apAdventures

Here are a few pics of our new ride…

I just looked at our website and realized it’s been a few weeks since we last mentioned what we’ve been up to. Geeze, I guess we’ve been slackin’ Actually, April and I have been busy. Busy getting ready for our insane travel plans over the next month. Currently our plan is in motion. I am traveling back from Austin with my Dad. Austin Texas. Yep, Austin Texas. Why?

We did it! We got a Sportsmobile!!!

Over the last several months we co-ordinated with Sportsmobile and had a Chevy van converted to our specs. Rather than have it shipped to our house in Tucson I decided to travel to Austin (where our van was being built) and pick it up. In a conversation over the phone with my Dad I mentioned what I was planning to do and he said, “Hey, let me come too. Like old times.” I said, “Perfect, we can make the drive together, the maiden voyage.”

So, here we are, out in the desert on our way to Tucson traveling on Interstate 10. This is just the beginning…

posted by pjv

As you can see from our last web entry, Paul and I spent the weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah. Our good friend Courtney now lives there and has a house nestled snug in between the base of Little and Big Cottonwood Canyons. This visit to see Courtney was long overdue, so we really packed in the fun with a few days in the mountains, riding the deep powder of the ski resort, Snowbird.

As all good trips do, we were of course bummed to have this fun weekend end. We were just getting used to riding in the powder (we’re from the East), and the forecast was showing more snow to come. We don’t want to go home! But alas, we had a flight back to Tucson, Arizona scheduled for Sunday night, 7:30pm.

….or so we thought. By chance, we decide to check our flight status mid-Sunday afternoon (we usually never check our flight status – maybe we should start). And low and behold, we realize for the first time that the return date on our itinerary reads Sunday, *March* 25th….not Sunday, February 25th. Hmmm. Whoops.

We laugh and blame this mistake on each other of course, then try waiting on hold for over one hour 30 min with the airline to try to fix this mistake (an extra $437.00 EACH to fly home tonight???!!!! No thanks), then consider renting a car and driving home instead (12 hour drive…not too excited about this option either), then finally decide to say heck with it – we’ll just buy one-way plane tickets that will get us home the next night (which was considerably cheaper than getting our flight rescheduled – stupid airlines – go figure). Oh yeah, and one more decision: Stranded one extra day in Salt Lake, shall we hit the slopes again? Hell yeah! And we all live happily ever after….

Recently we’ve been psyched. Psyched to climb harder. Our frequent visits to Hueco have exposed us to people from all over the world climbing hard! April and I have been wondering what we could do, how we can train so we can get strong like the many climbers sending the classics all around us. “It’s time to up the ante,” as April put it. So, over the last few weeks we increased our intensity of training. We started pushing our limits more than ever. Check out Ben Moon’s advice www.moonclimbing.com for some ideas that we think really work!

While training or climbing over the past few weeks we both kept asking each other, “Hey, do I look stronger now? Am I climbing harder after all this training?” For sure, yeah, we noticed the improvement in our abilities but we’ve only been linking and doing individual moves on problems at or above our limits. For example, I recently tried “Right Martini V12” and for a first time ever, did all the moves. I can’t tell how far off I am from a send but I can definitely tell that I’m stronger than ever and progressing every week.

Last weekend I managed to send “Dirty Martini on the Rocks V12” but that climb kinda sucks and it is probably more like V9. April repeated “Baby Martini V6” while Iaughing and then nearly sent the awesome “Big Iron on His Hip V7.” After a couple other pretty cool accomplishments that weekend we still were not satisfied and we craved harder sends.
Well, today, I think we got what we wanted.

Paul:
Sent “Predator V10” 1st go (worked out the full sequence last weekend) and “ V6” (I could never figure out how to do this one previously). Repeated “Daily Dick Dose V7” (warmed up the fingers for Predator), fell off “Double Vision V7” several times and tweaked something! And repeated “Big Iron on His Hip V7” to test out the tweak. Yep, definitely tweaked something in the left hand. No more climbing today.

April: 
Cranked out her best climbing day….E V E R. Decided to try out “Daily Dick Dose” just cause we were there for me to warm up, and then went ahead and promptly SENT the damn thing. A Hueco classic and her first V7! We then moved on to the Martini Roof and she laced up for “Big Iron on His Hip V7”, a much better climb in my opinion that is harder and much longer, and the climb which she had been projecting the last few weekends. She fell three times at the last move, fingers an inch away from the finish hold. Then rested. Then sent. April’s second V7.

Stay tuned…the sending train is just gettin’ started.

