Bouncing Marty

Aah. (relieved sigh)

For those of you who don’t know, my family is going to Akumal for Christmas! I CAN’T WAIT. Luckily, I don’t have to wait much longer. I leave Saturday morning, and we are staying until the 30th of December. Eight days of sunshine, snorkeling, awesome fishing, and good family times.

This is where we are staying…looks rough eh? I’m so stoked! Mollie is in North Carolina right now, and isn’t able to come along on this one unfortunately. She’s frantically planning a wedding however!

So, if you need anything from me next week, you’ll know where to find me. Whoohoo!

(Details on engagement stories, rings, luv amd mawiagge will have to wait until January!)

Mollie and I are engaged! Story and news to follow….

Brian Burgess made the long drive up to Vegas to try to repeat the funsies that we had a couple months ago climbing Sour Mash. We felt like we wanted to find something with similar difficulty, but with a little more elevation gain, so we headed towards Oak Creek Canyon, home of some of the bigger Redrocks faces. Black Orpheus is 1,500ft of roped climbing, with another 600ft of 4th and 5th class scrambling up slab at the base. The guide books usually list it at 12 pitches. A worthy outing for a short, cold December day.

We were first in line at the gate at 6:00am, hiking up the trailhead at 6:20am, and at the base of the slab at 7:20am. At 8:10am we roped up and began the fun. We split the climb into two big blocks, and I was up first. Two big pitches of super fun 5.7-5.9 dehedral, followed by one 300ft pitch of simul-climbing 5.0-5.6ish stuff.

This was both of our intro to simul-climbing. Its going to take some working to get the bugs out, but man its fast. What would have taken us at least a couple of hours ended up only being about 50 minutes or so. Amazing. Takes a good lead head for both people though, as its absolutely a no fall situation.

Good times. The big simul pitch was the end of my block, and Brian took the lead for the serious stuff. We were just approaching the giant right facing corner that you can see from the big route photo. By this time, we were both having a blast, making good time, and loving the huge exposure.

The top two pitches had some of the cleanest crack climbing I have ever seen. Awesome. Well worth the thousand foot approach! The crux of the climb was at the beginning of our 6th pitch, with a pumpy move off of two finger lock-ish crack holds. They felt brutally hard to me. I seem to be doing fine on climbs where the cruxy stuff is technique based, but when it the tough stuff is pure pumping, I suffer. More running I guess!

We finished up some exciting 5.6 slab climbing, and topped out at about 1:30pm. For sure the fastest I’ve ever covered 2,100ft! Burgess smokes up stuff, its awesome! The top of the climb has a sweet horn with some good exposure that was begging for a little Bull Ridin’ fun.

The decent was 2 big rappels, and a whole lot of slab downclimbing. I made the mistake of leaving my approach shoes on the ground below, so I suffered rather miserably for 3 hours of smashing my toes into my climbing shoes. Ouch! We hit our packs at 4:30, and were back at the car just after 5:00pm. Good times!

Thanks again for coming out Brian!

I’ve posted before about driving in Vegas. I still can’t believe the things that I see on the road every day. I’ve never lived somewhere where such crazy things happen every day, just driving around. Here’s some photos of today, on the way to my jobsite.

Brand new Jaguar XK…these guys are selling right around 90k. I liked the looks of it, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered the photo. Jags have come a long way!

This character I see everywhere. He works close to my office, and I see his truck sitting on its rails daily. I have yet to see it drive around…but its gotta be the ‘lowest’ vehicle I’ve ever seen. He has a bed for it, but hardly ever drives around with it on. Gotta love the green shag carpet interior as well! Maybe I should put some airbags in the land cruiser….

Apparently if you lift your Hummer, and get some hideous custom paint/chrome accessories put on, you can park anywhere you choose.

And then there’s this guy. He parks out front of the Venetian fairly regularly. Well…I take it back, I’m sure someone parks it for him. He just gets out and starts spending money. Hard to tell, but it looks like a Rolls Royce Phantom to me. The 06’s were going for $328,000 or so. I wonder if he needs a door ding….

