Return to the Scene of the Crime

Julia's timing was perfect. She called me just as I was stranded, awaiting the police, about five steps from where I'd met her. I needed a ride home, because the wheels that had brought me to the Table Mesa Park & Ride that morning were nowhere to be seen.

My ride, at least until that day, was a Cannondale Cyclocross bike that had been tweaked and transformed into a great little city commuter. I'd outfitted the machine with a series of upgrades; flat handle bars for comfortable, upright riding, a chain guard to keep my trousers free from spoke-trauma, and handmade wooden fenders that announced that my functionality was not without form. All of this combined nicely in the bike that I'd wanted for years. Unfortunately, it was exactly what someone else wanted, too. My lock looked to be the victim of some heavy duty bolt cutters, and my bike is now carrying some other, more nefarious, and hopefully accursed, rider. Bastard!

In a way, I should have seen it coming. Not because of any inherent belief that America is made up of a populace where one half lives to screw the other half, although that may in fact be the case. I had all the warning in the world when my friend Nuno opened his mouth that fateful morning. Instead of simply letting me ride my bike up to the bus stop, Nuno's gast was flabbered at the prospect of me leaving the bike locked to the rack. He dutifully informed me that his bike had been stolen from CU just a few years back, and that I might indeed be out of my mind by tempting fate. I assured him that I'd done it for a year, and that there was nothing to worry about. No one else had ever bothered to question me about my cycling habits.

Just as my bar fell from the wall immediately after Brian and I spoke about its precarious position, the bike was nicked the same day that doubt was first cast into the universe. Cast out your lure in the form of verbal suggestion, and see what bites.

I'm a big boy, and I can get over the loss. I've got renters' insurance, and luckily for me, a car. Abby the Subaru is a fine, if not altogether carbon neutral, alternative mode of transport. Things will ultimately work out just fine, and I'll employ my mother's state of mind whenever a dish was broken in her kitchen. She'd say, with a chipper, almost annoyingly placid calm, that when things break (or are stolen by some thieving shitbrain), you get to buy new stuff. A real glass half full kind of optimism. USAA, my insurer, should help me get two wheels back on the road, but even in the face of an insurance settlement that will likely set me nearly whole, I admit that it's occasionally tempting to indulge in those violent, vigilante fantasies of revenge.

My favorite, of late, is set against a pleasant, daytime stroll down the street. A double sided battle axe rests in my hand. Presumably, I'm headed to practice for my upcoming role in a Renaissance Fair. Why the hell else would I be walking down the street carrying an axe? I see the ne'er-do-well coasting smugly on my old beloved blue stallion, and in homage to baseball's spring training, happening in Arizona and Florida at this time of year, I take a little batting practice. Without going into too many gory details, the scene ends with the retrieval of my bike which has rolled gently to a stop in the bushes, and a thief, cloven neatly in two, lying in a deserved sanguine heap in the gutter.

Maybe that blood-lust desire for retribution is inherent in the unconscious male psyche. Braveheart, perhaps. Instead of paining my face blue and running around in a manskirt, I tap into some personal, experience based memory. My mom moved into a small rental house after she split from my dad. The small home was tucked away behind a row of mature pines and sycamores, its electronic contents as inviting to a thief as a shiny commuter bike attached to a rack.

The door was kicked in on three different occasions, each at the hoof of the same crook, and each in rapid succession. The boomboxes and televisions were all replaced, then all restolen. Every time my mom told me that we'd fallen prey to humanity's ugly material cannibalism, I felt the intense longing for my battle axe and that uninterrupted swing plane. Fortunately, as I've gotten older, that sense of disbelief and rage that accompany loss are less and less powerful. They tend to become only dates with nostalgia. "Oh hello," I'll say to my memory, "I remember how this feels."

I acknowledge the familiarity of my inner Mel Gibson. Then I become thankful that I don't have to follow the bitterness of material loss with a searing wonder of a thief's ability to take the terrible situation of recently divorced parents, and somehow make it even worse. There's nothing else to do but shrug and call the cops.

And in that same fog of memory at the pang of loss and victim hood, I stood at Table Mesa and awaited the Boulder Police Department so that I could file an official property loss report. Just before the arrival of Officer Granberg, my phone rang. Julia, and we're back to the start of the blog.

