new york city!

That really chops my hide!
Remember that comercial? About how some other salsa was made in NYC, and Pace Picante was made in San Antonio, thereby solidifying its claim that Pace's spice was more legit? Well, I thought I'd spice up my blog a little bit with some more incriminating stories, and I'm motivated to prove that my spice is from a real spicy place. Like San Antone.
Also, it's taken me a little bit to get into the swing of things. I started this blog when I was totally sick in bed, and I had some time when all I could do was suffer a crippling cold and lay in bed with my computer. Now, things are getting a little more familiar, and I'm a little more practiced with this whole "consistently writing" thing.

Anyway, back to spice.
There is an old, lingering plan my buddy Rob, the garlic doctor, and I have about the Asshole of the Week. We first thought about it in reference to the Boulder Rock Club (BRC) and all the shit-brains that place attracts. If you live in Boulder, you know. If you don't, just imagine a magnet where all of the washed up losers and young wanna be losers congregate. You can pick what category Rob and I fall into.
The competition for Asshole of the Week is pretty tough, but fortunately it's an informal award given out with alarming regularity, so there's plenty of glory to share. Even though there are tales to be told about The Dumb Ass Who Wears Kids Clothes Even Though He Is A Grown Man, Team Eating Disorder, Count Dooku (thus named b/c he looks just like Christoper Lee in Star Wars), and any number of other idiots, I'd like to talk about George and Karen. Let's call them Team Grump.
Team Grump can climb hard. They spend the summer at Rifle, and I know George can send 5.14. But getting either one of them to acknowledge anyone outside of their trusted circle of grumpy friends is a goddamn mathematical impossibility. They must be at the BRC
all the time, because every time I'm there, I see them. And every time I see them, Karen has this scowl on her face and won't say a word. Never smiling, never chatting. Apparently she is furious because she lives in one of the nicest cities in the world and gets to do the activity that she purports to like nearly every day. If I had such a rough life, I'd probably be a hater, too. She must be infectious, because George never smiles either, never talks, and just gets grumpy when he doesn't send his route. Ok, fine. They're grumpy.
I was at another climbing gym the other day down in Denver so I could climb with my buddy Eli who lives down there. Who do I see when I go in but Team Grump! The place is nearly empty, so it isn't like they lost me in the throng when I came in. We made eye contact and I smiled in recognition, but got nothing back but blank stares.
A few minutes later, I was walking past them and decided to just make a sacrifice and say hello. "Getting out of the BRC, huh?"
George answered the he had to get a workout in, but he should have been outside.
"Yeah, but it's still kind of cold outside. Spring's coming, though."
George told me the routes were harder at this new gym, so we couldn't climb as hard. "At least a letter grade." Again, he seemed to only see the negative. I don't know what Karen could see, 'cause at this point she had yet to say a word to either of us.
I told them to have a good one, and went on my way.

Later in the day, George and I found ourselves on adjacent routes, both having just fallen and hanging on the rope, resting while our belayers took our respective weight. George actually made conversation, and for a moment, I thought we had a breakthrough!
He asked "had I been on the white 13-?"
I said I hadn't.
"Well, this one is way harder."
I told him, "Yeah, the routes are harder here." And in a moment of self deprecating humor combined with an acknowledgment that the grades at the BRC might be soft , I told him, "I've been climbing at the BRC all winter. I was ready to get to Rifle and really crush it, but I guess I'm not as strong as I thought."
His straight faced response? "You're not."
Well ok then.

There was no moment of breakthrough with Team Grump. There is only the recognition that for now, they are the ruling Assholes of the week.

As a quick side note, I later watched George try to lay Karen flat out on her ass when he pulled a rope out from under her feet. Try to envision a cartoon where a rug gets pulled out from someone's feet and they go cartwheeling into the abyss. If you're willing to drop your girlfriend because you are too much of a dick to ask her to lift her foot, you totally qualify for the award.