One more. It snowed in Vegas over the weekend! Well, ok. It didn’t snow in town, but just above Redrocks. Looks like the snow line over the weekend was right around 8,000ft in the mountains to the West of town. Skiing season is coming!

I’ve been harassing Eric Byers and his girlfriend Rebekah to come to town for some Vegas fun for quite some time now. Rebecca works a tough schedule for the airlines, but we both lucked out with a free weekend in December, so up they came.

The primary event of the weekend involed a Saturday night Double Date on the town. Our eatery of choice was the Hash House A Go Go. They pride themselves on having meals large enough to subdue even the most emaciated customers.

Notice the size of the plate above. Mollie and I shared some chicken and waffles, while Byers and Rebekah worked over an equally huge pasta dish. We’ve been to the Hash House before, and the experience is always enjoyable. I highly recommend finding one in your town (if you live in Vegas or San Diego that is). If you do go, plan on sharing a meal. Get an appetizer. Get a dessert. Its worth it just to see what kind of of mixing bowl your next course will come out in.

Well fed and rather satisfied, we headed to the Treasure Island Casino to watch Mystere. There are no less than six Cirque du Soleil shows playing in Vegas right now. I have had the pleasure of seeing three of these so far (La Reve, Ka, and now Mystere), and they have yet to disappoint. All three shows were both wonderfully different, but still shared many of the same modernesque/artsy/fantastic/spectacular elements. They are all colorful, captivating, and suprisingly humourous. I find them intriguing, and worth the hefty price tag. I’m glad I got to share this one with Byers and Rebecca, it was a great evening! Thanks for coming out you guys!

Picture stolen from Eric Byers…. Find him HERE.

Complete and discustingly wonderful failure. We caved. We quit.

Apparently two days of food temptation is all that I can handle. I came home from work yesterday feeling rather exhausted, grumpy, and with a headache that was demanding some serious attention. I was whole heartedly ready to make the best of the situation, thinking of all kinds of interesting ways to make onions, cucumber, grean beans, corn, and other greenery into a marvelous, barely edible feast.

Then Mollie came over. “If you want to quit, I’m totally done with this fast.” She opened the door to the temptation, and that temptation was in the form of sugary pancakes, waffles, and all things breakfast goodness. The Original Pancake House was just too much to resist.

We were starving, and had all kinds of dreams of apple pancakes and hashbrowns and bacon and eggs and waffles and syrup and…well…you get the idea.

In some sick twist of fate, we drove for 30 minutes to the OPH. Closed…NOOOO! So we drove to another one, 25 minuted down the road. “This one can’t be closed, its like the ORIGINAL pancake house.” Closed….NOOOO! Our hearts sunk. The only other OPH that we knew of was in the Green Valley Ranch casino, another 30 minutes of driving. We flirted with other meal options. IHOP, Blue Berry Hill Family Restaurant, Chili’s…none of them had the required decadence of the OPH, so we had to continue on.

We stumbled into the casino at 7pm, after driving in vain for over an hour. Casino’s never close, neither should restaurants in casinos. EXCEPT FOR THE ORIGINAL PANCAKE HOUSE WHICH CLOSES FOR CLEANING OR SOMETHING RIDICULOUS AT 7PM ON TUESDAY NIGHTS.

My dream of apple pancakes was completely distroyed. We had to eat something. The next best option was the Grande Cafe’, which actually has reasonably good food. We struggled through a sea of slot machines, plopped into a booth in the Cafe’, and proceeded to consume everything edible that was presented to us.

I had chicken nachos. Mollie had a pecan waffle. We both had Cokes. I’m so ashamed. But oh me oh my it was good. I think eating ruffage for 2 days may be worth the satisfaction that I gained from that normally ordinary meal. So much for fasting!

What did I gain from my fast…we made it for two days, eating only fruits and vegetables. I do feel like my digestive system is ‘lighter’ somehow, and I’m sure I lost a pound or two over the last 48 hours. Today I feel positively normal, rather energized from my nachos and cheese/yogurt/fruit/coffee breakfast this morning. I do think I would do it again.