She said she'd come get me and drive me home. I waited for her to make the quick trip up from the University, and then I saw the silver glint of her Toyota. More nostalgia.

She drove up to me as I stood nearly in the same spot where I'd approached her those months ago. She didn't know me yet that day, but in brash ignorance of the fact, I simply approached her and told her she was pretty. We talked pleasantly, but before I asked for her number, I boarded a bus bound for Denver. It hadn't driven 100 yards when I asked the bus driver to let me off so that I could finish my conversation and beg for another date in the future. Fast forward, and then she and I were back at the scene of the crime, about to head to my house and then to dinner and a movie.

Just Say YES to Crack

I'm back. Back on Abaluba, and back in the desert. I am sorry to the Voyeurs for such a prolonged absence from the blog, and I'm almost as sorry that it's been so long since I've been in The Creek.

I blame it all on Nuno.

He came to Boulder last week as he was driving through from DC to California, and between catching up with him, loving March Madness, and meeting Geovon, Nuno's insanely cool/ridiculous friend (who you can see here, photoshopped into a tub full of scantily clad women), I didn't have much time to post. I have been working on a mega post about thieves, karma, and women, but it's still not ready and you'll just have to wait.

My testosterone laden Portuguese man-crush is also to blame for my return to the incredible crack climbing out here in the Utah desert. I hadn't been since last February, unable to come at all in the fall because of my still too tender ankle. Fortunately, it's finally feeling good enough to jam into cracks and take all of my weight. Since Nuno was on his way Westward anyway, I convinced him to forswear the bouldering pads and take to the tape gloves. He's been a total trooper, and thank god he still remembers how to belay. I had to put his skills to the test on an ultra classic 5.11++ (wink wink) called Quarter of a Man. God I wanted to onsight this climb!

Not to be, though, as at about 100 feet with only 20 to go, I just punted and slipped off of a rest. Those times are not when you're supposed to be falling, but I guess I'm just a Bryant Gumbel. Oh well. That is one of the best climbs I've ever been on, a full 35 meter pitch of rattly fingers and tight hands, with only minimal (though apparently tenuous) rests.

I wanted to do that particular pitch because I thought it would be a good replica of the famed "Enduro Corner" on Astroman on Washington Column out in Yosemite. I have been thinking a ton about my upcoming trip to The Valley, and it's gotten me really motivated to train hard and get proficient at trad climbing, moving fast, and being comfortable on trad climbs of all sizes. That motivation brought me to Quarter, and it also got me on Big Baby.

Big Baby is a fucking towering offwidth, and I'm barely able to type this post out because of the scrapes on the sides of my hands. I haven't ever delved into any pitches that are that wide, and the 100 feet of 4-7 inch MAW beat the hell out of me. There is a pitch called "The Monster Offwidth" up on El Cap that I want to do this summer, so again....training. I learned a couple of really good techniques, and am way more excited to try something like TMW, 2000 feet off the ground, after my battle with Big Baby.

So we're resting today, and then heading back to The Creek in just a bit for a few more days. It's so incredibly nice to be back in such a pretty place with great friends, and this time, motivated to explore some sizes that I typically would shy away from.

Hopefully the remainder of the week will continue to get me honed for California in June, and as soon as I get back, I'll finish up on my mega post. Take care until then!

The DragonChicken

As I've always feared, a woman was backing me into a corner. Toss. Turn. Whimper in the agony of paralyzing fear, and pathetically hope for the best. The air is heavy with that familiar aroma of sex, but I am sure it is just a trap. "Run for your life," that dependable animal voice bellows from inside my quaking skull. There is no where to go, so I have to settle for restless sleep. I wake occasionally to check that she hadn't run to the kitchen for a knife, and then double check that it isn't hovering above my ribs, ready to dig like a backhoe.

At one of these brief bouts with consciousness, I recognize the siren call of space - a bit of breathing room. She had backed off for a moment, likely to stretch her legs and prepare my demise. What sweet call for domestication would she use as a ploy for my evisceration? First a dog, then likely seven children, my testicles, youth, and dignity. Or maybe she'd ask for a run to Bed Bath & Beyond. I don't know if we'll have time for Home Depot. I'll have time for my own personal hell, that's for sure.

