Sunday Morning Observations

Not the religious type, as I'm a skeptical man who prefers sleep to sacraments. But I have a few things I've noticed this morning, Sunday, October 25, 2009.

I'm getting ready to leave for the Red on Wednesday. I'm alternatively enormously excited and a bit nervous. My first climbing day won't be for a week from today because I'll stop for a day at the farm to visit Grandma and Grandpa, and then again in St. Louis to see Vino and Nicole. In Louisville, I'm going to swing in for at least a "hello" with Neil's parents. That will break up the cross country drive well, but keep my pace slow.

I'm excited for the reason most obvious to any rock climber. The Red offers limitless climbing opportunities. The rock is beautiful, the routes number in the thousands, and the steep walls ensure a nasty fitness after enough time.

But behind the carefree optimism that could come to someone else, I'm nervous. My back has been hurting, and I want it to get better before I get there. Today I'm at around 75%, which is a marked improvement from three days ago. On Thursday, I couldn't even climb, but in a testament to the sole focus that personifies my life, I went to the gym, anyway. I figured I'd stretch and hang out with friends. Instead, my friends climbed, many of them with their sig-oh's, and I, coincidentally, saw my old college girlfriend and caught up with her. And then, I watched them climb and felt a twinge of jealousy. I just wanted to train. I want to be fit. I want to justify the fact that climbing is enormously important to me. You can't do that climbing 5.11.

I hope the weather will be good, and the cabin will let me relax. I wonder about driving across the country by myself. I still need to apply to grad school, and will have to do it while I'm in KY. I still need to finish my work for the Access Fund, but it's increasingly looking like I'll have to do it there, as well.

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Back here in CO, I noticed that the coffee beans smell amazing. If I had to choose between smelling coffee and drinking it, and could only have one, the smell would win in a landslide.

Yesterday, my friend Dan did a route called Anarchitect down in Clear Creek. If you remember, I wrote about it around the time of my Greece trip last summer. I think that route has to be one of the best in CCC. Way to go, Danny!

Thinking about Anarchitect, it's interesting to see where my life has gone since I did that route. If, as I was lowering to the ground right after I finished the route, you'd have told me that on the horizon were a bust up with a lot of my family, a painfully slow and cautious reentry, and a break up with Kate, I would have told you to piss off. That's exactly what happened though, and I'm still trying to make sense of it. Maybe the Red will help with some clarity.