Excerpted from a recent SFGate article by Mark Morford:
Which naturally might raise the question, What, then, is actually protecting America’s freedom? What forces are guaranteeing free speech? Protecting your civil liberties?
It’s you. It’s millions of independent, resistant voices, in chat rooms and e-mail boxes and magazines and on Web sites all over the nation and the world.
It’s your voice. Use it.
Reyna Lillith Lambdin (a.k.a. “Critter”)
born 3.27.03 at 11:55 AM to Nate and Tracy Lambdin
8 lbs, 12 oz, 20 1/4″
Welcome to the world, girl!
No matter where I go, nowhere is the Pad Thai as good as at the tiny Bangkok Wok in Harrisburg, PA. And the Lemongrass soup? To die (or kill) for. I love everything about this place. I love all 9 tables wedged into what must be only 200 square feet. I love the chilly draft and the steamed-up windows in the winter. I love the that you can’t smoke in there. I love that the capital lunch crowd has almost always run back to their desks by one, leaving me alone for a nice, quiet meal. I love the little variations in the food from visit to visit — proof that my grub is custom built every time — and the sound of the wok sizzling almost immediately after I order.
Climbing is not a competitive sport for me. I do it because it’s fun. I climb because climbers are generally fun people and I like to hang out with them. But mostly I do it because it challenges my brain as well as my body—engages my entire being. I climb because, for the hours I’m climbing, nothing else in the world exists.
But sometimes you just gotta see how you stack up. And after an enlightening evening at the gym last week where I discovered I was bouldering V5 and 5.11a wasn’t out of my reach on a top rope, I decided to give it a shot and make the Philly Rock Gym’s Midnight Burn boulder comp my competitive climbing debut.
I had no idea what to expect, so I figured I’d just show up, pull down, have fun and not worry about the score. I had a blast. And ended up pulling down way harder than I expected—placed 19th out of the 59 guys in my category.
Important stats:
Number of times I got spit off a problem: many.
Number of times that damn thing with the white tape tossed me off on my ass: 4
Number of times that white thing tossed me on my ass hard enough to hear my spine compress: 1 (That’s gonna really hurt tomorrow…)
Number of times the afforementioned white monstrosity landed me on my ass in such a manner to jangle the jewels: 1 (Ouchie.)
Shortly after the jewels incident, I decided a break was in order. And then went on to attempt and send a different problem with a higher point value so it didn’t make sense to go back and finish that white thing. It’s not like I was scared of it, okay? It just wasn’t worth enough points. Really.
It was totally cool having Mom and Dad show up to “see what all this climbing business is about.” (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!) Dad brough his digicam and I charged him with getting a shot of me bailing off a problem in the most ungainly fashion possible. This is all he came up with. I guess he missed the ball-buster and the spine-jangler. No great loss, I suppose.
He did get some really cool shots of my favorite problem there, a mind-teaser/dyno combination. Also known as the XX. Here’s a little photo essay:
Me fondling the start hold. Mmm, pink…
Slap a hand on the arete, rearrange the feet, pop up and grab… nothing. Insert another time or two flailing at that gigantic sloper end hold. Okay, flailing is just not working. It’s time to get serious. Let’s take off the hat.
Nope, that didn’t work, either. Flail some more. Finally decide to get really serious. Off comes the sweater. And while we’re at it, maybe we should use some basic climbing technique: opposition.
One hand on the sloper, one hand slapping the arete… gotcha! Easy as pinching a mountain.
Dad got some other cool pics. Maybe I’ll post a few tomorrow. Right now, my gravity-addled body needs some pillow time.
Tinywords.com is a tiny web site that will dilligently send a tiny haiku to you via email every afternoon. Generally, I delete them. But this one made me giggle, so I had to stay it’s execution.
clipping toenails -
each one chooses
a new direction-Edmund Hardy