Bishop!

Tag team, back again… somethingsomehtingsomehting- c’mon lets begin… clap your hands party people- c’mon make some noise- someonesomeone’s in the house- jump for joy… and… I don’t really know the words. But I always start singing that song in my head for some reason. It’s catchy.

We’re back in boshop ladies and gents. Psyched! we we’re blessed with pretty deese weather today despite what the forecasts and weekenders have been saying lately. It was pretty good- good for me means chilly and overcast- this morning. we got a late start out of the hotel room after sleeping in until about 9:30 because neither of us got very good sleep last night. After a quick break of the fast, we ducked to the milks to meet friends and warm up. I lent a pad and spot to Sean McColl as he made a ground up ascent of the direct finish to Evilution, chalking up and figuring it out as he went. Proud SON! Sean is really impressive… Upon my advice, Sean made an FA of the right extension to the ultra-calssic Heroun and the Sea of Stories today. It adds about five moves to an already brutally pumpy problem… It’s cool to see youngsters like Sean putting it on the line on the higher stuff… inspired by his effort I grabbed the rope and gear from the car and threw a rope on the top of the grandpa peabody, first to scope Ambrosia. I mini-tractioned the last 3/4 of the route (it’s a route no doubt) and did all the moves pretty casually, but found it hard to imagine doing them without the comfort of the rope and after doing a henious, crimpy V11… I usually tend not to think about the fall and consequences of one while in the mmonent because I just don’t have time for such thoughts, but maybe on a climb like that it’d be different because you’re climbing for so long…

After the clouds scattered and the sun shone through, Am-bro baked, so I rapped down the other side to brush the top of the Evilution direct and feel the holds. I got pretty psyched because the holds seemed pretty positive and none of the moves felt too stopper or dangerous on the shoulder. I comitted to come back to it later in the day when the sun dissapeared.

It was fun to just hang out and heckle, shoot some photos and video and watch my friends climb on the classics. Congrats to Jason on sending Change of Heart and Randy on his efforts on High Plains (he will surely send tomorrow) and to Karl for cleaning up some classics!

After sitting around for four hours and watching people try hard, I was cold and ansy and didn’t wanna wait until tomorrow to climb so I rallied pads (which kept getting blown away!) and spotters for the Evilution Direct. On my first try I got up standing on the lip, having basically speed-climbed up to there, staring down the last hard, comitting move with absolutely numb fingers. I made the smart decision to downclimb and drop from the lip… spice! I told everyone “one more try”, as we all know that could mean anything… but this time I meant it because the last thing I wanted to do was end up hurting myself wrecklessly after just coming back for an injury… but at the same time, after not experiencing “the feeling” on real rock for almost a year, I was hungry. My second try went even smoother from the beginning and without messing up any foot beta I found myself staring down the same last committing move, stuck for a split second in indecision, before thrutching and sticking the final right hand sloper, highstepping and rocking onto the slab! Ok it was a tad wreckless, but hey, I didn’t fall so it’s all good! And with all the pads and capable spotters I had I probably could have been fine falling even from that height. Hearing Audrey and Jason yelling victory screams from the car (where they had been watcing) was music to my ears as I scrambled to the top of the boulder. After descending, a really strong gust of wind came and keeping the pads with us was like trying to tame a wild rhino. We all packed up quick, got out of the cold and ducked down to whiskey creek just in time to place our order for happy hour! How ironic that whiskey creek is the same place I ended up right after busting my heel on new year’s day, 2008… a delicious dinner, a pitcher of beer and a hot tub sesh later found us back at the hotel room psyching on climbing and surfing videos, and others blogs, wasted and ready for bed… thanks to Ryan Olson for taking footage of the evilness and good luck on the Milker! Crush it!

We have tomorrow morning before going back home from our ninja mish so I better get some sleep. I’ll try to update during the week with video and pics from the trip.

One more thing: here’s a pretty cool shot from our last trip, from a nice guy named Pat who gave this shot to me to use for the blog. Thanks Pat.