Riding Bikes Is Hard - Singing Makes It Better

I enjoy music, like just about everyone else.  Unfortunately, I’ve reached that point in life when the music that brings me the most joy is now relegated to its own station.  Not old enough for that to be the ‘oldies’ station, just the ‘throwback’ station.  I hate the term throwback. 

Anyways, many of my favorite songs are favorites because of the memories they evoke.  Below are a few of the songs and associated memories I love:  

Separate Ways – Journey – I see my dad drumming on the steering wheel of our Dodge Caravan every time I hear it. 

Walking on Broken Glass – Annie Lenox – I remember coming home to my mom rocking out to this song.  I didn’t catch her mincing across the kitchen floor like there was glass on it, but that’s what I imagine. 

She’s Got Skillz – All-4-One – Reminds me of being 13 and doing silly dances with my friends, mostly just shaking our butts. 

Magic - Pilot – Teaching my 3-year old sister to sing that song and repeat lines from “Happy Gilmore.”  

Stronger – Kelly Clarkson – A particularly triumphant bike ride with Karina that I’d like to detail here. 

In 2010 Karina suggested it might be fun to borrow road bikes and ride around Bear Lake.  It was an oddly great idea then, and it of spun out of control to the point that we both owned road bikes and padded shorts.  The 2012 Cache Valley Century was Karina’s first 100-mile ride, which is a big deal.  The day of the ride I was grumpy and in poor shape and made the whole thing terrible.  The first hours were pleasant enough, but I was slow and fell behind the other riders, and since Karina was riding with me she fell behind too.  By the halfway point I was riding into a phantom searing hot headwind and was visibly cranky (I think I actually had an angry aura around me), but Karina was doing her best to encourage me.    

Our first road bike effort - scared, tired, and happy

 Around Mile 85 we were creeping past cornfields and heard an explosion like someone was shooting at us (seriously).  Karina’s tire had been blown out by a goathead thorn.   No patch or replacement tube is a match for a two-inch sidewall gash.  So there we were, 85% of the way through Karina’s first 100-mile ride, facing defeat.  She had the motivation to finish, but no bike.  I had the motivation to keep sitting right there, but a bike with perfectly good tires.  It just made sense to trade bikes and let Karina finish.  I worried as I waited at the finish line for Karina to come in.   I knew those last miles could be awful and I felt guilty for being so unpleasant to bike with, which had delayed Karina’s finish.  Plus it was so smoky that day, the finish line had been dismantled, and the course finished with an uphill segment.

All my fears faded when I saw Karina riding across the finish line.  She looked great, strong, and happy.  My heart nearly burst when she told me how she finished.  After 6 hours of suffering with me, I think she was alright riding the final miles by herself, but also had no support, and was wearing shoes that were too big and riding a bike that rattled.  Instead of stopping frequently to eat and cry (like I would), Karina kept peddling and started singing “Stronger.”  It was the best song for that ride and inspires me to this day:

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, stronger
Just me, myself and I
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone

So strong!

Every time that song comes on I see Karina biking up that last hill.  Happy and strong.  It makes me smile.  

After this experience we developed the No Guilt Rule: either one of us can ride on ahead at any point without feeling guilty.  We meet up at aid stations and finish together, but don’t suffer together when we could be enjoying the time on our bikes.  When we do ride together we always sing. 

You should watch this, Kelly Clarkson is the only American Idol that matters: 

The Desert Is Best in October

I just got back from an excellent trip to Moab with my most excellent friends.  Turns out October is a most-excellent time to be in Moab, the nights are cool (or cold) and the days are warm, the crowds aren't terrible and the rock feels great.  I've been to Moab enough times it's almost routine, but there were a few new things this time through.  For one, I laid out a plan ahead of time.  When Brent and I go we usually have a few options and spend a lot of time trying to decide where to go.  Not this time!  I laid out two places we'd all go and the climbs that I would like to do.  It might be the best way to go on vacation, but it was also kind of stressful, so I'm on the fence.  The second new thing was actually a person - Emma's husband Ryan came along and proved to be an awesome addition to the whole trip. 

