Christmas in DC - Dec 24-26

Friday night: left work and drove to DC, Terence had a little Christmas gathering at his house for people who were in town. We watched Dosage III, I got inspired by Sharma on Witness the Fitness (V15), and went down to Terence's home bouldering wall and set a problem called Witness the Phatness. Little pinches, gastons, and underclings on the roof. It's pretty hard... like V4? Went to sleep way too late at night.

Saturday (Christmas Eve): picked up Eric at the metro, then went to Great Falls where we met up with Tom and Hung. We set up on Z-Slash (5.11c), something both Eric and I were working on. Eric finally got it clean, but I still couldn't pull the crux move. Tom left to meet up with some people in the gym, the rest of us moved to Aid Box and set up on PV Wall (5.12a). After falling off every move, and Eric hauling on the other end of the rope, I got to the top, totally beat. Eric and I went back to Terence's house to shower and change, then we drove to Hung's house for dinner with his family, and got totally lost along the way. The dinner was great, afterwards we exchanged gifts, I got Eric some wiregate biners, and he got me the Pilgrimage DVD. We watched the DVD until the metro stopped running, I drove Eric back to his apartment, then drove back to Terence's house to crash.

Sunday (Christmas Day): I woke up feeling like I got ran over by a truck, I was sore all over the place. Terence busied himself with church and visiting with friends, so I just parked myself on his couch down in the basement and played Final Fantasy X-2 on his playstation. Don't ever give me a video game, because my OCD nature made me very easily addicted to things. Terence came home in the evening and I haven't moved since parking myself on his couch. He drove me to Bombay Bistro and we met with Nelson, Sue, and Sue's sister for dinner.

Monday: Terence drove us to pick up Lara, then we drove to Whitetail Ski Resort to meet up with Nelson. Lara, Nelson, and myself were on snowboards, and Terence was on his ski blades. The weather was ok, a bit windy at times, and the snow was a little slushy. But we made some good runs down most of the trails on the mountain. By 3 o'clock or so we were all pretty tired, so we went back to DC, had dinner at Pho 47, then I got all my stuff from Terence's house and went home.

The End.

Warning: pointless random jumble of thoughts ahead

So it's official, I'll be leaving southern Maryland soon. I've had my airfare booked a long time ago, and gotten my visa to Australia. But the point of no return was when I handed my supervisor my resignation letter on Monday. My last day at work should be February 3rd. I gave them six weeks of notice, so we have plenty of time to get someone to replace me in the projects I'm involved with.

Right now I have a 3-month tourist visa to Australia, a round-trip ticket departing on March 1st and returning on May 31st. Other than that, everything else is pretty uncertain. I don't have a job lined up, I don't know where I will go after Australia, and worst of all, I don't have a lot of money saved up. By my estimate, I can survive on my savings for 6 months on a very low budget. Half of this time I'll be in Australia, so I only have about 3 to 4 months to move and find a job. After that I'll have to go stand at a freeway exit and hold a piece of cardboard in front of me.

Am I just crazy for quitting my job without any plan for the future? I know this is what my heart wants to do, but at the same time there's this little voice of "reasoning" in my head. To give up a well-paid job with good benefits, just for a hobby I'm at best average at, to a lot of people that's pretty dumb. For sure I am quitting my job just to climb more. I'm not going to try and be a guide or anything, but I do plan to move to a place with closer rocks and better weather for climbing.

People like stability. A routine. Going to work everyday, coming home to a familiar house, surrounding themselves with people they known. But some people also get bored with routine. They want adventures, try out new things, and visit new places. A change in a person's life brings excitement and also anxiety. I think that's what I have, anxiety. It's not knowing what the future holds for me. It's an exciting feeling, but also a scary feeling.

But this is what I want. I know I just can't settle into a normal 9-to-5 life, not yet anyway. I feel trapped, my mind is always elsewhere when I'm at work. I've always admired people who took the risk and didn't settle into the normal routine. Traveling around the world, working, studying abroad. I always wished I can do that as well. In a sense I did just that when I moved to the states. Maybe that's why I can't settle back into a "normal" life. What's "normal" is all relative anyway. But I'm not wishing anymore, wishing doesn't get you anywhere. I'm going to do it. It's scary, not knowing what's going to happen, but it's also a liberating feeling at the same time. It feels like the first time Ness and Mikl dragged me onto the intermediate skiing trail. Standing there looking down what seemed like an awfully steep slope, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. I'll probably fall down a lot along the way, but at the end, I think I'll enjoy the ride.

