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Installment #8 |
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Last Try This is my last go at this. I’ve only been back in New England for 2 months, but already life on the road is slipping away from me. We are fully back in the mainstream. We have a phone, and a gas bill, and we go to the gym four nights a week. I have a busy schedule, with more engagements than I can keep straight in my head. I’ve had to buy a palm pilot. I live in the same town I lived in before, and for the most part I hang out with the same people. In fact we’ve moved back into the same house we lived in before we left. Different apartment though. Downtown is still nice, students still sit in the coffee shops pretending to be deep into a Xerox copy of the philosopher of the month, and all the expensive boutiques and nice restaurants are still here. As far as I can see, everything is the same. Except me. I feel like Leonard, the protagonist in the film Memento. If you’ve not seen it, Leonard wakes up every morning believing he is living in his own past. Due to a neurological disorder he cannot create new memories and so it takes him most of his day to get up to speed on where and when he is. He relies on a complex series of notes he has written himself to get oriented with his tasks for the day. I wake every morning and for a moment I worry desperately that I am the person I was before we left on our trip, and not the person I became while we were on it. In the waking moments before consciousness sets in I wonder if I will be comfortable in my own skin or if I will wake up only to roll over and bury my face in the pillow hoping for a few more seconds of anonymity from myself. Lately things have been good. I wake up and take my time enjoying my morning coffee, just as I would if I were camped out at the Buttermilks under the Sierra Nevada crest. I haven’t hooked up our TV, and I don’t think I will. We don’t even have any bookshelves yet. I don’t need the same level of entertainment I used to. I enjoy sitting. I enjoy being alone. I hope I continue to feel this way. The following four vignettes are moments from our trip that I hope stay with me. Actually there are three moments and one lesson I learned. A sort of a small written slideshow. They are some of the notes I have written to myself. Like Leonard wrote notes to himself. Notes to remind me of who I am and what I have become. Notes to remind me of the difference between who I am and who I was.
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The Sloth There is only one question on their minds. My friends are kind and supportive. They want to know how I’ve been, what I’ve learned, how I’ve changed. They are respectful, and wait an appropriate amount of time before asking. But really, at its essence, everything boils down to numbers and that is what they want to know. “Dude, what’d you send?” They ask. I, of course, am unsatisfied with what I have sent and quickly divert the conversation to what Alyssa sent. It is a much longer conversation to talk about what Alyssa sent. She is a different climber than when we left. She has moved up several levels of difficulty and much of the time is now climbing harder than I am. I didn’t break through any barriers, so I don’t have anything to brag about. I tell my friends that I didn’t really do anything very hard or very impressive. And it’s true, I didn’t. But, I did have a moment I’m proud of. And for the friends who I think really care, I say that while I didn’t tick any big numbers, or break through to a new level of performance, I do have a boulder problem I’d like to tell them about. So I tell them about The Sloth. When I think of the perfect boulder problem I think of a big granite egg. I want the perfect problem to start on steep rock with big athletic moves on horrible holds that feel impossible to use. Then I want a few moves that are technically demanding. Throw in a quick shake where you can stay just long enough to get really good and terrified for the top. And finally I want a highball, insecure, and tremendously difficult mantle. The perfect boulder problem must have two main ingredients: First, it must be a problem I just barely can climb. Second, it must be a problem that I just barely want to climb. For me, The Sloth at the Druid Stones in Bishop, CA was both. The technical crux of The Sloth is the first five moves. You start sitting down at a jug in middle of a roof and work your way out a horizontal crack with good hands and shitty feet. This section leads into a series of moves using the worst crimpers I can imagine holding while upside down. The saving grace in this section is a huge hueco in which I figured out a crazy heel-toe opposition sequence. I’ve never felt like the