Forest and Park services where they have a crew boss (Jeff) and a small crew of workers: James, Julian and Adam. Instead of giving them a badged Van, they give them a badged Ford pickup and a large tent. They’ve been on the job since February. Julian said they’ve seen all kinds of weather from snow to a hailstorm that cracked his windshield. 

He had recently badly bruised his finger when a boulder rolled the wrong way. I suggested armored gloves like knights in shining armor. I sketched out a metal three sided cave for each finger joint. Probably there is already something on Amazon.

Anyway, while  all that was going on I walked up to Julian and held my Meatloaf painting out. Everyone there knows and loves Meatloaf. Peggy was there when Maria decided to buy a kitten for her thirtieth. 

Both Maria and Julian had left when the rain started. That was when I got this laptop in Grand Junction and started in on the painting. I didn’t have Maria’s number then so I sent Julian the pen underdrawing. Later I sent the full painting to Maria as a printable Tiff.

But yesterday, Julian hadn’t seen the finished full color painting. As his eyes came down to my little color sketch they lit up in recognition and wonder. 

Several of them commented on the perfection of the eyes and the mouth.

“That looks just like Meatloaf!!”

I also showed them my oil portrait of Clint. Who isn’t proud of their son? I am supremely lucky to have the gift of portrait painting. Fletch stared at it in wide eyed wonder. He has met Clint may times back when Craig and Clint were actively climbing together.

But to see him now at 40, painted in exquisite oils must have been startling. 

“Do you recognize him?”

“Absolutely I do!”

“Meatloaf was a training exercise for these family portraits.”

The smokey campfire of a dozen trail workers and friends of Peggy had been noisy as we played a few instrumentals like Beiber and Brazilian Swing. Folks expect campfire players to be mediocre and primarily background noise, like an iphone speaker.

I suggested Carolina to Fletch and he said sure.

As I put the harp brace on my neck Aiden (leads twelves: Moonlight Buttress) asked: “Is that a harp holder, like Bob Dylan? Wow, is that magnetic?”

I explained to Adam that we’d do two instrumental verses before starting in on the words, then another instrumental after the first chorus. I said nothing to Fletch as we’ve been playing this for 10 years. 

As I started in on the first verse, blowing the harp while fingerpicking the chords, accompanied by Fletch and Adam I heard the voices around the campfire quickly die down. The silence of the star filled desert sky seemed to welcome our melody.

Like the ancient Anasazi Indians we sang to the beauty of a simple life full of love and wonder. The song is about Ryan Adams trying find meaning on the road while missing family at home. I couldn’t take my eyes from the music, but I sensed a great stillness around the campfire as they lost interest in their conversations and began to focus on the words and melody of the beautiful song.  Performers can read an audience intuitively and I saw that they were with us. 

After the chorus, with both Fletch and Adam backing me I launched into an instrumental verse with our 3 guitars  while my harp sang out in perfect tune to the soul searching melody. I played single notes and up to 3 at a time reveling in the mysterious diatonic harmony chasing the melody through the chords.   

At the end there was silence.  I think we were all a little shocked at what we had created. Peggy the birthday girl asked: “Did you write that Mark?”

“No, that’s Ryan Adams”

“Huh, I’ve never heard of him.”

“It’s a 20 year old song. I can’t write for shit.”

We played a few more after that. Both Fletch and Adam played a solo song. It was lovely to hear their voices. Because I’m deaf in one ear (thanks to Menieres) it’s hard to hear my fellow musicians. My own sound fills up what little hearing I have. I have IEM’s but rarely get them out around campfire jams.

It was getting late after a full day of climbing so the party began winding down. As I was carrying my guitar away from the still smoking campfire, Nathan waved me down:

“Thank you so much for playing! That completed everything I’d dreamed an Indian Creek trip should be. This great day of climbing couldn’t have been any better and your music was the perfect end to my day.”

4-17-25 Pregnant Woman Cliff. I found a nice unnamed 5.9 at the top of the trail. We started from a wide parking spot where a washout has almost taken out the road. It’s the only bad spot on the Pistol Whipped end. I pulled the Tundra in to the pullout on the left where a few cars can fit. From the 5.9, we had to walk at least 40 minutes left along the cliff base to get to Lichen Vacation. It would be better to park at the T intersection at the Willows campground. Then walk right a block and take the trail directly up to LV, which is a lovely 10 that requires either an 80meter or two ropes. It’s all hands except a couple short red sections.

When Fletch and I got back to camp the wind was blowing crazy. It knocked down Fletches tent so we took it apart as he can sleep in his Prius. The rain started that night. 

We were snacking on chips and wine in the front of my Tundra while the rain poured out of a black sky. Wind gusted curtains of sand down the road. Not a soul was moving so I was surprised to see a dark Tacoma driving the lower loop by site seven. Because it looked gray I didn’t think it was Lisa and Brian. But it quickly looped around the end and headed directly  toward us. As it got closer it resolved into a blue Tacoma just like Lisa’s. When I saw the Washington license plates I said: “That’s Lisa!” Fletch said: “It can’t be, they won’t arrive until tomorrow.”

But then we both saw Lisa waving in the passenger seat. We jumped out for a warm reunion. Lisa is one of Fletches ex’s. Fletch helped her set up her Match profile. She brought Brian to our guitarbcue and he immediately fit right in with his refined trumpet riffs. Lately he has been my climbing gym partner at Edgeworks. Lisa and Brian had joined me and Fletch there in 2021.

We pointed Lisa’s open tailgate to leeward and all 4 squeezed in for chips, salsa and beer. I’m not sure how it happened but Brian started telling stories about his life long career as a firefighter. His tone was very matter of fact as he described some of his more horrific calls. I would have felt very fortunate to have Captain Brian and his crew at my house or car wreck. We sat there for a couple hours as the wind and rain lashed the desert outside her little Tacoma  canopy. It was four good friends going back at least 15 years, sitting out a storm in a tiny pickup bed. Another timeless moment.

Friday was clearly a rest day so we carpooled in the Prius to Moab and got showers and a pizza at the food truck court. 

Saturday 4-19-2025. Sadly Fletch had to go back to work and left at dawn. Brian, Lisa and I had a lazy morning and drove to Donnelly. There were a few people walking up toward cave route but the lot was mostly deserted with a handwritten sign saying the rock is too wet to climb. 

I could have easily taken another day off but Lisa and Brian only had Friday to Wednesday. By noon the parking lot dirt was looking much drier so we drove to Blue Gamma which was packed with at least a dozen cars. They were running a crack climbing clinic with 10 clients at $700 each for 3 days. It’s normally 1500 each but they had a corporate sponsor (BD?).

They had ropes on every route so we jumped on something that looked seven-ish but turned out to be nine. Lisa tried the boulder start but backed off. I pulled on a cam to get my knee up and was off to the races. 

After we’d all climbed it I walked down to the #3 open book called Mexican Unicorn. There was a static line for a jumaring ‘crack advisor’ and several students top roping . 

“Hey, we were hoping to lead this at some point today. Are you all going to be a couple more hours?”

One of the guides immediately realized they’d been monopolizing the crag and apologized.

“We have no right to take over this crag for the whole day. It’s meant to be for everyone. Give us five minutes and we’ll pull our ropes off to the side so you guys can lead it.” I was surprised to hear that. I wish more guides were this courteous.

She and I started talking after that and it turned out she lived in Moab (formerly from Brazil) and knew my old friend Ammon McNeely (may he rest in peace). They were running a top notch show and giving excellent instruction. Later as we were walking out the lead guide offered to let Lisa TR a left facing finger dihedral. He even offered 5 minutes of tips. Those guys rocked! We had the often repeated conversation about how Indian Creek was the best crack climbing in the world. Several people agreed but their main guide countered with American Fork. He said it’s very slick there, unlike this sticky sandstone.

Joan and Meg arrived that day. They are friends I met through the Over Fifty group on Mountain project.

Sunday Easter 4-20 we went to Chocolate corner where we waited almost two hours for an idiotic female guide to finish coaching two beginners. They had no business tying up such a popular route. When the two beginners finally finished she said they were headed towards Generic which is an equally popular route they had no business climbing. I think I avoided being a dick about the guides bad choices but geez! She should have taken them to some out of the way crag where they would’t get in anyones way. It’s common sense. Blue Gamma is a great example. It’s not a highly desirable crag and hence a good choice for large groups of students. 

Sunday 4-20-2025 we went to Twin Cracks where Joan backed off at the stuck knee section. Lisa finished it and I also led it for my first clean creak lead. We also did Christines little nine, which Joan didn’t like. Meg finished that one. I felt bad about Joan getting shut down. I’d promised her cracks she would fall in love with but kept striking out.

I led Amaretto corner again, not clean. For 5.9 that top #5 finish is just impossible. Too small for butterfly and too big for fists, plus it flares and overhangs. The girls were very brave and kind. They insisted they didn’t mind me leading something that clearly didn’t fit them.

Monday 4-21 … or was it Tuesday? I may have lost a day. We went to Fern Gully for the second time this trip. Peggy had taken me and Fletch there a week earlier. I hung dog my way up the fist crack. At the roof I had four fours and managed to aid through. I also led-aided Devin Fin’s new fist crack called Soul. It was fat steeples, too tight for fists until halfway when it turned into perfect fists. It was Chocolate Corner for fists and super fun for the last half. 

The 3 girls had teamed up to climb a red corner that I’d already done. That worked well. They got their hand size and Brian and I teamed up on the fist crack.

Wednesday 4-23-25 Lisa, Brian, Meg and Joan all left at noon. I tried to get excited about painting but after 4 days of climbing it felt like work. I had a beer at 2 and napped in the baking truck until 5. 

Thursday 4-24-25 painted badly at Scarface looking west. Halfway through I broke for lunch. I got partway through a nine dollar package of smoked salmon and decided to eat it at my easel, out of sight and down a hill. The sun and wind must have baked my brain because when I gave up on the train wreck a few hours later and walked back to the truck the gate was wide open. My expensive full frame camera was sitting easy to grab as well as everything not locked down, like my guitar, sleeping cooking  stuff and all of Chris and Julia’s gear. There were only 4 cars in the lot, including Devin and Mike . Mike is a twelve leader and friends with Jeff the trail boss.

Thursday pm I drove to GearHeads and bought a nine liter gas can for $89. It’s totally leak proof and based off the famous ultra durable Jerry can invented by the Germans in WW2. I slept that night above Moab at the formerly free BLM road…willow springs? It’s now a Park with a new entrance and visitor center called dinosaur something. 

Friday 4-25 I came in late at twilight and left at dawn arriving at Islands in the Sky 7 AM where I took a 2 hour nap. I hiked 2Km up to Window Arch where I painted until 5. I started with monotone brown. It’s a great base color and similar to pencil in that there is no scary color decisions. Some tourists said it was gorgeous. I should have stopped but instead added color. The wind began whipping at 40 knots which tossed my turpentine can off the 300 foot cliff. My hat followed but stopped right at the edge. I carefully crept down the sloping sandy cliff top and rescued my hand built leather cowboy hat. Felt silly risking my life for a hat. 

The sand got all up in my palette, brushes and painting. I guess it’s now a sand painting. My nice new Rosemary brushes felt like wire brushes due to all the sand. With my solvent gone I couldn’t clean the brushes until Beef Basin two hours later. 

Saturday 4-26 I knew that I’d climb 5 days in a row starting Monday, so I decided to climb Saturday with Sunday off. I drove to climber coffee hosted by Kaitlyn and Elum (prefers she pronouns). Kaitlyn is a perfect host, well, they both are, but she has the more vivacious personality. They both loved my sandy painting. 

She was curious when I walked up with my cup and a board. I watched her eyes glance down at the board several times. She didn’t know what it was but could tell it was important. She was kind to be so enthusiastic about it even though it probably sucked. I was frustrated at depicting all the complex browns. Painting the desert is a bit like portraiture of a very wrinkled face. It’s all shades of brown and tan and I struggle to make them pretty. 

