The purpose of our trip is two-fold: climbing and poker. With Red Rocks just about a half hour away from downtown, the plan is to climb in the mornings, then head back to town to shower and hit up a cheap buffet for dinner. I expect it will be thoroughly exhausting and thoroughly enjoyable. I haven’t been on a rope in months, so the next few weeks I actually need to start getting my ass to the gym; at the very least to do 4×4s to build up some semblance of endurance (and callouses). My sister has been out of practice too, with some issues that have kept her from climbing. We’ll both be flailing our way up 5.9s and 5.10s, but apparently Red Rocks has them in abundance!

There are some pictures here, including a fantastic shot of the sunset made all the more impressive by all the wildfires in the area.

P1010078, originally uploaded by feralboy.

The whole tags thing seems to have taken off.

For anyone who remembers the site I’m posting a few of the better clips:

Dave Graham and crew tear it up at Rumney

Klem Loskot deep water soloing in Spain

Joel Brady on a cool project in New England

Some Cockney dude on his woody (heh heh heh)

All pictures here.

Update: Vince sent me some pictures he took as well. See those here.

All photos I took here.

We drove down late Friday afternoon, and got to the campground by about 11:30. The drive was uneventful, although I can tell you that El Paso is a crappy shitty stinky town. As soon as you hit the outskirts, you pass by a waste-treatment plant (think of the one at my work, times about 1000), and then a high-density feedlot. Yum. Anyway, get to the site, pull out the tents, and rack out.

Next morning was bright and clear. Our friends Vince, Tammy and James (along with Tammy’s son Mars and friend Chris) were already there as well.

We get to the state park, get checked in, and I get to watch an orientation video! Whee! “Don’t step on plans, don’t disturb wildlife, yadda yadda.” Ok, done. Set up at our campsite inside the park, some awesome breakfast burritos and tooth brushing, and we’re all off to hike in.

The warmup area is called Small Potatos, and has some small-ish rocks. I do my very first climb at Hueco, and then do a few other warmups in the area, and then an ultra-cool V2 called French Fry.

After the warmup we stopped at a climb called “No One Gets Out Alive”, which is V2 or V3. Then up to the “Track 2” area, where they have “Daily Dick Dose” (V7) and some other fun things. I took a crack or two on DDD, but realized that I need a whole bunch of training and not eating if I want to have a good winter.

Paul quickly knocked off “P.F.O.S.”, (V9), and we went around the corner to a cool highball arete called “Baby Face” (V7?). I took pictures of everyone trying it, and also a few shots of the awesome view.

Next up was Martini Roof, which was an awesome cave with all kinds of good huge jugs in the roof, with a few problems scattered about. A V5, a longer V6, and an ass-hard V10. Everyone was working on the 5, for the most part. I was close, but couldn’t control my swing when I got near the end. It was a great workout, tho.

Last stop was Hebrew Sausage, an awesome V5 that’s all slopers and heel hooks; really cool movement. The heel hook was starting to give me some trouble (I have a bit of a trick knee, and heel hooks and descents screw it up nicely), so I called it a day. We headed back to the campsite, cooked up dinner, and had pizza and beer.

Middle of the night it started raining! WTF? It was the first rain I had seen since I moved, and of course I didn’t put the rain fly on my tent, so at whatever time in the morning it was I was running around like a maniac trying to get the cover on so I wouldn’t get soaked. Paul and April were in the same boat, so I didn’t feel too dumb. Heh.

Next day there was still lots of rain, and cloudy skies as far as you could see.

The access issues at Heuco are strange: you have to have a guide for 2 of the 3 main areas, so luckily we had one Sunday to go see parts of the park that Paul and April hadn’t seen yet. Luckier still we had a guide who was a hardcore climber, Anna Burgos. She’s strong as hell, and cute as a button, but she sounds like Shelly from South Park. “Shtan, I’m going to go lishten to my Britney Schpears recordsh”. Sorry Anna!

