The 3-Star Project and How not to Behave While Injured

I always read things about climbers starting blogs or taking on other worthy projects while injured. I however hurt my shoulder a while back and fell off the blogging wagon.

Side note: I was also busy finishing my undergraduate thesis and graduating from college. I wish I could use that as my excuse for not blogging. But deep down I know that I was much to busy complaining about my shoulder to get anything typed other than my thesis.

First off, let me make it clear I am bad at being injured. For the first two weeks (with zero climbing!) I complained constantly. I am really not sure how I did not get hit in the face by a close friend at some point during this rocky period… luckily I survived with out any whompings from friends. Then for the next two weeks, while complaining for only about 50% of my waking hours, I proceeded to try to climb like I didn’t hurt anymore, like it had never happened. That didn’t work. I spent most of my gym session whining about my inability and lack of confidence when making big moves with my right arm. During this point, someone really should have stepped up and whacked me, but all of my friends were still too nice.

At this point, something amazing happened, Cameron suggested that I take part in his 3-Star Project at Rumbling Bald. The 3-Star Project is Cam’s goal to climb all of the three-star boulder problems in the Chris Dorrity guide. The 3-star list includes about 100 boulder problems ranging from v0 to v11. It does not include any problems established after the guide was published, regardless of how many stars they deserve. To make the 3-star project even more exciting, Cam decided he wanted to repeat all of the three-star boulder problems he had previously sent before checking them off.

For my 3-Star Project I am trying to climb all of the 3-star problems v0 to v6 (I thought about capping it at v5, but why limit myself). Addtionally, I do have a few higher v-grade goals for the season! Cam thought this goal would help me enjoy my time in the boulderfield more while I was still recovering and not up for climbing at my limit. It turns out this was a great idea.

After Cam made the requite Excel spreadsheets with a checkbox for each problem, we folded the sheets into my guidebook and headed to the Bald. I decided to include everything I have already sent this fall and winter, because I can’t resend Kung-Fu Grip for the life of me… obviously I need the early September friction back… or something.

With little more than a pad, a pair of Solutions, and a spreadsheet Cam was out of the gates and running. He started off the 3-star project by sending Clearwater, and repeating Brackish Water on his first day at the Bald after conceiving the project. I started off a bit slower, but did manage to send Brackish One the same day. Why I chose to even try a problem that starts with a right arm campus move with a hurt right shoulder I will never know…

In the Rumbling Bald trips since, Cam and I decided to visit a few areas of the Bald I had never been to. Our trip excursion was to the Far East. After a quick stop in the Middle East for Cam to either send or resend (I can’t remember) Grease Pit, we headed past the Fire and Ice Boulder to find Rift. Grease Pit is also on my list, but I was (and am) still working back to being confident on big moves like that.

Rift is a great v4. With the crux move just below the top-out it was just what I needed after two weeks without climbing. After getting angry that a v4 was going to take me more than just a few tries, I said a few words I wouldn’t say in front of my grandmother and managed to finish the problem. While at Rift, we climbed its neighbor White Rama, one of the Bald’s two 3-star v0 problems. It felt mighty hard for a v0, but what do I know…

We left Rift and walked over to check out White Ocean, a 3-star v5 face climb. The guide barely mentions the small details that the boulder is huge, White Ocean goes up the tallest part, and the hard move looks to be at the top! A worthy endeavor, but not for that day. Instead we went and climbed Forbidden City a v2 version of Dime Crack. This description has become way too detailed for anyone to care… so I’ll skip to my 3-star highlights in bullet form:

-Everyone should climb Clumsy Waiter, an awesome and forgotten highball v4 in the cluster area.

- The Egg is a damn hard v4 for me! I can only do the first move with an extra thin pad… nevertheless still awesome.

-The 3-star project involves some highballing! Super psyched to hopefully send DRTR soon.

-I got a Metolius Colossus for graduation. Although I am not used to carrying a huge pad, I am already used to landing on its rad 24 square feet of coverage!

-My New Year’s Resolution is to be a more positive, less competitive climber/person.

-And I am heading to Rocktown in a few days! Super pysched!


Also! If you think the 3-Star Project is as cool as I do, I just might be able to get you your own, limited-edition, 3-Star Project Spread Sheet! But supplies are running out fast!

Bakestravaganza!

I can't stop baking and cooking things. It is starting to get out of hand. This obsession started ages ago when I first started reading food blogs even though I know nothing about cooking. Finally, I have gained the courage/stopped being lazy and started making things that I think sound good.

Coffee cup for scale.. I guess

Most recently I decided that I wanted to make some kind of crackers, and had remembered seeing a really simple cheese cracker recipe on thekitchn.com not too long ago. I tracked the recipe down and managed to make a batch of these puppies with my really (really) sub-par food processor. I followed the recipe pretty much as is, no significant changes. However, I did run out of time to bake them the day I made the dough. Then was super busy for the next 3 days. The dough ended up chilling for 3 days in the fridge before I finally had time to roll them out, cut them up, and bake them. Luckily, their lengthy chill didn't effect them. They tasted great. I baked them Thursday evening and the photo above shows all that is left.

