Working For The Weekend

I was having a conversation a few days ago with a friend about things we wanted to be when we were growing up.  A little later I said I had no idea what to write about this week for my blog.  Put two and two together and here we go:

In first grade I wanted to be a police officer like almost every six year old out there.  That went away after I started to realize what cops actually have to do.  Throughout the rest of elementary school, I thought it would be fun to be a teacher.  

In middle school, for some reason I really wanted to be a bartender.  I once again don't think I really knew what a bartender was but they did a lot of cool tricks on TV and it looked like you got to have fun every night.  The teacher thing popped back into my head a few times until seventh grade where I realized that most seventh graders are, to put it nicely, handfuls.

Around high school was when I started to really get into climbing.  After a trip outside to Smith Rock near Bend, OR, I thought I wanted to be an outdoor climbing guide.  I would be getting paid to go climbing everyday which would be pretty amazing.  That was until I actually kind of did this as a job and realized that the only people you get to climb with have no idea what they're doing which makes it not as fun.  I also thought it would be great to buy a van and just travel around the US going to different climbing spots.  This obviously wouldn't provide much income but it is still something I would like to do at some point.

The thought of owning my own climbing gym didn't really come into play until freshman year of college.  The idea had been floating around a little bit but it wasn't until sophomore year where I had to finally choose a major that I realized it could happen.  It costs a ton of money to open a climbing gym but as of now, that's my ultimate career goal.

Didn't have pictures related to this week so...here's some flowers in Austria.

And some more in Switzerland.

The creative juices were lacking this week and I have a bunch of work that needs to get done for next week.  Sorry about that.

That's all for now.  Bye.

Come Together

Last week on Saturday, I once again got to go up to Horsetooth.  Although I did climb a little, I was in guide mode most of the time to help out the three other people I went with who hadn't been before.  The weather was perfectly warm and overcast!

This isn't from Saturday but here's the reservoir.

On Sunday I went on the New Belgium tour again with roommate Heather and her parents.  That's always a good time.

 

 I stayed up Monday night to watch the lunar eclipse do its thing.  It was big...and red.

This weekend I played in a one day, 5v5, soccer tournament.  It was not organized very well and we ended up having to play three games in a row but it was a lot of fun!

In other news, social media exploded this week around Fort Collins over the announcement that the Westboro Baptist Church is going to be protesting CSU's graduation day in May.  In case you're unfamiliar with this lovely group, I'll let you look it up on your own seeing as I in no way want to help spread their "message" of complete ignorance and stupidity (but don't go on their websites since those generate ad money for them).  My graduation time is at 8 AM and they're scheduled to be here around 5 so unfortunately I don't get to be protested against.  Why are they protesting a college graduation? Great question!  Apparently they don't like that a lot of my college educated peers are accepting of a wide range of people and so aggressively telling us we're going to hell will change that. 

One of my favorite things about CSU is the sense of community.  The second people found out about this, almost everyone was posting positive messages and coming up with ways to support peoples' hard work in finishing school.  My favorite comment I saw on Facebook was "It's my personal belief that if the WBC is protesting you, you're doing something right."  Within hours of the announcement, a counter protest had been organized and over 1300 people have already said they're coming to support the graduates.  Students are also organizing donations for charities that the WBC protests so them coming is actually kind of a good thing.  There's a lot more I would love to say about the WBC but restraint is a virtue.

Lastly, seriously though you should go on that website I helped make for class.  Part of our grade is on how many people go on the site so...click away

That's all for now.  Bye.

I'll Be Missing You

I had this idea for my random other category to do a "featured friend" post some weeks because I clearly like alliteration.  I thought I would do the first one about one of oldest friends, Conner Firstman.

If I remember correctly, I met Conner in Kindergarten and we were buddies ever since.  From Cub Scouts in elementary school, unfortunate hairstyles in middle school, and joking our way through Journalism and Senior Inquiry in high school, Conner was one of the most upbeat people I have ever met.  Although we went to college in different states and had quite different experiences, when we were able to meet up on breaks, it only felt like we hadn't seen each other for a few days.

Stole this from his Facebook page but I thought it represented him well.

