Sugar

My diet has been terrible lately. Seriously, I have been eating like a twelve year old boy. I'm not sure why I have been doing so bad, but I am going to mend my evil ways. I am going on another sugar fast. I am going to start on May 1st (have to help finish off all the Easter candy laying around the house.) Steve is going to do it with me, and any of you who want to join in please feel free. We can be our own little support group. I have my own rules so make your own. Some of mine include; dessert once a week, fruit doesn't count as sugar, sugar in regular food doesn't count, and basically I just want to cut out the extra sugar I really don't need to eat. I am just trying some things so I can quit loosing the same seven pounds over and over. Last time I lost five pounds in a month without changing anything else. Maybe next I will work on portion control. One thing at a time. Someday I hope to have a flat stomach like Kent's.

Amy's Birthday

Saturday was Amy's birthday. She found a 5k that she wanted to do. Amy, Philip, and I all signed up and ran. Amy came in first in her age group.

There she is finishing in 23 minutes and change.

Philip Ran just over 23 minutes. I ran 24:06. I was hoping to be able to just run my standard 24 minutes that I can almost always run even when I am not trained up, but was disappointed when I saw how close I was to going under 24. I should have pushed harder. I had more in the tank, but was leery of going to hard after several weeks of very spotting running.

Amy got this cool shirt. She will have to wear it next year at this race to defend her age group champion title. This is the first time she has ever legitimately beat me at any distance. I must be getting old.

Samson and Delieback 5.9 **

Saturday Ryan and I went up the mountain to do some trad climbing. We went to Green Slabs so Ryan could get in a couple of leads that he had not gotten to do the week before we went to Red Rocks. He lead Banana Cake, and Here and Now. I got to lead Samson and Delieback. It is a 5.9 two star climb. It really was a fun climb. The only thing that kept it from getting all the stars is the best part of the climb, the lie back, was only about two moves. It was worth doing the whole climb just for those two moves. Afterward, we headed up to Windy Point to climb Slippery when wet. I hadn't lead it yet, and it is considered a Tucson classic. All in all it was probably my best day of climbing in at least a week.

Red Rocks

While in Vegas I was forced to take in the sights. I said it, and then heard it from at least two other people independent of my saying it. "The Vegas strip is everything that is wrong with America." It was interesting to see, but I don't feel the need to go back for anything but the climbing. I really hated the cigarette smoke. On our last night we ate at an Irish restaurant in NY NY called Nine Fine Irishmen. The food was awesome, and the company was even better. They also had a very good Irish band that was fun to listen to.

We got to see the Desert Bighorn Sheep. I have seen sheep in the Catalinas, the Silverbells, and now in Red Rocks. It is always a treat for me to get to see them.

I have been saying that climbing Crimson Chrysalis was the highlight of my trip, and it was very good, but the best part of the trip was the good people that I went with. CC is on the far right of the rock with the red cap. It is 960 feet tall, and 9 pitches long.

This is from the top of the third pitch. It really was an adventure. We had at least two other parties bail off below us. It can be intimidating.

Here is Mike on top. 960' off the ground. It was a hard won ascent. We got up with the alarm at 4:00 am. We parked outside the gates of the park because it doesn't open until 6:00, and we wanted to be the first on the route. The approach is steep. At one point we had about forty yards to get to the base of the climb, but I had to do it in three pushes. (Before you judge me please know that I had started to get sick on Sunday, and this was Tuesday. I tried to pretend that I wasn't sick because I didn't want to ruin anyone's trip. I had a splitting headache though.)

Mike lead the first pitch at 7:30, and we swung leads from there. It was awesome leading 100+ foot pitches. What wasn't as awesome was that every pitch ended in a hanging belay. When we topped out we hung out for a few minutes, and then started the long process of rapping back down the way we came. I think it took us as long to rapp off as it did to climb the route. Mike tied our backed up European Death Knot, and we proceeded to get our rope stuck, (but not irretrievably so), on just about every pitch. The route is famous for trying to hang on to your ropes. It is also famous for having to rapp straight down the route. It is hard not to hit the party climbing behind you with your ropes. It requires good communication, and a little diplomacy. Our rope hit the ground at 5:20 pm. We threw our hands in the air and cheered like two men who had just received a call from the Governor. We knew we would live, not loose a rope, and have a great story to tell.