The Good Life

So I have promised a few people that I would finish a bottle of wine and have at this blog with the fervor and wit reserved the days of yore. Well... I didn't. And quite honestly, I find it rather unmanly to finish a bottle of California's finest/cheapest merlot at home when one lives with another dudeson, so I really don't see that situation occuring anytime soon.

Regardless I feel the need to regale the readership with tales of my current mountain town.

I've been here for almost three solid weeks. I'm doing what I love to bring home the bacon (slinging lattes where lattes need to be slunged) and the cool mountain air is as amazing to live in as I always envisioned.

THE RIDING: To start, our nearest singletrack is less than 1 mile away via the cities ultra-expansive multi-use trail. 42 miles of ultra-drainable desert dirt/gravel line all of the streets to make this the most impressive bike city I have ever encountered. And only 1 mile to the right of my doorstep drops me off in front of the cities after work superflowy loop. 10ish miles of singletrack provide everything from bomber 40 mph doubletrack to a technical loop that rivals Clintion's white trail. The best part though... it is never, ever, ever muddy. We have had days with flash flood warnings in the last week. And instead of turning the trails into mush, it turns into velcro infused hardpack.

Aside from the super close riding, the rest of the riding resides between 3 and 7 miles away and has proven to blow the mind on the decents (the ascents are less mind blowing but I'm sure once my elevation lungs are about me they will be equally glorious.)

Don't let the Goats hear me say this but the road riding here is equally amazing. Once outside of the city limits you can climb and climb and climb until you are done. And then bomb back down. Climbing 2o miles uphill to be rewarded with 60mph downhills can be quite entertaining to say the least.

THE CLIMBING: It's here, it's all here. My first few weeks were spent traveling around solo with a pack filled with shoes and chalk, freesoloing whatever looked freesoloable. I met some cool locals who threw a harness at me during my first visit to "Petit Verdon" and let me use their rope while I was eyeballing a 70 foot line that I was looking at just hanging out ropeless. Very chill people up in the thin mountain air, giving some stranger a belay on their gear.

Last weekend I taught our next door neighbor how to use all of his gym climbing gear to get out in the wilderness and found an even better belay buddy. And tomorrow, hoping the weather holds, Johnny will be learning his first outdoor on rope commands.

THE PEOPLE: They're all like me (or us). Everyone rides a mountain bike, everyone climbs, everyone drinks good beer with a pirate like thirst. I've sat outside the locals spots and listened to the hardmen spin yarns of epics on El Cap, Mt. Whitney or that last gnarly local race. The outdoorsmen run this town, and in a town this size that is a refreshing feeling.

So here's to the blog, the town and having life at your fingertips.

Roadie Rant Thursday

So I wasn't sure if I should post this or not and have marinated in it since I got off my bike tonight, my first instinct about the matter was to rage hard in regards but after a shower and some food I thought it best to not act hastily. Here I am three hours later still pissed about it, yes it is incredibly petty and yes we have all probably experienced it but...

The last few Thursday nights I've been riding Lawrence's local "Vomit Comet" road ride. Known for being a 25 mile long absolute hammerfest. I really enjoy this ride since it gives me the chance to sit in a crazy fast group, ride at my limit, make a few hard efforts at the front and get popped out the back knowing that I actually did some bike riding that night.

Well tonight went about the same as every Thursday. I led the group out of town for a bit rolling at a decent warm up clip, Adam Mills and some tri-dude dragged us out to the turn off and split and the ride was officially on. There was an incredible lack of work sharing with pulls tonight and about half the crew was just sitting in the back sucking wheel, now I'm all for that tactic if I am riding in a BIG social group ride. But this is the damn comet, it's over in an hour, go to the front and take a damn pull or come back when you are fit enough to at least try.

Regardless of that I took a few more pulls and got spit out the back around the half way marker as Thom Leonard absolutely motored up the rollers. After I got spit off I turned the pace wayyy down and recovered for a few miles. About a half mile ahead of me I could see a female GP Velotek rider (one of the aforementioned sitter inners) had just got spit out too. I figured I would keep the pace slow for a bit, recover and then go catch her and ride in together.

Here's where the story really starts: about mile 16 I catch her on a climb and as I ride up beside I say hello and smile, she doesn't even acknowledge my existence just keeps cranking. So I think to myself "Hey self, I bet she's just too far in the pain locker to say hello back. Why don't you let her sit on your wheel up this climb." So that's what I did. And then continued to let her sit back there for a few more climbs while she yo-yo'ed back and forth. Good deed for the day is done.