fitness of my hamstring muscles was very important for climbing, but on these moves I squeezed them like my life depended on it. Figuring out how to use the crimpers in the roof took me two days. The crimping section ends with your left hand on a one-pad edge that is perpendicular to the ground. It is only usable because of the foot-hueco trickery. Off this horrible edge you chuck a huge right hand move to a good edge, and a jump to a jug at nine feet off the ground. Linking to the jug from the beginning took me another two days. Once at the jug, the remaining Nine feet of the problem go in three big moves. First a three foot reach to a sidepull crimp, followed by a left hand-foot match on the jug, and a five foot reach to a hideous sloper at fifteen feet. Match the sloper, right hand reach to another rounded granite nothing, right foot high-step on a dime edge nubbin, gut check, and turn your left hand over. If you can press it out the mantle puts you on top of the boulder. If your left hand comes off with your right foot up so high, you have problems. As I saw it, the best case scenario for blowing the mantle was this: Left hand goes without warning, chin smashes into sloper and knocks out my front teeth, head rebounds off rock from teeth smashing, and I fall over backwards onto another boulder from 17 or so feet up. I may be a bit of a pessimist, but I could foresee no way to get my feet under me in the event of an unplanned fall. It took me another two days to cast off from the jug and even attempt the last half of the problem. In November of 2002 Alyssa and I made the long hike up to the Druid Stones twelve times. On a previous visit in 1999, I had made the hike in 28 minutes. On this trip I hiked wearing an aircast to protect my foot as I recovered from broken bones and torn ligaments acquired from the basketball game gone tragically awry. I was eventually able to get my time down to 32 minutes but constant vigilance for the smallest pebble on which to re-injure my ankle slowed me considerably. It actually took me an average of 10 mins longer to get back down the hill because it was so much harder on the joint. Once at the boulders, climbing was a different experience than it had been before. With practice I learned to land on one foot while bouldering. Slowly, I regained confidence, and was able to focus on the moves at hand instead of how to fall off of them. Slowly, my fitness returned. Slowly I learned the moves on The Sloth, and slowly I convinced myself that it was worth it to try. By the end of November I had no excuses left and a posse of friends to give me confidence. One typically beautiful early December day I hiked up to the Druid Stones feeling fit, with seven friends, and plenty of pads. Getting that many willing spotters up to the Druids was no small task and I knew that if I were to climb The Sloth that would be the day. It should go without saying that I didn’t send it. I climbed the whole problem: roof section, big moves, shake out, to the insecure mantle. Twice that day, and twice again a week later. On two of those four occasions my right hand reached the apex of the boulder. Both times I got my right foot up and looked at my left hand locked off on the miserable, shoulder height, piss-ripple sloper. This mantle would be difficult for me at ground level. But at 17ft off the ground, I couldn’t do it. All it would have required was a quick turn of the wrist, followed by a strenuous press until I locked out my elbow, and then a hand foot match. Not even one full move. If I close my eyes I can see myself doing it. My left foot giving the little pop necessary to get the press going, leaning into the sloping top to get my balance, bringing my foot up to match my hand, and the final, joyous roll onto the summit. Doing The Sloth would’ve meant a huge progression for me, a problem that required me to exceed myself in body and mind. I wanted to climb it more than I’ve ever wanted to climb any boulder problem before or since. But I wasn’t, probably am still not, a good enough rock climber. I don’t know what it would take to be able to commit to rolling that left hand over into the mantle. I don’t know that even if I had committed to it that I would have had the strength to press it out. But I do know that I left all of my talent and desire on that problem. Every last ounce. On my last try, at the top of the boulder, straining body, mind, and soul to get the thing done I climbed the best I have ever rock climbed. That was it. My best effort, and it wasn’t enough. It’s hard for me to tell my friends that the most fun I had on my trip was failing on a boulder problem, but it’s the truth. And if failure was that much fun, I wonder how I’ll feel after success? I can’t wait to get out there and give it another try.
