Far Out Son of Lung...

Weekend Review

Friday night was pretty low key. Laundry, Dark Cloud 2, go to bed early. With the whole Rita thing looming in the background I figured Saturday would brings lots of wind and some afternoon rain. As such, I decided to forego the road ride at RBM and just stick to the mountain bike. I prepped my water and food so I'd have one less thing to think about in the AM, and wanted enough water to last me multiple laps.



Got up Saturday morning to... what else? Partial sun and very high clouds, but no thunderheads. Time to go ride! I got to the trail around 9 or 9:30 and there was a small crowd in the parking lot. Not much to write home about and it would thicken and thin throughout the day.

As with Thursday night my first lap was a bit slow and awkward. I felt real good, but I needed to work through the cobwebs and get my mind on track if I was going to be riding hard through the narrow single-track of LB Houston. The trail is not difficult in a technical sense, seeing as how it is flat, smooth and very fast. The hard part is ducking around the myriad of trees and making all the tight corners without losing the front tire on the hard pack. I find myself ducking shoulders and my head as I wind through, getting as close as possible and sometimes grazing the trees in an effort to straighten the line and carry more speed. The front wheel likes to slide on the fastest corners, but not enough that a quick correction doesn't pull the bike back in line.

My second and third lap were much better and much faster than the first, primarily because I was hunting down some other riders. MTB is difficult in that you are also riding alone, as opposed to in a pack. If your pace drops, it is on you alone to pick it back up and keep pushing. Riding road is a little easier to push the pace because you have other people to gauge off of as well as having the urge to bridge gaps and chase break-aways.

Lap four went just as well as the first three but I was getting brain tired and started making mistakes. After the lap I decided to pack it up and head to the office, only a mile away, to look at the weather and see what the dark clouds had in store for the PM. With everything looking clear and my legs recovering from the morning ride, I headed back to LB Houston for two additional laps. Both laps felt great and I could easily have done two more, but a few things stopped me.

1) Reserve strength for Sunday rock climbing
2) Met a girl in the parking lot that I might ride with later this week



S is for Sunday and Stoneworks.
Eric came out and we headed to the rock gym around noon-thirty. After a quick warm up on the boulders we hit some green routes (easy) downstairs so we could remember what we were doing. Eric was having an off day, which sucked because that meant he was climbing poorly and was pissed off about it all day... but I was doing well and climbing efficiently. I hit blue (harder) routes the rest of the day and conquered the second bane of my existence, route #51.

51 is upstairs and runs up silo cleavage. A well-earned name because the rounded edges are on your left and right, and you work both walls as well as the middle. The climb is long for indoor, around 80 feet and involves a lot of gaps where there are a decided lack of holds. Given my lack of stature, I am typically left with choices such as:
1) Dyno for a small hold and pray I can hang on
2) Test my flexibility by puting my feet on the same holds I am currently using for my hands
3) Toe hooking and doing things I consider unnatural for the human body

It is, to say the least, a real workout. Add to that the heat as you get up in the silo and I was leaving all kinds of sweaty salt deposits on the walls as I climbed, and was dripping sweaty onto the carpet below. Eric said it was a little gross, but fun to watch none-the-less. My palms were sweating so much I needed to chalk constantly and try to keep the holds from getting too snotty, which is never fun because it robs that confidence inspring realization that, in fact, you can hang on to something that is the thickness of a pencil.

By the end of the day I had also climbed the infamous "highest indoor climb in the United States" or whatever it is, at a whopping 110 ft. It is a blue route, but only because it makes you so damn tired. Most of the holds are huge jugs, handles and cups, with a few slopers thrown in for good measure. The route also curves about 25 feet up so you have to traverse just a tad, but this is not an issue. By the time you reach the top, which is literally the roof of the silo, you are pretty well trashed and ready for the long ride back to the floor of the silo.

Based on how I feel after that climb, I cannot imagine how people climb outdoor, pitch after pitch (I a told that a pitch is 120 ft or so) on big wall climbs or even bolted sport routes. The distance you climb and the available holds (or lack thereof) blows me away.

Fara never turned up. Too bad, really. I spoke to her on the phone Friday evening and she sounded like she had a ton of energy, probably would have been fun to meet and spend a little time with climbing, but she and her friends were out too late on Saturday night and didn't feel like climbing. Then, she was back off to Phoenix. I never really expected to meet her, but had still hoped to do so before she left town. I can't tell if she'll be another Lori, that type of connection may only come along once in a lifetime.

posted by GreSam @ 11:31