We checked out all kinds of stuff. The warm up area “called ‘The Warmup Boulder’, interestingly enough” had some great climbs, including an awesome V3 I did with a big dyno move on it.

Then on to some other stuff, including a cool 45-degree face with 2 awesome climbs on it.

Then on to a different area which had “Full Service” (V10) and “Dragonfly”, which was an AWESOME V5. Crazy highball, cool moves. I can’t wait to send it.

Last place we went had just one climb, “Ultra-Mega”, which was a steep V7 with some really cool-looking holds on it. Paul and Anna both took some whacks at it, but Paul sent at the end.

A last stab at Hebrew Sausage for a few people (with James sending in fine form), and then we were on our way back.

In summary: Hueco is an amazing place, certainly on par with Bishop, and I can’t wait to get strong by going there every weekend.

All photos here.

To get to the areas, you drive nearly to the very top, and then hike down, past the cliffs you’re about to climb on. After a decent hike in, we tried out a few “warmup” problems (easy 11s). The type of rock on Mt. Lemmon is totally different from what I’m used to at the New River Gorge. The rock here is very sharp, with lots of quartz crystals. This is good because you can make use of a lot of blank-looking sections because of the friction, but bad because I don’t have very good callouses built up right now, so today my tips are blown.

After the warmup we hiked a little further down to head to an area called “The Orafice”. There were a few problems there that Paul and April wanted to work on there. To get there you have to shuffle across a foot-wide ledge, and then go around a corner and hook your harness into a safety line. P + A started across, and I looked and looked and looked and bailed. We were at least 500 feet above the rocks below, and one slip meant you were dead. I had visions of a foot giving way (it was sort of loose-looking choss), or a strong wind coming around the corner or something. That plus trying it with a loaded pack did not sound like my idea of fun, so as crappy as it made me feel I stopped. P + A were super-cool about it, and told me their first trip there they had bailed too, until some guy came and basically made them go across it.

Instead, we went down a really steep section of the cliff, past where a lot of the fire damage was from last year (burned trees and blistered rocks everywhere), and did a HARD 11 which was super-exposed, with a gorgeous view of the other mountains in the range, and all of Tucson spread out below that. Paul got the redpoint, and April and I both went up on TR. By the time I got to the top (long route, like 14 bolts or something) I was wasted. Not tired, so much, but no skin left, so all the prickly holds at the top felt horrible.

It was a fun place, but I’m still in bouldering mode, which is great because we’re going to Heuco next weekend!!! Hot weather be damned, we’re going to try and find all the shady spots, and just walk around and pick out some projects for the fall and winter. I’ve heard so many cool things about Heuco, combined with the video that P + A shot there, that I can’t wait to see it!

It’s a cool video, and I’ve probably only seen the first 1/3 of it. You’d swear it was a BigUp video; all kinds of cool slo-mo stuff introducing you to the area in the beginning… good music soundtrack and some great problems that I can’t wait to go send. It even had a real DVD case with pictures and stuff!

Update: Copies available for $5. Post a comment and I’ll get you info.

Saturday was an alleycat race around Pittsburgh. An alleycat, for those of you who don’t know, is an underground bike race, organized and mostly run by messengers] Everyone met at The Point downtown around 2, we each paid $5 ($6 if you didn’t have a helmet), and we were off at 2:30. The format of this race was a little different than the one I did last time the previous one laid out your route along with your checkpoints, but this race you were just told what your 15-odd checkpoints were, and your final destination, and you had to figure out the most efficient route yourself.

Brian was there, which was good, because I had someone that knew parts of the city that I didn’t, like the North Side. Also, he was riding his fixie, which meant that me riding my bike with all the gears had at least a chance of keeping up. There were checkpoints in all of the neighborhoods near downtown, so we hit them in this order: South Side, back Downtown, Strip District, North Side, Bloomfield, Squirrel Hill, and then ending in Oakland.