At 11 and again 12 Peggy showed up, second time with Travis and Gus, they on mountain bikes. They beat me to Optimator parking lot where 24 vehicles were packed in like sardines. I had to drive up to the top which was super sketchy. Gus led Mudslide after a party of 3 finished. There were at least a dozen or more dogs running everywhere. None were mean but that’s just ridiculous. What is wrong with all these humans who require dogs to make life worth living? Or put another way, what is wrong with me that I don’t want a dog?

Travis easily led Soulfire which they all topped. I passed. Reds suck. Eight years ago I followed Daphne and mostly got it clean except the green top. I led the 5.8 flake off right of Mudslide. My chest got stuck repeatedly in the flake to chimney transfer move. I had to blow out a hard breath and shimmy into the tunnel. I could only take shallow breaths because of the constriction. Meanwhile I was desperately trying to shimmy up and left to where it opened up to a normal body slot. But I couldn’t move or breath. No one could have reached me for a rescue. I felt like I was going die in there. Man, never again!!!

Peggy wisely chose not to follow so I met a guy on a nearby route who said his buddy Noah would clean it for me. Noah, 19, loved the route. He was young and slender.

After my new friend Noah rapped down I tossed my rope and followed. We were talking about about how tight the squeeze chimney was at the sideways transfer. I mentioned that I thought my man boobs were half the problem. After some laughter the girl Ella said: “So I wonder if there is an optimal boob size for the squeeze?”

I looked down at my old man boobs and said: “Smaller than these!!”

Sunday rest day, April 27. 5 months later the side effects of 15 months on prednisone are finally wearing off. Also my hematoma bruise is almost all gone. Damn that was a month long shit show, cancer scare, MRI and all.

Super Bowl site 25 has spotty voice service but very weak data. Talked to Sue for an hour. It was nice to hear her rambling on about all the shit she has to deal with regarding grandkids, kids and her mom. Me being gone for a month is not helping. 

Massive grey clouds with an angry wind is threatening climbing tomorrow, Julia’s first day. Shit weather can be the death knell of these 5 day Alaska Airline trips the girls are booking. Being down here a month means a few days of rain is kind of fun. It’s some pleasant drama instead of the endless baking blue sky, chasing shade and spankings on red cracks. 

I’m stuffed with a concoction of rice, tuna, brocoli Alfredo sauce and cheese. It’s dark and howling outside but my little Tundra shell is cozy and dry. I got the lights on and this new MacBook is the cat’s meow.

Monday April 28 was Julia’s first day. We hiked out to Habitado where I hung dog my way up Lightning Crack and the 8 to its’ left. I had been too lazy to carry out all my big cams. A couple nice girls towed our rope up so we could top rope Mariposa. We had planned on doing that ourselves but they had been on it for several hours doing multiple hangdog leads and repeated laps. No one was there but us, but still…it seemed bad form to monopolize a route. Not that anyone cares what I think. I’m clearly in the minority with my traditional views from last century.

Julia had the usual problems off width newbies have there. When I got on it I finally found the solution to the 4 foot tall 11 inch pod. On lead I place either the green big bro or valley giant there, very insecure. On TR I was able to experiment and found a wonderful right arm chicken wing. It was the classic elbow high chicken wing and locked in tight. With that holding me in I was able to maneuver my feet into some marginal heel toe jams. This let me push with my legs and slide up my chicken wing. A couple repetitions of that got me up into first hand fist stack. On lead this is a #5 placement.

Yarding my out of the pod felt great. Soon I had a levitation jam and a no hands rest. I did have to lower my knee pad. It makes my knee too fat. Julia and some bystanders were impressed as I chalked up both hands. Higher up it got wider but I was still getting at least good double fists. There was a 4 foot section where I was thrashing a bit with my heel toe technique. As I fell out, I felt the rope go tight.

An honest man would have told Julia to give me slack. That would have forced me to sort out the feet. However, I calmly let her hold me as I moved up the double fist. Someday I’ll get that clean, at least on top rope.

Tuesday April 29 We climbed Triple Jeopardy. It’s really fun tunnel problem. While there we talked with a gregarious 75 year old former climber. He was there with his 19 year old son and some other family and friends. With his extensive knowledge of the Creek I could tell he was SomeBody. Us old dudes are thin on the ground and I’ve either met or heard of all the old climbers on this side of the continent. Finally I asked him his name and he said it was Jimmy Dunn.

Me: Holy shit dude, you’re a legend!

Jimmy: Nah, I’m just an old dirt bag. I did do a lot of first ascents though. I did the first ascent of Generic Crack in 1976. That was long before cams so I had to runout the entire second pitch. At the last move over the edge I was so far above my last piece I would have decked. I put in a one quarter inch bolt. As I pulled the last move my partner hollered up that my new bolt had just hit him in the lap.

We talked about jobs and he said he’d never been good at working. Climbing was the only thing he’d ever been good at.

Jimmy: We called ourselves the Conquistadores of the Useless! I did run a contracting business for a while and made some good money. I sold all my climbing gear and didn’t climb for 10 years. But I hated that job and went back to climbing.

When I mentioned that I had worked blue collar most of my life and raised a couple nurses he was duly impressed.

Jimmy: Dude, you’re somebody. I can tell. You say you’re nobody as a climber but I can tell you got it going on. I don’t climb much anymore, my shoulder hurts. But you, look at you, you’re still getting after it!

When he mentioned his wife was a sculptor I showed him some of my work on my phone. He loved my portraits of Sue and the cow.

We traded numbers and he said I had to stay at his house if I came to Colorado. He was very impressed with Julia and what he called “Your harem of young ladies!” It is puzzling why I rarely climb with guys. I’ve got guy partners, but they’re always working. Julia, Meg, Joan, Lisa G, Christine…they are all either retired or able to take time off. Seems like my guy friends are either working full time (Chad) or taking vacations with their families and not me (Alex).

Anyway it was super cool to hang out with a legend like Jimmy Dunn. It was like running into Chouinard. And the guy was so gregarious….just a super friendly older climber.

Afterward we walked over to Twin Cracks but there was a Steph Davis crack clinic going on. One of the leaders looked a bit familiar in his nice straw cowboy hat. When he said they’d be a while with many people TR’ing I said I’d just do the next route to the left, meaning the one to the left of Triple Jeopardy. He gave me a funny look as I walked away.

That route is called No Name crack. Some refer to it as 4AM crack.

I really liked No Name. I had about 7 blues, 5 yellows and two reds for the top. It’s never unclimbable. But it’s long. As she lowered me off we both had to anchor into a cam 5 feet up when the rope ended. I climbed it strongly but kept running out of juice. Must have hung 4 times. That’s the thing about leading at the creek with white hair. I’ve got the skills and technique but the stamina of an old man. If I could just force myself to do 20 pull-ups every day I might change that. But pull-ups hurt my shoulders. It’s a catch 22. Every time I’d take to catch my breath the crack was perfect hands.

Me: I feel so bad hanging here, the crack is perfect but I’m so tired!

Julia: No worries, it’s hot down here too. Take your time.

Julia was a real trooper cleaning my lead. The girl can get up anything. That was definitely not her hand size but she got to the anchor just fine.

After rapping down I kept hearing a very familiar voice coaching the students in the Steph Davis clinic. I scrambled up to where I could see his face.

Me: You sound very familiar but I don’t recognize your face. Have we met…or are you SomeBody?

Chris Kalous: Yeah, I get that a lot. I run a couple podcasts called Enormocast and “The Runout” with Andrew Bisharat. Everyone knows my voice.

Me: Oh yeah, I’ve listened to both of those. Is running podcasts your only job?

Chris: Well mostly, but I do a little of this and that. My main income stream is that I knocked up a lawyer.

After we packed up he congratulated me on leading No Name.

Chris: Dude, when you saw we had Twin Cracks booked up you surprised me. You said you’d “Just do the next one to the left”. But that route is a huge step up in difficulty from Twin Cracks. It’s hands to big hands, overhanging in places and has some brutal flaring pods. Great job getting up it!

Me: Oh, it wasn’t clean. I was way over my head. I’m 71 and nothing is easy anymore. But it was fun, felt very safe.

Chris: Well great job. It was good for our students to see an old guy pulling down hard.

Wednesday April 29 Both me leading and Julia belaying No Name baked us badly. End of April is way too hot. We dragged our tired carcasses up to Chocolate Corner. Julia had been psyching herself up to lead and got up with the usual hangdoggery common at the Creek. It’d been a minute since she has led so I was happy she put a route up, and I was overdue for a top rope.

I followed cleanly but with a lot of huffing and puffing. There is no way I can lead that cleanly anymore. I seem to have aged out of it. We were clearly overdue for a rest day. But we stumbled down to Binous. She racked up then backed off. I’d removed my small cams a couple weeks previously because we were using Fletches and it looked dangerous without some point threes. I probably could have led it by staying in the six inch section, but sanity and tiredness led to us calling it a day around 3pm. So, half a rest day is how it worked out.

Thursday April 30 We felt better after our partial rest day and hiked up to Way Rambo. The river is much lower this spring. The Meat Basin crossing is bone dry. Still the Willows crossing is up to the bumpers. At the parking lot I hit pretty hard and almost high centered. I crawled under to look for damage.

Me: Oh shit I think we hit the gas tank on that last bump. I feel wetness and see active dripping, but it doesn’t smell like gasoline or transmission fluid. Weird, it’s wet all the way up to the springs!

Julia: Mark we just drove through a creek.

Me: That’s called Short Term Memory Loss. Don’t ever get old. It’s not worth it.

I led Blue Sun with two hangs…which was what we call an “UnSend”. Meaning, I’d onsighted it a few years ago and had now climbed it worse. Sending a climb is good, UnSending is…well…not. She ran a couple laps on it. I never top rope, but figured what the hell, no one was there, and at least I “Sent” the TR. I can see how TR’ing can build power and endurance. I need to do more of that and not be such a stick.

I also hung my way up Rochambeau 5.9. It is a lovely corner with a ton of rests. The overhang is intimidating as hell, but I kept convincing myself to “just climb another 4 feet and see”. There is always gear and comforting stem box rests. A great hand jam is never far away.

I left Friday morning at 11:30AM from Moab, arriving home Saturday at 6PM. The big city driving I’d been so worried about passed with little trouble. In the worst of it there was stop and go which is at least slow and controlled. Crazies can’t dart in and out at 80 when everyone is crawling at walking speed. Much of it passed in a blur. Salt Lake city is one very long metropolis. LIke if you squeezed Portland, Olympia, Tacoma, Seattle, Everett and Bellingham all into one metro. Just goes on forever.

Since getting home I spent one day reading my Kindle, moving as little as possible. Today I tried to ride but felt very weak on the single hill. 

Painting family

I spent 4 days working on a portrait of my son. Sue acted as my chief consultant, checking on it twice a day as she visited out in my studio / shop. Towards the end I sensed there were problems but couldn’t see them. I was taking breaks at night, hoping I’d see clearly in the morning but that didn’t work.

Back in the day I’d look at ‘from life’ paintings in a mirror, but now I take a photo and layer the photo on top of my photo reference. I reduce opacity of the painting layer and see all the errors. I had the chin way to short, the lips too high, both eyes were wrong for various reasons: Pupils were too large, left eye was too wide, right eyelid was too thick. The nose wasn’t tilted enough, lips were tilted too much, forehead was too tall and hair was too long. Other than that it was quite close.

Here are some notes I made for todays corrections:

• make darker on left forehead 
• Eyelid too thick right 
• Correct lip tilt
• Refine curve on cheek wrinkle  right side
• Mustache, left more contrast
• Left lip darker
• Define forehead muscles
• Rite hairline curves in more
• Tilt of nose is off
• Right mustache too dark
• Squint!!