Earlier this week I also decided I wanted to make some fancy, but easy, snack to take to women's night at Climbmax. I chose an great recipe from Dorie Greenspan's blog for mustard batons. They were so delicious I didn't get a picture of them. So here is the picture from Dorie Greenspan's site:

photo from Dorie Greenspan

I did make a small change to the recipe. Greenspan calls for an eggwash on the top of the pastry to give it a nice shine and to make the sesame or poppy seeds stick. But Cameron is allergic to eggs, so I didn't want to use them. Instead, I brushed the tops of the pastry with butter. It didn't give the batons a nice sheen, but the seeds stuck and the top was nice and brown. 

This was a super easy recipe, since it uses frozen puff pastry and like 2 other ingredients. However, it has inspired me! Inspired me to learn how to make real puff pastry, that is... should be awesome!

In other food related news, I recently acquired a crock-pot. I have been slow cooking up a storm... a very slow storm... yikes, cheesy. But really, I made my first pot roast and pork with cabbage and apples. Tonight there is a split pea soup in the crock-pot.... and it smells so good!

Banana Bread Cookies and Hott Traxx (aka songs you should hear)

So I am not very good at this remembering to blog thing...

I made some tasty (and super simple) vegan banana peanut butter cookies last week that I fully intended to blog about, but then they all got eaten before photos were taken. However, they are good enough to mention now sans-photo.

These cookies started out with my intention to make flourless peanut butter cookies for my gluten-free housemate, but then when he told me he doesn't like peanut butter cookies I changed my plans to make cookies for my egg-allergic boyfriend (since the flour-less PB cookie recipes I found all had eggs).

Another limiting factor I had for these cookies was my desire to not go to the grocery store for any supplies.  Because of some rogue frozen banana puree in the freezer, these cookies landed in the hot spot.

The result was certainly easy and tasty. However, they taste more like mini quick-bread chunks than cookies. In other words if you like banana bread, you'll probably like these. If I was going to make them again, and was feeling decadent, I would probably heed the recipes suggestion and add some chocolate chunks.

Long story short, if you have everything for these cookies in your kitchen they are worth whipping up:

1/2 cup chunky natural PB
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup mashed banana (1 medium sized banana)
1 1/2  cup unbleached flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 pinches of salt

-combine PB and sugars, then add banana

-in separate bowl combine other ingredients, then add these ingredients to wet mix

-put dough/batter on cookie sheet in heaping tablespoons

-then bake at 375 (or 350 because I never really know how hot my oven is) for 10 minutes or until it looks like the bottoms are browning, not a moment longer!

Adapted out of laziness from Fat-Free Vegan Kitchen (even though they are totally/deliciously not fat free)

In other news:

My current single-song musical obsession "Freak Out" from Tapes 'n Tapes. Get It Now! Its free (and legal) and awesome.

My last month single-song musical obsession: "Figure 8" from Lovers... also legal, free, and guaranteed to knock your socks off!

These bands also make great music that they aren't giving it away for free... check that out too!

Oh, and one more delicious morsel for your ears! El Ten Eleven's "Anxiety is Cheap." Sadly, just YouTube not a free version, but seriously its awesome. And if anyone with filming skills wants to record me sending my awesome new (yet to be determined project), this is my first choice for the music!

‘Tis the Season… (aka Bragging and Planning)

…for southeastern bouldering!

I’ve often called bouldering the art of frustration. Takes a lot of work and a lot of failed tries for me to send a new problem, especially when it is at a new grade or a grade I am just breaking into. All boulderers have their own reason why they put up with the struggle. For me, I put up with it because of how awesome it is to stick a new move, to link a new sequence, and of course to send. (And other reasons not enumerated here). But I also have another (no so) secret reason… it is the hope, the hope that one day I won’t have a mediocre or good session, that one day I will have a veritable crushfest. I also hope that I am not the only climber that holds this ridiculous dream. But long story short: yesterday, for the first time in my bouldering career, I had one of those days. It was great to see how much I have progressed from the last time I bouldered at Rumbling Bald.

Mini-post: Too much exciting stuff to not update

You could claim that I am just ripping stories off of climbingnarc, where they have been conveniently compiled for all climbers to see in one place. But I just found several things I liked so much I had to re-post.

1) Jamie Emerson's favorite book is Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian or at least that is what he says in an interview with Caroline Treadway. This makes me really excited because Blood Meridian is the text I am writing my senior paper on and it is a mind-blowing book. If you ever feel like diving into the deep end of heavy and cerebral contemporary literature, read it. Also, the rest of the interview is interesting read it too.