We got a little lost on the South Side, and ran into a messenger from Columbus named Randy. He had gotten separated from his buddies somehow, and was totally lost in an unfamiliar city, so he came along with us. Actually, it was Brian and Randy leading, and me gamely puffing along behind. Randy also provided me with the heart-stopper moment of the day. While going over the 16th St. bridge he was riding no-hands and hit a pothole and veered right into the bridge guardrail. Somehow he managed to straight-arm the guardrail and snap himself back upright, but I had visions of him getting splattered all over the road.

The rest of the checkpoints were uneventful, and it was a nice tour of the city, going from the “historic” adult Garden Theater on the North Side up to the beautiful campus of CMU, and everywhere in between. I guess our route wasn’t the most efficient, because there wasn’t anyone there to give us paper slips at the last two checkpoints, so we just headed to the finish, which was in South Oakland.

The finish was at someone’s “house”. I use quotes around “house” because it was a “house” only in the sense that it had a door, walls and a roof. Inside it was the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen. “Utilitarian” would be way, way too kind. There was a half-assembled bike on the living room floor. That was the only furniture. The back porch had about 5 trashbags full of empty PBR cans. The stove was beyond description, which is why I took a picture. I braved a trip inside to get us some “victory” beer. The “victory” was in that we didn’t come in last in any of our particular categories: fixie, regular, or out-of-towner. (BTW, pounding a beer as a water substitute is a Bad Thing™)

Yesterday Brian, Jen, Seb and I went bouldering at Pioneer. It’s not my favorite place to climb, but the weather was so beautiful for a change that it didn’t matter at all. Didn’t do anything exceptional, save for a cool V5 cave problem that involves doing a long throw to a small crimp edge and pulling off of that, pretty much one-handed. I was feeling the effects of the race still, so a pretty low-energy day. Stopped at Sheetz on the way home (MTO, baby!), and then settled in to watch Sopranos and Deadwood. I’m still not convinced about Deadwood… the characters are really starting to develop, but I don’t know if the underlying story is going to be enough to hold my interest.

And finally, I slept like utter poo last night. I think the stress of last week finally caught up with me, and I had fun sinus issues Saturday night and all day Sunday that finally turned into a cold last night that kept me up most of the night. Argh. I can’t wait for spring to be here for good. Every year I have sniffles pretty much from October through April, but I’m hoping that the clear Boulder air will do me good. Oh, I have news on that, too… but that’s for another update.

¹ If you want to see some alleycat footage, check out this guy’s site. Of particular interest are the “drinking and riding” and “NYC” videos. The NYC one especially is some of the scariest footage you’d ever want to see.

Right around the time that the local gym was completing their new bouldering area, we got a letter from the building owner where we were sub-sub-sub-leasing our space. There was a new tenant coming in; they wanted the whole floor, and we had to vacate. Luckily, we were able to sell all our holds to the gym, and just in time for a big climbing competition. It worked out perfectly for me, because with the new area open, there was much less reason to go to the co-op, but I certainly didn’t want to back out, because I still went in to campus on occasion, and also didn’t want to leave the remaining folks with a larger share of the rent.

So, last night was the first big night of trying to tear down the wall, which was highly over-engineered when we first put it in. All the nasty cummy mattresses were moved before I even got there, but we managed to get all but one piece of the plywood off, as it had like 4 stripped screws in it, and then called it a night.

There was one last problem at the end of the day (that I should have tried sooner) that I kept getting closer and closer, but couldn’t quite get. It was getting me so frustrated that I was pounding the wall and screaming with each failure. I never care about problems that much, but this one was dancing just out of reach. I know I can do it, and when I go in on Tuesday and warm up, I know I’ll walk it, but it would have been a nice capper on the day to get it. I’m feeling pretty strong these days, and with the new area of the gym open, I’m hoping that over the winter I’ll be able to get some work in. Then, when I go back out to Bishop in the spring I’ll be able to put my projects to bed without too much difficulty.

So, here is where I will be making updates/revisions/etc. while I get everything all commited to 1s and 0s.

Oh, and Las Vegas has the Weirdest. People. Ever.

