On Bachelorhood & Climbing

Liz is home now, back from a five day trip the New England shore to see some friends get married and catchup with a number of old college buddies, and even some Middleville folk who get to live on the seashore. (If you're lucky, maybe she'll take a second to talk about it and post some picture over on her corner of the interwebs) We don’t often part from each other for more than a few days, and I noticed some things about my daily life that pretty much immediately fell apart the day after she left:

- Showers were not nearly as important. If a shave and some deodorant could fake it, they won. It's not that I'm overly stinky to begin with, but, it mostly was a cause of:

- I can't go to bed on time or get up on time without a wife. I have this weird default setting for my sleep schedule, one that made me enjoy college but almost get bounced out of it at the same time: I just won't go to bed. I'll be really tired, 10:30 at night, and needing to go to sleep. Normally, liz usually wanders upstairs and my brain catches the clue that it is time to go to sleep, and I follow after a few moments. Without her, my brain is utterly clueless and before I know it the battery in my laptop is dead and I've watched the same episode of SportsCenter 3 times and it's 1:30 in the morning. This obviously leads to a horrible, rushed and nervous morning routine, which involves coffee being quickly made (still with my French Press though, I'm not a total heathen) and eating a bagel in the car.

- I don't really remember things. Dates, names, times. Pretty much gone.

- I allow myself to talk myself into things that are obviously horrible, horrible ideas. Liz is fantastic at stopping this; I'll come up with some absolutely fool proof way to rig the car, or arrange our camping gear, or some hike or climb that we need to do over the weekend, or some new gadget that we can. not. live without, and I'll take my news home and run it by liz. She'll take literally 5 seconds to ask a single question that completely alluded me and derail the whole thing. The moral of the story is, if I wasn't married I'd most likely be off getting lost every weekend on a trail too long for a single day, be broke on buying iPhone accessories before I even bought an iPhone, and would spend more time re-arranging house furniture and garage crates than any human should.

I startup the first pitch

That said, the weekend was suprisingly enjoyable and without too much alarm without liz here. Sean and Dylan arrived at mi Casa on Saturday morning, and we drove down past Lyons to meet with Dennis and Clare to head over the Ironsides formation at the Ironclads. This was the site of Liz's first ever outdoor lead (photo evidence here) where we camped and spent a sun drenched day on the slab. This weekend was a little cooler as the sun slowly found it's way over the lip of the NW facing wall, but was perfectly suitable for working up a sweat. Dylan and I started off the day with a 2 pitch climb that we swapped leads on. I led the bottom 50' 5.9 stretch of Alloy Madness, and then allowed Dylan to leapfrog me up the remaining 90' of 5.10d goodness. He had never gotten up the route before, and made it look easy (like usual). I then gussied up my courage and followed him up, eventually finding success. The route spit me of a handful of times, especially through the ridiculously thin traverse that makes up the Crux, but I eventually found myself at the top look at a fantastic view of the valley floor.

Belaying Dylan from above

Rapping down, lunch was in order until it was my turn to head up Gypsies in the Palace (said earlier liz lead route) which has a 5.10c upper pitch that I couldn't hack through last summer. Making the first of 5 five bolts on the upper route, I found myself stymied by the sparse moves and couldn't bring my brain to allow me to really put myself out even just slightly above my last clipped bolt. (and we're not talking five foot above, we're talking just at my knees. I'm a gigantic baby.) Spitting and clawing for ten minutes got me nowhere, so I eventually lowered down, tired and annoyed. There was another route to climb that day, but I think my attitude was spent and I didn't bother to keep my harness on, and instead opted to a granola bar and a book on a big flat rock.

Clare (on left) and Dylan (right side) race to the top

Everyone seemed to have a nice day of climbing, Sean got his first lead of the year in, and we all left tired. Post some wonderful mexican food in Lyons, we drove home happy with sore arms and fingertips. I did not have a camera on me, so you'll have to peruse Sean, Dylan, or Clare's photostreams to catch some pictures. (included pictures were judiciously stolen from Sean.)

Sunday found me running the soundboard for church in the morning, and to the Home Depot in the afternoon. I finally purhased the hardware required to erect some shelving and pegboard in our garage, and managed to organize and elevate most all of our junk off of the ground. I'd post a shot, but it's really not that impressive to anyone but me and possibly liz who have had to learn how to live with a (wonderful!) skinny garage.