I texted the painting to Craig and Jamie. They both said the eyes were wrong. Craig thought it couldn’t be fixed. He clearly doesn’t paint in oils. The first major change I made was to move the lips down a quarter inch. To get them to move I had to scrub them down to white gesso with solvent and then repaint in the right place. This was after agonizing over them for hours: refining the wrinkles, the shading, the hue, the chroma, the dark lip line, the shadow under the lip on the chin. And all in the wrong place, too close to the nose.

As I got closer to a likeness it began to breath. I’d make a few small corrections to the lips, nose or eyes and I’d hear him say: “Yeah dad, that’s it, you got it right there.” Hearing these imaginary conversations in my mind made me smile and helped the work continue. Which was incredibly frustrating at times. If this sounds like I’m crazy, hearing voices in my head. I probably am, or maybe it was the turpentine fumes. Anyway, what happens in the studio stays in the studio. No one reads this damn blog anyway. Except future me.

During the worst of it I questioned not only my skill, but my sanity in even trying something so far above my pay grade. I’m a total hack of a painter. Don’t have a clue how to use color correctly. I knew his beard was brown hair on tan skin, but those colors were intolerably boring. When I tried green though, it sparkled.

Sue: “Why do you use such stupid color? His beard isn’t green?”

Me: “I’m a retard! If you took as much acid back in the day you’d paint crazy too”

Sue: “You could tone it down a little. You have the skill to do that. I see it in your pencil work. You should work more in pencil, those are awesome!”

Me: “But I like color!”

We dropped by Clint’s after our walk today. He knew something was going on when I walked in with my wet painting carrier box.

“Got a new painting to show you.”

“Oh, you painted me! That’s not bad.”

I looked over at Rose who was bouncing off the walls.

“Hey Rose! Do you know who this is?”

Her attention slowly wandered over to me and the painting I was holding under the light. Her face opened up in wonder, her mouth forming an “O” shape.

“Daddy! You painted my daddy!!”

She reminded me of a dog who is super excited to see you. Tail wagging furiously, jumping up and down. But in a 4 year old human kind of way.

A small starved part of me wants to share it on social media, see how many likes I can get. I’ve been off FB and Insta for months now and don’t miss it at all. When I think about likes in the abstract, what are they really? Someone sees your work on a screen and presses a heart button. How is that real in any meaningful way?

Compare that to the huge smile on my son’s face, and the excitement of my grand daughter, and Jamie saying “Wow, that’s a huge improvement on the one you texted me!”

As I worked longer and longer on it I became increasingly sure that I had a likeness, that it was truly him I’d created with my brushes, oils and turpentine. Sure, the colors are all wrong, some would call it a train wreck. But there is something real there, bad colors and all. It didn’t exist before I put paint to canvas, and at the end of the day that’s a good day of work.

I especially like how I’ve carved out an attitude that allows me to work on stuff that is totally pointless, doesn’t have a chance of ever selling and is not intended to.

I’ll post it later. I like the purity of English. Van Gogh would write letters to his brother about his paintings. He didn’t need photos to express his feelings and neither do I.

And now is later. Here is Rose, his daughter:

And this is Olivia, my daughter’s daughter:

I also painted his chickens and his dog. They can be found over in my portraits gallery on my hand built website.

Fifty nine year friendship

This is not a story about painting, climbing, or family. Rather this is a story about an 11 year old kid, new to town, on his first day in a new school. His dad had got a new job. All his friends were left behind 30 miles west.

As he stood there bewildered by the new buildings, wondering which way to go, a small voice popped up beside him: “Hey there, are you new here?”.

The new kid was me, and Ted became my first friend in town. 59 years later we’re still friends through thick and thin. We got in so much trouble in high school, it was almost a right of passage to break as many laws as possible. We weren’t criminals or anything, we had our morals and sense of honor…but if a law didn’t make sense, was it really even a law?

If you lived thorough those times I need say no more. But we were there for each other through boy scouts, our first crushes, girlfriends and the inevitable heartbreaks. They were wild times but we soldiered through together.

He was there when I first picked up a guitar. He was in a band that played gigs around town, and I was invited to practices. A gang of 5 of us had our own garage band complete with some cute girls who liked our sound and the beer. His band later won a competition in Seattle and toured Europe.

I was working full-time then but still joined the band at house parties as the harp player. We jammed today for an hour, playing both old and new songs. It’s hard for me to remember the old harp riffs because I play them so seldom.

Going back to 1966 he and I and a few other friends played ping pong downstairs at my folk’s house. If you have kids, get them a ping pong table! It’s safe harmless fun and endlessly entertaining to kids of all ages. Plus it keeps them off the streets.

My dad took Ted and I on some hikes in high school, and we continued hiking afterward. Ted took this photo of me and Sue hiking and being silly in 1980:

After jamming today we wheeled his table outside and played for another couple hours. He raised his kids with a table and has some chops, especially considering he only plays every few months. Though I play up to 3 times a week, he still had me running around the table. I could not let my guard down at all or he’d be on me.

I finally painted my second grand child. I did my sons kid almost a year ago and finally got a good photo from which to paint my daughter’s kid. They are going to see it tomorrow. I hung it on the wall by the first portrait. I hope they like it. I look at it and see problems. But everyone else (Sue, Ted, Carol) all think it’s great and problem free. I’ve already spent 4 days on it and it’s in danger of getting overworked.

We’ve had the usual bout of spring colds. It’s hardest on Lisa as she is stuck so far from help. She drove up here while Levi had a fever. Nothing could make him happy and being unable to talk yet all he could do was make annoying Ahh, Ahh sounds. It was driving us all crazy but she was on day 4 of it and at wits end. Sue was right there with her. She gets on the same wavelength and the two of them are drama queens.

I played ping pong Wednesday and we had a great crowd. Randy and Bob showed up which would have been plenty, but then Lamson and his friend showed up. Lamson is the guy I took a lesson from. According to Kenny Lamson used to clean up at regional tournaments. Seeing him at our local gym was like a visit from royalty. His forehand smash is a thing of beauty. The movement of his arm as he flows through the punch reminds me of how Tiger Woods swings a golf club.

I need to work out and then start in on a portrait of Clint. He sat for me once before he had kids, but I’m afraid that window has closed. Many of my artist heros including Richard Schmid work from photos when necessary. And both of my grandkid paintings were definitely done from photos. 3 year olds don’t sit and neither do solo parents babysitting two kids under 4 years old.

Healing an old ankle injury

I was 20 feet up the cliff and had no protection. I’d seen the bolt from ground and knew the hangar had been removed. What I didn’t know was it had been removed the previous fall and was now severely rusted. I attached the spare hangar from my little pouch and screwed down the nut, but because of the rust it cross threaded.

My power was fading fast as I frantically looked around for protection. I saw a crack over to the right that might take a small nut. I carefully weighted the cross threaded hangar, using it as a handhold while I tried to place the nut.

The rusty nut popped off the bolt. Time slowed down and I just had time to realize I was airborne with a useless rope coiling below. I fell 15 feet and hit the sloping ground at the base of the 5.9 route called The Knobs. It’s to the left of “A Crack” and the 5.4 gully route at the Peshastin Pinnacles.

Because of the slope my catlike landing posture was for naught and I broke my damn ankle. Will offered his shoulder as we hobbled down to the car half a mile away. The ER doctor loaded me up with pain killers and I caught a Greyhound to Tacoma. Will, Paul and Lemon had decided to continue the weekend of climbing. It was our first weekend of the year and I’d gotten overconfident. Sue wasn’t answering, probably at work, so dad drove half an hour up to the bus station and taxied me to our apartment.

Sue answered the door, shocked to see me home early from the weekend. She was wearing a cast on her forearm from wrist surgery a week before. She’d tried to crawl through an open window to clandestinely visit a friend. It broke, and she severed a tendon.

“Why are you home early? Oh no, you’re on crutches…what’s wrong with your ankle, what happened!”

A week later, we had just pedaled around Vashon Island. At the ferry, the dock worker noticed the plaster casts on Sue’s wrist and my ankle and told us we should stop fighting. Halfway across Puget Sound we heard a boom and saw the smoke cloud when Mount St. Helens blew up. That was May 18, 1980.

My ankle has never been the same, but it is usually just an annoyance, not a deal breaker. However, at Wednesday ping pong I was playing Randy and Bob. They are tournament level players and I get severely worked when I play them. Normally I love the challenge. They wipe the floor with me but I put up a brave fight and it’s a ton of fun. But my ankle started twinging with severe pain.

I bailed early but my suffering wasn’t over. I still had to walk a mile back to the house. Sue was out helping her 98 year old mom at the hospital. Limping home with my ankle getting worse and worse was ugly. Now I’ve been sitting on the couch for 2 full days hoping it will heal up. Without exercise my weight has ballooned up to 175. When I’m healthy I was already struggling to get under 170 so it’s frustrating not being able to work out.

It’s Monday and I’m able to walk slowly around the house without pain. There are occasional minor twinges of pain but it’s generally much better. I was able to climb at the gym Friday while loaded up on Ibuprofen so that’s a plus.

It’s possible that the Prednisone of the last 15 months has been masking the ankle inflammation. And now that I’ve been off the drug for a full month my ankle is alerting me to the fact that I have a problem. I do get occasional twinges of pain in my knees and I still have a few lingering side effects from the drug. I’ve read that it can take more than a month to “get back” after quitting cold turkey. Glad to report that I just rode my Schwinn Aerodyne for 50 minutes. I had the rear of my foot on the pedal without any pain.

On a side note, I just de-activated Instagram and Facebook for a while…needed a break from the doom scroll syndrome. So much of Social Media is a bad joke these days. Jeez.

Newspapers

I subscribe to the New York Times. It’s important to support Journalism…especially when it’s under attack both from the government and dropping circulation numbers. Occasionally I see something worthy and feel like writing a letter to the editor, or, as they call it now: adding a comment. Today they had a great article about aging and I was prompted to submit a comment, shown below:

Nice article about aging! Everyone gets a chance to be young and pretty. If you’re lucky, you get a chance to be old and wrinkled. That’s me now at 70. Young people are so pretty. They’re like fresh roses, they sparkle. 

I never wanted to be this old…couldn’t imagine it when I was young. Every year it seems like more is taken from me. I’ve had a few annoying diseases come and go, always taking something. Lost my hearing in one ear, for example.  And Long Covid wasn’t pretty. Unlike many people I know, I’m blessed with a lovely woman, my long suffering wife, plus two nearby kids and 4 grandkids. I shouldn’t complain, but it’s hard not to look back at who I used to be as a young man. 

I still do the activities of my youth, but I can’t do them as hard, or as long, or as often. Thankfully I can still rock climb, both at the gym and outside in places like Yosemite. And I treasure my back up activities like landscape painting, for when I need something less active. The years are winding down for sure. None of us get out of here alive. Carpe diem!

Quit Prednisone cold turkey after 15 months

Long Covid and PMR success story

If you know me in person, you’ll know that I got Covid for the second time in April of 2023. I got it while leading 5.10 splitters at Indian Creek. I was in such good shape that I thought it was just sore knees from all the hiking.

I drove home OK but landed on the couch in full blown Covid for a week. Sue caught it and we sat on opposite ends of the couch with flu like symptoms: weakness, bronchitis. Mine were compounded with sore joints to the point where I could barely walk and sleeping was painful due to the sore neck, shoulders, hips and knees.

After a week on the couch the flu like symptoms went away but the joint pain lingered and would flare up and down. At that time I thought of it as Long Covid, partly because the exact same symptoms happened in 2020, but they all went away in a week. Here is a longer version of my Long Covid and Poly Myalgia Rheumatica (PMR) story. The short version is that I suffered with increasingly bad joint pain until August when I went to the ER. A nine day course of Prednisone cured it overnight, but then it came back.