10-day forecast for Bishop, CA

After today, posts will be sporadic until I get back; I know there’s Internet access out there, just not sure how much I’ll be using it. Man, I need to get a laptop with WiFi.

I’ve got a few things picked out that I would really like to do while I’m out there, but I’m going to soak up the whole experience. The desert was so beautiful last time… just on the drive from Vegas I remember being struck at how gorgeous the desert was; how huge the sky looked. I’ll have my good digital camera with me, so expect lots of photos when I get back (although I don’t think I’ll be able to upload any from out there, my camera can’t quite function as a USB device, which, as far as I can tell, is its only downfall).

Undaunted, we headed back to the ‘burgh, and then went to the Co-op for a few hours so we could at least say we pulled down a little bit. Ben was a machine and climbed for like 4 hours straight, and then we all had some delicious homemade pizza, and I had a bit too much wine. I would say I can’t drink like I used to, but I never really used to drink, so 4 glasses was a bit over the top, and a slight headache today is my reward.

All pictures from yesterday

My sister also seemed to have a great time. She led almost everything, including putting up (and cleaning) a long 5.9. All of my friends were duly impressed by how strong she was. She didn’t have quite as much stuff to get on on Sunday, but that just means she’ll need to come back soon.

Sunday was also the day of near-misses. First just while in the parking lot, Jason backed his car into a small ditch, so some of us went behind his car to help push him out. As he was pulling free, a baseball-sized rock came whizzing out from under the tires, missing my head by about 6 inches. Oops. Later on while we all climbing, Jason (again!) was on a climb, and pulled out a chunk of rock about as big as his torso, nearly killing his belayer. Luckily, they were both alert and nobody got hurt, but we were all around a corner when it happened, heard Jason yell “Oh shit!”, and then a huge smash, and thought for sure he had decked. He hadn’t, and everyone was alright, albiet a little shaky.

All photos from the weekend are here.

Also did lots more work on my BlogShares Client app. I added some simple charting of your net worth last night, and some other nice things. It’s amazing still how fun this little project has been, even with all the frustration.

Weather generally sucked all weekend, although I did manage to get a bike ride in Sunday. I’ll need to do more of that, because I stepped on the scale last night, and it was a bad scene. I don’t weigh any more than usual, but my body fat ticked up a percent… just the opposite of what I want. Today will start a slightly more rigorous program of diet and exercise; especially more time climbing. I feel like I’ve let biking get in the way of that a little, so tonight I plan to go in and have a serious workout. I want to hurt when I leave, and then I’m going to do it again tomorrow night, too. I’ve felt weak climbing lately, and I don’t like feeling that. Time to start working hard at it again, as it’s the only way I’ll push through this plateau I’m on now.

[While checking in at the campground with the creepy campground manager guy]
CCMG: What kind of car are you driving?
Friend: A silver Honda CRV.
CCMG: Gray. You’re in West Virginia.

[At a Mexican restuarant on our way home]
Kid: (looking at woman’s large and, IMHO, ugly tribal tattoo on her back) Why do you have a tattoo there?
Woman: Well, why do you have arms?

Climbing yesterday went OK; I was right about not really having any endurance. I only did 5 routes, but a few were things I hadn’t done before, and they were fun. At the end of the day I went to go do an easy 11a that I’ve never quite sent. I think I had psyched myself into thinking it was going to be super-easy, so I had a horrible time on it first go. I was cursing and yelling and completely annoyed with myself, which never happens to me on routes; I usually just don’t care that much. I finally fought to the top, came down, and April went. She had a bad time as well, and forgot her sequence for one part, so she actually wound up bailing, which meant that I needed to go up and get my draws off. In a Hollywood story, I would have gone up and pissed all over it. It didn’t quite happen that way, but it was close. I was one move from sending, and forgot about one key hold that I hadn’t seen last time, either. It wasn’t the best ending to the day, but it made me feel a lot better.

Today we’re going to a different area, and there is a 12a and an 11d right next to each other with my name on them.