I'm a strong believer in remembering the good times of a person so here's a list of my top 5 favorite memories of Conner:

• Sleepovers at my house way back when where we tried to watch The 10th Kingdom and had no idea what was going on or why it was so long.  I don't think we figured out either.
• Playing rec soccer where I may have kicked the ball at him (accidentally) in a place guys don't want a soccer ball to be kicked.
• Me teaching Conner how to play the dot game and him beating me on the first round in health class.  I'm still a little upset about that.
• Every day in journalism, especially deadline days.
• Reciting Family Guy lines at inappropriate times.

The Dot Game

New Year 2013/2014. So glad this picture was taken!

I think that's really all that needs to be said.  Short and sweet.

Miss you buddy!

That's all for now.  Bye.

The Climb

Happy April!  As much as I would like this whole blog to be about traveling, unfortunately school creates a bit of a barrier.  Until I can do more travel posts, each week I'm going to write about anything noteworthy, a topic of interest, or random other.  

This week you get a topic of interest.  Unless we haven't had any interaction in the past 8ish years, you probably know that I kind of like rock climbing.  The first time I climbed was at a birthday party.  I don't remember the party very well but I do remember I had a blast!  Some time later my family joined an athletic club that had a climbing wall and I was hooked.  I got "recruited" to join the club's newly formed climbing team and competed with them for 3 years.  But how does a climbing competition work?  I get asked this a lot and in honor of the SCS Nationals competition today, here it is:

Let's break it down.  There are two main types of climbing competitions, bouldering and sport climbing.  Bouldering is climbing without ropes, staying fairly low to the ground whereas sport climbing is using ropes and going up much higher.  Generally, bouldering tends to be more strength and power based (not me) whereas sport climbing is more about endurance and balance (more me).

For USA Climbing competitions, climbers compete in a number of local competitions followed by regionals, divisionals, and nationals.  Most of these local competitions are three hours long.  Climbers walk around the climbing gym, pick a route to do, and try to get from the floor to the top without falling.  If a climber can do that, you earn the points for the route.  The harder the route, the more points it's worth.  If you're unfamiliar with routes but you've been to a climbing gym, all those colorful tape marks on the wall show you the route path.  A climber can only use the rocks that have the route's tape color.  Use anything else and it's considered "cheating" and counts as if they fell.  At the end of the 3 hours, a climber's top 5 completed routes make up their score for the competition.  The local competitions are typically pretty laid back.

For regionals, divisionals, and nationals, the competitions are a bit more intense.  Climbers are assigned a certain set of routes they must try.  Instead of having to get to the top without falling, for every rock (aka hold) a climber grabs, they get points.  The higher they get, the more points they earn.  These routes are designed to be incredibly hard and it's not uncommon for only one or two people to actually reach the top. In general, when climbers get to the gym, they are taken into an area called isolation (or "iso" if you want to use the lingo).  In iso, climbers cannot see anything else in the gym.  One at a time per age/gender group, a climber goes out to the main climbing area and sits in a chair facing the audience with their back to the climbing wall (this way the climber can't get any tips about how to climb the route from watching someone else).  This can be pretty stressful since you can hear the audience reacting to how the climber before you is doing but you're not allowed to watch.  When the timer begins, the climber turns around and attempts the route.  For sport climbing, the climber gets one go per route.  Bouldering tends to allow as many attempts as wanted within the time limit.

That's the basic outline of how climbing competitions work.  For sport climbing, there are speed competitions as well.  These are pretty self-explanatory.  Whoever makes it up the wall the fastest is the winner. 

I caught a ride up to Horsetooth last week and got do some bouldering at the reservoir.  I have been seriously slacking on my training and am definitely out of climbing shape but it's fun to mess around on the easier climbs and relax.  It's a bit hard to take pictures of yourself climbing so I've thrown in some of my favorites from the past.

Horsetooth Reservoir, Colorado 2012

Horsetooth Reservoir, Colorado 2012

Divisionals at ClubSport, Oregon 2010

Smith Rock, Oregon 2012

Three side notes:
1) Vlad put up his video of us talking about our spring break trip.  It's pretty entertaining if I do say so myself so go ahead and give it a watch.
2) I helped create the "travel" part of a website for my digital marketing class.  We'll be updating it with new things each week so you should take a gander.
3) If anyone has anything they want me to write about, let me know and I'll more than likely do it.  Suggestions are welcome!

That's all for now.  Bye.