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Crazy The Pit is the domain of crazy people. The Pit is where you stay if you are climbing in Bishop, CA, and during our time there Alyssa and I came to know a guy we first christened “Sketchy Man.” We called him this because of his repeated attempts to draw Alyssa into conversation while she was trying to check email at the public library. He wanted to talk about why he was being chased by the FBI. Sketchy Man turned out to have a name (Danny) and to be the most profoundly delusional person I’ve ever met face to face. One night in March as we and ten or so friends sat around the campfire, Danny emerged out of the desert night and joined the circle around the fire. He introduced himself as the King of England. At first I did not realize that he was serious, and replied that my name was Enrico Ferme (the first man to split the atom), and that it was nice to meet him. My miscalculation became clear when he replied, “Oh. Then you know about those students at Cal Tech who are trying to control my body with the virtual reality.” In fact, I had no idea that this was the case. Danny went on to describe how every time he tried to leave Bishop the Cal-Tech kids blew up the engine of his truck using radio waves from the Owens Valley observatory. Trying to be courteous, someone asked him exactly how that worked. I can’t remember who it was that asked the question, but I do remember that they seemed to be asking out of compassion, out of a legitimate desire to calm Danny down and relieve him of the burden of being shot at by radio telescopes. It was a mistake of course. Danny had a five-minute answer ready that started with virtual reality controlling his body, and ended with him being chased across the desert by a hologram of Bozo The Clown. As he talked I gained a good deal of insight into what it must be like to live day to day, in a world which the rest of society doesn’t experience, and can’t understand. My initial uneasiness, which had lead me to brand him Sketchy Man, slowly changed into compassion and finally a small degree of understanding. Danny’s life has got to be terrifying. If I was alone in the desert, in the dead of night, and suddenly I was being chased by a hologram of Bozo the Clown, you can be damn sure I’d seek out the biggest group of people I could find. Fast. And while his presence made us uncomfortable, no one asked him to leave. Someone gave him a cigarette, and he stood there for the rest of the night as the conversation went on around him. Every now and then his arm or leg would twitch and he’d nudge the person next to him and say: “There goes that virtual reality moving me around again.” |
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Try Hard I am being burned off by a hippie. For the last half an hour I have been climbing with a dreadlocked 20 year old prototypical super hippie who is so colossaly stoned that he has just told me I am the spitting image of Anthony Kiedas. Super-stoned Proto-hippie can hardly stand up. He can’t finish his sentences. He keeps re-introducing himself as though we hadn’t already met. He is way stronger than I am. I should be used to this. Being burned off is nothing new to me. Many of the guys we meet are stronger than I am. But proto-hippie is pushing all of my buttons. From the moment we met him he has been nothing but wildly supportive (I hate this). Every time I climb he shouts direct quotes from climbing videos less than a foot from my ear. “Come oooooooon, dude,” he croons. “You got this, man.” “Focus, ‘bro.” And of course, my own personal, all time least favorite, makes me want to fly off the problem I am attempting and vomit all over whoever said it, piece of climbing encouragement: “Try hard, dude.” Really? OK Abbie Hoffman, I’ll try hard. But first think on this: Sweet Mary mother of the freaking baby JESUS! If I’m not “trying hard” what in the name of Zeus’ Butthole am I doing in the freaking middle of the god damn desert, going rock climbing in the middle of winter, wrestling for the blankets with a 100 pound woman and a 90 pound dog every night? Fucks sake. It should be clear that Proto-hippie masters of the insanely obvious find a place of special contempt in my heart. Proto-hippie has made friends with my friends and will be climbing with us for the rest of the day. I am still climbing like shit and he is not helping. Every time I try a problem and he yells encouragement, I step off. My fingers are raw, my joints ache, I make slow progress on problems my friends fly up in a few tries. Proto-hippie continues his kind-hearted barrage of cliches, and in spite of myself I am beginning to grow tolerant of his prattle. Maybe he is sobering up, maybe I am mellowing out. Three hours pass. The sun goes behind the mountains. It is cold. I’m spent. I have thrown myself at a half dozen problems with everything I could muster. I have had no success whatsoever. I am thinking of what sort of alcohol I will drink tonight, and how many rest days I will take. Unfortunately for me Proto-hippie has had a super-motivational effect on my friends, and despite the waning daylight we trudge up the hill to try another V10. Bad enough that we are still climbing, even worse that we have chosen a problem of this difficulty so late in the day. But the clincher is that I tried this problem for a day last year and got shut down. I find a flat rock with no snow on it and sit down, away from everyone else, feeling well good and sorry for myself. Within a few seconds the posse assembly line is formed and running at full capacity. Pads are thrown down, shoes are on and the problem is sieged. One guy tries the hard crimpy start, and falls at the crux dyno. Another can’t pull off the ground and walks away muttering about his skin. Proto-hippie is stumped at every move. Trying with all his might he holds one body position, puts a foot down, moves one hand, steps on, holds that position, steps off, moves a foot, steps on, and so on until he has done the entire problem with one foot on the ground. He says it’s too hard for now and steps aside. He finds a rock like mine and for the first time today sits in silence. Eventually the only person trying the problem is the Never Tired Teenager of the group. Never Tired Teen