Saturday I went and met my younger sister at the NJRG. We climbed for about 3 hours, and had a great time. My sister just started rock climbing not all that long ago, so it was great to get to climb with her for the first time. She really enjoyed leading on the overhanging Eldo walls, and I was content to just boulder. She’s remarkably strong for how long she’s been climbing, and tenacious, to boot. Once she’s on a climb, she’s going to finish it… kind of like a rabid pitbull tearing into a cow with Epstein-Barr. The bouldering was really good, and I miss when I was flying to NJ every week to work for my old company, and getting to go to that gym on a regular basis. They set problems that are hard, but use good holds. They also were doing this color-coding thing which was pretty cool… using tape based on how hard the problems were, i.e. all orange problems were around V0/V1, all yellow were V3/V4, etc. Made it easy to wander around and try and do all the problems at a particular level of difficulty.

One other little humorous observation: they were doing some sort of kid’s birthday party while we were there; lots of little 6-to-10-year olds running around, and at the same time they have The Crystal Method blaring over the house sound system: “Listen all you motherfuckas!”

Saturday night both of my sisters and I went down to Philly to visit Ryan. We went to the scary bar right across the street from Jane’s place, and had a blast. Many shots were done, and my sister discovered that taking Tums makes your puke neon-colored.

Sunday a.m. Kyra and I dragged our asses to my grandmother’s in northeast Philly, and took her shopping. We loaded her up with catfood, picked up some bath towels, and then went food shopping. I must admit I went a little crazy, because my grandmother has a pretty set routine as far as food goes, but is always happy to try new things, but doesn’t know what to try. I got her Boca burgers and “chicken” patties, some sort of granola/meusli cereal, and some other snackies that seemed to be of interest. I made us Boca burgers when we came back; on toasted english muffins, with swiss chese and a slice of tomato. She really seemed to enjoy them, which was great.

The only bad thing that happened was my sister left her keys at Ryan’s place, so I had to hop in the car, drive back down to Center City, and then back up to my grandmother’s again, and then hop in the car right away again and start heading home.

The drive home last night was uneventful, but just long. There was an overturned mobile home coming the other way, so I drove past about 10 miles of stopped traffic. Ha! Suckers…...

I was so tired this morning that I completely fell back asleep after turning off my alarm, and was about 1/2 hour late for work. I feel pretty good now, tho, so I think I’m all back to normal. Tomorrow the weather should be good, which means I’ll be riding in. If I have time tonight I’ll even put my new bike tires on.

I’m definitely ready for this persistant low-pressure system to be on its merry way, so I can actually plan weekend trips. It would also be nice to be able to bike in more than once a week, because while a short-ish ride in the rain can be nice, doing 30 miles in that shit isn’t my idea of fun.

I hate to actually do an entry that just whines about the weather, but it seemed to work for Anil.

In other news, I had a decent workout at the gym last night, and I’ll be heading to the Co-op tonight. I realized that while my 30-mile bike commute is keeping me fit, I’m not nearly as strong as I used to be climbing, so time to fix that. Tonight should be some bouldering, and then a campus session. If everything falls into place (especially with the weather), I’ll be able to go bouldering at Cooper’s Rock Saturday, and then hit the lead wall at the gym Sunday. Woo!

The rest of the photos are here.

Justin Hall → Wired → Experimental Gameplay

-yesterday was a most craptacular day at work, and it’s not going to get better anytime soon. we have an insane deadline for a project (actually, several projects all rolled into one) that i have no idea how i’m going to hit, and to top it all off i’m going to be spending two and a half glorious days in rhode island doing a lovely dog ‘n’ pony show for another client that has a deadline 6 months from now.

-i see that tivo is finally going to add one of the features i’ve been asking them for for awhile; being able to program your tivo through a website. it would be very cool to be away from home, say, on a hellish two day trip to rhode island with your boss, and OH NO!!! you forgot to tivo joe millionaire! so, you log on, put in the instructions to record the show (assuming you don’t already watch a ton of reality-tv crap, or at least your tivo thinks you do), and when you get home, it’ll be there. that’s a nice feature, especially since my cats don’t know how to work the remote, and don’t even know how to answer the phone when i call.

