Happy Hour, 10-star day, Bad Touch
I often walk past midtown bars during the summer and think to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice to be out drinking with friends?" I don't know why I never seem to partake of this young professional ritual - maybe bc I really prefer intellectual conversation over a tasty meal - but I'm often jealous, even knowing that they don't actually like the people with whom they're drinking =that= much. So it's awfully nice to have a drink with someone I do like =that= much, at a really great bar, even if it's not outdoors, even if it's abbreviated.
Climbing with GSKeletor on Sat was both better and worse than expected. Better, in that his laid-back attitude is much better when we're actually on the cliffs than when we're trying to plan meeting places and times and activities. Worse in that he hasn't been climbing all that much lately - I think he's losing interest in the sport to be honest - and so he wasn't as "on" as he was last year. It was still a 10-star day. We did Yellow Ridge (5.7 ***) and Te Dum (5.7 **). GSKeletor apparently loves Layback (5.5 **): it was my second ever climb outdoors and I still think of myself as terrible at that type of move, but on the other hand, it IS a 5.5.
Even though the climbing was fine, I was starting to feel discouraged at this point. GSKeletor wanted to do Broken Sling (5.8 ***) and started to lead it. The crux was at the bottom though so before he could put in his first piece of protection, he had a hard move where he decided to dyno (!!) and didn't stick the move. He fell about 8' and tumbled a little before coming to a stop. If I'd'a been quicker, I wouldn't've been holding the useless belay device and might've given him a better spot, but he didn't say anything about that. His second try was clean. I had a tough time with that same spot and took a few tries to get it. There was a roof near the end of the pitch that took me quite a few tries: in the end, I grabbed part of the corner away from the roof and sort of worked my way through both parts of the climb.
After GSKeletor's tumble, I realized he was probably not thinking clearly enough to lead: I just hoped we'd get through the "last run" incident-free. He'd had me set up my own rappel on Layback, which freaked me out bc (a) I had to untie from the rope and link them together (without dropping either), and (b) he wasn't there to supervise. In the end, I figured out how to keep them from dropping and executed it nearly perfectly. He had me do the same on Broken Sling, except that it was a hanging belay, i.e. instead of standing on a precarious ledge, I was dangling from a sling. I'm still not entirely convinced that sling was sufficiently redundant. After having a tough time with the climb itself, I was very happy to make it to the ground again.
We went to the swimming hole for a bracing swim: I think this is the first time I actually remembered my bathing suit and I loved going under the waterfall. We went into town for dinner with the other climbers, which was nice, esp as I was able to get the UWS contingent thinking about camping/climbing/hiking trips we might do together. AustenVillaness turned up at the end; apparently she'd been out climbing with Peter from Mtn Guides, who kept getting off-route; he may be annoyingly discouraging, but I'm inclined to stick with JBeau.
I slept very deeply, even if I did have a career-related nightmare, and woke with a few good ideas about the job hunt. We eventually made it to my grandparents for a typical feast. One uncle came back from the city with pastries from Balthazar and fresh chocolate from Kee's; another made lasagna and flan. Spent most of the day trying to enter the password for my grandfather's wifi into my Touch: my mother, two uncles, and 14yo cousin tried as well, but it didn't work. Who the heck sets a password with spaces in it??? The cousin managed to enter it into someone else's Touch - and people with laptops have never had trouble - so I assume it's a character set issue. AND THEY SUCK. *coughs* I made the mistake of introducing my cousin to Plants vs. Zombies though, so she ran out the battery. Dinner was bum rieu (sp?), a soup containing crab, lobster, shrimp, tofu, noodles, cooked greens, nasty fresh greens, shrimp paste, and lime. I actually liked it. Unfortunately, bc my brothers were in Miami, there was no one to say it was time to go home, so we ended up taking the 9pm train and I didn't get back to my place until nearly 11. Even though my sister and I had just sat on the train together for an hour (after an afternoon in the same house), she wanted to vent about stuff, and then I was too keyed up to go to bed, so I'm very sleep today :(
Climbing with GSKeletor on Sat was both better and worse than expected. Better, in that his laid-back attitude is much better when we're actually on the cliffs than when we're trying to plan meeting places and times and activities. Worse in that he hasn't been climbing all that much lately - I think he's losing interest in the sport to be honest - and so he wasn't as "on" as he was last year. It was still a 10-star day. We did Yellow Ridge (5.7 ***) and Te Dum (5.7 **). GSKeletor apparently loves Layback (5.5 **): it was my second ever climb outdoors and I still think of myself as terrible at that type of move, but on the other hand, it IS a 5.5.
Even though the climbing was fine, I was starting to feel discouraged at this point. GSKeletor wanted to do Broken Sling (5.8 ***) and started to lead it. The crux was at the bottom though so before he could put in his first piece of protection, he had a hard move where he decided to dyno (!!) and didn't stick the move. He fell about 8' and tumbled a little before coming to a stop. If I'd'a been quicker, I wouldn't've been holding the useless belay device and might've given him a better spot, but he didn't say anything about that. His second try was clean. I had a tough time with that same spot and took a few tries to get it. There was a roof near the end of the pitch that took me quite a few tries: in the end, I grabbed part of the corner away from the roof and sort of worked my way through both parts of the climb.
After GSKeletor's tumble, I realized he was probably not thinking clearly enough to lead: I just hoped we'd get through the "last run" incident-free. He'd had me set up my own rappel on Layback, which freaked me out bc (a) I had to untie from the rope and link them together (without dropping either), and (b) he wasn't there to supervise. In the end, I figured out how to keep them from dropping and executed it nearly perfectly. He had me do the same on Broken Sling, except that it was a hanging belay, i.e. instead of standing on a precarious ledge, I was dangling from a sling. I'm still not entirely convinced that sling was sufficiently redundant. After having a tough time with the climb itself, I was very happy to make it to the ground again.
We went to the swimming hole for a bracing swim: I think this is the first time I actually remembered my bathing suit and I loved going under the waterfall. We went into town for dinner with the other climbers, which was nice, esp as I was able to get the UWS contingent thinking about camping/climbing/hiking trips we might do together. AustenVillaness turned up at the end; apparently she'd been out climbing with Peter from Mtn Guides, who kept getting off-route; he may be annoyingly discouraging, but I'm inclined to stick with JBeau.
I slept very deeply, even if I did have a career-related nightmare, and woke with a few good ideas about the job hunt. We eventually made it to my grandparents for a typical feast. One uncle came back from the city with pastries from Balthazar and fresh chocolate from Kee's; another made lasagna and flan. Spent most of the day trying to enter the password for my grandfather's wifi into my Touch: my mother, two uncles, and 14yo cousin tried as well, but it didn't work. Who the heck sets a password with spaces in it??? The cousin managed to enter it into someone else's Touch - and people with laptops have never had trouble - so I assume it's a character set issue. AND THEY SUCK. *coughs* I made the mistake of introducing my cousin to Plants vs. Zombies though, so she ran out the battery. Dinner was bum rieu (sp?), a soup containing crab, lobster, shrimp, tofu, noodles, cooked greens, nasty fresh greens, shrimp paste, and lime. I actually liked it. Unfortunately, bc my brothers were in Miami, there was no one to say it was time to go home, so we ended up taking the 9pm train and I didn't get back to my place until nearly 11. Even though my sister and I had just sat on the train together for an hour (after an afternoon in the same house), she wanted to vent about stuff, and then I was too keyed up to go to bed, so I'm very sleep today :(