During my 20 minute journey to work this morning I noticed Olympic Volunteers in blue jackets loitering around key public transit areas. I suppose the tourists are starting to arrive in our city eager to take in the many attractions. I just hope they leave with a positive impression – I want them telling their friends and family back home how awesome Vancouver, Squamish and Whistler are!
Speaking of the Olympics, I figure I should put a plug in for a small website I built back in November. It’s a map of Olympic venues – venues2010.com. Do me a favour, click some of the ads! I didn’t put a lot of effort into the site, but it helps earn a little bit of spending money.
There’s just over a week until opening ceremonies here in Vancouver, but even though I really want to join the party, I’m getting the hell out! After some arm-twisting, I’ve decided to join a huge crew of friends for a trip to Bishop – a mecca for huge granite boulders. Sean McColl and myself are driving down together and I think pro-climber Will Stanhope is joining us on the way home. There are a number of other Canadians meeting us in Bishop including the cute couple Vikki Weldon and Ryan Olson. So many good friends and talented climbers. I’m actually more excited to just be roadtripping with these peeps than sending projects. I’m also looking forward to snapping lots of pics. It should be easy to get some mag-worthy photos!
Spring and Summer are just around the corner. I’m excited for a few Leavenworth adventures and definitely multiple trips to Squamish. In September I’ll be going to Edinburgh, Scotland – the host of the 2010 Youth World Championships. I was recently selected to be a coach for the Canadian youth climbing team. It’ll be the 4th World Championships I’ve coached so I hope my past experience will help our young athletes do well. There are lots of changes to the team structure this year. In 3 words: no parents allowed. I’m looking forward to the challenge of supervising 24 kids!
I’ve been so busy since I got home from Europe at the start of this month. Sarah and I bought a condo in North Van. It’s beautiful. We have a view of the city from the 15th floor. Move-in day is this Friday. I’m so excited! Last weekend we did some climbing in Horne Lake. I witnessed Gary Foster redpoint his long standing project, Save the Pushers. Great work meingh!
This weekend I finally got out to Squamish. It was my first day back after 2 months of abstainence! The rock was still pretty wet, but I managed to do a few problems. I went up with Sean McColl, who was motivated to try Dreamcatcher. This route has yet to see a repeat. I got on it earlier this year to just play around. Holy shit does it feel hard. So bouldery! If there’s anyone capable of doing the second ascent, it’s Sean. Especially after I saw him do the route with only 1 fall the other day. He stuck the dyno for his first time ever then easily made his way to the “slots”. Bad news was that the slots were soaking wet. But somehow Sean managed to clip and make two more moves before he wet-fired out. He boinked back up, shook out, then finished the route to the top. No problem! I wager that Sean would have made the 2nd ascent if the holds were dry.
I’ve slowly been adding photos to my Photo Gallery. You can also see them on my Flickr Page. There are some photos from our trip to Europe as well. Take a look and let me know what you think in the comments section. Below is one of my favourites!
It’s been a long ten days. Sarah and I received our car okay in Montpellier. We picked up some groceries at the Super Marche then started our drive towards Pisa. We got to just past Nice then camped in the car for the night. The next day in Pisa was brief. We parked the car and spent 3 or 4 hours at the tower. If you really think about it, this tourist trap really isn’t that interesting. It’s just a building established on a weak foundation that has sunk a bit on one side. The result is a failed construction project that has created a tourism based economy for Pisa. Every person takes the same picture: the one where it looks like you’re pushing the tower back up. Some tourists show some creativness – they lay on their backs and use their feet to push the tower up. Then there’s the guided tours. 30 sheep follow some old lady around while she holds a pink umbrella up in the air. They’re even all tagged with a red piece of tape so they know which herd they belong to. As you can tell I’m getting a little tired of all the crowded tourist destinations. In the last 10 days we’ve been to Pisa, Rome, San Gimignano, Florence, Torino, Paris, as well as a few other lower key destinations. The ones I’ve listed however are all crowded with a million other people taking countless photos of the same thing. I suppose I fit right in, but often I was asking myself why I was even taking a photo of some building I couldn’t name on a street I couldn’t remember. When I get home there will be no significant story to tell about the photo.
