Sharma lecture aftermath

Well, I guess among other things the main reason why you attend a professional climber´s slideshow is that you want to be inspired in some way. Maybe you want to get back in the game and just need a push, maybe you want to refocus, maybe you just want to see nice pictures and maybe, even though that seems a little bit stalker to me, you just want to be in the same room with the person. Due to the fact that I´m straight, the final option is out of commission in my case, at least as long as the slideshow is done by Chris Sharma (who didn´t bring his girlfriend). That leaves inspiration.

Well, I have to say that I´m very psyched on route climbing again after last night. I have also come to terms with 2008, a year I considered largely wasted in terms of climbing.

I was, and there´s not going to be any sugarcoating in this case, just plain overweight in 2008. Not on a general basis but as a climber. But I just wasn´t as psyched on climbing then as I am now. I had put up tons of problems in 2007 and felt drained. I just wanted some chocolate cake! I needed some time to refocus and actually learned a lot more about myself as a climber and about climbing itself that year. Sometimes, failure will teach you better lessons than a win might have, regardless of its size. I finally got my coaching license, refocused and came back psyched for 2009. 2009 brought the Valley, Bishop and the US. Psyche back on, more than ever before. I have grown as a person. For the first time in my life, I think that I have a clear picture of what I want to do this year...not only in terms of climbing.

Psyche is high on routes after last night. I still predominately boulder and train very little endurance. Bouldering always has been playful for me. Route climbing is training. Still, train I will. Route climb I will. It´s not that I´m actually starting to train according to a plan. I don´t want my climbing to be training. If climbing a lot correlates with training, well, that´s the way it is and I like that.
My focus this year is going to be route climbing. Gorges du Tarn, here I come! I have a project and after listening to Sharma talking about bolting I really want to bolt this year! I have been focusing on first ascents of boulder problems for some time...the process of doing first ascents is beyond doubt the most rad thing about climbing. Especially Chris´s Spain pictures got me really psyched on finding some rock and bolt it! There is an abundance of gritty, no-good-to-climb-on rock around, there needs to be some rock that deserves to be cleaned and bolted. Steinplatte is high on my list. A couple of years ago, me and Shorty bolted a pretty visionary line and then forgot about it. I´ll return as soon as the snow has melted!

The show bringing these realizations to the surface obviously made it a success! I guess that some people in the audience were a little disappointed, Chris Sharma is a shy guy and way behind the pros of self marketing like Alex Huber in terms of slide show management and plot scheming. You can almost sense that he still feels a little
awkward speaking in front of a 400 people crowd eying him with admiring eyes. But that´s just what he is. He´s a human being after all. If you listened carefully to what he had to say, there was so much to learn or to agree with.

Queued up like the rest of the bunch. Had my beanie signed. There´s just things you´re supposed to do, if you attend the world´s best climbers slide show...

Out to cure my sinusitis. Weather forecast for tomorrow doesn´t look as good as it looked yesterday any more, still there is hope.

Take care everybody!

Family visit and skiing!

Last weekend, my family, that is, a part of, came to see me and join me in some rad skiing. Loads of fun! My dad and my bro Shorty camped out at my flat for a couple of days and the action was on. We went to Fieberbrunn

www.schneedorado.at

for the first day, just to find out there was a Big Mountain contest going on. Sweet watching the pros do their thing!
We finally found a way into the couloirs, meaning that we have entered a whole new level in Fieberbrunn Big Mountain riding! So many powdery possibilities!
I can still ski! After almost two years of not skiing due to that heinous knee injury I contracted last year, things were pretty dope! I don´t have any stamina and my thighs are on fire after skiing for some 200 metres without taking a break (especially in powder, I last longer on track;) but it was some sick fun! Pics are to come, as soon as I´ve been mailed them.
Sunday wasn´t as good but still very nice. I just like Fieberbrunn a lot better than Steinplatte.
Totally done, Shorty and me headed to the gym to get some climbing on Monday. He crushes! Can´t wait for this spring, there´s gonna be some Frankenjura cragging and that´s gonna be amazing!
Sharma slideshow tonight! I´m very psyched to be able to see this lecture and I have been looking forward to it for days. Chris Sharma is the most influential and visionary sport climber right now (in my understanding) and I´m hoping that tonight is gonna be inspirational. My sinusitis is a lot better today, with enough hydration and some hot lime juice, things might get better right on time for the weekend.
Inspired by my friend Em, who is going to hike the Appalachian Trail this spring/summer I have also been thinking about crossing the Alps hiking the past days. It´s something my dad has been dreaming of for quite some time, so I might break this proposal to him and see how he takes it...

