The war has ended

Yes you all know the war I'm talking about. There are no hot deserts involved (although possibly hot desserts!) that endless ephemeral debate of what to add to your meal. Yes the condiment war to end all wars

BACON VS CHOCOLATE

Well the problem is no more thanks to this amazing substance BACON CHOCOLATE bless their souls for solving all our problems and creating a chocolate bar with the bacon cooked right in.

chocobacon

Bouldering in Zion

Wall climbing is good in Zion, but hey, the bouldering is nice to. This is like going to Wimbledon to play table tennis...

Turbulence and Coffee

So am flying to Chicago today amid the big snowy system covering all USA. The flight is so early that I don't have time for my morning coffee. United's computer system is down so the ticketing line is fucking long, and I barely make my flight. So I'm on the plane without coffee or breakfast. After waiting forever to take off we are aloft with too much turbulence to get any coffee in economy class. All the while the bourgeoisie class is getting showered with what looks like lattes and mochas. Finally, the turbulence subsides and the guy comes around and I ask for not one but two cups of coffee for good measure. He obliges and goes on to the next row and BAM, more turbulence and the drink guys pack it up.

So there I am with two cups of coffee, one in each hand, hovering over my laptop. I am trapped in a prison of my own making. I can't put down either cup anywhere and I don't want to spill anything on the computer. And so begins the dance. Bobbing and weaving, putting the cups on a linear trajectory through space while the plane (and me) bounces around them...

Two Seats, Twenty One Gears

We just got this kick-ass ride off of craigslist as our mutual birthday present. We paid 400 for it, which is a good deal for a tandem, I think. It should be nice for dirt roads and touring. Ever since we rode one on Friday Harbor we wanted to get one but most are really expensive. We are going to get some racks and sew our own panniers for it. I have no idea where we are going to store it in our house. I'll probably have to reconfigure my office to make it fit.

I will also entertain myself on it by riding it solo on the shoreline, which will make that old trail interesting again. I'll also see if I can ride it solo from the back seat using strings to control the brakes and steering. I bet two coordinated people could pull off a rolling chinese fire drill on it: switch seats while rolling without touching the ground. I wonder how many people we could have riding on it at the same time? I am open to any suggestions on entertaining things to (try) to do on it.

lcc and diverse media

thanks for the invitation, will.

remember that day we went climbing in little cottonwood canyon this summer?

here is a picture of you.

here are some more:

LCC

i had just been in the wind rivers. i also posted some pictures of that trip:

Wind Rivers

here is a movie:

Wind Rivers movie 1
Wind Rivers movie 2

while we're on the subject of pictures of things i did that these are links to, here are links to pictures of my trip to china, in 2005:

Beijing
Shangha
Yangshuo
yunnan
szechuan

here is a movie of my bike ride in yunnan and szechuan:

ride video

thats all for now.

peace and sunshine upon you.

--bobby in nh

Rock Hounding in Triassic

I went bouldering with a whole crew of folks down in Triassic this weekend. I went with John, Christine, Scott, and the Benster.



From these unnamed friends I learned some new words to enhance my climbing vocabulary

Crank and spank ---- lock off and slap indiscriminately for unknown holds.

Hippie climbing ---- Trads

Hippie skiing ---- Telemarking

That Weird Time of the Year for Sports

Every fall is that weird time of year when all four major professional sports are in season: baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Similarly, fall is that weird time for imbuildingarockwallers when all major unprofessional sports are in season: climbing, hiking, skiing, and cyclocross. All of the following pictures were taken in the last month. We start with Gavin Noyes' "Homespinin on the Homestead" annual event which takes place at his primitive cabin between Hanksville and the Henrys.

Gavin is a professional potter. The cabin is on the left and his giant kiln, built into the side of the hill, is on the right. On the same trip M and I went bouldering at Triassic and hiking at Goblin Valley.


From my last post many wanted to know my secret bike-bouldering pad transportation technology: You take a stick and jam it in your bike frame and tie it down with string and straps. Done.

Fall is fun: go skiing one day and climbing a few days later, both in the Wasatch.

More racing!