I've been struggling to think of a theme to link all of these pictures together.  We did some aid climbing in Arches, as well as some free trad climbing.  We also did some odd crack climbing at the Ice Cream Parlor.  I think the thing that links it all together is finding new ways to keep climbing difficult, which always reminds me of this quote

 “We do not deceive ourselves that we are engaging in an activity that is anything but debilitating, dangerous, euphoric, kinesthetic, expensive, frivolously essential, economically useless and totally without redeeming social significance. One should not probe for deeper meanings.”  Allen Stock (1967)

With that in mind, I'll start with the story of my only successful lead climb of the trip - The Pickle (5.7 C1).  It took me about 35 minutes to climb the 90-foot tower.  Put all together, it looked like this from the east -

And it looks like this from the north

What these pictures don't really show is just how tedious aide climbing can be.  To aid climb, a climber uses equipment in addition to their arms and legs to get to the top of a climb.  In this case, I used a serious of pitons and bolts drilled into the wall, carabiners, and slings tied together like a rope ladder to get to the top of The Pickle.  Modern climbing emphasizes "free" climbing things, getting to the top of routes as fast as possible with minimal impact to the rock.  So why would anyone aide climb?

Because there's nothing to hold onto.  

No hand holds

No foot holds

Nothings but a very smooth, unforgiving rock face

However, because that little tower is there, it must be climbed.  For me in particular, it was one of the few routes in all of Moab that I could climb (so long as there are bolts).  I took Brent's GoPro up the climb, which was programmed to take a picture every 30 seconds, thereby providing all of these pictures of The Pickle from the aid climbers point of view.  Observe -

Smooth rock face, save for that bolt, which I have adorned with a carabiner and will shortly run the rope through.  

Then you clip aid ladders (or slings, in this case) through your bolt or carabiner

Then you wiggle your foot into the "ladders", being careful not to snag it on the velcro from your shoes

And then you stand up, without any visible foot or hand holds.  It's kind of amazing it can be done.   

And then you start the whole thing again.  Occasionally making desperate moves like the one captured here.  

Often time resting is in order, which provides a good opportunity to look down at the belayer you're so fond of and at just how far you've come.  

Inevitably, tower climbs slab out - they go from vertical to less-than-vertical, at which point you are expected to free climb again.  

The wide angle lens of the GoPro has distorted the way the rock looks a bit, but make no mistake, the slab is the worst part of the climb.  It is scary and run out and awful.

But then you get to the top, take a breather, and bring your friends up.  

Karina was the next to make it up.  We got to have a nice chat about big life topics there atop The Pickle.  

Then Brent came up and called me a Teletubby.  

 I know, that was a long story but there's more.  Here's what it look like from the ground.

Aiding up The Pickle in the sun, the glorious sun.  

And there was a celebration dance at the top.  

Karina tackling The Pickle

Emma joined us just as we rappelled down.  It felt like it had been forever since we'd climbed together.  It was great to hang out again.  

With the sun like it was, and Emma like she is, she looked like an angel.  

Ryan proved to be good at adept at aid climbing, we were all seriously impressed.  

Down on the ground, Brent was stealing Karina's sunshine.  It was hilarious.  

But occasionally they were able to get along, soaking up their own sun.  

Brent looks especially good in the desert.  

The moon was so bright the weekend we were there.  The first night we camped below Tombstone Butte, which provided at excellent opportunity to take night pictures.

What a beautiful night under a beautiful butte. 

Watching the moon rise above the LaSal mountains while we were in Arches was also really spectacular.  I was hobbling down from the crag in my climbing shoes when the sun, moon, and mountains looked best, but this was nice too.  

All of these clear, moonlit nights did make for some cold mornings.  Our second morning we stopped by the Birthing Rock on our way to the crag.  This might be the clearest, most easily discernible petroglyph I've ever seen.

Perhaps it was the cold, but it took a few hours to really get started climbing.  But once the climbing started, it was pretty great.  Brent decided to tackle Die Another Day, a 5.9 crack climb with a killer run out at the top.