I settle back into wary sleep.

I'm walking through the woods above Boulder. My sanctuary for so long, these trails are familiar in their piney beauty. Huge stone faces, brown and red, loom above and offer me refuge if the need arises. Then, as I round a switchback on my way to those boulders below the Third Flatiron, a mountain lion appears. She's with her cub, and I immediately recognize the danger. Cougars are rough stuff. I know. My roommate's dating one. But if there's one rule, and after all, there's really only one Golden Rule Number One, it's that you don't startle a puma in the company of her junior genes. Shite.

Here she comes, pissed off, all claws and fangs. Thank God I'm wearing my hockey gloves. How'd those get there? Who cares, man! Start swinging. Batman style onomatopoeia. Boom! Bam! Scraaaaw! And she slinks away. Too close for comfort, PattyP. A man's gotta be aware when he roams them hills. Check for damage, and only minor scrapes appear. I flirt with my consciousness again, and then fully embrace it.

Awake now. She's back. That need to move about, away from my prostrate body, must have been extinguished. Now she's gone so far as to throw a leg over my kidneys. Must be where she's aiming with that knife of hers. Christ. Back up, slither. Squirm out from her thigh, and then it's only one slender calf holding me back. Only that, until the cold chill of drywall against my bare ass. Nowhere left to run. And here she comes, sensing me pinned. Again, I drift away.

Now I'm in Old Mother England; the Dark Ages and little hope for prosperity. Peasants by the thousands crowd the dingy town square. Stone buildings, all squat and shoddy, hem us into the tight public space. What the hell are all these people doing here? I see! It's a public execution, and I'm here in my best woolen cloak to bear witness. It's me and all of the other serfs. I slide between the stinking bodies of my neighbors, intent on settling my view upon the stage and the unlucky bastard destined for death.

Oh. My. God. Where the hell did they catch that thing? And I can't believe they are going to try to take its life in full public view. Half proud rooster, half ferocious dragon, the beast is hooded and chained. Thank god it's chained. If that were to get free, we'd all be eaten alive, torn limb from limb.

It snarls, a serpent tongue darting from beneath the black sheet covering the demon's eyes. A razor beak tears at the cloth, and I can feel it searching for me. Just me.

"You!" the executioner exclaims and points me out in the throng. I immediately recognize my fate. I've got another fight on my hands, and have to TCOB. Take care of business. That line comes from my old high school friend, Will Gorman. He was caught by the cafeteria staff in Keystone, a ski resort in Scum-mit County, CO, trying to stuff an entire quarter of a pizza into his face while in the checkout line, presumably so that he wouldn't have to pay for it. When asked what the hell he was doing, he calmly replied "Takin' care of business." The staff made him pay for the pizza, anyway. Now it's my turn to pay.

So I saunter up the creaky wooden stairs, a few thousand eyes searing my back. Face to face with the heaving beast, I look towards the same executioner who'd called me up to the stage. I nod my readiness, and he releases the chains. I put up my fists, ready to fight. Those same golden gloved fists, surrounded in hockey padding and still swollen from my bout with the mountain cat, are again called upon for battle. The hood comes off, the full might of the DragonChicken stares into my soul.

I can't fight that fucking thing! Look at it! I'll be killed!

Quickly, I realize that the only available tool is intimidation. My fists, cinder and stone as they might be, have no chance against such a prehistoric man-eater. I growl. Mind you, this is no normal growl, but everything I've got. I take any desire to live and extrude that hope out through my throat in the deepest, most animalistic intimidation I can summon.

"GRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWLLL!"

And then I awake. Again. Though this time, I'm face to face not with any DragonChicken, but a fair lady who's now staring back at me. Our noses touch, and the last note of my battle cry fades into the midnight. She blinks.
"What the hell?"

I ask her in the morning if she remembers. Ummm, yeah. She does. She assures me that one doesn't forget being awoken by a rabid bedmate, gurgling for space and screaming his "defense against the last great monster."

Maybe I should go back to see my therapist.

TD/HBI 2

Today's the day. The second Thought of the Day/Half Baked Idea comes at ya, and it's fueled by some incredible new musical scores. Bassnectar for beats, Boombox for grooves. Each of these DJ's seems to have found the perfect beat per second ration..these tracks just melt into your soul.