doesn’t really look like he’ll do the problem today, but he has the amazing ability to get on the problem every 30 seconds for half an hour and produce the exact same results every time. I don’t know whether I’m seeing an impressive display of fitness, or a textbook demonstration of Attention Deficit Disorder. I decide it’s both. Eventually I start to feel guilty about sitting on my ass feeling sorry for myself. I decide I should at least give the thing a burn. Although I try to be discrete about getting my shoes on and throwing my pad down, Proto-hippie catches on and is instantly at full volume. “Dude, you got this shit man!” He is yelling even though I am only four feet away from him. “You’re gonna eat that shit up!” Internally, I note that eating shit is a remarkably insightful prediction of what’s likely to happen. The first two moves are relatively easy and a good warm up for the crux dyno. I remember that last year the hard part for me was getting my feet set well enough under the overhang to make the jump to the jug. Sitting at the base of the problem I chalk up and grab the starting holds. They suck, and I want to walk away, but Proto-hippie is in full war-cry and he has whipped my friends into a similar frenzy. I would feel bad if I quit now and wasted their effort at encouraging me. The opening moves go easily, and before I know it I’m at the crux dyno swinging on some shitty crimps trying to paste my feet under the overhang for the jump. My fingers hurt like hell and I can feel the skin starting to roll off my tips. I want to let go, I know I can’t do this move. Not now, not at the end of the day. My friends are screaming like I’m about to win the lottery and the noise inside my head is almost as loud. I must get that foot on, but I can’t hold on. I can’t let them down, but I can’t do this move. It’s almost over, my body swings out and if I don’t use the return momentum to get my foot on right now, it’s over. I’m missing something, a crucial piece of beta. I should be able to do this, it’s right there in my mind. And just as I figure out what’s missing, I hear it screamed out not two feet from my ear. “Pete, TRY HARD!” I smack my right foot onto the hold, dig it in hard, zero in on the jug, and jump. |
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Seven I am in the Barrio. The Ghetto. Down the street a hooker buys crack. Maybe she’s selling it, I don’t know. I am in the Barrio, but I am in New England. The second floor apartment whose bay window I sit in takes up the top floor of a strangely displaced colonial style house. At least 100yrs old it sits just off Central Ave. in downtown Albuquerque. Like me, a stranger in a strange land. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon and the winter sun pours in the window and over me, accentuating my wine-buzz and drawing me deeper into a conversation in which I am a semi-willing participant. The hooker leaves the corner when a construction vehicle arrives to the site next to my friend’s house. They have just razed an old hotel that used to be a haven for drug dealers. They will install something better, newer, safer. It is like many urban renewal projects nation-wide. For the last six months I have seen these quick fixes for urban blight in every city I’ve been to. A sign proclaims the project’s bright future. Brick sidewalks and some fresh paint will lure people back from the suburbs, will infuse this rotted neighborhood with new life and a new economy. Making what was once the seed from which this whole city grew into a community again. They are building a parking garage. I merge back into reality and my friend is mid-sermon with his back to me. His is fixing grilled cheese to go with our red-wine appetizer. My friend is one of those people in my life (there are several) who it seems is always just one step ahead of me. For a while he was a better climber. I took care of that and he went and got a Masters degree. I will pursue a lucrative opportunity life has presented to me, and he will eschew immediate materialism to pursue his Ph.D. mapping the metamorphic petrology of Mt. Everest. This is the way it goes. Each time I think I have caught him and we are equals, I discover that we are not in fact running the same race at all. He has changed the rules and I will have to start playing catch up again. Right now my friend is telling me how I will feel when I return to my home and my circle of friends after a seven month absence. He knows how I will feel when I return home because he has traveled all over the world. Three times. As I return to the conversation, he is telling me, in his nasal Boston twang, about my character. I catch him mid-sentence. “… and that’s because you’re different now. You don’t know it yet because you don’t have anything to compare yourself to. But when you get back, and you see aaalllllll those people you know from before. And they have been in New England shoveling snow, being grumpy, wishing the Red Sox would get a pitcher, not doing what you’ve been doing and you haven’t thought about ANY of that shit for six months.” He is gesturing with the bread knife and a bit of cheese flies off the blade and lands on top of the refrigerator. He continues unperturbed. I am worried for his fingertips because the more he pursues his story, the more animated he becomes, and the less attention he is paying to his cheese chopping technique. “But when you get back there, they’re all gonna be the same. And they’ll expect the same from you. But you’re not gonna be the same. You’re going to be totally different.” I point out to him that it’s only been seven months and at my age (I am 28) how much can a person really change in that short a period of time? He stops chopping the cheese and turns towards me hands outstretched, palms up, in the universal come-on-you-have-got-to-be-shitting-me-was-I-friggin-born-yesterday? Look of disapproval. “Dude.” He says. “You live in a friggin van.”
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Unfortunately, this is the last of Pete's reports from the road. I hope you all have enjoyed them as much as I have. I would like to thank Pete and Alyssa for sharing their experiences, good, bad, and otherwise, with us. - Joe McLoughlin |
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