1/2/08
Christmas came and went. We ate, hung out, drove around, slept, drove again, ate more and waited. We did in fact visit Coto De Caza, the “most exclusive gated community in the US” Natasha’s cousin in-law boasted at Christmas day gathering at Natasha’s dad’s house (yes, near the filming location of Real OC Housewives). And I ate too much dessert. It dawned on me how easily I get depressed without climbing of surfing, or at least the prospect of one of those things in the near future. So we got the heck out of there as soon as we could and hightailed it to Bishop.

Even though I’m not as psyched on bouldering as routes at the moment, I always have fun climbing at the Buttermilks and I figured if I got spanked I could use it to motivate myself to get stronger on the boulders. Natasha sent a couple hard things that she was psyched to do, which was awesome, and I sent a couple hard things and worked on a couple harder (more crimpy and sharper) things that I hadn’t done before. I’ve spent so much time bouldering at the Butters over the last few years that all I have left to do are the extremely tall and dangerous highballs, i.e. Kevin’s new things: Golden Rule, Footprints (crazy), or the extremely crimpy and hard low starts or obscure lines i.e. Mandalion, Swarm (sharp). On this trip I decided to go for the latter, requiring a lot less time and commitment, and less consequence, or so I thought.

So last night I was trying the Mandalion, the low start to the forever famed Mandala, and found some really sweet tall-person beta that made it feel like I was cheating. I was getting through the bottom several times only to pump out and fall high on the wall. It was obvious to me I should have warmed up more, and my fingertips were sweating feverishly from the razor sharp crimps that I was over-gripping. But they hadn’t broken into a full-blown seep yet, and there was still light for one more try. I ended up falling on the last big move; missing the pads and smashing my left heal rather hard on the compact ground. F—k. So we made it to Whiskey Creek in time to put a happy-hour order and after eating our half price dinner I ate my depression away with a chocolate ice-cream concoction they called the brownie monster.

So this is the New Year, and I don’t feel any different… except for a piercing pain in my heal. Looks like it will be campusing and hang boarding for a little while. A quick resolution: get really strong, come back and get revenge… and make sure my I have more than enough pads.