I spent a bit tonight thinking about my few years overseas, teaching English and writing textbooks in South Korea. Don’t know why. On those occasional snowy spring nights the strangest things pop into your head, pleasantly unrelenting. I have been accused of nostalgia. I will not deny this. Touring my old sketches of life in … Read more
During a recent ClimbTalk show, I switched gears from talking training and competition to the chipping controversy that blew up a short while ago, out on the East Coast. Trainer and coach Kris Peters, and strongmo climbers Katie Peters, Alex Johnson, Nina Williams, Alex Biale, Courtney Sanders, and Daniel Woods joined Mike Brooks and I … Read more
Shitty jobs are for people who didn’t sprout from wealthy parents. Shitty jobs are saved for people like me, who came from lower middle class, spent tens of thousands on a university degree in Insane Optimism (English/Philosophy double major), and currently slog through life anchored to the helmeted, hulking, horrific Baby Huey of college debt. … Read more
Thursday , Early Afternoon Vail, Colorado’s very own 104.7 The Mile is the worst radio station on the planet. A tour: Jason Mraz, Counting Crows, Barenaked Ladies, and John Mayer, these all folded and spilled and puked one atop the other in the space of the winding Highway 24 leading out of Vail, through the … Read more
Post-Mortem Non-fiction writers, and this is just my reckoning, tend to lean towards the pitifully self-conscious. Like, self-absorbed with self-consciousness, a kind of ego scrubbing wherein nerve endings become acutely sensitive to stimuli directly involving their work, self-perception of work, and tertiary admonishment/praising of work. In simulacrum, this mess devolves into some sort of Tolkien-esque … Read more
Transcription. What a shitty word. I prefer Torture-scription. Or Tran-seething. It’s a loathsome act and I hate it, hate it, hate it. Yet, sometimes a ClimbTalk show comes along that you just have to transcribe, for a number of different reasons. Even if it does take 15 hours of play, rewind, write, rewind, write, stop, … Read more
ClimbTalk. A pretty simple idea, really. Mike Brooks, the host of five years, wrangles up guests both local and international. Every now and again I nab a guest, as well, but I only teamed up with Mike three years ago, so people still think I’m a janitor who sneaked into the studio. These folks, climbers … Read more
This year marked my tenth anniversary climbing trip to Bishop, California. Whoop-dee friggin’ ding dong, eh? Indeed. It occurs to me, however, that the state of my travel has changed over the years, if in no way other than the nomenclature I use to verbally categorize my celebration amongst the boulders and crags around Bishop. … Read more
There are so many alternative names for bouldering pads, all fantastic. Sketch pad, crash pad, elk saddle, backcountry massage mattress, volcano cork, marmot holster, rock toboggan, tree band aid. Surely, you’ve rejoindered some wheezing tourist with your own variation after being asked: “Say, now, what’s that there on yer back?” “It’s a parachute! See ya … Read more
Marcel Proust is a tough read, no doubt about it. That’s why I only read his quotes. “Every reader finds himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.” I so vividly recall … Read more