I got some more racing in last weekend, this time in Gloucester, MA. The course was fast and the weather was really nice, and while those things don't swing the 'cross pendulum in my favor, I had an awesome time and got good results. I was 17th/104 on day 1 and 18th of 98 on day 2. Here are some pictures of me building a rock wall on day 2. Thanks to Chris (via Tom) for the pictures!

east coast cyclocross, 07 season opener

So I got my 'cross season started last weekend, what fun! I may be able to post some pictures, if I can get them from my interweb friends.
I drove up to Biddeford, Maine on Friday evening with Stacey (now my wife!) and my friend Colin. We stayed at my friend and occasional MTB teammate Billy's house. Colin and I headed over to Rotary Park in Biddeford early Saturday after stopping for greasy breakfast sandwiches and coffee at the corner store. Given enough digestion time, I recommend this nutritional prerace strategy, but take a look at the weekend scoreboard and decide for yourself. We got to the venue with plenty of time to get our numbers and preride the course, which was an unusual circumstance for me. We met up with Josh and Sarah and Tom in the parking lot, who are teammates on my new team, HUP United. I won't go into a lengthy course description, but I'll summarize by saying it had fun grass twisties, a high-speed grassy descent, some technical sandy sections, and a log barrier before the final gravel climb. On our pre-ride, I hopped the log, making full use of my chainring. I heard a small "chk" from my handlebars, which I ignored (but must have filed away for some reason). I lined up for the 9am C race, and of course had some start-line repairs to effect. Colin helped me add some toe-in to my front brakes, and at the last minute I decided to tighten up the faceplate bolts on my stem. Hmmm, the bottom one felt a little funny, oh well . . . At the start, I got clipped in well but had not gone three pedal strokes when my bars gave me a subtle but unmistakable sign that all was not well. Sure enough, I had stripped one of the faceplate bolt holes and was left with a worthless stem. I watched wistfully as the field disappeared up the hill and around the bend. After fiddling and confirming that all was lost, I tried to be tranquil about not getting to suffer severely for the next thirty minutes. Of course it took very little urging from Colin and Josh to decide that I could probably get the bike fixed in time for the 12 o'clock 3/4 (B) race. I stuck around long enough to see Tom sail in to win the C race, and then off I went to find a new stem. I picked one up from the fine folks at Cape Able in Kennebunkport (where Billy used to work), and was back at the venue in time to get a number and line up behind Colin and Josh. Now you'll probably be disappointed because I can never remember the details of my races - they go by in a blur and I hardly even know what lap I'm on during the race, let alone recall correctly afterwards when anything happened. I started off in some sort of pack, and moved up and down in it for quite some time. I was hoping to keep Josh and/or Colin in my sights for a little while, but that was not to be - Colin ended up winning the race, and I saw Josh wheeling his bike off the course early in the race, victim of a broken chain (those 10speed chains seem pretty fragile for cyclocross, in my opinion). I realized I need to work on a few important technical skills, namely holding my line in a pack, laying off the brakes in fast corners, and getting my feet back in my pedals. My dismounts and remounts are fair, but it takes me forever to clip in! The sand pit gave me some trouble on a couple of laps, but mostly I was able to ride it smoothly. I made places on the gravel climb on a couple of occasions, but lost time where I had trouble clipping in. I ended up in 17th out of 39, which I was very happy with.
Sunday was a fun day too - Colin and I again arrived at the venue (New Gloucester, ME) with plenty of time, having stopped again for gut-bomb breakfast sandwiches and coffee, and were joined shortly by Josh and Sarah in the parking lot. Three of their Colby teammates showed up for their 'cross racing debuts, and judging from their post-race chatter, I think they'll be back for more. After picking up my number and warming up a bit, I lined up for the start, for once getting my choice of position on the front line. I chose the far-right side - the start section consisted of a 30-yard pavement climb to a 90degree right hand turn, whereupon we descended on pavement to join the main course at the start/finish. Owing to my one-speededness, I figured I'd have to give a pretty substantial effort on the climb in order to not get dropped on the downhill that followed. The officials gave us the race instructions - 30 minutes or 3 laps, whichever came first. So we'd be racing at most 3 laps, which seemed pretty short, but it was good to know this going into the race. At "Go", I had a good clip-in (to my surprise), and found myself rounding the corner in the front with a couple of other riders. Up front with me, I recognized Deke Andrew - he won the Saturday race last year at this venue. The first tricky section in the course was a wicked down-up sidehill with no really good line, and I knew that on the first lap it was going to be trouble. Sure enough, a rider came inside on me and promptly washed out, forcing me low so I had to dab and shuffle my way out of the corner, losing a couple of places. I made up a place or two on the fire-road section going into the woods, then employed a bit of "tactics" on the next off-camber section, coming to an abrupt halt as the path tipped upwards and I lost my momentum, causing the following riders to pile up behind me. Again I shuffled out of the trouble spot and called out my apologies to those behind, and stood up to catch #1 and #2. I caught #2 without too much trouble, and it was three of us heading into the pine-needle runup. We held our positions there through the grass twisties and over the barriers, but I got past #2 on the pavement climb to the start/finish. I began to work on closing the gap to Deke, who seemed pretty comfortable out in front. I rode the first off-camber fine, though awkwardly, though the second off-camber still gave me a little trouble. I closed the gap to Deke by the pine-needle runup, and held his wheel until a short pavement climb between sections of grass switchbacks, where I made a move that could be construed as an "attack." I got past him cleanly, and tried to concentrate on not riding stupidly. I knew my weak points were in the transitions (esp. clip-ins), so I knew I needed a buffer going into those parts. Finishing lap 2 in the lead, I felt comforted by the knowledge that I had only one more lap to go. Things seemed to come together for me technically that lap, and though I wasn't especially speedy through the tricky sections, I also didn't flub anything badly. Deke made up ground on me on the transition after the runup, but I held enough of a buffer to come across the line ten seconds up to take the win! I managed a two-arms-up finish to show the world that I dominate men's category 4 cross. The race seemed very short, as indeed it was - I finished in 21:32, which means that I could have done one more lap and still been well under 30 minutes. Who am I to complain, though. The result gains me 10 upgrade points for a total of 24, so I'll be moving up to category 3 - after Gloucester! I think the category 4 race, with a field of 125, will be plenty entertaining, thanks. Races being too short will never again be an issue for me.
After my race, it was awesome to watch my friends Colin and Josh battle in the 3/4 race at noon, and then see the elite races, the highlight of which was a wicked fast junior racer bunnyhopping the barriers on lap 1, at full speed, to rocket from 4th to 1st.
Cheers
Justin

