This is the first blog post I have ever done and... I'm suddenly feeling a bit of stage fright! The worst part is that I do not have any exciting climbing news to report at the moment. I'm sitting in my office staring at two ginormous boxes of awesome Voodoo holds, but I have nowhere to put them! I was inches from having a training wall but alas... it looks like I'll be waiting a little longer to use those holds! Good thing we have an eight-feet high campus board on the back of our house and a MOON fingerboard in the kitchen (though I really wanted a green one...:)!
So the question on my mind is... 'What happened to my summer'? Two weeks ago it felt way too hot to climb. Then last week my fingers started going numb. Of course those who know me would not be surprised by my numb fingers since most of the year I live in my black North Face down jacket…while those around me are in T-shirts. But last week was a shock to the system…it suddenly was REALY cold. Wills and I woke up to a 40-degree house. Then we both remembered that the heater had stopped working last winter and we never bothered to repair it. And of course we had burned all of last year’s firewood cranking up the wood stove. You know the old saying that “they don’t make things like they use to”…? Well, that’s right… Today they put insulation in houses! My 1920 house has none! As a result, I rushed out to dedicate the whole of last week to wooding. Just another one of Life’s little monkey wrenches that get thrown at you to ruin two perfectly good climbing weeks. Yes, it can take a week for my back to recover after incorrectly lifting two cords of wood into the truck and out again.
On the first day, as we were driving out of town up Hwy 395 to the designated wood cutting areas, it felt wicked early… then I noticed that the two trucks on the opposite side of the highway arriving back into Bishop already had full beds AND trailer loads of wood. Perhaps I need to work on my morning starts. Unfortunately we had only enough time to cut and fill one full truck load each day. The irony of it all is that after ruining myself with four days of wooding, it’s warm again, so right now we don’t even need the wood burning stove!
Thinking back over last week I suddenly realize what happened to my summer… it disappeared without me getting to do much climbing because as usual, LIFE got in the way! Well, look out Life… I don’t intend to give up my fall and winter boulder season as well.
Next time around, I'll have some exciting climbing news to report...I hope!