2) Without getting too personal or sharing too much, my weight and the food I consume are two things I obsess over too much. In the newest Urban Climber Angie Payne talks a little bit about her relationship with weight and how hard it can be to make 'good' food decisions when as a female climber you realize it is easier to pull on crimps when you weigh less. Although I am a long way from being Angie Payne, this statement clicked with me. In the past two years I have been climbing, I have both lost weight and improved my climbing tremendously. When I do weighted pull ups or other weighted exercises I think, "How the hell did I ever climb anything when I weighted 10 pounds more than I do now?" And then I go down the rabbit hole, I think to myself, If I only weighted 5 pounds less I could be so much better at climbing. So I try, I eat less, I actually run, and I climb better for a few sessions. And then I am hungry, tired and grumpy, so I scarf down some sort of greasy crap and get mad at myself.

Currently, I am working hard to stop this cycle. Today I found this post on Allie Rainey's blog that both reminds me as a climber I am not alone in my weight stress and also makes me realize that it is training, not 5 less pounds that is going to help me sent.

Which gets me to my final point, TRAINING! I have never really trained before, but I feel like I need to start being more deliberate about how I use my time in the gym in order not to plateau. I'm psyched, now I just need to do it!

An aimless post with random links aka 3 reasons climbing is awesome

Three Reasons climbing is awesome:

1) This past weekend was the one, the only, the first installment of the Triple Crown Bouldering Competition, HOUND EARS! But I wasn't there, this past weekend I went to the Obed and continued in my quest to try to climb 5.12. Sadly, all that I sent this weekend was the warm up...  but progress was made on both of my current projects!


Here is a video of a young boy crushing one of the climbs I have been working on. I don't know the kid or the guy who filmed it, but it is a cool video and is a good reminder that (pretty much) no matter how hard you climb, somewhere there is a thirteen fourteen fifteen year old climbing your latest project. Like I said, climbing is awesome.

2) There is an almost endless possibility for making up words: dyno, aggro, sloper, ringlock... the list is (almost) infinite.

A new word was added to my climbing lexicon this weekend-- PORK WHIPPER. You may say, "Wait! That is two words, one of which is a preexisting climbing word." To which I would reply, "You're right, shut up." That sticky point bypassed, I return to the matter at hand: PORK WHIPPER. I don't need to tell you what it is, because it is a term best defined for oneself. One day you will fall off a rock  and realize you have just taken a Pork Whipper, bask in the porky goodness.

3) There is an almost endless possibility for making up words: dyno, aggro, sloper, ringlock... the list is (almost) infinite amount of climbing media out there on the internet. This video from Switzerland is rad. Do yourself a favor and watch it (twice).

This post is mediocre at best; I felt bad about not updating, but now I want to go to the climbing gym.

The Real First Post- Chorizo Tortilla Soup and Adam

I have a mild addiction to food blogs. Actually, considering the amount I cook the addiction is a bit more than mild. So when I cook it is usually food blog inspired. Fall just started two days ago here and because of that I decided 'pumpkin something' was in order for dinner last night.

After almost 30 minutes of pumpkin recipe search and consideration I settled on pumpkin tortilla soup from "the kitchn."

This lovely photo, for the record, isn't mine. It came from the link above and I am only re-posting it to show the awesome picture that convinced me to make this soup. When I made the soup, I changed it a bit. I started the soup with chorizo, onions, garlic and tortillas. Then I tailored the spices I added to fit with the added chorizo... I used a bit less cumin. Also, I didn't add the avocado because I was feeling cheap at the grocery store. And I just put pre-made tortilla chips on top because I was being lazy and starting a frying endeavor at 9:30 at night when I was cooking dinner.

My leftovers- turned the wrong way... maybe I'll fix that later

However, to cut to the chase, the soup was awesome. My version was a bit oilier than the original because of the added meat, but the flavors all worked together really well.
The pumpkin and tomato came together to have great flavor and texture and the chorizo made the meal super hearty. Also, it was easy.

While eating dinner, I watched Adam. It only gets 65% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, but I liked it and am here to recommend it to internet land. Unlike most romantic comedies this movie didn't make me want to vomit in my mouth, the soundtrack is mellow and pleasant, the lead male is good looking, and the whole feel of the movie was fitting for fall and the onset of cooler weather. As a random point of comparison I liked it better than (500) Days of Summer, but that is probably just me. Do your self a favor and watch it.

Blogging

I keep ending up in conversations about blogs and blogging. "what is the point?" I keep being asked. I usually make up some answer about self indulgence or self obsession. But truth be told, I'm obsessed with blogs. I have my list of climbing and food blogs that I read daily.

So, now here I am with my own blog. I made this page ages ago then never updated it. Now with Railroad Safety I am back with a passion. My goal is to waste less time on the internet reading things other people have read and waste more time writing my own web drivel. Also, hopefully I can get a camera and put some pictures on here, because I know I am 8000% less likely to read a blog if it doesn't have pictures.