Epic climbing.  How could he not climb well with that stack of rocks to start on and those socks belaying him?  

The start of this climb kind of made me want to puke, as did the end.  Brent ascended it calmly though.  

There were base jumpers leaping off the cliffs just south of us!  It was alarming at first (it really does sound like a rock fall when their parachutes open), but then it was just great to watch.  

Someone took the time to etch these route names with map.  

And Karina created this pictograph.  

And of course we had to take a group photo at the end.  It's tradition

With vows of friendship renewed, Emma, Karina, and Ryan headed back to Provo and Brent and I spent another night in Moab preparing for my half marathon the next morning.  I sure stressed a lot about making a plan that could be fun for everyone, but in the end hanging out in the sun with my friends was really enough to make me happy.  Climbing was a great bonus.  These people pictured here are some of the best in the world.

Nostalgia - Friends

Prepare for a series of very nostalgic posts.  I un-earthed my scrapbooks and found lots of pictures...

A few weeks ago I got to have a Girl's Night with my oldest friends.  While our reason for assembling was not quite happy, it was a great opportunity to reminisce about all the adventures we've had.  These girls have been my friends for more than a decade.  Since we graduated high school they've all gotten married and had children (I think there's 9 kids in this group altogether), but we still maintain some contact, and that's been great.  I'm not really sure how to remember 15 years of friendship in one blog post, but here's a shot.

I met Vanessa when I was in 2nd grade, but it wasn't until 7th grade, when Candace, Trudy, and Vikki all moved to Clinton, that we all became really great friends.  Oh what a magical time, we spent most afternoons playing basketball, wandering the neighborhood, and watching awesome movies (I know I'll never forget "The Craft" and the impression it made on our group).  Some other wonderful people (including Traci, who's in several of these pictures) came into our group of friends.  I've got a pretty terrible memory, but that does confer at least one advantage: what I remember of the past (which we'll call 1997-2002) is all fun and happiness.  Then I dug out my old pictures and discovered that while we might have been having a lot of fun, we seemed to take inordinate delight in taking bad pictures of one another.  It took a lot of work to find pictures that wouldn't be labelled "embarrassing" (consisting mostly of bad, early morning faces), but here's what I came up with.

Four of us, circa 1997.  Obviously, we've been hard core from the beginning.  

Remember when photo booths were actually booths?  We were quite fond of those in the late 90s, as pictured below.

Notice people magically disappearing from the booth.  Also note our clear love of fun scissors.  

I think this illustrates one of the key parts of our group dynamic: picking on Trudy.  Trudy is one of the most delightful people I know, and one of the shortest.  In the series above you can see four of us, until the last frame when Vanessa decided to be the biggest part of the pictures.  It was hilarious.  I can't say this is the only series of pictures where Trudy disappeared from the shot.  Luckily, she's very photogenic in the pictures I have of her, and managed to be a good sport through all of this.

Dancing was a big part of our activities, and we were awesome at it:

Oh jorts.  I miss you.  

I really started developing my own musical tastes during this period.  Before then I listened to the same radio stations my parents did (and I will always and forever love Billy Joel, Chicago, and Elton John because of that), but around 12 or 13 I started being more influenced by the things my friends listened to.  We sure loved Alanis Morisette and No Doubt, but if pictures are any indication, we were also heavily influenced by the Spice Girls:

According to the caption from the scrapbook we created, this is Posh, Baby, Scary, Ginger, Sporty, and Sexy Spices.  

  Here is what we were going for:

Sleepovers were a big part of things.  Early on, we had a lot of sleepovers at Candace's, mostly because her place was awesome, but also because we might have had less supervision there.  I can now say, we totally should have been supervised more.

There are many, many more pictures from said sleepovers.  But everyone has just woken up in all of them, so I've decided to leave them boxed up.  

Occasionally we tried cooking, which is what is pictured below.  It just kills me how beautiful these girls are.  Cooking was rarely successful in these days, but they've since managed to raise their children past infancy, so I image their skills in the kitchen have improved significantly.

