Archive for February, 2008

Back in September, when I was starting to sketch out the rough plan of what I’d do after leaving DC, I knew I’d want to head on down to Bishop to live here and climb for a couple months.  I think the original plan was to settle down here for 2-3 months and get whatever climbing I could get done before I headed out to San Francisco.

Now I’ve been here about a month. And I know there’s no way I’m going to stay here 2-3 months. I’m having such a great time here, I’m thinking I very well may be here for the entire year.   Ill probably travel around during the summer when it gets wayyy too hot here, but yeah, I can see myself staying here for a good while.

I also blogged a preliminary tick-list of problems I’d liked to get done while I’m here.  You can see the tick list here.

And how are things going, you ask?  Better than I’d ever expected.  Today I headed out to the Happys and found this group of climbers working on Disco Diva.  I warmed up on several different problems before flexing my fingers for the big send.  There were two other guys giving it real serious attempts.  One of them was getting very, very close.  And I was still fumbling around on my first few tries – on the start, trying to figure out a good way to link up everything to the crux without blowing too much energy.

Then it just all clicked on the next try and I ended up sending it in a rather easy fashion.

So here’s the ticklist as it is right now.

• The Hulk (v6)
• Disco Diva (v8)
• Pow Pow (v8)
• Saigon (v6)
• Soulslinger (v9)
• Jedi Mind Tricks (v5)
• Stained Glass (v10)
• High Plains Drifter (v7)
• Atari (v6)
• Mandala (v12)

I shouldn’t be content to sit back and settle for just those.  I’ve been shown, and discovered quite a few more amazing looking lines that need to be done.  So here are the additions:

• Cholos (v9)
• Acid Wash (v10)
• Evilution to the Lip (v10)
• Rene (v5)
• Rave (v7)
• Every Color You Are (v6)
• Shock Therapy (v8)
• The Checkerboard (v8)

The Story in a Nutshell

With the release of Aperture 2.0, one thing I was looking forward to was to see if a disturbing trend I noticed on some of my photos would be corrected or improved on. Now that I’ve had time to review specific images, I thought I’d write up an report to pass on to the development teams at Apple and Adobe, because my consensus is that there clearly is room for improvement.

Read the rest of this entry »

After that epic three-day weekend where I was knocking down long-standing projects day after day, I spent all day Tuesday convalescing.  Wednesday I went to lift weights and woke up this morning with a dull, sore ache all over.

20 years old, I’m not anymore.  I could do this stuff and bounce back the next day.  But age is creeping up on me now.   I went out to the ‘Milks anyway for a hour to scope out some new routes and tick off a few more. That’s the great thing about living here.  I dont need to plan a special 5 day vacation trip to give Soulslinger a try.  I just have to drive eight miles up the road.

Today’s tick list:

• Funky Tut (V3)
• Howard Carter Sit Start (V6)
• Iron Man Traverse (V4)