Maybe next time I’ll shoot for 3 days!

DAY TWO - All vegetables. You are encouraged to eat until you are stuffed with all the raw or cooked vegetables of your choice. There is no limit on the amount or type. For your complex carbohydrate, you will start day two with a large boiled potato for breakfast. You may top the potato with one pat of butter.

So far so good. Mollie and I made it through the night by having some microwave’d apples (suprisingly good), and a big fruit-only smoothie from Whole Foods. Bowels were as usual yesterday. I discussed fasting briefly with Toby, and he recommended I try some Senna Tea in the evenings to help loosen things up even more. I found some tea called ‘Smooth Move’ - how appropriate….

The directions clearly state that after 8-12 hours of consuming this wonderful substance, an epic bowel movement is to occur. They had the right idea, but falsified some information. As I was forced awake at 1:30AM, barely containing the oncoming poo, I realized they had should adjust their hours to somewhere between 5-6 hours time. Possibly the fruit only diet had sped things up. Whatever’s in that tea apparently works.

I ate my potato first thing this morning, and my growling stomach was grateful for the added calories. If only it knew what it had coming in the next couple days…. As of lunchtime today, I’ve consumed several pounds of carrots, and a big bowl of cooked okra and corn. Gotta love it. I’m still feeling fairly well. I woke up this morning rather dehidrated, and that’s been contributing to a mild headache that’s plagued me most of the day.

Looks like more of the same tomorrow…minus the potato. Whooeee!

DAY ONE - You are preparing your system for the upcoming program. Your only source of nutrition is fresh or canned fruits. Fruits are nature’s perfect food. They provide everything that you could possibly want to sustain life except total balance and variety.

I’ve never done a health food fast, but I’ve heard a lot about them from some of my more ‘health conscious’ friends. I remember talking to Matt and Sally about fruit diet ‘cleansings’, and stuff as drastic as living off of lemonaid, syrup and pepper for longer than a week from Toby. They all reported positive affects and recommended that I participate in something similar.

I’m rarely one to back down from anything that involves excrement or digestive processes, so when Mollie brought up the idea of doing a health fast, it seemed like a natural thing to do. I haven’t been able to torture myself with any grueling backpacking or skiing lately, so I might as well suffer a little from starvation right? Mollie has a friend at work who recommended a certain fast found at this website:

http://www.ruchihealth.com/health/diet_program.htm

So here I am in the middle of day 1. Only fruit. No bananas. Must drink 10 glasses (not cups, glasses) of water every day. For breakfast I had plenty of watermelon, honeydew, an apple, shortly followed by an orange. As of 4pm, I’ve lost count of how many apples I’ve consumed, something around 4 or 5 today. I’m out of fruit at work, and am not really looking forward to dinner. I’m rather suprised how much fruit you must consume to make up the caloric content of my usual awful diet.

We are allowed coffees and black teas, a minor bit of spices…and that’s about it besides the ‘menu’ of the day. So far I feel hungry, but not aweful. When I eat some fruit I very quickly feel energized, but it seems to disappear just as fast, and is replaced by mild but nagging hunger. Bring on the misery….

Last night I was sitting just under 199lbs.  Heaviest I’ve been since college.

Tomorrow is Vegetable day.

Mollie and I took the long flight to NC for Thanksgiving. For some reason, the last two years I have had an awful time traveling over the holidays, and this time wasn’t an exception. We got to the airport around noon, then spent the next 12 hours trying to get to the East Coast. After some quality time in the Philadelphia airport, we arrived in Greensboro, NC at 3AM, Thanksgiving day.

We had no less than four giant holiday meals over 3 days time. By Sunday, we both had absolutely had our fill of all things Turkey/Gravy/Sweet Potato. Luckily for me, my sister lives about an hour and a half away from Mollie’s folks, so I got to spend some quality time with her as well.

I somehow convinced the Stewart Clan to take a classic Swenson Shot with me!

Good times, Happy Holidays!