Some friends of ours once took their teenagers to see Barenaked Ladies. (Yes, I know they’re Canadian…) Much to the kids’ disappointment – and to the relief of the parents – they didn’t actually get to see any bare-naked ladies. (No, I’m not going to give a link for that one – just for fun, Google it on your own…) So much for truth in advertising!
Speaking of advertising, our best former vice-president has a brand new bag. (Best? It’s a slim list, I grant you – but name another VP who has ever done anything besides open his own museum.) If I had a million dollars – let alone $300 Million – I would do something like he’s doing with it, for sure.
I swear I would. Well, I would do good with at least $275 Million of it, or so. You could still do a LOT of good with $275 Million, right? I mean, on a percentage basis it’s not that much different, is it?
We should give him the Nobel Prize.
Ooops. Too late. He’s already earned that, also. Maybe he’d settle for a re-vote in Florida, then? Dang – wouldn’t you know that it’s too late for that, too…
ps for the link-averse: Al Gore is donating all the proceeds from his books, his movie An Inconvenient Truth, and from his Nobel Prize winnings to fight global warming. All told, he’s giving away $300 Million to create awareness about the problem. The key method – at the start – will be a series of ads that highlight the importance of this cause. Pretty cool, huh?
So those of you who climb with me know that my chalkbag has a name. His name is Frank and I made him in late 2004. Some call him morbid, others call him cute and adorable. Everyone has an opinion though. I love him, as any good parent should.
Yesterday a very special person baked me maybe the best cake I’ve ever seen. It was Frank. In cake form…
Needless to say, I was psyched. It had everything!! A missing head and even the offset buttons!! Plus it was double chocolate chip.
For those of you who want to know, there was a head. It was chopped off and kept separate for later enjoyment.
Well, here it is. This is the final week of Curling for me. We’re in the playdowns, Curling speak for playoffs, and we’re sitting pretty well. We did well enough throughout the regular season to be one of four teams to get a bye through the first round. We play in the second round tonight and we’ll have to win our next three games to get to the finals.
Unfortunately we have the luck of playing against Dave Brown. Dave is coming off of a very recent victory at the U.S. Club National Championships.
It’s been kinda cool to see how many National level teams have come out of Madison. Surprising too actually. Both the men’s and women’s National Championships went to teams out of Madison. Also the Boy’s and Girl’s Junior National Champs had team members from Madison. The Boy’s team also won the Junior World Championships. Then there is the Men’s Senior team that got 3rd at Nationals.
It’s a different world for me coming from the climbing side of life where all of the talent is seemingly in either Colorado or Europe somewhere. I love the fact that I don’t grasp the level of talent that I’m playing with. It’s fun to be oblivious sometimes.
Having recently been on the wrong end of a high-speed game of bumper-pool, I thought that y’all might want to see this. The bottom line: Let’s be careful out there, and be aware.
This past Tuesday I went up to Devil’s Lake to climb for an afternoon. I was able to hop on one of my many projects, Rubberman. I had put in a very short day of work on it a couple years ago and was shut down hard by the first couple of moves. I lowered off without making any progress and was thoroughly humbled by it.
Coming back alone this year brought a little more light to the subject though. I don’t know how much stronger physically I am compared to two years ago. My mental strength has changed though, as it should. This was helped along by doing Perfect Medium last year. Perfect has the sharpest hold I’ve ever used. The crux revolves around being able to shut out the pain factor and just going for it, which meant punching through and using that horrible razor edge.
Getting humbled on Perfect Medium
It hurts, but after you do it a few times it gets easier and easier…or you just go numb from pain and forget about it. Either way it gets more tolerable. For Perfect Medium my key was just forgetting about how much the first move hurt and just press on. “It’ll be over soon” I kept telling myself.
Sticking the painful crux move on the send
I find the first move on Rubberman falling in the same arena. I tried the move a couple times without really committing. Finally I grabbed the hold a little harder, forgot about the blood blisters and nearly stuck the move. With a little more work it’ll go and I’ll never have to use that stupid two-and-a-half-finger razor again.
In the land of hard Devil’s Lake climbs there are very few that don’t revolve around this same issue. Forget about the pain for a second and just hold on tight. It seems so simple now but I’m glad that I’m getting used to the idea before spending more time on my next project…
