Hello old love

Ahhh... Black Mtn. How I missed her so - like a long forgotten surrogate mother who enjoys kicking my ass just b/c I looked at her the wrong way.... err... *cough cough* never mind.

First trip back to Black Mtn this season - and what a great trip! This time around it was just Johnnie and myself meeting up with my buddy Jason and his crew at the bouldering Elysian fields. Notable areas that we played at: Visor area, NRA area, Boulder Basin and Lookout Tower area.

I was a little nervous about climbing this weekend since I've been taking a long hiatus to try and keep my shoulder from getting injured / aggravated so I slowly ramped up what I tried over the course of the weekend. Started up and sent some warm up boulder problems from V0 to V2. Once those seemed like they weren't hurting me, resent Visor Lip (after a really ugly couple of tries...). Overall the shoulder kept up nicely.

What made the trip so grand was that I was introduced new problems that I could try that didn't seem to hurt me (see previous post on how to entertain me...)!!! A problem that had vexed me for years, a relatively "easy" (note the quotes) variation of Can Opener was shown to me - a key kneebar and a good throw to a nice sidepull! It's getting me all goose bumpy thinking about it... On top of that, my friend Jason showed me a nice long fist to offwidth 15' roof crack that just works every single muscle in the human body. I've never fallen out of crack with every muscle tissue failing all at once near the lip of the crack. I think my eyebrow muscles were sore the next day...

Made a few attempts at Cracker Boy but to no avail. After three attempts, it started tweaking my shoulder and decided that I should try it after a nice long rehabilitation of the shoulder. Besides, I was destroyed the second day - not by being sore but by feeling like I had been hit by a case of mono. I blame the 2 dollar tijuana hooker in my dreams for that. Well, that or the lack of food and proper rest the day before.

I think the two highlights of the weekend was watching Johnnie climb and the In-and-Out stops. It's so nice to see Johnnie progressing so much in her climbing these days. It's infectious watching her make an extra move each time she gets on a problem. Not only that, but just seeing the difference from a year ago - i.e. how much more she trusts her footwork or how less nervous she is about the height of a boulder (i.e. on Pink Crack). Too bad the lethargy hit me hard on day #2, otherwise I might have been able to smile and show her. I'm sure she understands how happy I felt and that it was all because of the emergency botox injections I've been getting that I couldn't outwardly smile (I am from L.A. afterall... gotta do these things every once in a while...).

As for the In-and-Out stop offs, Johnnie and I were craving MEAT and CHEESE on Sunday night. So what better place to eat dinner than to get a 3 by 3 Protein Style with grilled onions with french fries and a large coke? :D The thing is, 20 miles down the road, I decided I was still hungry - so we stopped again and at a different In-and-Out and ordered a 2 by 2 Protein Style with grilled onions. Then I was sated for the eveing. Final tally: 5 by 5 with fries and a drink vs me... and I won.

I think my metabolism got kick started after climbing that weekend. What do you think?