-more comp stuff: results have been posted from the prg comp, and although they misspelled my name (i emailed them and they’re going to correct it next update), i placed 13th out of 56!!! i’m pretty stoked about that, considering how hard everyone there was crankin’. i also emailed jim horton (organizer of hound ears) to get him to put up scores.

well, last night he was there, and decided that he wanted to do some lead climbing on the (mainly) toproping walls. the problem with this is that you usually need a bit more room when you are either climbing or belaying lead. BME was trying to do this in the front hallway, which is usually loaded with topropers, and last night was no exception. there is a wall specifically for lead climbing, but it was closed while the gymnasts next door did their thing, and wouldn’t open for a little while longer.

during the course of belaying the slf on a few climbs in the hallway, i watched him skip a clip (a big no-no), and ask some woman who was already anchored in and ready to start belaying to unhook and move so he could start the climb he wanted to. waaaaay, waaaaay back in the day when i took the lead course at tcw, the guy giving the course said that he really did prefer that you not lead climb when it was busy on the toprope walls, for exactly that reason. on the next climb i was anchored in to belay near where he was belaying this poor unsuspecting chud. he said something to me about having to move way over, and here’s the conversation that ensued:

me: (in a nice conversational tone) you know, that’s why they don’t like you to lead climb on the toprope walls when it’s busy.
BME: why are you throwing fucking attitude at me?
me: (in an even nicer nice conversational tone) i’m not throwing attitude. i’ve just seen you kick one girl off a belay after she was anchored in, and now you’re asking me to move. it’s too busy in here for you to be leading.
BME: whatever… don’t fucking talk to me. just stay out of my way.
me: (stares blankly at him, and then turns attention to the slf) belay on!

didn’t want to press the issue because frankly, he looked a little crazy, and i didn’t need to be getting into a fistfight. boy obviously has anger-management issues. after that climb was finished, he did move out to an area that was more sparsely populated, which was a good thing. after he had gone, i was telling the story to some friends, and the manager of the place just happend to be there. he said that if he had known that happened, he would have taken away he lead rope “like it was a toy”... so, hopefully that’ll happen next time, and maybe i’ll even be there to see it! apparently every time he’s in and lead climbing he does similar things, and is basically just an all-around arrogant jackass. i hope i’m not ever bouldering over where he’s belaying… because heaven forbid i should (begin dr. evil “finger quotes”) //slip\\ and //fall\\ and catch him in the //face\\ with my //elbow\\.

mmmm… geeky climbing!

a 3lb bag of the most fantastic trail mix, ever. cashews, almonds, real m&ms… i could go on.
a 40oz barrel of pretzel sticks.
a 12.5oz box of goldfish.
half of a 14oz bag of pretzel nuggets.
a 20oz bag of assorted “fun size” chocolate bars; milky way, 3 musketeers, twix, snickers, and milky way “midnight”.
a small ziploc bag of wasabi peanuts.

i’ll be lucky if i’m not 5 pounds heavier by next saturday.

ok, so i’m in! after thinking that i had sent my registration in too late, i was notified at the end of the week that i got my stuff in under the wire, and i’ll be going to hound ears. there’s a limit of 275 people, and when i mailed my check for $45 in, there was already like 220 people signed up, so i figured there was no way my stuff would get there in time. stranger still, is that my former neighbors and current climbing partners sent their stuff in even later, and they also made it.

so, the plan is to hit the gym, hard. there’s two weeks left to train, and i’m hoping to be able to hit the gym 4 times a week, maybe 3-4 hours. of course, my skin will never last that long on plastic, so i went all crazy today and ordered a few bottles of iron palm. that should help me train a bit harder, and more importantly help me be able to climb for 8 hours on all that lovely southern sandstone.

i tried to strike the right balance between indignant and sucking up… i think it worked out ok, and brian tells me that five.ten is pretty good about replacing shoes. hopefully i’ll have them back in time for the comp.

