january at the gym.

get ready people, it's new years resolution time and everyone has decided to go to the gym! tonight we arrived at our climbing gym around 7:45 PM to find the place packed to the brim-- many of the people there were new climbers, also, which... is annoying.  i'm sorry, i support people learning to climb, but too many new climbers just gets in the way.  people think they can climb harder stuff than they really can, and consequently get in my way.  

i can't wait until february when most of them give up.  ooh, i'm mean....

WV photos

the full albums are here and here

WV

we are back. it was a fun trip. i don't want to go to work.

here's a photo of bridge day.

more weekend fun

this weekend-- tonight actually-- we're headed down to the New River Gorge for an extended weekend climbing trip! we will be driving starting tonight (yikes!) after the class i teach-- dan will drive the first leg of the trip while i sleep (i hope) and then i will start driving sometime in the middle of the night... in addition to climbing we'll be watching official bridge day! i hope it's fun and the drive doesn't kill us... now i just have to make it through work today, tying up a bunch of loose ends, and then it's off until tuesday night!

weekend adventures

this is going to be a long post.  i hope it's worth your time to read it-- i have to document this before i forget it all.

this past weekend was kind of ridiculous.  enjoyable, memorable, and ridiculous.  it was perfect climbing weather, so dan and i decided to head up to rumney, and were excited that darren would join us as well.  the original plan was to go up saturday for the day, since i had plans to see david sedaris at symphony hall sunday.  well, we had to run some errands saturday that could not be done sunday, so instead darren got the idea to drive up saturday night to camp, therefore getting an early enough start sunday so we could make it back.  sounded great! dan remembered we had heard of a place called D'Acres, and organic farm close to climbing that has camping as well as indoor sleeping accommodations and i thought it would be easier to sleep in their yoga room rather than pitch a tent, so off we went.  

seriously, the whole D'Acres experience was under 12 hours but MAN was it CRAZY!! somehow the website seemed rather unassuming and i didn't realize that the place is a commune of sorts.  we arrived around 8:30 PM, and entered a large house.  i noticed on the way in through the garage a free-standing bathtub with what looked like laundry and ice cubes in it... odd, i thought, but i didn't mention anything to dan or darren.  a guy was putting on a pair of boots by the door, and told us to go inside an talk to the guy with the goatee.  so we did.  the first thing this guy says after dan says we have a reservation to stay in the yoga room is "have you been here before?" to which we say, "no".  his immediate response is, "isn't this place great?" and we all kind of said "uh, yeah" even though we'd only been in a large garage, a hallway, and now a kitchen.  right.  then he mentions something about the yoga room being upstairs, and the composting toilet, and that we can't wear our shoes upstairs.  he shows us the yoga room, then we go back to the car to get our things.  

there's a bonfire going across the "street", so after we drop off our things, we take the 6-pack of beers we brought over there.  i think this was the point at which darren suggested asking someone what the hell was going on... interestingly i don't think we ever did.

let me try to set up the scene:  people are quietly sitting in a circle around the fire, there are 2 guitars, several bongo drums, a diggerydo (i have no idea how to spell that) and maybe a rain stick? and singing.  oh, and the fire! there was an elaborate contraption set up in a teepee form with what we later found out to be a tangerine tree suspended over top the flame.  then we see close to the fire what looks like a large paper mache head, probably 6' diameter, about 15' up.  it is right next to a real teepee with its own mailbox.  so we start to drink our beers and i feel totally out of place-- we chatted with one another an again i felt like it was inappropriate to talk with the singing!  luckily about 10-15 minutes later someone came back from town with a bunch of beers, and some of the original musical group left.  at that point it changed to a regular campfire, which was cool... we met this guy who lived there, and he was all fun...

 dancing for us, chatting us up-- then he grabbed these fire balls (i'm not sure if there's a better word to describe them?) and started slinging them around in a wild dance.  it was kind of surreal.  oh, he told us the story of the teepee fire thing, which was a remnant from their middle earth party a few weeks before, in which they lit a bunch of leaves covered in vegetable oil.  BUT my favorite comment he made was this: a bit later 2 of the residents started playing guitar.  i could not identify the song, as they were not singing.  so this guy says to us "hey, is this hotel california?" i am about 99% sure it was not, but i said "it can be if you want it to be" so he says ok cool, but i forget how it starts.  so i lead him to "on a dark desert highway" and he says "oh, ok, but i have to do it reggae style" from which point i think he sang most of hotel california with a reggae beat-- which, by the way, was totally not what the guitars were playing!  ok, so then back to the fire, good times... then a conversation starts about a pig roast.  apparently the bathtub with ice was holding a pig.  on ice.  to cook.  i mentioned having seen this, and it was noted that i was "more observant than most" to have noticed a bathtub filled with sheets and ice.  so they rally up a few guys to start setting the pig up-- it would take 1 hour at 350 degrees for each 10lb of pig... or so they say.  hm.