Moving right along:

Ouch! This hurts. Typing that is. My fingers are thrashed from a RAD Hueco weekend! No major sends to report but both April and I are getting close on our current projects. Recently, after working on problems way at my limit I have had to adjust my mindset for the constant days of getting humbled. Many times when the climbing is really really hard and I keep failing I step back and say to myself, “This is fun, right?” “Hell yeah it is!” I usually get psyched at the thought and try again, try harder, and fall off. I look at my torn up fingers and feel all the sore muscles in my body, thinking am I ever going to send this thing? For me, this is awesome! The challenge of the problem lures me in and I can’t get enough even when I’m bloody and dead tired.

Although my enjoyment may be unique, shared by only the community of climbers like me. I often wonder what an “outsider” must think. What if someone who doesn’t understand what bouldering is just happens to look on at what we are doing? Ok so here is the picture: we are barely making any progress, trying sooo hard, nearly killing ourselves when we tear off moves crashing into the ground. Swearing, hi-fiving, yelling and saying goofy things. For example, the Brits we sessioned with this weekend were psyched. They came to the US to experience Hueco but recently the weather has been horribly cold and they got off to a slow start. Yesterday, after making great progress on Power of Silence V10 and falling off one guy yelled, “It’s been so F-ing Bloody Cold this is the first time I’ve been warm on this trip.” After hearing that all of his super strong friends chalked up and got in line to reach the same high point. To me, the 3 moves they all made was inspiring. I joined in and made it as far as them. When I fell off and caught my breath we all shared beta, “Dude, where did you grab that crimp?” “Grab the left part and smear on that shitty foot” “Toe hook with the outside of your left foot” “No no, use your heal and lean” “This is bloody fantastic!” Obviously, to us, each climber did something totally different. We were all psyched and kept at it.

Ok so back to the “outsider.” At this point they would definitely wonder what 6 guys are doing down in a hole where it’s super cold, speaking a weird language with a few expliciives thrown in. They may ask “What are you doing? Is that fun? Is that a sport?” “What are you guys doing, just walk around to the top of the boulder if you want to get to the top (you wouldn’t imagine how many people really have told us that).” What’s even better is when they go to the top and say, “Hey look how easy it is.”

Recently I’ve been laughing about what a non-climber would think about my attempts at problems that are really hard for me. I can see where they would come up with those questions but it was today that I found a moment where I seriously thought any non-climber would appreciate the scene of people bouldering.

I stood at the base of Mushroom Boulder, a super classic area with tons of awesome problems. My attention was caught when a few cheers eminated from Mushroom Roof V8. A British girl (from the crew of Brits) was cruising. She naturally locked off the crimps on the steep roof, exhibited no strain and as she neared the top-out, caught the last good hold with ease, flexing her muscles which were comparable to the guys that spotted her. To my right a guy grabbed the lip of a tall problem, cut his feet, threw his foot up to the top and cruised over to celebrate his warm-up send. In the distance there were three people climbing the high-ball Mellon Patch V0. Three, all on the climb together! Jokingly they were pulling on each other as they climbed as if they were trying to cause each other to fall off. But, really they were so calm that it appeared as if they were on level gound playfully bumping into one another like playing a game of tag. Everyone was demonstrating skill that seemed so natural. It was as if we, humans, were meant to climb. It was a display of talent from people all around the world. I would even compare it to the show that olympic athletes put on that impress viewers who have no clue what snowboarding is or what’s possible on ice skates. Today I saw a demonstration of climbing that would impress any non-climber and maybe interest them enough to try, to have fun and join our underground sport.

Too bad this scene was only shared by us, many miles from the nearby city, on the boulders in the desert, away from the spotlight and away from all the “outsiders,” the non-climbers. Maybe someday people won’t wonder what our underground sport is all about?

Sorry for NO video footage or pictures. Our video camera broke and our camera battery has seen its last recharge.

posted by pjv

Well, the snow didn’t last too long at the house. The sun came out mid-morning, so by the time we got home from work the only remaining snow was up in the mountains and bits here and there in the shadows. Paul, Linda and I wanted to end this ‘snow day’ with a trail run up on the mountain, however, the Catalina Highway was said to still be closed. We decided instead to turn our running legs toward this lower elevation trail that we had yet to check out before, the Agua Caliente Trail, the trailhead only minutes from our house. Turned out to be a great trail and a great run.

Then to top it all off, we finished the day with some warm, snow-day, homemade cookin’: Great Grandma’s macaroni and cheese, vegetable soup, and chocolate chip cookies. Mmmmm.

Stellar day. 🙂

Paul and I have quite a treat going on here in Tucson this morning. SNOW! Snow everywhere!! – on the mountain, in the foothills, covering the yard, covering our cars!!! Across Tucson last night, around 5pm, the rain started turning to sleet. And then the sleet turned to snow. And then – the best part, hehe – it started to stick!! Now this morning Paul and I awake to a winter wonderland, here at our little desert adobe home. Seeing snow at the house is a sight we thought we’d never see. What a treat!!! :-)))))))