A weekend of snowboarding and bouldering - Dec 16-18

It was an activity-filled weekend.

On Thursday night I drove up to Gaithersburg and crashed on Nathan's futon.

Friday morning Nathan and I left Gaithersburg at 7 am for Whitetail. The roads were icy from the freezing rain the previous night, combined with the morning traffic, driving was slow. We got to Whitetail around 9 am, I went snowboarding while Nathan rented skis and took a ski class. We spent about seven and half hour skiing/snowboarding, the condition was pretty good compare to last year when I was snowboarding at night. Many of the blue trails had some pretty good packed powder. I was afraid that I might be rusty after a 9-month break, but it felt like I picked it up right where I left.

We drove back to Gaithersburg, showered and changed, then drove to Alexandria to a parting gathering for Karin, who is moving to Chicago for a new job and to be closer to her family. It was fun talking to everyone (or rather, listening to the conversation because I was pretty beat), before I knew it, it was 10 o'clock. Nathan and I left to get some rest for the next day.

On Saturday we left Gathersburg at 7:30, when we got to Whitetail the parking lot was a lot more filled than Friday. The slopes were slightly more icy than yesterday, we went down the blue slopes a few times until the chairlift was stuck shortly after noon. Then everyone started going on the green slope including us, so it was extra crowded. After a couple of hours though, people started to thin out, and they finally fixed the chairlift that served the blue slopes. Also at this point, I spotted Mike (who works on the base as well) skiing down from the chairlift. I met up with him, his son Nick (who has grown so much in a year), and Nick's friend Tim. I ran their last two runs down the blue slope with them. After they left, Nathan and I took two more runs down the blue, and decided it was time to go.

After getting some inexpensive Chinese food in Gaithersburg and watching the Apprentice on Nathan's TiVo, we picked up Eric from the metro station around 11 pm so he can crash in Nathan's apartment as well.

The 8 hours of sleep I had felt awfully short when I woke up at 7 on Sunday morning. We all got up and met up with Hung shortly after 7:30. After two and half hours of driving and $12.75 in tolls because we didn't (couldn't) get a ticket out of the ticket booth, we arrived at Governor Stables with about 3-4 inches of snow on the ground. But it was a clear day and the sun soon warmed everything up. We started in the Upstream area and just moved along the trail looking for stuff that were dry enough to climb. It was a good day for me, I went further on a few problems than I've ever did last winter. I also got spanked on a few hard problems, and Tut (V3) still eluded me. A key hold broke off this year, making a small right hand crimper even harder to hold on now. We also ran into some climbers from the St. Mary's College: Chris, Miranda, Dav, and Dean. They got to GS pretty late and I didn't see them until late in the afternoon. We all worked on Tut for a while, then everyone else in my group was done for the day, so we left while the college climbers went to look for a warm down problem.

A long drive back to Gaithersburg because we decided not to take the toll road again, then another long drive back to my home. Got back around 8:30, just enough time to unpack everything, lay stuff out to dry, and crawl into bed and fall asleep within minutes.

Eric warming up as best as he could on the Scoop (V1)

A hangboard, and some bouldering

I'm recovering from a cold, so I didn't do much this weekend. On Saturday Tre' helped me build a frame for my hangboard. I designed it to be a free-standing A frame, the major joints are held together with 1/2 inch hex bolts and nuts, so I can take this apart and put it together by myself. There are seven holes drilled into the support beams, that allows me to vary the angle of the hangboard between 90-degrees (vertical) to about 50-degrees. There is a small "foot board" on the bottom of the frame, I planned to put some screw-on jibs, I can use them to train body tension when the hangboard is at a low angle. Overall, I'm very pleased with how everything turned out.

My hangboard

On Sunday I went to DC so I could pick up an order from REI (the aforementioned jibs and some other stuff), but it's such a long drive just to go shopping, so I decided to check out some of the boulderig problems at Great Falls with Hung. There were not many, and they were all further down stream from the main climbing areas. The problems were ok, some were pretty fun, some were really hard, but all looked rarely climbed, and getting to some of them over snow and ice covered boulders was a little tricky.

Bouldering around Morgantown - Dec 2-3

My original plan for this weekend was to go to Franklin with Tre' for a little sport climbing. But we changed our mind at the last minute after checking the weather forecast (chance of snow Thursday night, cold and breezy on Friday). We decided to go to Coopers for some bouldering.

We woke up Friday morning to three inches of snow on the ground. "Chance" of snow, huh?


Season's Greetings

Tre' on Woody's Arete (V4)