Fire

Katie just posted a picture on bookface of a forest fire on the West Bluff.  Texted back and forth with her for a bit and it sounds like it's "long and skinny" and that it could be pretty bad.  Really hoping that it doesn't get out of hand but I can only imagine that fighting a fire in the talus would be well beyond heinous.

If anyone finds anymore info or knows anything please post it up.

Unicorn Spotting

I did it. I finally found one in real life. Honestly never thought it would happen but yesterday the stars aligned and the clouds parted over Adel, Iowa.

I've now seen, in the flesh, a guy wearing a 'wolf howling at the moon' t shirt! It was magnificent. So happy I stopped at subway. Check out the mediocre picture to see for yourselves!

After I was done I walked outside and a dune buggy had parked next to me. I may have very well taken a wrong turn and ended up in Canada.

Action Park

Scorpion's Tail

Back on the Fourth of July a group of us went up to Noah's Ark for the day. It was 105 out that day. It was amazing.

First ride of the day though was the Scorpions Tail. Aaron kept telling us about how awesome it is. How you get in a tube, they lock you in, do a three second count down and then the floor drops out.

It was terrifying and fantastic but oddly like taking a good whipper. In the back of your mind though you know you're not actually going to get hurt. Who gets hurt at a water park anyways??

Aside from Katie coming quite close to not making it around the loop we all made it through fine and had a nice time.

Fast forward to last week at a local tradeshow and I was hanging out with a coworker and a former coworker, talking about water park rides. I started talking about how badass Scorpion's Tail was and we watched a couple videos.

Dan and I kept talking but Pete got all quiet and started looking something up on his laptop. After a few minutes he smiled and turned his laptop towards us, showing us this:

How fucked up is that???? This was an actual ride at a place called Action Park in New Jersey. It was one of the first waterparks in the US and the park as a whole resulted in at least 7 deaths, if not more.

It's worth a Google and ten minutes of your time.

Anyone actually been climbing??

Video

Last fall/winter there was a video going around from a ski flick called "All.I.Can." and we talked a bit about how climbing inherently makes things tough to vary from the traditional format.  I saw this little video come up this morning and I thought it was kind of cool and worth sharing on here.


If nothing else it's a little bit different of a take on what we can do in the medium and even if it's a promo, it kept my attention throughout.

I'd be curious what others think of it.

The Ebb And The Flow

I've often talked about motivation and the constant changes it seems to take on.  The past few years at the lake have been as perfect an example as could be.  It's been incredibly fun to watch the area as it grows and goes through the initial pains of any place that expands at a rapid pace.

As for this season itself, it's been remarkably positive and I started out the year with as much motivation to find new problems and areas than I have in a long time.  A nice byproduct of that was seeing guys like Ian turn the Smooth Operator area into a true destination with multiple high quality lines.  Big Red is an absolutely stunning line and many of the other problems over there are of very high quality as well.

I'll be the first to admit I've been as hard on Ian as anyone else when it comes to "variations".  Its made me extremely happy to watch him from the outside as he developed this particular area because a good majority of the lines were true, independent lines of good quality.  Almost singlehandedly he turned that area from one with 2-3 problems and 2 extremely difficult projects into a diverse, concentrated destination that everyone has enjoyed with an easy approach.

Sometimes it just takes someone with an non-discriminating eye to turn a place that was overlooked into an area of quality.  Peter, Chris, Sarah, Tony, Katie and myself(among many others I'm sure) all walked through the area saying the same thing.

"Couple things, but nothing amazing."

Turns out we were wrong.

On a more personal note, while the year started out great I've had a bit of a rough run since and my motivation has waned a good amount.  As of right now I've had one month this year without an injury of some sort and I'm taking some more time off at the moment in the hopes of healing up a bum finger.

What's been amazing to me though is that I'm not frustrated at all.  I'm actually enjoying some time off.  Its allowed me to focus on work a little more and I'm hoping it'll let my body heal a little bit.

The timing couldn't have been any better with recent temps consistently hitting the 100's and with next weeks "cold front" bringing us highs in the low 90's.  Gonna be chilly.  Might have to put a sweater on.

Motivation is a fickle beast that I wrestle with often.  Thankfully this time around I hit my motivation low as things aligned for me otherwise.  This feels very different from last summer when I was forced to the sidelines.  I could very well climb through the finger injury and it might go away at some point but being able to make that decision on my own has made the biggest difference to my mindset.

Instead of sweating my ass off and climbing poorly, I get to play badminton and drink.  I think I'm gonna go pro.