After we turn onto north 1400 to cruise back into town I shut down the pace and once again ride beside her and say "Think the wind shifted on us? That hurt a little bit." With a grin cocked and a chuckle. This time she acknowledged my existence with a scowl and a corner of the eye glance. At this point I am fuming, in my head I am screaming, "I just dragged you around for the last few miles and you are well aware that we are on the same group ride because I am well aware that you were sandbagging around behind my wheel for a good portion of it."

To put the icing on the cake, when we reach the traditional "group sprint" end she comes motoring along past me around 26 mph with the full on metronome body bob and maybe a 50rpm cadence. So I once again cruised up next to her seated and just stared as we crossed the line directly next to each other. I didn't offer my assistance by pointing out that she was wasting all of her energy bobbing around like a jack in the box or in a highly inappropriate gear for a sprint at that speed. I am fully aware that no woman wants to be told what to do, especially from a hairy legged dude on a cross bike.

But seriously roadie douche queen... wtf? You were blatantly rude to a fellow rider who not only towed you ass in the group, but also out of the group? Is this just a shitty personality trait of yours? Does the silver back of your money sucking shell of a club hold meetings on how to sit in the back of rides and not do a goddamn thing while you ride laps around a lake campground? Is this some grudge you hold against mt. bikers or cross bikes? Or did daddy just treat you poorly and now you have an aversion to strange men?

Long story short: roadie douche queen + mtb>rb + GP Velotek is effin' lame + rant = me angrily blowing an isolated incident out of the water

(I am going to commit blaspheme and quote R5 now so sit tight while type this toast.)

So here's to the pirates of the dirt, and as R5 said in regards to our scene demolishing the road scene re the Bonebener, "Beer, hotdogs, and babes: shit you never see roadies get a sniff of. While you shaved leg weenies are drinking your recovery concoctions, we're taking recovery rides with your wives." Except for whomever's wife this was...

Mountains Ahoy!

I think the majority of the world has heard the news by now. But for those not in the loop, I will be a resident of Flagstaff, Arizona as of July. Scored a swank little condo with Senor Johnny G. near campus and downtown and off we go next month.

I think I get more excited to live in a mountain town every day. I've been dreaming about moving west (as every young man does) for wayyy too long now and I see this as a re-focusing of my life. I know the majority of you reading this have seen this blog since inception and watched it turn from a bike blog, to a runner's rantings, to a lazy summer bum's tales to a climber's party tales. This last year in Lawrence I have felt pretty stagnant, no real motivation to ride the same trails over and over again and even Arkansas has started to become redundant in the climbing scene.

But in Flagstaff... I will be living 6 miles away from world class sport climbing. And my local crag has many more 5.12s than 5.9s (and no 5.8-). To put this in perspective, I believe my "local crag" of HCR has about 10 5.9 and under climbs for every 5.12. Which means that if I want to continue climbing it's time for me to either put up or shut up, I can't really sit and stall at a 5.11+ limit anymore and have it be any kind of impressive or even acceptable. Which is pretty rad since I firmly believe once a climber has found their technique climbing in the 5.10-5.11 range it is rarely a challenge to come back to them after time off and becomes more instinct and rock reading, which admittedly accounts for my lack of gym time this year while I am still increasing my onsight level.

I'll also be living in a hot bed of new mtb trails and looking forward to seeing switchbacks, logrides and jumps on the local xc trails again. I have super high hopes that I can land a job that affords me a decent new XC rig this year as that has always been great motivation for me to get out and ride, coupled with the scenery and the town itself. My anticipation for new riding has already kicked in and I have had the roadie out in force the last few weeks attempting to gain the composure back that a year on a motorcycle killed in me. If things go as planned I'll be riding 24hrs of Moab this year and if they don't than I'll still be riding rad trails at home 6 mths. a year and gooseberry/moab the rest of it.

Whitewater Kayaking: This has always been one of those things that I have thought would close my triangle of things I am good at. When I reference "the triangle" I feel like a mid-90's Mountain Dew ad. But the mtb, the climbing and the whitewater have always seemed like the three most extreme outdoor activities to me since I was a kid, the pinnacles of their respective properties (land, water and air). I can hang my hat comfortably on two and apparently Flagstaff has some good stuff in the water and I am pretty stoked to see it. I suck in the water (there's not much reason to be good in it living in KS) but have high hopes that the next year will be good learning regardless.

