First Steps

The cast is off! I arrived at my appointment a half hour early yesterday and still spent two hours at the hospital. But the good news is that the cast is off for good and my heel is healed! The not quite as good news is that I have to spend two more weeks walking in the moon boot to strengthen my foot and ankle, then I can start easing my way back into a shoe, so I still have a ways to go. But I’ll be going to the gym soon to try to start the process I am dreading of getting strong again, but for now I’m just psyched to be out of that foot prison. I’m not religious but when Dr Sundstrom told me my foot was healed I could hear the choir singing in the background. Right now my foot is in ice water, the first stage of my 30min contrast bath. So my right leg is pretty beefy from bearing all my weight for the last 4 months, and my left leg is all skinny and emaciated and skeletal. When my cast came off my the hair on my leg looked like the grass under your tent after a month, all matted down and half dead. The gyrating saw they use to cut casts is awesome! you can press it against your skin and it doesn’t hurt. There was a lot of dead skin and hair on my leg and foot that I will spare you the details off. You can’t really tell how skinny my leg is in the photo, but I tried.

I did a pretty long interview with Joe Kinder for MVM that just went up a couple days ago and is in the news section now. The new issue of Urban Climber, the ’08 Photo Annual arrived yesterday and I was surprised to myself in it twice. There was a full page pic of me on the second ascent of the Sasquatch in Yosemite taken by John Vallejo and a double page spread of me falling off a project in Mallorca taken by Boone Speed. I was also quite proud to see, on the page following the Sasquatch picture, a picture I submitted to UC for their Photo issue that I took in the Zillertal in Austria in the summer of ’05 during a trip to Europe. This picture was printed on a full page and is pretty much my first ever gallery image!

In other news, I think it’s pretty rad that Daniel Woods placed third in the first bouldering world cup of the season in Hall, Austria. Obviously team America, besides a few women (Lynn Hill, Robyn Ebersfield, Katie Brown, Lisa Rands, Emily Harrington) haven’t really measured up to the Euros in the world cup comps, especially in the past decade. It’s been a goal and a dream of mine to win, or at least podium at a WC someday. Maybe it’s time for generation next to step up and give the Euros a run for their money? We definitely have the talent, but are there enough climbers with the dedication and resources to make it happen? It will be interesting to see how things fair out at the world cup comp in Vail this summer, when the American boulderer’s (especially the ones from boulder) are competing on their own turf. I cruised around the IFCS website for a while trying to find the last American men to do well in the world cup circuit and here are a few little statistics I found (not 100% sure on the accuracy): The last male US competitor to podium at a world cup was none other than Chris Sharma in 2003. He made the podium at many bouldering and lead WCs between 1997-2003, but only one he won was a lead in Kranj in ’97, beating Francios Le Grande and Petit. Besides him and Daniel, I think Jim Karn is the only other Male competitor from the US to podium at a WC which he did at a bouldering event in ’92. Besides that, Hans Florine won a speed WC way back in ’91, and I think that’s It for the guys.

Climbing Magazine has the full story on the WC, and if you go to the Salzlager website, in the Video/photo section, Finale videos #1, 9 and 28 feature DW.

Later!