Mr. Do-it-Yourself

I had to call the front desk in a bit of a panic. Almost all the channels here in my hotel room were working fine. The lone exception was ESPN. Instead of the football game, all I could see was a jumble of paralyzed, scrambled pixels. Hummm. I'm out of town for work, and don't have too much else to do this evening. I'd done some Christmas shopping, exercise, and answered all the emails. Gorged on pub grub (as it always seems to be when I don't have access to my kitchen) and, basically, bored. I felt that the spectacle of the NFL, violence in shoulder pads and shown in HD, would probably do wonders for the speed of the evening. With nothing but static, my plan looked almost as stalled as my screen. WWGPAD? What would Grandpa Do?

Over Thanksgiving, I had some time to sit with my the old colonel, Don Arth, and just hang out on his terms. Most of the time, that meant in his garage, tinkering on some home improvement project under a wall of tools. That was just fine with me. When I was younger, I didn't take much of an interest in anything mechanical. I didn't have a house or a car that could constantly require preemptive attention, and likely just assumed that I'd just call in a handy man any time something wasn't working. You know what? That gets expensive.

When I bought my Sprinter (officially known as Capt. Walter C. Lewis, US Navy (Ret.)) and started planning the RV conversion, I was probably still working under that mindset. I came up with most of the conceptual design after consulting with a bunch of my friends who had already done their own van build-outs. Instead of building out the bad/bench/table set, wiring the lights and house battery, and installing the new stereo, I just searched out a professional, wrote the check, and called it a day.

Vans, if you haven't heard, are really good at two things. Primarily, the deliver the ultimate climbing and road trip experience to the vertically inclined ruffian. "Dirtbag fabulous," as Josh says. I've spent a ton of time driving around in my beloved Subaru, Abbie, and even though those days in Rifle, The Red, and Indian Creek were wonderful, the car wasn't exactly the tipping point. This spring and summer alone, I've "vanned" it in Red Rocks, The Valley, again in Indian Creek, but those trips were in the care of my buddies Josh Finkelstein and Madaleine Sorkin. After being so kindly treated by their four wheeled mansions, I realized I had to get one of my own. But then comes the van's second best trait; the ability to need a little more attention than your average vehicle.

Mike Patz and The Evictor

"Oh, but the moves are so good! Up in Eldo, climbing at The Rincon Wall. Sun shining so warm that even early December feels slippery. Those finger locks that are just good enough to let you climb past, but not hang out for too long. A few edges just where your feet absolutely need them. Even checking things out on top-rope, you were engaged. Your mind found the meditative state, the flowstate. The Place that climbing can deliver your pilgrim ass better than any extant transportation vehicle now at hand. (Except maybe music). You wanna go back. You want to get it figured out with the safety of that TR, and then you wanna pull the rope and see how it feels to climb it for real. You wanna go back. There's no denying that little fact."

My brain will exercise its incessant need to forget what I'm actually doing at any other given instant, and return my mental energies to that climb. Like any good climbing route that's just above one's physical, mental, and/or emotional pay grade, this is starting to take the form of obsession. I am nervous to admit, but I might have found a new project.

I noticed my mind first starting to stray toward The Evictor while I was dripping sweat in a yoga class this afternoon. The studio is miles from Eldo. There's no real reason to mentally be up on a wall while I'm physically in a yoga class, right in the middle of a perfectly nice warrior variation. My wonderful girlfriend not 12 inches away, and I started thinking about the crux sequence. "Stay in the stem. Elevator the hands up the seam. Oh, God. I can't believe that left hand works. Right hand next. Left foot up...stand up. Stand up. Tense and stand up. Breathe."

Planning a Reunion for the Holidays

My good friend Neil is turning, gasp, a healthy 30 just after New Years, and his wife Heidi decided to plan something cool for him. A party, of sorts. Since they will be in Neil's hometown of "Luhvull," Kentucky right around Christmas, coinciding with the return home of many of their longtime friends, Heidi invited a big crew of people out for a night of celebration. Pizza and beers downtown. After a long chat with Neil last night, I decided to book a ticket, and so after not more than three days of being back, I'm scheduled to return to Kentucky.

This trip isn't about the climbing. In fact, I'm just going to be in town for a little more than 36 hours. Even so, it's hugely worth it. Neil is a closer friend to me than just about anyone else in my life, and between that bond and the fact that another close buddy, Ethan, will be there, I couldn't turn down the chance to see him at a celebration in his honor.

It isn't like Neil and I never get to see each other. In fact, I drove down to his home in Knoxville, TN while I was out in The Red. That quick hello was superficially more convenient, so in deference of the fact that he's reached a milestone, I wanted to express in my actions the fact that he means more to me than just someone who I would see while passing through.

Ethan isn't exactly a stranger, either. He and I manage to put together a yearly skiing trip, and usually find a good excuse to hang out at least one other time during a calendar year. He lives in Burlington, VT, though, and so it isn't quite as easy to happen by his house if I'm on a big climbing trip to Yosemite or The Southeast. Being both a medical resident and new father doesn't help to ease our scheduling, either. In spite of the geographical distance between us and the other easy excuses, Ethan shocks me in his ability to hop in the car or onto a plane and meet up with me regularly. He's picked me up in Chicago when my connecting flight to Louisville was canceled. He's booked enough tickets to Squaw, Jackson Hole, and Denver that I'm sure some of his other flights were paid on miles. I wanted to live up to a lot of the sacrifices he's made to get out West in an effort to keep our friendship up to date with face to face contact. As soon as I heard that he was going to be at the party as well, I had to book the flight.

It's good for me to keep up with those people who have shaped my life, made me a better and kinder person. Some of them were woven into long stretches of my life's fabric. Semesters in Spain. Seasons in New Zealand. Summers in Boulder. Other people were bursts of immediate energy that lasted only a little while, in a particular location. Still, these interactions shaped me too. The connections I have with them endures, as well.

I'll tell some of their stories soon.