So I have to get back to attempting to sell the motorcycle, furniture and spare parts now to make this adventure hurt financially as little as possible.

But here's to new trails, new rock, new water, new friends, new local beer and focus.

Treading the Water of Life

Oh the neglected blogosphere. I'm back and after what feels like a few months of holding my breath I feel like I almost have my head above water.

Conversation point #1: I graduated college. After 5 long years they finally kicked me out with a degree in psychology with a minor in political science from the great University of Kansas. That felt amazing for a minute until the boozey haze of graduation weekend ended and I realized I still had to figure out what to do next. I've made some big steps in that direction lately and should be out of the midwest quite soon, more details later on that one.

Woot! Graduated.

Regardless graduation weekend was super rad. Mike Draper and myself hosted a co-kegger grad party. The Fink family unit made the drive up and I had all of my climber family mixed up with the old Lawrence crew and the girl for the night. Felt great to have all of my best friends in the same place for the night. It was a true rarity for my collected memories and if you came than thank you, it made my grad weekend. On Sunday I walked down the hill and enjoyed the lovely tradition that all of us Jayhawks can forever bond in, celebrated with my family and then went on a 2 man pub crawl to re-live our (now) college past.

Conversation point #2: What's a college graduate to do when they are still working at a coffee shop with no real life obligations? Go climbing of course. So last weekend I headed back to the ranch with the trio of Carol, Rachelle and Jess to send some gnar rock. John Waller was already in the great state or AR so he joined us as well and we went to sendin'. Not too much to report on the whole climbing front. I almost onsighted another 5.11 and have high hopes that .11a will be my onsight grade by the end of the summer, sounds kinda lame and sport climberish but I have come to terms with the fact that that's all I currently am for now until I get a job, build a rack and hit the mountains.

J-Dub cut his teeth on his first outdoor lead climb ever on a pretty stout 5.10b at the prophecy wall. It was a very impressive first send on the sharp end and just goes to show that once again John "Good at Everything" Waller can get the job done. I'm pretty sure if you have a conversation about it with him he will mention something about it being less hard than I am making it out to be, but a .10 for your first time out on real rock is damn impressive (don't let him tell you anything else). Overall the weekend ended up being a great way to gain some composure. We climbed in the morning, swam in the Buffalo in the afternoon, climbed again in the dark and attended a most rad wedding reception in the HCR barn.

Conversation Point #3: This was a while back but I know a lot of you who read this have participated in this event in the past so it's worth a mention. David Neidinger hosted the Biro 3.0 at his pad and team WallerSlate dominated. Johnny Giles' team almost showed up with some good competition but in the end proved to be choke artists. So I now have the shirt to show that I belong on the hall of fame wall with the likes of Bundy/Kristen and Schroeder/Hemphill.

So here's to growing up, climbing rocks, and combining the great sports of beer drinking and bike riding.

The Final Trip

Last weekend I headed down to Horseshoe Canyone Ranch with the KURC for my fianl trip ever with these kids. It's a most giant bummer for myself to have to leave this club or rock crushing stone bandits, but apparently life has to move on.

We started the weekend on Thursday night with a Jeep full of kids who climb harder than me (the ego took a hit on that one) and partied hard until we reached HCR around 5:00 in the morning. From then we threw up some tents and slept until 11am. And then the quartet of Lesage, Spalding, Surface and I went sendin'.

This is what our campfires look life, don't be too jealous

Friday: We went craggin' at the Prophecy Wall and it was good. Got warm on a .10b and moved over to a giant roof line titled "Taliban Soup." The Soup is a hard .11D that not only requires some serious rock-reading skills but also some serious burl to pull the roof. I got hung up on a balancey, lie back in the middle of the route after not trusting the beta that was being shouted from the dirt. So it didn't go clean, but it did go and after getting shut down on Flying Elvis just a few weeks before it felt good to pull some overhangs.

After we left Prophecy we built a giant tent fort at the campground in preparation for the impending storm and went back to send town over at the north 40. Racked up some biners and ticked off another .10 over there and then went to town on Sonny Jim with Andrew Spalding, an .11b with a neat roof. Almost, almost, almost had the onsight, and damn it would have felt good to say I did it. But once again my rock reading skills proved to be the downfall for the send. Hung once and cleaned up the roof.