Here is my Prednisone taper schedule:

• August 8, 2023 started 15mg daily
• September 19, 2023 started 10mg daily
• October 20 start 9mg daily
• Nov 20 start 8mg daily
• Dec 20 start 7mg daily
• Jan 20 start 6mg daily
• February 20 started 5mg daily
• March 20 start 4mg daily
• April 30 started 3mg daily – Just after returning Indian Creek
• October 1 , 2024 decreased from 3 mg to 2 mg. Thigh cramps, knee collapsed hiking. May need to go up to 5mg?
• October 5, went back to 3. Knee, hips even finger cramps were bad
• October 12, 2024 went back up to 4mg, all symptoms went away
• December 16 went to 3.5mg/day. I’d forgot a morning dose until 4pm with no problems. Was starting to think I was healed.
• December 20, 2024 went to zero with no side effects, not even a headache. That’s after 15 months on Prednisone.
• January 4, 15 days without drugs. As mentioned above, my knee pain has returned, but it’s manageable. Hips and shoulders tweak now and then…but very short duration.

Here is an excerpt from an LA times article about this disease and how to beat it:

When the prednisone my doctor gave me almost miraculously vanquished the paralyzing joint pain I was suffering from, I was hooked.

At first, I didn’t care that I had to take a second drug (alendronate, brand name Fosamax), to slow or prevent osteoporosis, one of the dreaded side effects of prednisone. But I would learn there were other drawbacks.

Prednisone can wreak uncontrollable havoc on one’s central nervous system, leaving some users feeling like a zombie. It can also cause difficulty sleeping, problems focusing, decreased mental acuity, weight gain, lowered sex drive and, not surprisingly as a result of all the above, depression. “High doses for long periods of time can cause muscle weakness, drops in blood sugar levels, higher susceptibility to infection and even cataracts,” explained my Berkeley rheumatologist, Dr. Brian Kaye of the Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation, who was treating me for the autoimmune dysfunction polymyalgia rheumatica.

This is Monday, December 23, 2024. Last Friday I’d been on 3.5mg of Prednisone a day for a week, down from 4 a day since February. My sore joint symptoms were completely gone, unlike before (see below) when I’d try’d to taper down on the dose. The online forums about PMR are full of people warning of the dangers of tapering too fast.

They talk about tapering by a quarter of a milligram. Do they even make pills that small? Anyway, the side effects of Prednisone are serious and I was willing to gamble that I no longer needed the drug. Friday December 20 was my last dose as I quit cold turkey.

There have been zero withdrawal symptoms. On the plus side, I’m sleeping better…my dreams are full of color. The side effects are quickly fading. My joints feel normal for my age. The huge crash of prednisone withdrawal is a no show. I had read that the body makes 5mg of natural prednisone (cortisol) every day. But taking prednisone suppresses that natural production.

I was worried that my body couldn’t get up to speed after 15 months on that awful drug. But so far I seem fine.

My first attempt to taper off ten months in

I went below 4 during the summer, down to 3mg a day. Gradually my thighs started aching. But not regularly. Chris and I hiked up to Lookout Point and climbed Cloud Flare. I was strong and had no pain. But on the way down my right thigh was cramping. Halfway down I felt a stab of pain and collapsed into some boulders as it completely gave out. I very nearly broke my leg as I’d fallen into a sort of trap between large boulders.

Chris, 50 feet ahead, heard the commotion and offered to come up.

“You ok?”

“My knee just gave out”

“Oh no, shall I come up?”

“No, I’ll come down to you. It still works, it just hurts.”

Chris: Why don’t you give me the 70 meter rope? We’re going down hill.

Me: No, you already have the rack of hardware.

Chris: But you might fall again, and you’re going so slow, just give me the rope.

Me: I hate to make you do it, but something is wrong, I guess you’d better. This makes me feel really old. I hope my climbing days aren’t over. I knew it would happen some day.

The next time my knee went out it was the left knee. With the cramping pattern switching knees, I realized it was probably my Long Covid PMR disease. I bumped my Prednisone dose back up to 4mg a day and within a few days all my pain went away.

After a few months I noticed that I wasn’t cramping up in the mornings when I was 24 hours out from my last pill. One day I forgot my morning pills and was still pain free at 4PM. It appeared that the disease was slowly fading away. In August of 2023 my Reumatologist doctor had told me it could be as long as two years, and I was 5 months short of that. Eighteen months of joint aches, fifteen months on Prednisone.

A few weeks ago I cut my dose down to 3.5mg/day. After two weeks of that with no adverse symptoms, feeling great…other than Prednisone side effects…I decided to take a chance and quit cold turkey on December 20. If it blew up on me, I had a brand new refill of Prednisone to fall back on.

But here I am, seven days out feeling fine. I have some very minor stiffness in my knees, but I’m not sure it’s the disease. It might just be old age. And it goes away when I start moving. It might be early days. I can imagine a scenario where the disease is so used to being subdued by Prednisone that it is hiding, still scared of the big bad drug. But it will eventually peek out the door and realize all the guards have left and the palace is wide open and unprotected.

A brief diversion for the holidays

As I do every year since the grandkids were born, I spent 3 weeks practicing Christmas Carols for the family sing along Xmas eve. While the songs are fun to sing and I enjoy the process of mastering them, it feels silly to perform them once, and then be done for another year.

Normally I master a song and sing it for months or years. I need to reach out to Dave L. He was part of our Guitarbecue group while Fletch was in town. Last year he invited me to perform with his new group at the senior center where he plays every Thursday. That would give me more satisfaction than my one family sing along.

Back in the day my mom, dad and my sister would play for hours, maybe days during the holidays. Me and my cousin would sit on either side of our 99 year old grandma, who was mostly blind from cataracts. She would hold the sheet music and I’d sight read the music on my 30 year old chromatic harmonica. My cousin would sing in her lovely stage trained soprano voice. All the aunts, uncles and cousins sang. No one worried about perfect pitch to make an instagram moment. Those were beautiful decades.

In the absence of drawing, music and writing is my only creative outlet. What the hell is up with my art? It vanished again.

December 31, eleven days since I quit Prednisone cold turkey. I’m starting to get some stiff joints in my knees and ankles. Basically anywhere there has been injuries or past inflammation due to overuse or tendonitis is an easy target for the disease to re-establish some beachheads.

I haven’t been too active other than rolling some logs on Lisa’s new property and helping Clint on his 2 inch lift for his Tacoma. He put Bilstein 5160s on the front and rear, including the new leaf springs for a 2 inch lift. It took us two days, one for the front, and one for the rear. I didn’t do much other than sit around and advise on safety aspects. He doesn’t have much time with jack stands or floor jacks. Most guys trust their jack stands completely, but I like to back up everything. I put one foot cubes of wood beside the jack stands. We sat one end of the truck on those backed up jack stands then used my floor jack as needed to lift axles and lower control arms.

We had both watched videos, and I even made a pdf of screenshots with torque settings. But in the end we did a lot of head scratching and wild guesses: “Well, that didn’t work!” Our first front wheel took 5 hours. When we did the other side, in the dark, in the rain…it took 90 minutes. We couldn’t believe how much we’d improved. A couple key tools were a set of ratcheting box end wrenches, from 12 to 17mm, and a 3 foot crowbar. That was critical for aligning the leaf springs bolt holes. Those things are under tremendous pressure and don’t cooperate when you try to bend them. I gladly let him do all the wrenching. Occasionally I’d turn a nut, but it was his project and I was happy to be his assistant. There were numerous times where he really needed a second hand.

I played ping pong twice last week and was fine. Tomorrow might be harder with my stiffening knees. I’m fully expecting a month of suffering as my adrenaline gland emerges from Prednisone caused hibernation. They say it makes 5mg of cortisol a day naturally. Which is basically equal to 5 of P. But it hasn’t needed to in 15 months and they say it can take up to a month to get up to speed.

Sue and I had a great day today. I took ibuprofen before ping pong. She was playing strongly, jumping around like a teenager. A couple of times I was behind her and watched her line up on the ball and smash it down the table. She can’t believe how much better she has become lately. I reminded her that it’s all about practice. You will inevitably get better as you do it on the regular.

Later we came home and read books on the couch. She scratched my back while I massaged her foot. It was a pretty wild New Years eve.

It’s January 2, thirteen days off Prednisone. My achy joints have returned as expected. Getting up off the couch is painful. It seems better in the morning, and better when I exercise. I played well at Ping Pong today. We had 4 tables going, that is 16 people. I’m usually one of the top players there, everyone knows and respects my serves. But today there were two 30 year olds and they were in the Bob and Randy category. The one guy was maybe Randy’s equal. His serve was wicked! He could take my most devious serve or spinny return and slam it back with a wild top spin. He was treating my best work like high slow floaters. It’s super fun to play against hard guys because they bring out my best game. I still lose to their superior skill, but I go down with a smile.

Now it’s January 6 and my knees are the only thing missing Prednisone. They ache when I do deep knee bends and I get little random stabs of pain under the knee caps. It’s quite painful, I took Ibuprofen since I’m going climbing this morning. This disease is still around, but I will gladly tolerate some sore knees to be drug free.

This could have been so much worse. Be interesting to see how I am going forward.

Meatloaf

I got to Moab October 28, having left t-town the 27th. The free BLM camping above Moab now charges $15 a night. All they did was put up a few plastic outhouses and iron ranger self pay stations. It’s still just dirt roads through the sage brush with occasional wide spots. I’m guessing Moab ran out of funds to constantly clean up after careless campers. In the morning I was surprised to meet Handsome Dave at City Market. He was 5 days into his trip with his Smith buddy named Dragon and staying at Hamburger rock. I also met Maria, of Meatloaf the cat. She was in the same rebuilt popup camper on her Ford Ranger. I had met her and 3 of her friends with Fletch in Leavenworth. It’s funny how seasonal workers follow the good weather, just like us old retired guys.

Note: Names have been altered for privacy.

On the 29th I drove down through Creek Pasture and it was packed to overflowing. But Super Bowl campground, which is just across the road and one mile south, was deserted.

10-30: Morning of the 30th my Creek buddy Paul came walking up with a big smile.

Me: “So you couldn’t get a spot in the cool kids campground either!”

P: “It’s crazy over there! People are triple parked in every site. Even weirder is that I drove all the way down here from Canada and 8 of my hometown Squamish climbing friends are camped right there,” pointing at a nearby Kimbo camper.

It is so awesome to have friends who love this place and don’t need to be begged to show up.

It was raining that day so I drove back to town to do some shopping. I needed something to enable painting in my truck on rainy days. And that something was only sold in Grand Junction. But it was raining and snowing so driving was a practical way to spend the day.

On the way back to camp that night I stopped at the junction of Highway 191 to 211 towards Bears Ears. The first cattle guard is right there, signaling free range pastures. When you combine sixty miles an hour on a black road, a black night and black cows you have a disaster in the making. Already there were 5 dead cows on the shoulder in a 10 mile stretch. In the distance I saw the taillights of a Sprinter van heading towards the creek. I briefly considered catching up to them for a caravan but I didn’t want to race through a cow pasture at 80Mph.

5 minutes later a Subie drove past and I quickly pulled out behind them. With them leading 10 car lengths ahead I was able to combine the illumination of their lights and mine for a reasonably safe cow plow commute. I do this a lot at night or in fog on freeways. There is always someone bolder than me willing to lead the way.

We drove for 15 minutes until we suddenly saw blinking hazard lights up ahead. There was the Sprinter I’d almost tried to catch, slewed sideways across the road. Their $200,000 rig was totaled, a dead black cow laying feet away, the rest of the herd standing nervously on the shoulder. The two young climbers…looking about 27…were standing there unhurt but with expressions I can only describe as stunned. Both me and my cow plow drivers pulled over and walked back to see if we could help. They said they’d already called for help and were fine. But…they were far from fine.