overall it was a good time at the fire.  then we headed in...

the yoga room floor was not comfortable, despite our sleeping pads.  the room was huge and had maybe 8-10 people in it. it was also right above where the people had started cooking the pig, so it was not that quiet.  eventually i fell asleep.  at one point, though, i thought dan had rolled over in his sleeping bag onto my legs, because i felt something pushing on my legs.  i was actually quite warm at the time so i reached my hand outside the bag and then i seriously screamed-- my hand landed on the back of a cat! A CAT! dan woke up and i told him about it... but i think he fell back asleep immediately.  well, i could not sleep.  dan is allergic to cats-- and i later found out darren is, too-- so i took it upon myself to defend us against this cat by NOT going to sleep.  i was super hot but convinced myself i had to stay entirely zipped into my bag in case the cat tried to attack me.  also, this guy across the room was snoring like a train.  or something else loud.  it didn't even bother me though because it helped me to stay up and defend against a cat attack.

in the morning we were planning to have the pancake breakfast, but that turned out to be a bust... so we left that zany place in search of a diner.  the diner was tasty.  climbing was good.  the whole experience at D'Acres lasted from 8:30 saturday night to about 7:30 sunday morning.  it was a different world.

attached are a few pictures of the fire, the yoga room, and climbing.

thank you for reading. 

a fall saturday

we got pumpkins.

we went climbing. 

and this time the pretzels were a success.

wii and blueberries

yes, it was a good few days.  dan and i enjoyed a rowdy game of 4 player wii tennis at tobias and tessa's place.  totally great.  only a few unintentional physical hits with the wii remotes.  today we went climbing in rumney and on the way back, we picked our own blueberries! we left after picking just one pint but i was impressed with the couple who showed up at the same time as us and left with at least 3 pints.  it was clear to see they had more experience picking blueberries.  we are still happy with our crop.

refreshed

a nice long weekend of campfire and climbing. it was great! it was the first time this season we made it up to Rumney, and the weather was just perfect. i've attached a few photos.



the campsite, however, was weird-- typically when we go to Rumney we just make it a day trip (it is a 2 hr drive) but this time we decided to stay for 2 nights/3 days-- let me just recommend, though, that if you're considering staying at a campsite that advertises it has sites for camping AND RVs, don't do it. it was like stepping into another universe. last night we went out for dinner and when we came back it was extremely difficult to maneuver the car in and around the GIANT bonfire practically in the road, and the hundred or so people sitting in chairs ready for the fireworks. the fireworks were also terrifying-- the first one went off too early or something and basically landed on the pool deck, though it looked like it was headed our way! we also ran into some weird signs on the campsite-- the first night we saw a small building that said "showers" so we went for it-- the sign in the shower room said "warm water showers only"... which was actually a bit of an exaggeration: the water was cold. i actually almost got sick that night because my hair wouldn't dry, and i couldn't get my core temperature up. saturday we found the hot showers-- apparently the first showers we found were the pool showers?!?! this place was fake fancy. here is our campsite right when we arrived... before we really realized how crazy the place was. note the pop-up camper behind dan is actually another campsite-- they really pack 'em in.

what are the odds

pass, so back to the crag for us! again, we hiked iso here we are in las vegas... it's excellent, except for the teeny tiny fact that it's really cold and has been on and off pouring rain-- yes, i'm serious. today we went to Red Rock Canyon to climb. the area is absolutely beautiful! it was a bit cold this morning, but we hiked in anyway, and MOMENTS before we started to climb it began to pour cold rain. seriously. so we left to go to the Red Rock Casino, which was fun, but not what we had planned. i played in a giant game of BINGO! i did not win but it was still very fun and i must admit i am tempted to go find another game of bingo... then we realized the weather had cleared up and we had already bought the day pass to the park, so we headed back-- this time to a different area-- and i get all suited up to lead. dan cautions me that i have maybe, oh, 10 minutes until this ominous cloud comes rolling in. yeah, that was enough to freak me out, so i basically epic-ed a 5.7 sport climb as it began to slightly rain, and get really windy. probably didn't help that we didn't exactly know where the route ended... but i live to tell! we made it out, again very wet and cold, but happy none the less-- it's just nice to be on vacation. i hope the weather will warm up tomorrow, because we're going to try the cliffs one more time!!