while at the post office, the girl in line in front of me was mailing a package (i’m assuming it was a pair of shoes, based on the size of the box, and the fact that it came out of a ninewest bag) to hong kong. the total (w/out insurance) came to about $68! that’s quite a few bucks… i hope they’re really special shoes.

i have to leave tonight for a work trip down to miami to visit one of our clients, and then fly back tomorrow night. i just saw on headline news that they’ve raised a nationwide alert of that stupid “terror color” scheme to orange, which is one step below “duck.” i don’t mind flying on the anniversary of 9/11, but i already know that airport security is going to be a major hassle. i’m considering leaving my palm, my phone, and anything else that might even seem like it could be dangerous at home.

took a new route in this morning on the bike; it’s street the whole way, as opposed to the 3 miles of trail i was taking the other way. this way was much more thrilling; lots more traffic, but on streets wide enough that i didn’t crap my pants. there’s a very looooong downhill section that was great on the way in, but i think will be hell on the way back, so i might take the trail route, which is longer, but more moderate. means i’ll probably get home in about the same amount of time as if i was struggling with that hillclimb, anyway.

very excited about tonight; the Special Lady Friend is going to be making dinner. she’s got a grill of some sort, and she’s going to be grilling up a bunch of vegetables. she’s quite the cook.

all the nasty, cummy mattresses scavanged from curbs in oakland are wrapped in heavy-duty plastic.

finished putting up all the framing last night, even got one of the 3 plywood sheets with all the t-nuts hung. tomorrow night we’re all meeting to collect “monies” (startup contributions, first month’s rent, etc.), hang the last two sheets of plywood, maybe set one route, and then go out and have some beers to celebrate.

of course, there’s “mandatory drinking” with co-workers after work tomorrow night. i might be in trouble by the end of the night.

a group of about 15 climbers from our gym have decided to build a climbing co-op. we’re tired of everything; the routes, the lack of air conditioning or even a fan, crap music on the radio, and bad attitude. so, we got together and decided to make our own wall.

so, this weekend was a lot of construction. i missed saturday, because i was helping friends move (more on that later). yesterday i rode down around 11, and worked until about 6 or so. pounded maybe 200 t-nuts, and more nails than i could count. almost all the framing is done, and probably just one more night of work to finish putting the framing together, mounting it on the wall, and hanging the plywood sheets that the holds will actually be screwed into. we have a buttload of holds coming from pusher, plus others that people already had or “borrowed”. we could be climbing on it by this weekend, if we’re lucky.

but, in the course of pounding all the nails and t-nuts yesterday, i managed to rip my palm open with the claw of a hammer, get a nice big splinter under the nail of my index finger, and today my right hand is so sore i can’t even close it all the way. don’t know how people actually do that for a living.

on the way home on sunday, i stopped at a “fireworks” tent in w.v. i use quotes around “fireworks”, because they were anything but. i guess current paranoia about the world ending means that you can no longer have fireworks that blow shit up. everything now is wussy little roman candles, with all these high-falootin’ names like “the titanic!” and “king kong”. “bollocks”, i say.

in college my old roomate was a firecracker afficionado. he would go to manhattan the week before the 4th, and find some illegal fireworks shop and bring home scary amounts of munitions. he had one that was about the size of a coffee can chopped in half. the fuse was as big as my pinky. there was a sculpture over on one of the rutgers campuses; looked like two ends of a trumpet welded together, and wouldn’t you know it, that bomb fit perfectly down the tube. so, we hooked up a cigarette fuse, and ran over to the bushes and hid.

about 5 minutes pass, and we’re giggling like idiots with excitement.
at the 10 minute mark, we started to wonder if perhaps the fuse had gone out. we get up to go see, and just as we stand up:

BOOOM!!

we didn’t hurt the sculpture; it was a monstrous bronze thing, but it still made a sound like the sky had split open, and we ran to his car and sped off laughing like loons.
now that’s a firecracker.