Those van life people spend months and thousands of dollars building out those rigs. It’s a lifestyle choice with many of them pouring the money they normally would have put into saving for a house mortgage into their glossy apartments on wheels. Many insurers will only cover the vehicle. The build out labor and materials used converting it into a home made RV is usually not insurable because it’s not officially registered and classified as a commercial RV. So when you wreck your home, you’re screwed. Not only is your trip over, but your lifestyle is turned upside down.

This exact same thing happened to my friends Bill and Pam 2 years ago. His comment was: “We are van life people, it’s who we are! We climb, mountain bike, ski, river raft…everything hinges around the van. With it gone, who are we?” Bill, his wife and their 6 year old are lucky to own a house, and thankfully in both these cases the airbags and crash crumple zones protected everyone…except the cow of course.

There were a dozen similar shiny sprinters camped in the Pasture. They all have the same Starlink antenna on the roof. One pair I talked to had been there for months, working remotely full time, climbing when they could. And everything is gravy until something goes wrong with the vehicle. Loosing a transmission is bad enough. But when you total your apartment/office space hitting a cow…it’s a huge deal. Their expressions were very telling as they stood there in the cold November wind waiting for cops and a wrecker. Definitely not an Instagram moment.

I found out later that Paul saw the exact same wreck. He and Laura were a half hour behind me and saw all the emergency vehicles. It’s puzzling why the ranchers take the time to put tags on the ears but not a reflective collar. I’ve heard those cows are worth upwards of 800 dollars .

10-31: Laura wasn’t feeling well so Paul and I climbed at The Fin. He on sighted a 12 as he does most days. It was fun driving him to the crag. We both commented that it was “like old times!” As I always do, I asked him to please not squeeze my rubber chicken.

“But it’s a new one Mark, I have to squeeze it!”

11-1: Laura, Paul and I climbed at Habitado where I gasped my way up Lighting Bolt crack, hanging on every cam. Paul was kind, telling me that it was only day two and I just needed to “warm up and get your lead head back”. I followed the fun off width to the right of Mariposa. Great no hands Levitation style knee locks called Jojobean.

11-2: Hiked up to the Second Meat wall with 8 of Paul’s Squamish friends. Sharon came walking around to see Paul and mentioned Norma was leading an off width that no one wanted to follow. I perked up at that as they are one of my passions. The route was named  Low Cholesterol featuring a few number fives but mostly sixes. 

https://www.mountainproject.com/route/105877824/low-cholesterol

I told Norma, the young lady who led it not to expect much. And that I hoped I didn’t disappoint her because I was super rusty and out of shape.

“No worries, I’m just happy you’re willing to clean it for me! Go up as far as you want. I have zero expectations…have fun!”

I immediately got a solid hand fist stack and soon was high enough to do the Levitation knee lock. I took both hands out of the crack and chalked up to oohs and ahhs from below. When it opened up to double fists it got hard but I persevered and managed to wedge my fists just right. You have to be very deliberate with the positioning of the fists as they meet, but it will work. With the fists for a handhold, you unclench your thighs, swing your feet out and up then push down with heel toe action. This raises your core a few inches. You swing your thighs back into the crack and flex. With both knees locked as at Vertical World in Seattle I had a no hands rest, once again shaking out and chalking up. Reach higher, lock the fists and repeat. It’s a full body workout.

I heard a bunch of attaboys from the youngsters down below. It must have been startling seeing a white haired geezer easily following something they were avoiding. When I lowered off Norma said she had had zero expectations of me, but that I vastly exceeded her expectations by doing it with one hang. I got fist bumps all around from the kids.

Her fives and sixes were shoved far, far back in the crack. I realized as I cleaned them that placing deep allowed her to more easily shuffle past, while keeping the rope clear up to the pusher top rope cam. If I had 3 more green sixes I think I could lead it. That would be: three fives, four sixes, a green big bro and my valley giant.

Earlier I’d followed Paul’s hard ten which was mostly red #1’s. It was a very pure corner splitter on polished Wingate. I didn’t have the power to layback or jam the reds so ended up french freeing most of the route. I love LinkCam handholds when following 5.12 leaders.

While that shit show was happening I heard an increasingly loud argument from Paul and Laura down below. She had wanted more help doing her first tape job but Paul had told her she kind of needed to figure some of it out on her own. He had taped both hands for her, but only the thumbs. 

Anyhow it turned out to have upset her. When she lowered me off he was belaying another route and she was not happy. They are both super nice people and it was sad to see them fighting. Wiping her eyes, she said she hadn’t had a boyfriend in a long time and didn’t know how to do it anymore. When I told her that Paul was a great guy she said yes, he is usually so sweet, but not this time. 

I drove her to camp to start dinner while Paul got in another pitch, assuring us he had a ride. She walked over and invited me to join them for dinner. This raised obvious red flags but she was quite insistent. I asked her if Paul was ok with the idea. She said it was all good and she’d tell him that she had asked me over. I was kind of stressed over the whole thing so I lit my campfire and had a shot of whiskey to calm my nerves. 

Darkness brought them both over to my fire in great spirits holding a casserole dish. We started talking about relationship challenges. I told the old story about how Sue and I finally tied the knot after many misunderstandings. I mentioned that I knew she was my person after 6 months. 

L: How did you know she was your person?

Me: That’s a tough question. Sue knew I’d been a drugged out hippie just 3 years earlier with a dozen failed relationships. I’d waited 3 years to meet someone real, and Sue was definitely all of that. By that time we were spending all our time together while still keeping separate apartments a block apart. We were hiking every weekend. We had each others backs and there was no one I’d rather be with. 

I offered to tell one more story, the one about the seven year itch. Afterward I mentioned how I’ve never told Sue that story but had told everyone else. 

Paul: I know, I’ve heard it twice now!

Me: Yeah, I remember telling it to you.

Paul: Hell, I’d be happy to hear it a third time. It’s a great story!

Me: I feel like I’m talking too much, do you guys have any relationship stories?

Paul: We had only been on a two week trip to Skaha, driving our separate vans before I ventured the idea of a month long trip to Smith, The City and the Creek. She was back in Calgary by then and I was really sweating whether she would buy the plane ticket back to Squish to join me.

Paul: When she got in my car at the airport parking garage I was ready to drive, but was getting some strange looks because she immediately jumped in my lap. We started making out behind the steering wheel.  I knew then that we’d be alright. 

Paul: But dude, thanks for all the wisdom! 

Me: Aw jeez, I’m no shrink, just a guy with a lot of water under the bridge.

11-3: We had a great fire last night at Sharon and Larry’s camp. Larry is from England and was raised in a rarified community where they had mounted fox hunts Tuesdays and Thursdays. He said it was an ancient tradition to rid the farmlands of too many predatory foxes, or at least drive them away. Fox in the chicken house is a real thing. Everyone around the campfire was fascinated by this story. He was basically talking about the lifestyles of Lords and Earls in modern day England.

When asked if they got a fox every hunt he said that no, they only got one about a quarter of the time but it didn’t matter as it was so fun. When asked about the dogs he said they were a special breed and there was a guy whose full time job was raising and caring for the fox hounds.

Up to twenty fox hounds would lead an equal number of mounted horsemen across the countryside in riotous gallops ending with the dogs eating the fox. The riders and horses would all be in high spirits, there is an infectious camaraderie that builds during the gallop across the moors. He said that sometimes a rider would wade into the slaughter to grab the foxes tail…sort of like a scalp…to prove they’d got one, before it got eaten. Guy had definitely won the birth lottery.

11-4-24: The entire Squamish contingent saw the incoming storm and bailed for Vegas. I drove to town for re-supply needing propane, gasoline, water and food. It was nice to catch up on the family news. Our daughter is trying to both buy and sell a house so she can be closer to civilization. Her job, and the kids schools are simply too far away.

I drove back in the twilight dodging cows and hung out by Ed’s fire. I’d met him in the morning when he’d walked up to Paul’s camp looking for partners. 

11-5: Ed and I climbed Bunny Slope at Critics Choice wall. Even on climbing day #5 I couldn’t climb the tight yellows. My technique was awful. I wasn’t focusing on jamming my toes so my arms quickly tired. I was getting jams, but the shallow non sinker jams…just barely bigger than red #1. I could not have led that climb, despite it’s reputation for being easy.

Ed had to haul a line as the rap is around 50 meters? He has smaller hands and led it with one hang.

Down below there was a brand new Overlander pop up camper on a sweet Tacoma. The guy worked for them and said they’d loaned him the rig as a demo. He said they weigh 300 to 400 and run $10,000 with a 3 month lead time. They sit on the bed rails, as opposed to the slide in models. It’s very much like the model M from 4Wh. He said the optional windows add a lot of weight. 

It started snowing on the way back to site 24 at Creek Pasture. I need to bring at least two green canisters. I can empty one during a day of painting. Because it was snowing outside I filled one canister inside the canopy. To avoid the obvious explosion risk I had the electricity off and the lift gate up…snow swirling in. I wore a glove  this time on my right hand to avoid the frostbite from my previous refilling.

With the main white tank valve off I was able to easily undo the collar and disconnect the one pound tank. The green Flame King refillable canister needs to be hanging down. This helps to ease the release. Also, after main white tank valve is closed, press spring handle to inject any remaining pressure into tank. Once tank is off, clear gas from pipe assembly with spring handle. Careful…there is a lot in that brass tube.

11-6-24: Election Day! Trump or Kamala? I occasionally listen to Joe Rogan . He’s rough around the edges, maybe a little crazy but always entertaining. I also admire Elon Musk and they both like trump. Before I’d left town I’d known trump would win so forced myself to watch Rogan’s 3 hour trump interview. There is so much bad press about him. A lot of it is true, the man is for sure not a saint.

But when the dems started calling him a Hitler I knew something was up. I wanted to know the man better. In the interview Rogan was laughing about how the democrats have painted trump as the end of democracy, maybe even another Adolf. That hyperbole does not serve Kamala well. Though both parties are slinging mud, I like Kamala more. But there is merit to trumps argument that she has had 4 years to fix things and didn’t, so why four more?

Anytime weather rolls in your climbing plans are shot for at least two days. As I looked around in the morning I saw the two women with matching $200,000 Sprinter vans standing talking quietly in the swirling snow. 

They had been living there for months working full time via StarLink and climbing on the weekends and   afternoons.

“Morning! So I assume you guys heard the results of the election?”

They nodded sadly. “Do you really want to know?”

“Ah Jeez. That bad huh?”

I had known T was going to win for months. Even some of my climbing friends were writing posts on social media endorsing him. And all the farms outside the cities were plastered with T signs.

When I got home a couple weeks later I decided to educate myself on who is coming into power. During the debates I’d been struck by how Vance seemed very polished, not at all like his boss. Joe Rogan interviews Vance for 3 hours here. Vance actually sounds quite smart. He’s not cocky, he admits what he doesn’t know and has a live and let live attitude. He seems like a guy I could drink a beer with. This is a democracy…they won…if you have the time, watch this. It seems all is not lost.

I walked over to Ed’s for breakfast. He and Ryan (pink haired girl) had a fire going and we jammed for an hour, burning through Ed’s wood as the snow fell softly around us. A few people gathered round to hear our live music. She is a singer songwriter with a great voice, perfect recall on her songs, and a smooth polished strumming style. Ed and Ryan both left that day for jobs. She teaches skiing. Ed has an interview for a job offering mid six figures. If he accepts it he will work remotely in Japan 3am to 11am to match US time. He designs and develops SSD hard drives along with server racks for the cloud. 

<!– begin Geek Alert –>

Ed has an encyclopedic memory for how bit storage works. Said that flash drive transistors have an on off switch at the one bit level. They can be on, meaning holding a bit of data (1 vs 0) or off. Newer SSDs lock or “freeze” the transistor switch to the on position.  But over time, if the computer is off, the switch leaks electrons and gradually moves toward neutral. 