gotan project

Every time I hear the Gotan Project, I think of New Zealand. A guy I met while climbing at Flock Hill got me turned on to the stuff, and it became one of my soundtracks while I was living there.
The problem is, Gotan Project isn't entirely uplifting. It really reminds me of the background music for 12 Monkeys, which was one of the weirder, scarier movies of the last 20 years.
I was down in New Zealand, trying to figure out what the hell to do with myself directly after graduating college, and I willfully chose to listen to this weirdo sci-fi theme music about eating bugs after a biological holocaust. Good times? I dunno. It didn't seem so cool when I was shivering my skinny ass off in the uninsulated box that was our home, starving on Jiff peanut butter my mom sent across the Pacific out of pure pity, and dirt poor 'cause the wages at the docs were shit. Not to mention the working conditions. Have you ever had a huge angry Maori threaten to kill you if you didn't "shift" the 60 pound boxes of frozen squid quicker? Well, it's as overrated as it sounds.
So now I have this new remixed tango CD, and of course, a main contributer to the tracks is Gotan Project. I wanted to be swept away to Argentina, in the time of Eva Peron and before globalization was king. I wanted to be Hemingway's Jake Barnes, except I don't speak French and I doubt the fishing in Spain was ever that good. I wanted to go to Buenos Aires and the Pampas and Patagonia and see the world untainted by age. Instead? I have to fear that a maniac will put terrible bugs in my lungs (Malos Aires, instead) and force me to work as a slave on a boat. Drat.

everybody poops

Or, more cryptically, we are all going to die. Geologically speaking, soon. And in any respect, sooner than we'd like.

I told my dad that he was getting older, and that on his deathbed, he'll wish he'd have fished more. "Versus being a millionaire? I doubt it." he replied. Ok, so my dad would rather work more. But he is the lone exception. And I doubt that he was telling the whole truth. After all, he was talking to me, his son, and I would bet that he was just trying to teach me some Jedi lesson. He's a kook like that.

Maybe my generation missed the boat somewhere, 'cause I think there is a break from the old man's way of thinking. I know a lot of people who would rather scrape by and pursue their passions with their hair afire. I'd rather not work this entire week and go climbing as opposed to have an extra 500 bucks. I guess my dad makes more money than me. Or knows something I don't (want to know).

the creek

Every time I go to Indian Creek, I have a fantastic time. The weather is super conducive to climbing, the scenery is eye-numbingly beautiful, and the climbing is some of the best in the world. To jam into perfectly parallel cracks with nothing else for your hands or feet is such poetic climbing that nearly everywhere else seems a little sub par. I have been dreaming about getting out there since my last trip in the fall, and now that the weather has made a break for spring, I am back to my old obsession. I wish I could explain to my boss how much it means to me to be out there, but no one is going to understand my affinity for the creek.

Groundation

Reggae feels like an illicit lover. I grew up in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, home of the farmers. Do I really have any business asking questions like "When Jah gonna' rule dem?" or letting anyone within earshot know that "We not forget Zion!"? It seems like these are statements meant to come from men of deeply rooted soul. Or at least with much nappier dreads. My greasy blond hair is kept short, or at best, frat-shaggy. So where, then, does this love of Groundation stem?

That's an easy question, one meant to be answered in the pithy simplicity of my little blog. I learned to love these guys while I was climbing in Rifle last year. It seemed like every time Katie and I swung the Subaru (see, super suburbanite) into the canyon, our ipod (again) would be blaring this stuff. Now I've got one particularly fond memory association between great climbing trips and music.

Add some of these songs to your favorite activity and hanging with your girlfriend, and you, too, will have a new paramour.

garlique

My friend Rob isn't a doctor. This mere technicality doesn't stop him from dispensing medical advice to anyone who is potentially ailing. Although, to his credit, Rob's advice is rather modest. At the hint of any cold bug, the first words out of his mouth will be "zinc and garlic." Zinc and garlic, huh? Sounds innocuous enough. It's not some witch concoction that requires vast quantities of eye of newt, frog blood or the like. That shit might kill you.

A few days ago, I started feeling a little off. I know it's flu season, and I hate being sick, so I thought, "what the hell?" and headed to the grocery store to pick up the goods. Zinc pills...check. Garlic....hummm. Pills or cloves? Something about the pills seemed a little fake. If you're gonna take garlic, take garlic. I opted for a big head of the stuff, and that was that.
Back home, I popped some of the pills and peeled out 3 cloves. Chewing seemed suicidal, so I opted just to swallow them down like horse pills. My breath immediately smelled like an Italian grocery.

Fast forward a day and a half. I woke up to a fever, huge cough, chills, and an aching body. Every cell in my abdomen felt like it had been hit with a baseball bat. I had the flu.

The worst part? I had a bit of gas, it smelled exactly like concentrated garlic. It was amazing. Like seeing a cat that barked or something. There was simply no connection with how things should have been. Thankfully, it's gone. So is the notion that garlic wards off the flu. Thanks Rob.