“I fell off, I came weak, but I’m on again so love me… I was lost, you can see, that I’m on again, trust me”

A quote from the newest Grouch album Show You the World. Pretty dope. I have “acquired” so much music lately I haven’t had time to listen to it all. Still, I think my favorite band is Why? Their new album Alopecia is amazing, if you like that emo, indie, white-boy rap, which you do. I have also been reading a hilarious book called Orange Crush by author Tim Dorsey. I don’t know what it is about those authors from Florida, but they sure know how to make me smile.

Anywho, it has bee quite the week for me. Been living the good life. Lots of second firsts this week, if you know what I mean. I stood up on a surfboard for the first time again, at the same spot with the same rental-shop, soft-top board I used the first, first time I stood up on a surfboard. I climbed outside for the first time again today and surprisingly did my first “5.14″ again. I still can’t quite walk normally but I can put my foot in small moccasyms and do almost anything I would normally do with my foot. I even bouldered again, inside of course, which I know was risky and pretty dumb of me but I was very careful and made sure not to land at all on my left foot. What can I say? I live life in the fast lane… kinda. I’m also four days away from turning 22 for the first and last time. How scary for me!

I have been training my butt off in the gym and it seems to be paying off. I feel strong again! The bad thing about that is I have now completely exhausted all the gym routes and possible link-ups at the touchstone gyms in the bay area. I now have to take a trip to Sacramento to find new and exciting gym routes, and where will I go after that?

This weekend I climbed at the Oakland Gym for a few hours and then drove up to a friends beach house just north of Stinson and Mickey’s beach and enjoyed a evening session alone in the line-up with a humongous board and decent little mushy long-board waves, followed by a nice dinner with a bunch of friends. Like I said, living the good life. The next day things took a turn for the worse when I encountered the annual Carnivale celebration that my house was totally boxed in the the center of. It took me an hour and a half of driving an incredibly slow, zig-zaggy circle around the neighborhood to get back home. I forgot all about the incident with the therapeutic properties of cleaning dishes and washing clothes.

So today I met up with Ethan Schwartz, the hip-gimp (sorry for the previous mis-spellings of your name Hipster) in Marin and we car-pooled out to the beach for what would be our first day on real rock. On the way out we chatted about climbing, Mickey’s history and ethics, blah blah blah. Mickey’s Beach is an old-school sport area with a few spread out formations and a little bouldering as well. For how sharp, chossy and condition-dependent some of the rock is, there are a handful of routes that are really quality. Having done most of the good hard routes at mickey’s I was just looking forward to climbing on the real stuff, forgetting about the gym and getting some pitches in. I thought I might also check out the Beach Arete which goes at 13b, or stiff 14a if you avoid the one chipped hold, a side-pull pocket at the crux. Kevin Jorgeson (pictured left) was previously the first and only person to send the arete without the chippedness, and for good reason: It’s wicked hard. Especially the way Kevin did it. After warming up on routes that were still a little damp and way too hard to warm-up on, I flashed a really fun route called Naked and Disfigured, which other Ethan also did on his third go of the day (yay). After that my skin was in pain but I hung the draws on the arete anyway and tried to figure out the crux section. I tried the move several times using Kevin’s beta and didn’t even come close. I could make the excuse that it was about 75 degrees at the time and my skin hurt like hell and it’s a very friction dependent climb, bur really it’s just hard. After fidgiting with some holds that had no chalk and trying some different beta I found a sequence that worked and was really fun involving some massive extensions and compression, and go-go-gadget arms and legs. This new method is still really hard, like V10 ish, but far easier and higher percentage than Kevin’s way. Those who know me well know that doing huge moves to skip moves I have trouble with is my default position.

I lowered down and had no expectations of sending the route, but figured I’d go up it once more just to get the moves that much more dialed for when I came back. Most of the time when I give up and think negative thoughts I still know it’s possible in the back of my mind, so on my next go I just gave it everything I had, and tried to climb the bottom efficiently. I burled and yelled my way through the crux, forgetting what to do with my feet right after, but still recovered and managed to pull the last big throw before the easier terrain to the finish. I was so psyched to send since we lucked out with the slightly cooler than normal temperatures that will not return frequently until the fall. The line turned out to be one of the best climbs of it’s kind I have ever done with really fun moves on cool holds on an obvious feature. To top it off, I bought a bag of the best cherries I have ever tasted and gobbled them down on the drive back to my car. What a day. The funny thing is that I called Ethan this morning to tell him I was gonna bail because I was tired and my foot was soar, which was true. But when I called he didn’t answer, so I just sacked, got my stuff together and jetted. Today so easily could have never happened.

Well, I’m psyched to be climbing, surfing and just feeling alive again. This weekend I plan on going up to Donner Summit to climb on the star wall. So excited.

Well I’ll end my ramblings with a picture of the recipe for my favorite guacamole, the ‘Miso-Kelp guac’ taken from the cook/diet book the Thrive Diet. Enjoy!