This leakage leads to what is called “College student failure”. Kids come home for the summer and leave their laptops off. They go back to college in the fall, turn on their laptops and experience lost data. Moral of the story is turn on your laptop regularly so the “locked on” transistor stays firmly locked trapping those pesky electrons in place.

When I asked him what was the best long term storage solution he said there are two: (1.) Burned DVD discs stored in a cool, dry dark place. Like a vinyl record, they do not use electrons to store data. It’s all analog. They will last as long as the plastic. Whether there will be a DVD reader in 100 years is another question. (2.) Cloud Storage, which is his favorite. He says they spread out the data across up to 8 different locations. Even if 7 get destroyed, the 8th one can recover all the data.

Interesting side note: Ed worked most of his career in tech but burned out on the long hours. He switched to ski guiding in Japan where there is good money in winter on the great powder. But now he is being lured back to tech by the high dollars.

<!– // end Geek alert –>

Despite all our concerns over loosing our precious baby photos, I suspect our descendants 100 years from now will toss DVDs in the garbage. I recently tossed an entire family album of 150 year old tintypes. I had no idea who anyone was, they weren’t labeled. My Aunt might have known, but she is living in the moment and probably wouldn’t care either.

This is one reason why I love painting. A good painting will hang on peoples walls basically forever. It gets handed down through the generations. I’ve got a painting done by my grandma’s great aunt in 1910. She was a well known American artist in the late 1800’s. Her work is still cherished because it seems to have a life of its own.

In my own experience, there have been many times while I’m painting…usually a couple hours in…when a painting or drawing will suddenly change from just paint on canvas to a living thing. I like to say that it breathes. Maybe there is some kind of molecule transfer that happens between the artist and the pigments on the canvas…who knows? There are many things in life that can’t be explained…or maybe I just took too many mushrooms in my misguided youth. Anyway, if you don’t believe me, go to any large museum. By and large, they are filled with paintings and sculptures, not photographs.

11-7, written on my phone: It’s snowing outside again, I have the Buddy Heater running on low, a full belly of precooked mac and cheese. I’m going to work on Meatloaf’s portrait. Maria, his owner, is here at the creek. I showed her the pencil under drawing a couple days ago.

Pen drawing is done. I could stop here…probably should. But I have nothing better to do and there is a slim chance color might make it better.

Thursday 11-8 through Tuesday 11-12 were troubling days. All my partners, Paul, Ed and friends were gone. Each morning I’d do my normal walk around the campground, smiling at strangers and trying to make new friends. But for some odd reason, I was striking out. People would say they had a tight group and didn’t want to add a 4th to their threesome. Or, and this happened two days in a row, a guy would promise that I could join them, and then I’d see their car driving away. Straight up blew me off.

My neighbor next door had his hood up so I walked over to help, thinking I might make a friend.

“Car trouble?”

“Nah, I just left the light on all night during the rave over in site 7. It’s charging back up now. You going hiking in Canyon Lands?”

Now, the fact that he even asked me that indicated several things:

1. He clearly did not see me as climber.
2. I need to work on my presentation. Perhaps I should trade in my tundra for a beater Subaru.
3. My custom leather hat makes me look less like Alex Honnold and more like Crocodile Dundee, who doesn’t climb.

“No, I’m actually a climber…hoping to hook up with a partner.”

“Well, me and my girlfriend, we’re a pretty tight unit, we’d prefer not to bring a third. I had no idea you were a climber…maybe you should pile your rope and cams on the hood so people know?”

It’s funny that I don’t look like a climber. Maybe it’s the man boobs and the 15 extra pounds? Definitely I’d been painting in the truck too much, instead of mixing every night around the campfires. Other tricks I’ve used in the past are to set up my easel in the campground, or ride my unicycle around. Anything to claw my way out of the old man stereotype. It’s also quite likely that hitting 70 is some kind of critical age where you look so old to people in their twenties that you are just SOL.

I loaded up a rack and hiked solo up to Chocolate Corner. A nice 50-ish climbing guide was there with his wife and a friend. When they found I was solo they immediately offered me a top rope on Elephant Man, while the party on Chocolate said I could TR their route also. Now this was the friendly climber crew I know and love. I followed those routes and also Mr. Peanut.

There was a very charming couple at Mr. Peanut. He flies C-47s for the Air Force. She works as an Environmental Scientist.

Me: So you dump the jet fuel, and she cleans it up?

Her: Ha Ha! That’s pretty much it.

They didn’t know the area well, and he was a relative beginner, so would have made awesome longterm partners, but they were heading back to work.

I TR’d both climbs with very little effort, cleaner than I’d ever done them. Clearly following P. and Andy had built some power in my arms. I was ready to start leading creek routes if only I could snag a partner.

When Fletch heard I was struggling to find partners he offered to clear out a four day weekend at Joshua Tree evening of 11-13 to 11-17. When Samantha and Melanie got on board as well I knew my partner problems were finally over.

I did the drive to Josh in a day and a half, staying once in the mountains half way to St. George. I always swear I’m not going to drive at night…but every trip I break that rule. By 9 o’clock I was tired. I’d passed a couple rest areas because I prefer quiet BLM camping. When I saw a “No Services” sign at a pitch black exit I pulled off. After a half a mile on dirt roads I saw a National Forest sign that said camping was allowed but no longer than 14 days. I pulled over halfway up a hill at the first fire pit. As I sat in the cab, still buzzing from all the coffee, I saw a dark shape appear above me on the hill, silhouetted against the rising moon. At first I thought it was a person which surprised me given the dark night, frigid temps and howling wind. But it quickly resolved into an elk with a huge rack of antlers. He saw my truck and stood quite still against the full moon…clearly wondering if I was a threat. Moments like these are magical.

The next day I easily made the Yucca Valley BLM lakebed where I cooked hash browns and eggs for dinner in the warm blustery winds. A dawn start had me driving up to an empty site right below Toe Jam. I grabbed that and immediately met my neighbors Carl and Bert (not their real names). Within 10 minutes they had invited me to climb but I was too jet lagged from the drive. I sketched the Egg Boulder and worked on a drawing of Olivia. 

Thursday I did the dawn patrol and found a better site with lots more privacy. Fletch and I used to have a band.

As I packed up to move I said good morning and they were once again very charming, telling me I was welcome to climb with them. This was a huge change from uppity Indian Creek. I was in a rush to get back and join them so I left my creek rack in the pack, thinking I could make it to True Hidden Valley and back, a decision I later came to regret. We hiked to true hidden valley to do a couple eights on the brown wall. Then Bert said we were hiking down to Leap Year. He took us deep to the north into country I’d never hiked before. At one point I was astonished to see a cliff resembling Lost Horse wall. Lost Horse is a wall we normally drive to because it’s quite far.

Me: “That looks like Dappled Mare!”

Bert: “No, That route is on the far side of that mountain to our left. I think you are looking at the back side of Dairy Queen.”

“Dude, I’ve climbed Dappled Mare a dozen times…that is definitely it!”

Bert held up the climbing topo and it matched exactly. He admitted something had gone wrong. Carl chimed in that this wasn’t the first time they’d been lost. We scrambled down the huge boulders to the road, took a sharp right turn back into the draw and began the long approach to Leap Year:

https://www.mountainproject.com/route/105725065/leap-year-flake

Bert did a clean and bold onsight lead. It’s only 5.7 but the crux is friction with very thin cams. We ended up hiking 6 miles cross country that day…me carrying a 50 pound creek rack. Carl even took pity on me for a few miles, offering to carry my pig. His pack felt like a feather.

I told them my friends Fletch and Samantha were coming in that night and invited them over. By the time I’d cooked dinner Carl and Bert came walking up out of the darkness carrying a bottle of wine. They were such cool fellows. Carl told a long, extremely moving and entertaining story about working 3 months straight as a Trauma 1 nurse during Covid in Minnesota. All the nurses with families had quit, fearing the infection. Only Carl and one other single 23 year old nurse kept working. He never left the hospital that entire time and would sleep in a computer chair every night, pager at the ready. And he did that 89 days in a row…for $22.50 an hour. He lost 260 patients to either Covid or Trauma.

Both he and Bert met and work in LA now at a ritzy hospital catering to the rich and famous. Hippa rules prevented him from talking about his patients…but he did quip that he wasn’t fond’a Jane Fonda. One of his best stories was of a guy who walked into the ER with no pants, shit stained underwear and an arrow embedded in his brain. I’d love to tell it here but I don’t want to get him in trouble.

Samantha came walking up out of the darkness right on time, man it was good to see her! Speaking of meeting partners, I met Samantha in November of 2021 at Indian Creek. I feel lucky to call her a friend. Fletch arrived not long after with another bottle of wine for the fire.

Friday November 8: Fletch, Sam and I hiked up to Popular Mechanics:

https://www.mountainproject.com/route/105723478/popular-mechanics

Fletch led that with both Sam and I falling at the low crux where it pinches off. The fix is to get your feet up high so you can reach past the pinched off lost arrow pin scar to a sinker finger lock.

Next I led Jack of Hearts:

https://www.mountainproject.com/route/105722713/jack-of-hearts

I hung once in the elbow locking chimney. That’s a hard move to commit to. A six would be handy because my big bro was wobbly. Both partners thought it was cool 3d climbing as it moves between multiple free standing flakes for a full 35 meters. Our old friend Melanie showed up that night. Fletch and I have known her for a good 15 years. She is a doctor now. I know she does autopsies among other things. Might be a pathologist?

Saturday November 9: We woke up to wind and decided on Indian Cove. Sam and I climbed the 5.7 bolted route while Fletch and Mel did the 10 thin fingers.

I led Duchess Right. It’s a 5 inch crack that rapidly enlarges to 9 inches. I had a 4, 5, 6 and Valley Giant 9. The VG and the six were the critical pusher cams. I had to rest once on the 6. My double fist has vastly improved after Low Cholesterol. No one wanted to follow it…this seems to be a pattern.

https://www.mountainproject.com/route/105721729/duchess-right

Sunday November 10,  Melanie, Fletch, Rob, Sam and I climbed Tip Toe along with a couple others at Trashcan – Quail Springs rock. Fletch and Melanie went back to work in Santa Barbara and San Diego while Sam led the Flake 5.8 on Intersection, finishing in the twilight. We had to use her phone’s flashlight to rap in the dark. In the first 40 feet you need a green 0.75, a 5 and a 3. Normal rack after that.

That night Michael, another seasonal ranger showed up. We were sitting around after dinner and there had been some loose talk about hiking in the moonlight. If you don’t know Josh…you have three choices when it gets dark in winter season:

1. drink;
2. burn wood;
3. go hiking. Often, we combine all 3.

“You guys still want to go, maybe do the Iron Door and Hobbit Hole?”

As we hiked, Michael told a great long form story about a Hinge date in LA with someone whose gender was unclear. He drew the story out through both the Iron Door cave and Hobbit Hole. In this photo, he is still going while inside the Iron Door cave.

Monday Nov 11: I woke up at dawn and packed. By the time Sam and Michael had got up all I had to do was sort the rack with Samantha. I packed up, then went over to Sams site. 

“So, you’re here to say goodbye?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” I said sadly.

She opened her arms and I gave her a big hug, saying: “I love how we keep putting these things together, meeting in the middle.”

I shook hands with Michael. 

“I was thinking about your story last night about the dating apps.”

Sam: “You have any parting advice for him?”

“Ah jeez. I’m sure you’ve read all the same books on relationships?”

He nodded affirmative.

“I can only offer my experience. I was a lonely single guy, 22, hated the bar scene. Beautiful women make me super nervous. I feel like they look at me approaching and think I’m hitting on them. I don’t want to be that guy.

So I took a 6 week, after work class on hiking and alpine travel, like how to do self arrest with an ice ax. They put on an overnight trip where they brought all the skills together and taught us how to build and sleep in a snow cave. 

