Seeing fellow members of the climbing community out at night can be strikingly familiar to the first time you saw your high school math teacher grocery shopping. 'Whoa, dude, check out Mr. Jones- he's like, buying eggs and bread and sh*t- I guess that means he must eat food.. maybe he is human?!'
In much the same way, seeing all your gym and crag buddies out at night, all fancy, or sleazy, or intoxicated (or all three), can be a bit of a shock- revealing an alternate identity of people we may strictly know as climbers. Until a unifying event or celebration occurs, it's not uncommon to never see such climbers in anything but chalk covered pants, dripping in sweat and looking fully haggard. Contrary to popular belief, climbers do clean up well and even the most burly of hard men and women get their party on when the time is right. So and so might destroy your project in the gym, or maybe they butted in front of you last weekend on that boulder problem outside, but under black-lights and deep house music- everybody is stoked and we are all just dancing monkeys.
Nick Sherman and Andre Di Felice- hard boulders all day, hard boogie all night
The community runs thick around Boulder, and we were out in great numbers last Saturday celebrating the Chinese New Year and Valentines Day. With so many climbers under one roof, it was refreshing to see high heels and leather in place of approach shoes and cotton. I treasure such events because it gives an opportunity to relate to a community on a different level.. plus I'm a closet dance freak. Needless to say, we had a ball and, yes, even the filthiest of us (read: myself) looked FABULOUS.
Paige takes a break from the all-Marmot getup to make this dress look amazing
Speaking of fabulous, I'm proud to announce that my injured ligament is on the mend, and my finger is functioning at at least 85%. I've been training like I mean it recently, eager to whip myself into peak fitness for the budding spring season- lots of rock climbs to climb on. Despite a little tweakage, I've been seeing some real gains recently and I'm increasingly excited to get out and try hard. Take a look at this spunky little video Simon Fryer at the Boulder Rock Club posted about my recent setting / training practices.
nothing against you!! finger healing the hard way- chinese medicine wrap
Paige Claassen, Beau Stuart, Andy Mann and myself are heading south for a little while to catch some rays and sample some New Mexico stone tomorrow. None of us have ever been, and we're hoping to check out a couple of the choice spots. I've heard the state has some real hidden gems and I'm looking to dig 'em up! It will be great to touch some real stone for a week, seeing in that since my return from Asia I've only gotten out twice (...shhhh...). I'll have some top quality images and undoubtably a couple good stories to share upon my return- stay tuned.
Lastly, I'm proud to announce that I'll soon be working in collaboration with DeadPointMag.com- where my site will be one of the featured athlete blogs. I'm stoked to hook up with this crew and continue to broadcast consistent, high quality JSTARinORBIT for your at home viewing pleasure!