One of my all-time favorite memories is the time Vanessa and I tried making chocolate pudding from scratch (I'd say we were in 9th grade at the time).  It started out very promising, we simply needed to dump all the ingredients into a pot and boil for a few minutes.  However, during this short boiling period, we got distracted trying to light a gerbil cage on fire (there were no gerbils in the cage, we weren't horrible people, after all) and forgot about the pot of boiling cocoa until at least half an hour later (probably more).  By that point it had become a pot of burnt chocolate-ness, a few inches think.  The loss of promising pudding is tragic enough, but it gets worse - my mom cleaned the whole mess up.  I don't know how we got out of that.  

Lagoon was another part of growing up for us.  Whenever I get annoyed at groups of teenagers, I try to remember how obnoxious we must have been, especially at Lagoon.  One of our favorite things to do was ride the Sky Lift (just a shuttle back and forth across the park) and count how many people would say "Hi" to us if we said "hi" to them.  It was silly, and we didn't have a great success rate.  We also used to try riding the White Rollercoaster with our lap bars as loose as possible.  In hindsight  that was silly.  But also awesome.  

In line at Lagoon 

 We all started High School in 1999, and looking back at a lot of my pictures, I can see why I may have chosen to remember so little of that period.  Everyone was dating during this time, and there was so much awkwardness I started blushing just looking at the pictures.   The elaborate ways we had to ask people out, the awkward hand positioning during pictures, spinning around in circles for hours on end...  But we obviously thought these things were worth documenting.  I haven't included many of the pictures here, in part because of the awkwardness, and in part because everyone (but Candace) has married other people and there's no need to dredge up old boyfriends.  The dresses and hair were definitely worth preserving though, because it was awesome to dress up.  Observe:

Prom 2002.  

I just love this picture.  I think Vanessa and I made awesome fairies. 2001-ish 

Obviously, we were hot stuff.  

And remember how I mentioned Candace, just a second ago?  She married to her high school sweetheart Jon, and they're just as adorable together now as they were then:

Sometimes I feel a little left out, when I think of the hairstyles popular during my time in high school, so little we have to regret.  With the exception of butterfly clips, there wasn't really much to cringe about.  Trudy was perhaps our most daring, when it came to hair, as illustrated in the platinum blond below:

For the most part, my friends and I couldn't be considered rebellious.  But Vanessa and I did have a flair for ditching school.  The most awesome time was the when we left school to visit the zoo.  With a camera.

I dare anyone to try looking this cool in an egg.  

Some of us got cars during this time (you'll find a blog about my chariot, Gus, after this one).  It was pretty rad to cruise around the suburbs, but we felt down right cool going to Salt Lake City every once and a while.  However, we were by no means rich, so once we got to the city, we found free things to do, like going to the pioneer museum:  

Remembering what awful drivers we were (yes, all of us were legitimately terrible drivers) is one of the few things that pains me about this time.  I recall rolling my eyes every time a driver's ed teacher would tell us "You think you're invincible, but you're not.  Slow down and wear your seat belt."  Without any irony, I recall thinking "I don't think I'm invincible, but I'm going to drive as fast as I want without my seat belt on.  Nothing bad is going to happen to me."  This feels especially stupid when I recall how many things we all rear-ended and drove head-on into, the number of speeding tickets we received, and the number of cars that were totalled (which is exactly what we did during our last girls night).  But we all lived through it, and for the most part, everyone seems to have slowed down, started checking their blind spots before making lane changes, and stopped backing over stuff.  For the most part.

After high school, we all generally stayed in northern Utah.  Some of us went to college, all but one got married and had children, and the Facebook became a thing.  It's been pretty great to keep track of these lovely ladies as our lives have become more hectic.  But it's even better when we get to catch up in person and reminisce about days gone by and laugh.  Oh so much laughing.  I don't think I'd have grown up to be the same person I am without my awesome friends.  And I look forward to several more decades full of memories and such.  Love you ladies.

My locker partner for many, may years, next to a locker.  

I thought duck face was a relatively new thing.  While I am ashamed of this face, it captures an important part of my adolescence - the movie theater.  

I just love this picture so much.