My buddy said I needed to check out the amazing deep cave these two girls had dug next door.

I walked over and climbed up the 15 foot passageway. I still remember how blue the light was under 10 feet of snow. At the end was a startled girl shoveling the cave larger. She had huge dark eyes…eyes that I still love 50 years later. My buddies name was John, 3 years later he was our best man .”

Michael liked the story. Sam said: “You’re one of the lucky ones Mark. Sue is wonderful!”

“So she and I were sort of both on a journey, both walking down the same path, both frustrated and lonely. Dating is stressful, but in that group setting there was no pressure, they weren’t dates, they were classes we’d paid for that happened to be full of beautiful like minded young people.”

Truth is that even after the snow cave, I still didn’t really know Sue. But when the class ended my buddy asked Cindy to go hiking. She brought Sue, and he asked me to make a foursome. On the 3 mile hike out to the coastal digs…Cape Alava?…I played my harmonica as we hiked. We paired up after that: Sue and I, him and Cindy. One on one…in a romantic setting like the ocean…we both felt the beginnings of something.

After grabbing a breakfast burrito at the Park Headquarters I hit the road.

The drive home was the usual numbing mix of long hours of boredom spiced with short bursts of terror. It seems that the more tired I get the more I think other drivers, especially truckers, are veering into my lane. It’s an awful feeling to be passing between two trucks when you suddenly sense one of the trucks is crossing the lane divider toward you. It’s a side eye thing. I often wonder if it really happened or I was just imagining things. Long solo drives are not healthy.

It was so nice to drive up to my house and see Sue standing out in the yard. 24 days is too long.

November 14, 2024 Sue: “You want to take care of this before ping pong…we have half an hour.” 

“Well, sure. I won’t turn that down!”

Later, on the bench after a game, she sat right next to me…rubbing knees. We’re like a couple birds who haven’t seen their mate in months. We’re kinda’ broken when we’re apart. It was never my game plan to take long trips without her. She has had a long string of shoulder injuries keeping her out of the climbing game. As we walked back onto the court I put my arm around her, pulling her close as we walked to the ping pong table for some double trouble. 

“You guys ready to take on the Websters?”

Clint came over later with his two daughters. We slouched on the couch, feet up, while the grandkids played on the rug. We are planning to help Lisa with a fallen tree Saturday in Ashford. He and I seem to be so well bonded…like best friends who don’t need to talk  because everything has been said.

In Josh, where I’m supremely happy, I was telling Fletch and Samantha that I loved living the life down there. The climbing is always amazing and the camaraderie and friendships were top notch. It’s a great scene. I am blessed with the best friends in the world. But I have a really good scene at home too. And now that I’m home, I realize just how true that is. Clint, Lisa, the grandkids, Sue…wow. These people are my life. 

Portrait of Rose

I haven’t published a post in 7 weeks. When I feel like writing I’ve gotten in a habit of writing privately on my MacBook in the Notes application. Notes is my replacement for the more expensive Evernote…which I used for 15 years and loved. But like Photoshop, I don’t have the funds for expensive software.

A ton has happened over those 7 weeks. I’ll start with the most recent and work backwards. Today Sue and I drove up to babysit our grandkkids while Lisa had their potential new house inspected. Dan was working so she had asked us to help out. This was the first time Lisa had been involved in a house purchase. Dan owned a house when they got married.

She was understandably nervous. It is lot of money. The house they are selling is less expensive so their payments will take a big jump. But it will get them out of the sticks and into a decent town where everyday life will be much easier.

Working backward, our 24 year old gas water heater needed replacement. Sure, it might have run another 10 years, but Sue said the temperature was getting wonky, and common wisdom said a replacement was overdue.

Lowes ball parked it over $2000, and that was on the phone and without seeing our old pipes. And for a $500 heater? They said that a gas plumber had to come out first for an inspection, then more people had to come for the installation and removal.

I thanked him and hung up. I’ve installed two electric water heaters at our old house. But I was nervous about capping the gas line. However, I’ve been using propane campfires and camp stoves for decades and had some comfort level with gas. I called our gas company and explained I wanted to keep our gas fireplace but disconnect the gas water heater. He agreed that it was a simple diy job to cap a gas line. Turns out it’s just some yellow gas tape and a brass screw on cap. Plus, there is the original red shut off valve. It’s in the off position, and if for some crazy reason it gets knocked into “on”, the cap is there to seal off the gas. I did the standard test with soapy water…several times…and all is good.

Getting the gas tank out was really hard. The vent-chimney was two layers of 1mm 7 inch steel pipe enclosing an inner tube of 3 inch 2mm thick walled steel pipe. I spent at least two hours cutting that out with an angle grinder.

The heater is squeezed into a slot between the wall, the door and the washing machine, with a thick galvanized pipe directly in front blocking its exit. That pipe is the overflow drain and dumps excess pressure outside. It was a nightmare getting the damn thing cut out, drained, and hand trucked down the porch steps to the back yard.

Plumbing Nightmare

Unlike the original install, I wanted to install an expansion tank per current code, as I’d done at our last house. But the torque of the tank on the new galvanized steel plumbing created leaks.

After failing twice, both times with brand new steel I went back to youtube. After some research I realized an entire generation of plumbing had come and gone while I wasn’t paying attention. Copper had become the new standard, replacing galvanized steel. After 15 years, copper became yesterdays news in favor of the new latest greatest standard called PEX.

I’d seen it while Chad was rebuilding his Index cabin, I was like, “What the hell is that plastic junk? It looks like aquarium plumbing”. We took another trip to Home Depot. The ladies in the hardware aisle knew our story by then and were happy to assist us as we spent another $200 in PEX tools, piping and fittings.

But the fun wasn’t over. I had a tee joint exiting the wall in 40 year old galvanized pipe. I wanted to start the PEX there but the 10 inch steel pipe coming up out of there was frozen at the joint. Nothing would loosen that 1980’s joint. Not force, not a heat gun, nothing. I was deathly afraid of breaking the pipe down inside the wall. It would have cost us upwards of fifteen grand if that broke. Because at that point Sue would have called a plumber for a complete house re-plumbing job.

More internet searching found a youboob video of a guy heating a steel pipe glowing red hot with a torch. Looked like a great way to light the house on fire. I built a heat shield from aluminum sheet metal and a turkey roasting pan. After heating that thing red hot, Sue standing by with a fire extinguisher, it finally broke free. I put a steel to brass PEX fitting in using my best dope over tape joint and plumbed the water heater. This time I supported the expansion tank properly on the wall to studs. So there was no tension on the joints.

In my new plumbing job #3 there were only two non PEX joints: wall to the PEX and exp. tank to the pex. The wall joint weeped. I cut the first section of PEX out and discovered that joint was not tight. It had been tight when I installed it…but it got loose. I used a new fitting, only 3 wraps of tape and a new brand of dope over the tape. And I reefed that sucker down like a mofo. I’m talking 95% of everything I’ve got. I put it all back together and no leaks after a week.

I bought a leak detector from Amazon and installed a floor drain. One of the detectors is under the house to detect both fresh water leaks and drain leaks.

We had a little trouble with hooking up the power. That is a lot of wire to pack into a tiny cavity on top of the heater. I won’t go into detail…but we called our electrician back and he got it hooked up in no time

Chris and I went up and did GM to Heart of the Country. I was feeling weak and she had to lead every pitch. Against doctors orders, I’d lowered my PMR medication to the point where my knees hurt.

While all this was going on I spent a couple weeks tinkering with a portrait of Rose. While building a frame for it I realized my son’s Rigid miter saw had a bent fence. I got a new DeWalt and it is flawless.

My old cast iron frame clamps were causing me trouble. I’d been hearing about people using ratchet frame clamps so took a break from plumbing to drive up to Rockler and buy their clamp.

My portrait of Rose was very troublesome. It kept looking like a doll and I couldn’t see the problem. Lisa immediately saw that the chin and cheek were too long. Finally, since I seemed to be blind, I brought the painting in to Affinity (like Photoshop but cheaper). I set the painting above the reference photo layer and made the painting layer semi transparent. This allowed me to see where my drawing errors were. I noticed that her right eye was completely wrong…almost anime wrong. Note the guide grids I’ve drawn over the photo defining eyes, nose and mouth. I drew those guides with the pen tool.

Below is one of my many failures. Note how the portrait of the face doesn’t match the grid I built over the photo, errors shown in red. Affinity is great for this. It replaces Photoshop and it’s super cheap. Like a one time purchase of $70? In an ideal world I’d be able to see these errors without technology. To that end I bought some artist calipers. Sculptors have used these for a thousand years.

After several more hours over a couple days she began to look real. Not perfect…but so close that more tinkering was irrelevant.

Going even further back in history I had fun trip with Chris to a new 4 pitch route called Cloud Flare at Look Out Point. My knees were pain free and strong on the way up. Only one rest break above the idaho turn off. The climbing was fun 5.7 though I grabbed a cam 15 feet up. i should have gone right. Pitch one has a senior citizens style crack, very sticky and shorter. Bring 15 slings and long sling any sharp corners. Pitch two has a Klahanie crack capped by a undercling traverse on sticky slab. At the end of that you have to pass a bulge with great pro and the crux move. I stepped right on steep slab which worked on follow.

Pitch 3 goes thru what they call choss, but I found moderately good gear. No loose rock, just steep water polished gully style stemming. Gear is minimal and not inspiring but not truly dangerous. l was glad I’d recently done front 180 to have my friction feet dialed. 

At the bottom of pitch 4 we were looking up from the shade at the flagpole 70 feet away blowing in the sunlight. Chris didn’t have summit fever and wanted to rappel. I kept thinking we were so close and I’d never seen the summit. I wanted to summit  but knew she wanted to rap. There was no need to summit that day, I could always come back.

Plus, to summit, we’d have to climb right by or over the two huge 4 foot stacked blocks 40 feet directly above us. They were completely undercut and the worst one was only held in place where a 3 inch corner was jammed precariously against an overhanging wall. Draped over the two blocks was a stiff and crusty handline. 

I was trying to be a good partner by agreeing to rap, even though I wanted to summit. She was aware of this and offered to summit, but only if I led the pitch. It was an interesting dialog where we were both trying to be good partners despite differing desires. Neither wanted to be a dick. Finally we checked the time and realized that at 3, we had up to four hours to summit and deal with any stuck ropes on the 4 rappels to the ground. 

I led up, using knots in the cheesy handline for protection since there was minimal gear. There were two lovely splitters on the summit block. One needed two 4’s and a 5, which we didn’t have. The other was a steep hand crack, overhung at the bottom. Both looked fun for a later trip with more time and gear.

The raps were uneventful, there are anchors all over Lookout Point. As we started hiking down there were some shockingly exposed sections of cliff directly above Private Idaho. It was “one slip and you’re dead” trail. Fortunately the route developers have done a ton of trail work involving huge trees shoring up the exposed sections.

My left knee got some kind of a fluky crap out syndrome. My right has been doing that lately, but it was fine. The left let loose a burst of pain and collapsed, causing me to sink down into a crack between boulders. It was extremely painful and completely unexpected. That kind of bullshit 40 minutes up a climber trail can be very bad.

Chris was a hundred feet downhill and saw me having trouble. She offered to take the rope, despite already having the rack. I realized that was smart and sat on a boulder during the changeover and took a couple ibuprofen. Prior to that, back in mid September:

Squamish with Craig

We did 9 pitches of super fun bolt clipping on Front 180. I easily navigated each crux. The worst one was where the face is streaked with rising thin finger cracks. You have to step off right to get a reliable side pull on the cracks. Other cruxes were simply tucking my toe into thin pockets on the vertical seams. Bolts are always close.

Craig needed more exercise so I drove him to the top of Mamquam road, a 3000 foot hill. He mountain biked down and back up 3 times – not electric, just muscle power. And pedaled to Saveon where I was waiting.

