Colete McInerny tells me about how she’s going to pack up an old Civic and drive to Squamish after she finishes her last semester at Fordham University just outside of NYC. Taking a drag from her menthol cigarette, her highlighted-blonde hair masking half her face, she asks me if I think she can exist on the road. Obe Carrion jumps in, “Do you have the desire, the heart? ’Cause that’s all you need!” Obe’s been living life on the road for several years, specializing in competitions. Carrion is gregarious — at times excessively — such that he has earned the moniker “50/50,” “Because half the people love me and the other half are haters.”

While Obe rants and Colete dreams aloud of her future plans, my non-celebrity friends stand fidgeting uneasily, forcibly taking in the spectacle, listening to Obe’s rap. One of them, AJizzle, a nineteen-year-old high-school dropout, lives in a small room behind my local climbing gym. He paid out a day’s earnings for gas money to join the festivities. This is his first time to the Gunks and he’s getting spanked. “These problems suck, this movie sucks, Obe sucks — let’s split ... ” I’ve pitched my share of tantrums, but few of mine can top AJ on a bad day. He is a stark contrast to the superstars who are forced to watch what they say in front of journalists and strangers.

Tomorrow this eclectic group will wake up groggy and hit the boulders and crags yet again. Some will go home, back over the Atlantic, some to the West Coast. Others will continue northward, stopping along the way at several well-known Northeast areas. Reflecting back on the first day’s events, my palms grease thinking of the projects that got sent, the several that will have to wait till tomorrow, and even harder ones that will have to wait until a Roc Trip of the future.