Sticky Granite

Mr. Hardage stopped into town a few weeks ago. Bobby (AKA little Bobby) now hails from Verhampshire, but is always traveling. He dropped into SLC via a trip up to the Wind Rivers.



Without a car, going out to the boulders is an all day affair.




I hope to do more climbing in combination with bike touring this year.

Russian Free Soloing

The whole village, Mom, Pop, and the kids out for a day of free soloing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwCyM84HCcA

September is basically ski season

September is here and that is ski season for all intensive purposes. You see, in September it starts cooling off, the caterpillars start growing that extra fur, animals start gathering nuts and such, and people start gathering the necessary supplies for ski season. Bobby has purchased some new skis, I have a new set purchased last spring, and Lis is canning everything she can find at the farmer's market in advance of the Winter.

September is a long time to December you say? Not really, if you see it with the following Seinfeldian logic: September can get a freak snow storm like last year, but more to the point, September is climbing season, and we all know that climbing time goes much faster than normal time. This makes the 30 days in September more like 2 1/2 hours. The same logic applies to October and November, adding up to about 30 minutes after you factor in sleeping and time in the bathroom.

northwest waterways or how to become a man

In Will's family there seem to be a lot of rights of passage.

First, to prove your "manliness" you are required to submerge your head into a cold mountain stream. So, as Will and his dad proved their manliness one more time in the Wenatchee River, I couldn't be shown up.



I feel very manly now, thank you.

The other way to become a man, or I should say right of passage since Will has a sister, in Will's family is to build a boat. I am pretty sure that this is just an excuse for Will's dad to get a bunch of watercraft. Will built a sailboat, his brother built a catamaran, and his sister built a kayak. It's a beautiful kayak, which we took out for a cruise of Priest Lake.




With the emphasis on manliness in Will's family, you need a way to retreat to boyishness which Will did with his new hobby of tree-moving. In both Couer D'Alene Lake and Priest Lake, he found big logs (one a nearly entire tree) near the shore which he proceeded to move out into more open waters. This required swimming underneath the logs and getting huge back scratches. He spent hours trying to move the logs. And he seemed pretty delighted the whole time. 9-year-olds are easy to entertain.

A longish bike ride

Recently I sold my car. I did it partly because I couldn't afford the insurance premium, registration, and the price of fucking gas these days! Some amount of enviro do-gooderisim also factored in to the switch. I also didn't like the terrorist-per-gallon rating that my car, or anyone's, had. M has her car of course, but she uses it for work, so for the most part it's all pedal power.

I went on a mountain bike ride last Sunday. Now I ride to the mountains, but I caught to Wasatch Crest Shuttle up to Gardsmens. I did the crest, then the mid mountain, then down to Park City for a snack, then I rode home, taking part of I 80 from Parley's to East Canyon, to Emigration, then home. I consider this a longish ride according to the classification system devised by Sukow:

a ride <6hrs
longish <8-9hrs
long <16
redicuride no limit

I may not have the numbers right. I'll have to get back to Sukow on this. They are just a ballpark. This would also vary with terrain, or if you were racing at the time ect...

Elk Mountain Traverse

During the busyness of Spring I still got out to do some skiing. To be efficient I concentrated all that skiing into 16 hours called the Elk Mountain Traverse. True to form for all my ski races, I did'nt finish the whole race. I had seven miles to go and collapsed after jettisoning all cargo from my innards. I think I got dehydrated early on and never fully recovered. Oh well. There is always next time. Here are some pictures...