Just bought a shirt online. I'd been in the market for a new sleeveless T-shirt because I'm a placidly stupid American who has the time to concern himself with his sleeveless T-shirt selection. Further, I've got to worry not only about the shirts, but I need multiples because I'll wear them out climbing on rocks for days on end, and just for fun. Jesus. We've certainly made life easier for ourselves, us humans.

Think about it. We started out as a species out in the wild, just another animal on the steppe. Naked, homeless, and still millennia removed from the invention of the Internet, the beast that allows me to talk in your general direction via keyboard. Damn that information superhighway, I'm sure you're thinking.

So we're out with all the animals, equally at their mercy as to the cold winds blowing through the trees. See those nuts and berries in those trees? Good. Now go eat them. Think you can sling a rock at that bird and kill it? Whip it, Scotty. Dude! You nailed it! Nice job. Now rip off it's feathers and beak, char it over a fire, and let's eat it. Thanksgiving!

For Thanksgiving today, we sit around in our living rooms, eat massive calorie loads, and watch the Cowboys beat the Lions on our gigantic plasma screen TV's that were made in China and then shipped halfway across the world. I'm not trying to say this is a bad thing, but it sure is a far cry from where we've come, and it sure is pretty cushy.

I think that fact that life today has become so easy is what makes me bummed out. There's so little challenge in our basic day to day.

Normally I don't make impulse buys for the reason that doing so makes me feel like just that American.

But then I remember that I bought that shirt to go climbing. Climbing: my salvation and the one thing that feels really fucking hard. I'm not out killing bears, but I can be scared or pummeled and bloodied pretty easily clinging to edges of Granite. I can be reminded that I'm just an animal and am nothing special and that this easy, flaccid life of shopping, the Internet and eventual death by Diabetes is for the birds.

And that takes a little of the sting off my new threads, and the self loathing they bring me.

Fanning's Flamingos

Even though she was basically a walking corpse, I shouldn't have treated my sixth grade teacher with such abject contempt. In these past fifteen years, I've hopefully gained a modest perspective. Now I think back on Ms. Fanning as someone's grandmother. I imagine her narrative as a tale of an educator who devoted her life to improving the intellectual faculties of Wheat Ridge's youth. When I was 12, however? She was just a dumb old hag getting in between me and my recess.

Up until about sixth grade, I was such a sweet boy. I remember launching my hand skyward at any unsolved blackboard puzzle. Ms. Key, my kindergarten teacher, would direct the class' attention towards my amazing displays of acumen. Same with McNally, Etter, McCall. Misters Fays and Ingram received my utmost respect and attention. My speech was colored with polite deference to each, my homework done with earnest effort. The mere threat of punishment weakened any inkling of mischief I might have been courting.

Wilmore Davis' equivalent to the death penalty was The Bench. This famed purgatory awaited any misbehaving student who incurred the wrath of Mr. Taylor, our lunch room attendant. I remember now that Mr. Taylor was little more than a harmless, wounded veteran there to ensure that no food fights broke out and that schedules ran precisely. Early in my Wilmore career, though, he was the warden to Sing Sing prison, and I dare not piss him off and earn my inaugural trip to "The Bench."

Around the time of my final year in elementary school, something changed in my general attitude. Blame it on the hormones, Beavis and Butthead, or maybe some troubles at home. Whatever the cause, I found myself bereft of any residual innocence. Instead of an intense yearning for a teacher's approval, I went for cheap laughs. Making a spectacle of the situation was far superior to another gold star. I'm sorry, Mike Urbana, that I punched you in the nose because everyone thought you were ugly.

And I'm sorry, too, Ms. Fanning. I'm sorry that I took your stuffed animal, a moose named Bullwinkle, from your desk. I'm not asking you to admit that the name was contrived and unoriginal. I'm just telling you that each time I hid him from you, a little piece of my youth was dying. Sure, it looked like I was taking pleasure in your calls for his safe return as I rolled in laughter. The dismay as you searched the room for his coffee colored hide might have kept a younger, kinder me in check. Instead, I loved to sneak him onto high shelves, behind bookcases, or, most maliciously, dangling from the cord on the projector screen, a noose around Bull's neck. My fellow students loved to see you searching, and I knew they basked in that light by an act of my bratty hand.

