Outside

The first outdoor climbing session of 2015 has happened!  After getting up around 7 and catching a train into Portland on Wednesday, I met up with two friends/coworkers and headed to Washington for a bit of cragging.  We headed to the Ozone area in the Columbia River Gorge, a wall I hadn't been to before.  None of us knew the area very well but there was a nice couple that recommended some routes to hop on.  The weather was perfectly overcast and although our hands got cold during climbs, the temperature was pleasant.

The routes were interesting and fairly high quality.  There were some fun moves on each route and the views from the top were incredible.  As you climbed above the trees, you could look down into the gorge.  Although there were a few chossy sections of rock, overall it was solid.

View from the top.  Very cool in person.

We all had to work that evening so had to head back to Portland earlier than we would have liked but it was a really good time.

That's all for now.  Bye.

Wanderlust

Oh boy has this been quite the exciting week!

After lots of research and running through different scenarios, I made it official...

I'm going to Australia!  

It's still a little over 4 months away but at the end of June, I'll be headed down under for over a month.  I'm insanely stoked! 

By the way, well done Australia on your visa process.  It took me less than 10 minutes to input my information and be issued my visa online.  I didn't need to get a visa for Ireland but I've watched other people go through the traditionally weeks long process for other countries and it did not look fun.   

If that wasn't exciting enough, I'm also headed to Colorado/Fort Collins at the beginning of April!  I was originally planning on going for my birthday but had to delay it a bit which actually ended up working out even better.  I can't wait to see people and have a great time in Fort Collins.  I know the CSU campus has changed quite a bit since I left so it will be interesting to see the differences.

Hope everyone had a good Valentine's Day.  This year, I'm in love with airplanes.

That's all for now.  Bye.

Paperback Writer

I've been writing these weekly posts for awhile now and thought I would share a few tips about blogging.

1) Set yourself a publishing day and stick with it.  I randomly chose Saturday and have been sticking to it.  Giving yourself a deadline pushes you to get it done.  I did this before with my Ireland blog and it worked just as well.

2) Think of ideas ahead of time.  If you set yourself a publishing day, try and have the post written at least a day before.  This is hard sometimes when you have no idea what you're going to write about.  I think my best quality posts were the ones I wrote in advanced because I got to continuously revise them until I was happy.  It's pretty obvious (or at least to me) which ones I wrote the day of and which ones I put more time into.

3) Do NOT use song titles for every post title.  It worked well for the first 3 or 4 and then I discovered how dumb of an idea that was (in case you didn't realize, all of my postings have song names as titles).

4) Once something is published, don't change it.  If I find a spelling error, I allow myself to fix it but other than that, I don't let myself add or remove content.  There are a ton of things I would like to add to old posts but I think you should stick with what you published.

5) Don't worry about the numbers.  I will admit, I look at the numbers every once in a while.  Blogger has built in Google Analytics which let you see things like how many people read each post and where in the world they read them from.  These days, people don't like to read.  If you want to see overinflated numbers, make videos (although if you do want numbers to be really high, post a group photo as the cover image).

6) Try to keep it personal without keeping it personal.  That's slightly confusing but I don't believe anything online should be used as a way to call someone out.  I'll be honest.  I had a few posts that called people out either subtly or directly that I ended up not publishing (although I did let a few subtle jabs slip in here and there).  After thinking about the situations in these posts, I realized nothing would be gained from putting personal issues out to the Internet.  At the same time, I try to be fairly real on here.  When I reread posts, I can tell how I was feeling during that time period.  Sometimes I have a not great week and I think it reflects in the tone.  To go along with this, try and keep it light.  I also had a few deleted posts about some heavier topics.  I try and keep these as light and entertaining as possible because people tend to respond better to that than intense topics.

Blogception

Hope everyone had a good week.

That's all for now.  Bye.

These Boots Are Made For [Climbing]

Heads up- this is a strange one.

Whilst showering last night, I wondered what in the world I would write about for today.  I reminisced about what I had done this past week and nothing was even remotely interesting.  The most exciting thing was ordering a new pair of climbing shoes.  Now that may not seem very interesting (and it's not) but it made me think about the past pairs I've owned.  I rounded up all the old shoes I could find and started to think about the significance of each pair.

Shoes

My first official pair was the blue 5.10s.  Technically my first pair was a red version of these my dad and I shared but these were the first to be just for me.  This is the pair where it all began.  I started competing in these shoes.  I was absolutely terrible and the shoes probably added to that but I can always look back at the photos of awkward 15 year old me barely off the ground wearing these at competitions.

I don't really remember this next pair at all.  Some sort of Evolvs.  I think the rubber blew through really fast.  In case you were wondering, duct tape is not a good replacement for climbing rubber.  I believe I climbed my first crack in these shoes.

Ah the Evolv Defys.  I wore this pair the first time I ever climbed outside.  My dad and I went to Smith and hired a guide for two days.  The second day we climbed up Monkey Face which was pretty neat.  This must have also been the pair I used my first sport climbing season for competitions. I wasn't able to find these but was able to snag this picture, once again, awkward 15 year old me barely off the ground.

When I was actually starting to do better in competitions, I upped the shoe game.  La Sportiva Miura VS were my next pair.  I believe when I got these they had just been released.  I remember at a competition in Tacoma a guy who worked at the gym came up to me and said he had been trying to get a pair but they were impossible to find.  Lucky me.  I loved these shoes.  I went to nationals in the first pair.  The second pair were the shoes I took to college/Colorado.

Pair #1

Pair #2

La Sportiva Solutions are my current shoes and the ones in the mail.  These shoes are amazing.  When my second Mirua VS pair broke, I went to the store to get a replacement.  I saw these and after trying them on, I was hooked.  The summer between sophomore and junior year when I was in pretty peak climbing shape, I climbed the hardest I ever have in the first pair of these shoes.  I climbed a certain difficulty on my first try which I had been trying to do for years which was very exciting.  The second pair I took to Dublin (which got used one time) and did some hard outdoor climbing with.

Pair 1

Pair 2

Now you know more about my shoes.  Bet you've always wanted to know more about that huh?  Also, I realized I've had a lot of climbing shoes.

 

That's all for now.  Bye.