home for an island

There was a free Hold Steady show at the Paradise a few weeks ago and Laura, Jason, Mariam, and I went. I'm constantly impressed by their live show; the energy and enthusiasm they put out is phenomenal. They played a lot of material from their new album that I wasn't very familiar but there were plenty of tracks from their other albums that I did.

Laura and I saw Wall-E last week and it was pretty great. The quality of the animation was simply stunning and the story was adorable. It would make a phenomenal date movie but is well worth seeing in any capacity.

Jason and I took a trip up to Rumney on Saturday. The weather was gorgeous and for some reason, there were almost no people there. We didn't have to wait for a climb at all and some of the crags were totally empty. We started off on Rose Garden (5.7) and Truth in Advertising (5.7+) and I felt pretty sketched out on both climbs. I wasn't very confident with my feet or hands the whole time and these climbs didn't get me excited about the day at all.

We then wandered up to Jimmy Cliff and started on The Junco (5.8+). This particular climb was the second lead I had ever done outdoors and I was hoping it would help me get back into a good mental place. I ended up getting backing off several moves (some of them multiple times) and eventually came off near the top. This was about the least confident I've ever felt on a climb and I was pretty bummed out about the day and the state of my climbing in general.

Jason then shot up To Love, Honor, and Belay (5.9) and told me that I should get up it. This is either the easiest 5.9 around, or the Junco is the hardest 5.8+ around because I went right to the top without any problems.

Jason had been climbing really well all day and wanted to give Lonesome Dove (5.10a) a try. He went up it with almost no problems and couldn't stop raving about how awesome it was. I had climbed it last summer (not cleanly at all) but after my climbing exploits earlier in the day, I wasn't feeling very confident. Jason talked me into it and I'm glad he did, because I ended up with my first clean send of a 5.10 outside. For whatever reason I felt solid the whole way up, my feet and hands stuck where they were supposed to, and I didn't run into any of the problems I had last time with route finding. The view from the top was incredible and it was a totally unexpected high after the nonsense from the morning.

After that we hiked back down to Darth Vader (which was still empty) and flailed around on Yoda (5.9). The first few bolts are on a pumpy overhang which neither one of us were in any shape to be playing on, and the last section was a vertical crack / crimp climb that required a lot more footwork than my toes could handle.