Towards the end of the school year, any veil of respect I maintained finally disintegrated. Field Day was approaching, and God how I loved Field Day. How could I not, a youth with boundless energy and a penchant for sports? Indeed, some of my fondest memories revolve around that springtime tradition. The ribbons, the return of warm air. It meant that another year was upon us. With it, a slightly bigger, faster, more rambunctious me.

Back when I was still a decent child, when Ms. Etter was my teacher and the Fourth Grade my home, I was allowed to carry the flag during the National Anthem. Had you been in the crowd that day, you might have thought I had been awarded a Silver Star from then-President Clinton himself. The pride on my face must have looked positively awkward, given the fact that I was merely walking across a crumbling basketball court with a five foot long wooden flag pole driven into my belly. Even more awkward was my sock selection. Mid-calf, forest green. I'm an iconoclast, what can I say?

Again, a sweet memory derived from Field Day. My seventh birthday, September 10, 1988. My recollection tells me a story of my father. He knows I love Field Day so dearly that he themes a party for me and my friends based upon the idea of an Olympiad of sorts. An autumn Field Day with ribbons for footraces, basketball marksmanship, a bean bag toss. My father understood just what I wanted, and without my insistent asking, he gave it to me.

I don't really know if that's how things went down. It very could well be that the party was my mother's idea. Even if my theory that my father truly connected with me that day is false, I'll keep it. There are few times when I feel so close to him.

But then fast forward roughly half a decade, and I wasn't the young, giggling son I once was. This new incarnation was seated in the front row of Ms. Fanning's class; close enough to be supervised. Far enough away, I'll also note, from her desk; abode of one now tattered and soiled stuffed animal with a name lifted from a cartoon.

And on this magnificent spring day, only a week before the whole of Wilmore Davis poured out onto the spacious green behind the school for a full day of recreation and competition preempted only by a pledge of allegiance to a flag held aloft by some unsullied soul, each class selected a mascot. Behind these self ascribed monikers, etched with associated art and pertinent information (grade, teacher's name) onto a large piece of butcher paper, the whole class would parade into the anticipating vision of parents.

Ms. Fanning held the chalk in her bony fingers preparing to list our suggestions. We were 12, and the limits of our creativity, even collectively, were oppressive. Alliteration seemed to garner much attention as the hopeful called out their best attempts to name our class.

"Fanning's Flames!" A cheer rang out. Swiftly, though, as it's wont to do, the rumor mill claimed a victim. Mr. Fisher, the fellow sixth grade teacher, was just across the hall. It was a known fact that he would consider just such a nickname.
Nix the fire.

"Fanning's Flamingos." Oh! Intriguing. A bit unorthodox, and while normal behavior dictates the selection of mascots sporting teeth, a stilt legged pink bird might be just the thing to tame banality. Flamingos it might be...

"Fanning's Panthers": alliteration be damned. "Fanning's Wildcats": traditional, and again forswearing the "f." "Fanning's Flatworms," "Fliers," and "Fiends." All could be considered. Surely we as a class could improve upon these suggestions. Perhaps my hat belonged in the ring.

I found myself drawn to the alliteration, perhaps out of habit after being inured with Key's Kickers, McNally's Monsters, Etter's Eagles, and McCall's Macaws. What could I possibly suggest that could compete with a semester and a half of animal abduction? How could I enumerate my hurt at the irony of my father's introduction to my "wicked" stepmother at, you guessed it, Field Day. That fucking traitor! That was our day!

"Ha!" I thought. "That old bag of bones won't even know what I mean, I'm so smart." The hubris rattled in my brain like a grenade. "Fanning's Ferocious Fellatios." I offered quietly. A secret between an old woman, those two lucky students seated adjacent, sadly ignorant of the punchline's definition, and myself.

"Are you sure you want to name our class that?"

My inside joke with myself became instantly less funny when she was in on the ruse. I'd put the final nail in the coffin of Field Day's mystique, though she politely let it drop.

We marched onto the fields led by a pink bird of doom. In several weeks, we'd relinquish this playground for youth's ultimate space; summer. We were finished with Wilmore Davis. And I've no doubt, it was ready for me to go.