Update #2

MERRY CHRISTMAS/CHRISTMAS EVE! (And Hanukkah, Kwanzaa etc.) 

Update #2 for my grand adventure, this one a bit more detailed than the last. If you actually read all of this, I’ll love you forever. 

A couple things from last week I forgot. I’ve met some really interesting people thus far, one of which was this homeless guy I talked to for about 45 minutes the other day (I’m not the homeless guy here haha). He had some pretty interesting stuff to say and it was great to listen to his stories. I also met this other dude who had all these cool facial tattoos and he told me about all the Ironman triathlons that he’s done and how he’s currently planning his second bike across the country.

Today I drove over 600 miles up to D.C. to visit my dad for a couple days for Christmas. I’ll probably be on my way back to Chatt by Monday to continue climbing and whatnot.

Starting from where I left off on the previous update, last Sunday was a rainy one down in Tennessee so I spent it at the gym bouldering around and hangboarding/campus boarding. While there I achieved the amazing. After a few hours of climbing/training, I remembered this challenge that a friend of mine gave me a couple months ago. The goal was to do more than 3 pull ups on the worst slopers on the Beastmaker 2000 (a type of wooden hangboard for those who don’t know). I hadn’t tried it in a while but last time I gave it a shot, I couldn’t even do a full pull up and down. This time I went at it with a more thoughtful approach and after a few tries I did 4 pull ups!!! I got excited though, and lost my focus and dropped off. I’ll have to try again and see how many I can actually do.

On Sunday night I was hanging around at a hostel and was planning on going to bed early but a girl I met talked me into going to a concert for a band that I had never even heard of. Turned out to be pretty rad! Not quite sure what genre the bands were but somewhere around hard rock/metal.

Monday I took a hike that may have been more adventurous than I had planned on. After picking out a seeming well traveled trail on a website I found, I drove over to the trail-head to do a cool 10- mile loop. Immediately upon entering the trail, it was pretty clear that this was not a well traveled route, and needed some serious maintenance. It was kind of amazing actually, maybe I’m spoiled by the well established trails of the northeast, but this thing looked like 5 people had ever been on it and there were downed trees crisscrossing the trail all over the place. It was okay at first, but after a few miles, the trail thinned out and I somehow ended up in the middle of a plateau with the trail nowhere in sight. It was sub freezing temps and I hadn’t seen anyone else so far, so I was a little nervous about being in the middle of the woods with no idea of where to go. I ended up bushwhacking down hill to a river to see if the trail was there, it was not. I then went back up the hill (which took a good amount of time) to where I had started, and then went up the other direction. Naturally after going up for like 2 minutes, I met up with the trail again.

Further down, the trail intersected with a logging road with no clear indication of whether to go left or right. I chose left first and walked for a long while but it never met back up with the trail, so I went back to where I had came from, and went the other way. Once again it met up with the trail after 2-3 minutes of walking, lol. I continued the rest of the beautiful 10 miles and made it successfully back to my car without further incident (Although I did find some nice gloves on the ground and actually saw one other human being!)

On Tuesday I checked out Little Rock City (Stone Fort) for the first time. This place is legendary. You park your car, pay for a pass ($9) and then walk 2 seconds to reach hundreds of boulder problems all right next to each other. I didn’t have anyone to go with that day or a guide book, so I just hopped around and climbed with people I met. The quality of the rock is so, so good and all of the boulders I tried, from super lowballs with heinous mantel top outs (like “The Fish Market” v4) to super tall highballs, were super fun climbs.

Wednesday I had planned to go back to LRC but I had a lazy morning so I went over to Mountainbrook Boulders. I discovered this super cool lowball that took me awhile to figure out beta on, but eventually worked with the fanciest footwork I’ve ever made up on my own. This is all done with the body horizontally. Starts with a right heel hook and both hands on big crimps, do a big left hand throw to positive crimp, move heel up 6 inches or so, match hands then cross right over left to mediocre pinch, toe hook left foot below right heel then take heel out and bring it up to waist level (changing to a toe), toe in super super hard and take the left toe hook out (hardest part of the whole climb), bump hands along a beautiful iron oxide crimp rail, bring super high right foot and do the biggest lock off ever to a fat jug, top out is a joke. Someone walking by said it was v7 but I don’t know the name of the climb.

I also tried a super classic there called Osiris (v10). I think I need to grow like 6 inches before I can do the boulder. All of the moves felt almost possible, but I kept falling short of the holds by an inch or 2.

After climbing at Mountainbrook, I went over to the TBA do a gym session. At first I just felt tired since I had already climbed about 5 hours but nothing was out of the ordinary. Then as I was trying a heel hook intensive climb, I felt a pull in my hamstring and I popped off the wall. Anyway I think I tweaked my hamstring a bit. Not sure how bad it is but I’m avoiding right heels for now.

Thursday I didn’t climb outside due to fear of how bad my hamstring was, so I just walked around a bit downtown and found a park to read a book in (it was a super nice day, 60-65 degrees Fahrenheit). I got antsy though and went to the TBA again to campus some boulders a bit and hangboard. I went back to the Hostel that night to hang out and play some card games with some friends I ran into at the TBA.

On Friday I went back to LRC. I was climbing pretty crappy due to (I think) being a few hard days on, having actually 0 skin on my tips, my fear of my hamstring, and just general mindset. The climbing was still world class stuff, I was just getting frustrated over being rejected off several climbs I know I could do. I redeemed myself a bit though by doing “Shotgun”, a super classic balancey boulder with slopey pockets and bad feet. The top out is a little sketchy too, with just a really slopey lip and high feet with a landing that’s a rock sticking out.

That night I went out to get Thai food with some fellow pebble wrestlers and played some more cards.

Anyway, I am now in Washington D.C. for a couple days, till next time all of ya’ll in the world of facebook!

Wow I can’t believe I just wrote this all down in less than an hour. Pretty sure this is more than I collectively wrote in my time in high school. If you actually read this far, you are a true dude.
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Here’s a picture at the crib (Walmart) where my neck looks weirdly long.