Saturday: Some more creatures from the north joined us just in time to watch an Arkansas tsunami wash over the Canyon. Once the sun came out we headed to the aptly named "Goat Cave" for some super overhung climbing and what I can only imagine was the only dry climbing to be found that morning. The goats were there when we arrived, hiding from the wet but they quickly dispersed as the clouds moved away. The bottom of the cave was covered in inedible cocoa pebbles and it smelled like a petting zoo (to us city boys). Regardless of the smell, the climbs were a straight burl-fest. Start overhung and climb out of a cave, that was pretty much the name of the game for everything there.

Sunday: My hands were worked, my head ached from partying too hard in the barn the night before and my balance wasn't the best in the world. Regardless if this was to be my last trip with the club I wanted to go out the same way I came in, on top of Orange Crush. To all the climbers reading this, yes I know it's a cliche to talk about this line and how rad it is but stfu. It's the tallest climb at the Ranch by far, it's a 4 star climb, it's rated so I can lead it clean and still have a ridiculous amount of fun and it has the best view of the Canyon of any crag at that place. So yes it was gorgeous, yes it was well within my limits, yes the bolts were a little too closely spaced together and yes if I climbed it at sunset I would "like totally tell you how totally gorgeous it was." I have that view on top of that rock to forever couple with the memory of my last club trip and that is something I can most definitely live with.

So here's to pushing your personal limits, sending harder than planned, the canyon, the views and those dang creatures of the Arkansas craggin' scene.

Freefallin: The tale of the weekend of the 16th

Friday: I quit early from the coffee shop and raced down to the LRT to demo some Trek bikes. Rode some pretty rad squishy things. I hauled ass on a Trek Top Fuel, cruised on the Superfly 100 and hucked as much gnar as I could for the LRT on a Rumblefish. All of them were rad. I won't write a novel about the experience since I don't have the background in suspension or bikes that aren't my own to write even remotely a well thought out experience.

Saturday: Hopped on the road bike and headed out by myself. Probably the first solo road ride I have enjoyed doing in quite some time. Lawrence to Perry Lake to Clinton Lake by the day's end, all in a breezy 5mph crosswind.

Suit up!

SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY! I jumped the heck out of a plane. It was the most rad experience of my life by far. It was kind of the culmination of every adrenaline rush I have ever chased in my life. I liken it to going full throttle on my motorcycle straight up in the air, jumping off, taking a 5000 foot whipper and then sitting on top of a giant route trying to catch your breath.

I was pretty nervous going into the day seeing as I had a good 9 months of anticipation building up inside of me. Once the flight suit was on and I watched my altimeter climb as I sat on the metal floor of a tiny plane shaking at speed the nervousness disappeared and a calm set in, the closest I can liken it to is sitting at the base of a very runout project and knowing you can do it but knowing it's going to hurt if you don't do it right.

The minute I hucked out the door of the plane all of those feelings disappeared. I was in freefall for 30 seconds and it was the most serene 30 seconds of my life. Some people talk about getting tunnel vision when they free fall, some people say their brain blacks out, mine did the opposite. I felt a very acute awareness of my surroundings, I was cruising at 130mph through the air, looking around in awe with life, calm and happier than I think I have ever been in my life. I firmly believe that I could spend the next 50 years as a buddhist monk and I would never achieve the serenity that washed over me the second I gained composure after tumbling out of that plane.

So here's to the weekend. Long live long rides, carbon wonder bikes and jumping from way up.

Party at Graceland

The first weekend of April I made my return trip to Cave Creek in Arkansas. The club took down a smaller group of kids to send hard and that is what we did. I had my sights set on a severely overhanging 5.12a named "Flying Elvis." I've been eye-f*cking this line for almost 9 months now, it is honestly one of the boldest and most beautiful lines I have ever seen AR. I got the chance to top-rope it a titch on the March trip but couldn't work the crux side pull, so this line got deep into my brain. The minute I got to Cave Creek I warmed up and went straight to Elvis. I had redpointed this thing at least a dozen times in my dreams the month leading up to tying into the sharp-end at the base of this climb, but alas those dreams did not become a reality. I flailed at the crux for probably a half hour before resigning myself to come back and try it later that day.

Flying off Elvis' Crux

Little did I know that the rest of the day would be spent with Brian Lesage climbing things that are just at or past my limit. After pulling through a .10d and then following up the most technical .11D I have ever seen in my life I was so exhausted that I could not climb a 5.10A on top-rope and felt like a soccer short, shoe renting, plastic pulling squid.

The next morning I returned to Elvis and pulled through the crux moves but my body was just too worked to clip the following bolt and move onto the juggy finish. Elvis got me good but at least I know that I got his number now.