We bought a burger from Flipside. Eating out in the dark with the firepit warming us we talked about our shared interests. He is my son’s oldest friend. We all used to climb together so our memories go back 30 years.

In the car, Craig said: “You want to go do Penny Lane by moonlight?”

“Ah, shit, I can’t say no. This is a thing we do, repeatedly, going back decades. If I say no it means I’ve gotten old.”

“Yupp, can’t have that.”

When we arrived at Penny Lane in the darkness we found a couple dudes drinking beers by headlamp. They had been there all afternoon and had just finished working on the route to the left of Crime of the Century, in the dark.

“You guys here to do a lap of Penny Lane in the moon light?”

“Yeah, we were sitting in the tavern drinking a beer and eating a hamburger. I was looking forward to sleeping when Craig asked if I wanted to do Penny Lane by moonlight”

“Oh man, we all need someone in our life to ask us that! You’re a lucky man!”

There was no moon light yet on Penny Lane, plus it’s a built anchor with a traverse to the rap station. That was too many red flags for me so he led Quarry Man which has aligned top rope anchors. I had just led it with Joan a week previously and found it very do-able in the dark.

There is more, but I’ve covered the major stuff. Keeping a blog is a lot of work. I’ll add more photos later.

Gobble Gobble

My son has three egg laying chickens, a dog, and three towers of bees. He and his wife sell their honey to friends at work. During the bee harvest he stacks up two cubic yards of jars of honey in the living room.

I’ve been fascinated by his animals. I’ve drawn his dog several times and now I’ve started in on his chickens. I also have a great photo of Rose, which I plan to do in oils.

After my disastrous experience trying to place my big paintings in the gallery I’ve switched to drawing whimsical things just for fun. It’s much more relaxing knowing I don’t have worry about whether they will sell. Like Van Gogh, who sold two paintings his whole life, I paint because it’s an itch I have to scatch.

I photographed the birds with my full frame Canon. The details up close are dramatic and were super fun to paint.

After I finished the birds I made another cowboy hat. This is my fourth one and it’s getting easier. I wore my first one for 5 years. And while it’s still going strong, it’s heavy. My second one worked, but I used the wrong leather and made the brim too short. I gave the third one to Clint and liked it so much I made another one for myself.

Part of the success of the last two hats is using the right leather. I bought a half skin from Tandy for $120. It’s got a hard polished finish but isn’t anywhere close to full grain. They measure leather thickness weirdly. I have no idea what I’ve got, other than it’s about 2mm thick. Fortunately, I can walk into Tandy, hand them the leather and they show me where there is more.

Buying leather is a very hands on experience. It’s something that must be felt. I always feel bad for the cows, but that’s a story for another day.

Not in sales

I recently enlarged a 12 x 16 plein air oil to a 24 x 36 inch painting. I liked the unhurried studio experience so much I painted it again on canvas, but with a palette knife. It’s so nice to work at my leisure in the studio. There’s time to sort out form, lighting, and color choices. Painting plein air is lovely, the views are captivating and being outdoors is wonderful. And capturing that view over the course of 3 hours is very satisfying.

Tourists are always hiking by and taking photos of me working. I may be deluded…but from my perspective, cameras are cheating. Nevertheless, there are always problems working plein air due to the sun racing across the sky and the resulting movement of shadows.

In the studio, I can take the flawed plein air painting and fix it’s problems. I have my iPhone photos of where the shadows were, and my painting showing my interpretation of the colors. Cameras can’t begin to capture the colors my eye sees and imagines. I choose colors almost randomly. For example, my thought process might go like this:

Hmm, the drawing looks accurate, now what color am I going to paint all that white snow? It can’t all be shades of light blue or grey, that doesn’t look right. There is blown dirt on that snow, and some of the brown gray rock is wet from snow drainage, while some is bone dry and sand polished. If I can’t mix that exact color, would another color of the same value work?

An old saying in portraiture is: “Any color will work if the value is correct”. An example is a portrait painted with very wild colors. Meaning the flesh tones are barely seen, having been replaced with purples, greens,blues, you name it. But when you take a photo and convert it to gray scale (black and white), the portrait looks like normal skin. The values are correct, just not the hues. And this is where the art comes in. I have, on a good day, a gift for color.

I finished the two 36 inch mountain paintings and then faced the challenge of framing. I’d never framed anything that big. They were not only large “over the fireplace” style paintings, but they were on two inch deep canvas stretcher bars. My moulding from home depot is 3/4 inch deep. I needed moulding 2.5 inches deep.

Off to Lowes I went to get 24 feet of .75 x 2.5″ pine. I built the frame but my son’s borrowed miter saw is out of adjustment. I had up to 0.125 inch gaps at the joints. That meant week joints so I put triangles in the corners, along with the strainer pieces. The strainer is what the painting sits on, or “floats” in the frame.

The painting fit with a relatively accurate 0.25 inch gap all the way around. But then I began the nightmare of varnishing the frame. On my smaller frames I simply paint them with acrylic paint and gold leaf. But these deserved a piano gloss varnish…being so large and hopefully expensive. I got some Minwax Polyshades Stain + Poly in Satin – Espresso color. OMG, that stuff is a nightmare!

I painted it on very carefully, wiping down the drips and oozes repeatedly as it dried. Two hours later, the paint film had experienced some kind of weird gravity ooze. Forming ugly drips. It looked like a 7 year old had varnished the frame.

I sanded the bad paint off. But my 21 year old sander wasn’t cutting it. I bought a new velcro style corded Dewalt. So much faster and better! I painted it again even more carefully and it dripped again. I sanded it off again. For my third coat I used a rub on Danish Oil. That went on nicely, no drips. But it was’t the “coffee” stain color I wanted, even after two coats. For the third coat, I mixed in a bunch of black artist oil paint. I used about a 3 inch bead of Ivory Black in one quarter cup.

Finally I got the shade and varnish I wanted, but it dried like an oil painting…as in slow. Plus the darn thing was super heavy since this first one is painted on a canvas glued to a cradled board, not just canvas alone. Before starting the next frame I looked at youtube and found other frame makers were using half inch board, and they glued the strainer to the frame before cutting it in the miter saw. In theory this makes a strong frame since you are chopping through an “L” shape and it gets glued + nailed, in two dimensions…the side, and the bottom strainer piece. But the saw was still out of alignment and my miters were awful. I was able to patch it with putty…but jeez, I am such a bad carpenter.

To wrap up this overly long blog entry…I took the two framed monsters up to my gallery at the mountain. I thought he’d flip over this new work. I was so excited after two weeks of full time artist labor. I was like, rah, rah, this is going to be awesome! I was dreaming about them selling for a grand each.

But when I walked in and asked him if he wanted to see some new work, he replied that he had no more wall space and hadn’t sold my last oil painting. It was still hanging on his wall. Basically…”nah, I’m good, but keep painting, those are great”. He did give me some good feedback, preferring the knife painting the most, and said my frames were just right. He likes the floater style.

After that I realized I’d been taking my art too seriously. At the end of the day, it’s just a hobby, like Sue and her perfect yard. She loves to tinker out there, watering and pulling weeds. She doesn’t try to sell her hobby. It gives her satisfaction and that is enough. So I started making leather hats. I’ve made four so far using a youtube tutorial. I’m not a bad hat maker.

A climb called Battered Sandwich

I have a long history with a climb called Battered Sandwich. I sent Alex up it on one of his first trips to Index. I’ve done it with my niece Pam and her friend Kena. My daughter got a cam stuck on it while following. When she lowered me down to retrieve the cam, I rubbed the knot in the chimney and core shot our brand new bicolor rope. I’ve hung all over the route in the 3 unique cruxes. One is off fists in the first 40 feet. At 50 feet it goes from fists to a body slot, but the body slot is smooth with nothing to grab. You’ve got pro at your feet, but nothing above you as you try and rock up into the bottom of the 8″ body slot. It’s extremely insecure.

Then the 8 inch slot gradually widens over the next 50 feet. You can walk a four and a 5 if you still have them. I only had a 5 yesterday. It’s a no fall situation. When you are walking your only cam for 30 feet you are risking a 60 foot whipper. So the move was: flex, push the cam up, unflex, wonk your way up above the cam, flex, reach down and move the cam up, repeat.

Eventually the slot opens up into a left facing flared chimney with hands in the back. It’s imminently climbable for 30 feet but then the hands turn into reds and greens. Which for my big mitts mean insecure again and I have to press my back against the flaring chimney since the hands are so strenuous. The chimney meanwhile is arching over towards less than vertical. At a certain point, right when the green cam sized crack becomes ring locks, you realize that you can sort of stand on the bottom of the chimney wall by pressing upward with your back. It’s steep friction, but just barely works.

A couple moves of that on increasing less steep footing, one more maxed out green or purple cam and you can reach a good hand hold and stand up. So for my hand size, it’s three cruxes: the off fists, the body slot, and the off hands at the top.

With all those challenges, I avoid it like the plague. Many people just top rope it. The party before us led up from the top of Wild Turkey and got a top rope on it. But Lisa G and I have some climbing chops and decided to give it a go. She got it clean with only minimal grunting. I was super nervous at the bottom, thinking all the worst case scenarios, including down climbing and going home.

But the terror starts slowly. After the runout start (bring extra reds just for that) it’s very solid hands leading into friendly blues. Just when you are getting comfortable (love my big hands) it gets bigger than steepled hands but not big enough for fists. So I was doing diagonal fists which is both painful and insecure. Right about then all the face holds on the left vanish into a blank vertical wall. But by committing both feet to the crack splitter style I was able to grunt my way past the bomb bay bulge in the crack. I slammed in one of my fours and the crack, even though it was bigger inside than fists, tapers at the outside to make perfect fists.

I happily walked my four up 10 feet and then arrived at the body slot…where there is nothing to grab but a rounded one by four inch ledge. I put my five in at the bottom of the slot, which was great. But then I had to climb above it into the body slot. I’m an old chicken and do not like climbing above my gear, but I manned up and made it work with a tipped out blue for a top rope piece.

A week later I did it again with Julia but brought three fours, so I had a much safer top rope piece at the body slot. A few days later Chris and I did Rattletale and Peanuts to serve you. I hung all over Rattletale pitch two. I’m blaming it on the heat. My hands were greasing out of what should have been secure yellows. She also had trouble on pitch three, so maybe it was just low tide. Couldn’t be that we are getting older.

The next day was my nephew John’s wedding, and then we followed Lisa and family to Leavy for Levi’s first birthday at 8 Mile campground. In the morning I led Lisa up Classic Crack. That thing is not getting easier as I get older. Maybe fresh from Indian Creek it would be a cruise, but I found I really had to focus on technique to get it clean, and that was just barely. The feet felt insecure, the good jams were over long reaches and I could feel my power ebbing. When I finally got up to the secure fists at the top I was breathing like a cart horse.

It was great to hang out as a family. As we walked from the campground to Classic, Lisa said she was having deja vu moments, remembering walking there with my parents, me holding her 5 year old hand. Now she was holding her own daughters hand, while I was the grandpa. It’s funny how age gives you this grand perspective back through time, looking down through the generations.

Speaking of grandparents, yesterday Clint had to work an unplanned shift. Sue went over at 6 to babysit. I pedaled over at noon to help. Rose was bouncing off the walls with Abby crawling under her. It was an accident waiting to happen. I asked Rose if she wanted to go for a walk. We walked down to the park together. I’d never taken her for a walk by myself. But there I was, an old white haired grandpa walking a three year old girl in a little white princess dress. Who saw that coming?

She reminded me of Wyatt, meandering along, stopping at every point of interest. But unlike Wyatt the dog, Rose could talk lucidly about the pretty yards, the fine old elegant brick houses. And she was so well trained, grabbing my hand at each street crossing, watching for cars. Getting old sucks, but there are these neat things that happen, like grandchildren.