Okay. I’ve finished my depressing little commentary on the tourism phenomenon. There have of course been many fun times. Recently Sarah and I visited the Louvre, Paris’ most famous museum. We spent most of our time looking at paintings. Let me tell you, the Mona Lisa is garbage compared to some of the other messed up renaissance paintings I saw. There were scenes of old school people eating fruit and frolicing in the meadow. The catch was that some of the people were half man, half goat. Fascinating stuff. I also like the paintings of outdoor areas. They give you an idea of what the land looked like before modern man turned it into a concrete paradise. In Florence we saw the statue of David. The guy made me feel powerless. I think that pictures nor words can describe what it’s like to be standing beneath such a magnificent piece of art. The view from the Eiffel Tower is impressive, but the vastness of the structure itself is even more striking especially when it’s all lit up at night. On our drive from Florence to Paris (90€ in tolls by the way) we spent a night in Torino with a kid I used to coach, Lorenzo. He and his girlfriend Isadora gave us a great tour of Turin. They both knew so much about the history of their city; I was impressed. They even treated us to the best gelato I’ve ever had.
Tomorrow we train to Valence to be with Team Canada at YWC. Then Sarah and I will spend two nights in London before we fly home! I miss you guys and a part of me can’t wait to be home. See you all very soon!
Sarah and I are currently on a train to Cerbere, which is just north of the Spanish-French border. We will then get on another train to Montpellier. There was a direct train, but it was full so after lots of confusion in the Barcelona train station we figured out our itinerary. In Montpellier we are picking up a rental car. We have it for a week. We will drive to Rome with stops at Pisa and other points of interest along the way. Then we need to drop the car off in Paris on the 21st. We have 4 nights in Paris then we train to Valence for the Youth World Championships. So everything is pretty much all planned out for the rest of the trip. Thank god. It was very stressful trying to plan without a laptop.
Last night we picked Mathilde up at the Barcelona train station. She had been training in Valence for the last five days in preparation for Worlds. We went back to a restaurant that was recommended to us by my brothers girlfriend: La Quinze Nits. On the walk there we were blocked by a policia incident, which must have just happened. The girls sheepishly stayed behind while Sean and I pushed to the front of the crowd to see what was up. We saw some paramedics working on a guy laying on the ground. There was blood pooling beside him and he wasn’t moving. It looked like the medics had given up. Sure enough they covered him up with a white sheet 5 minutes later. The police let some nearby friends approach him and we watched one guy lift the sheet past the victims head to give him five kisses of grief. Then a photographer stood over top of him to snap a few pics, which to me seems a tad indecent. It sounds like the person was stabbed in the chest and another guy was already in an ambulence. I don’t think either one was a tourist. The whole situation was pretty sad, but at the same time surreal to see. We continued onward and half a block away life went on as normal; tourists conversing over beers on the outdoor patios, oblivious to the death that just occured a stones throw away.
A few days ago Sean, Sarah and I drove to Rodellar for two days of climbing. Think of Horne Lake limestone times 1000. The walls are twice as high and twice as steep. Again I didn’t get on anything too hard and I didn’t work any routes. There wasn’t enough time. Instead I just tried to onsight everything. I came close to flashing a 7c+: “El Setes” (I think that’s what it’s called), but even after pulling the lip and resting on the biggest jugs, I couldn’t recover enough to push through the final crux. I forgot how good it feels to be so ridiculously pumped that even jugs feel like 5.14.
So I gotta say that the people in Rodellar are very… What’s the word… Confident: Near the end of day 1 we were climbing by a river. The river is a big attraction to families for picnicking. It splits into lots of pools that are great for swimming. Well, at the pool just 20 feet from us we see this guy stripping down to the buck to go for a dip. He’s not shy. He faced us and dropped his pants in front of about 10 other climbers and one little girl. That was Dick #1. While we were hiking out that same day we come around a corner to see another dude without pants. Dick #2. Then the next night, while doing laundry in the mens washroom another guy walks out of the shower swinging his piece in front of me and two others trying to brush their teeth. That was Dick #3. So in the 2.5 days in Rodellar I saw 3 dicks. On average that’s a Dick a Day! Of course you don’t want to look but you can’t help it; there it is right in front of you. You’re shocked and you wonder: WTF!? On the bright side (where the sun does shine), at least this experience makes me think of a certain V7 boulder problem at North Mountain in Hueco Tanks.
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