The Paria

About a week ago I got done walking through the canyons of the Paria river down in south Utah and north Arizona. It was a great way to unwind from a busy first half of the year. With my first paper published and second paper submitted the day before I left it was a much needed mental break.

The hike took four days. It was HOT, but the river provided the needed cool-down. We entered the area via Buckskin canyon, which is a thirteen-mile rock hallway till you reach the confluence with the Paria.




Our first day in the Paria was the best aesthetically. The walls were wider but you still felt enveloped. The canyon was a lush oasis from the gently flowing river and the perennial seeps.




As the canyon became wider and deeper with the increasing miles the sun became a bigger deal. Hiking in the afternoon was out, so we scaled back the hiking time and found camp and shade by noon. We read and ate snacks. I build a rock wall in the river and laid down in the resulting cool pool.




Although, my watch read 127 F after I left it out in the sun, I think the afternoon temps were about 107 F tops.

If I were to recommend one hike to do in the Utah desert this would be it.

Riding for Climate

Last weekend was our first taste of glorious spring weather, after tolerating a couple of weeks of gloriously bad spring weather (e.g., 40 degrees and raining). To fully take advantage of this, we rode the tandem from Boston to Amherst, MA (108 miles) on Saturday and Sunday, accompanying our new friends Dave and Bill. Dave and Bill are riding across the country doing presentations to raise awareness of climate change issues. Their website, www.rideforclimate.com, has all the details. Dave just finished a similar tour in which he bicycled from California to Tierra del Fuego (see www.rideforclimate.com/americas). Anyhow, we had an awesome time and hopefully I'll get some pictures posted on the blog. The tandem worked great and we look forward to outfitting it with real touring accoutrements and doing some more long rides.

Uinta Ski Hike

I went on a little trip to the Uintas. I skied till it was dark, and then kept going, all the way to gunsight pass to my high camp at 11,300. I got up at 5am and started over the pass and into painter's basin then back up some steep hills to King's peak. At 12,800 I had gained the long ridge where King's peak resides. I mistakenly thought Kings was south of where I was. Daytime heating made me leery of traversing a steep slope with a slide-for-life into an unknown drainage, so I bailed on fake Kings and decided to head up to a more accessible 13er which I thought was not King,s, but actually was! King's, shown above as the central peak that is recessed a bit in the photo. From the top I was able to see all over into several drainages that practically nobody goes to. I came down via an amazing ski pole glissade. When the angle slacked I skied the rest on perfect corn across miles of open terrain in these expansive mountain valleys. The only living thing I saw up there was a fox. Once back on the Henry's fork side I kicked back at my tent, melted some snow and made some tea. I let my socks dry in the excessive warmth and took a nap. Due to the excessive heat the thin snowpack was collapsing and unconsolidated. I could only travel successfully on the packed down ski track, and even then I fell into many a trap door. I decided to come down that night when the meager refreeze made the track more supportable. About every 30 steps I fell through and I needed my skins for the decent just to slow me down so I did not stray from the track into the vast sea of facets. I was very weak on the way down, but feeling ok. I skied for 14 hours that day and by 10 at night I was at my car. I spent 32 hours car to car for a 40-mile round trip hike. Great training for Elk mountain coming up in two weeks...

Bambi Left sent!

Just wanted to let you all know that the sick new bouldering problem I recently found was sent without incident last Thursday. "Bambi Left" a horizontally traversing V 0.4 presents unique and rapidly changing objective hazards. While the holds are easily found and represent little difficulty, a roof directly above the problem prevents full extension of the body and cramps style during ascent. For those into zen-like first ascents the atmosphere in which the problem is located is often crowded and loud interferring with concentration. Other boulders on the problem often block key holds on this route and may be unwilling to share the location due to a variety of perceived territorial threats ("I was here first") or xenophobia ("you're too big!").
Nevertheless, for those willing to work with the challenges, this route represents an expansion into the Park City region of the well-acclaimed workplace bouldering ticklist which is currently dominated by such classics as "Wearhouse hand crack".

Route Beta
Name:"Bambi left"
Rating: V 0.4
FA: Margaret Kimball
Acess: restricted, some sneaky antics may be required
(Acess Fund may be working with owners in the future to integrate access to this location)
Location: Snow Park Lodge area, Children's Center region, Bambi room wall
Directions: Enter through the main doors and follow the signs to the Bambi room drop off. "Bambi Left" is through the drop off and ski-school doors on the west wall of the play room. Caution: Either wearing all green or pretending to be 4 years old may be required to acess the problem
Notes: no crash pad required as floor is pre-padded.