Out!

No US and possibilities...

There will be no US trip...that is, I postponed the trip. The reason is pretty obvious, still it shall remain a matter not made public. Decency is forbidding this, at least following my standards. In the end I asked my good friend Emily for advice and took it. Even though I was incredibly psyched to see her (she is an amazing and inspiring person, if only there were more like her) and her dog Belle, which I love as much as my own dog, it just didn´t make sense.
She will go on a hike of the Appalachian Trail and after checking out some pics, I gotta say, damn, that´s gonna be an amazing hike! Psyched for you Em!

I was also looking forward to seeing Damian and Jeffie (as much as I was looking forward to seeing Em) but things were not meant to be. Right now I have postponed the stay until Sept/Oct, that´s after my exams are over (partly), so this will be some reward for all the chores I´ll have to go through. I guess it will also be something that will cheer me up when I´m fed up with reading through developmental psychology books! I´m planning a roadtrip! Favorite kind of holiday, San Fran to Yosemite to Bishop to RMNP/Mt Evans to Boulder/Co and Amtrak back to San Fran...sounds good, heh?

Not going to the US, I´m already busy planning where to go this spring. Right now, things are looking Ticino, the Swiss/Italian boulder mecca of riverbed bouldering, sun and slopey problems on bomber granite...if the Lowell brothers, Dave Graham and Co go there on a regular basis, things can´t be bad:)

This weekend is gonna bring skiing! First time skiing after nearly two years of break, last year I couldn´t ski at all due to a knee injury inflicted during belaying...tomorrow morning I´ll find out if I can still ski...

Pics to come...

US zoom in...

I`m making lots and lots of money right now! Thanks to the ongoing sportclimbing boom in Germany (something I have very mixed feelings to) I get to do loads of courses, which of course means that I´ll get a massive paycheck at the end of January! That being, I´ll buy my ticket at the beginning of February...second Cali trip March/April! Can´t believe how psyched I am! There is gonna be loads of fun! I´m gonna see Jeffie, Damian, Emily, Belle and all the great people that made my first stay such a fun time. I can only hope that they will come to Germany sometime, so that I can show them my areas, my place and give back some hospitality. Emily is gonna go on a slackline trip in July/August, something that I really look forward to!
I gotta admit, I´m already plotting and pondering places to show her during her time in Germany. Fortunately I´ll have wheels by then, so I can drive places! That so boosts my possibilities! Northern Italy, Lago di Garda, Verona...all´s within reach...tufa climbing, pasta...ME GUSTA!

Tonight bouldering with Stephan, Phil, Rob, Mascht...damn! Why are there NO/ZERO/NADA/ZIP cute climber girls in Germany??? I´m confused...

The more things change...

Well, right now I´m just tired, bored and uninspired. My last post, very upbeat and positive. Well, things took a nasty turn over Christmas. Someone broke his foot during a lead climbing class I was giving on the 26th and 27th! That was a blow. I know that this can happen all the time, I know. It has never happened to me before though, so dealing with this has kept my mind whirling around the past days. Since stress is no good for your immune system, I´m also still battleing that heinous cold/full blown sinusitis that I contracted about three weeks ago. This of course meant: no sking with my dad, no climbing since Dec. the 20th and also no bouldering with my bros right now. All I can do is sit around in our living room, gulp down mega ammounts of water and hope for my medication to seriously kick in.

The lead climbing class accident fortunately went pretty smoothly in its aftermath, so far there hasn´t been a fight with insurance companies, maybe because both S. and his wife E. are incredibly nice and cool about the whole accident and didn´t put a single bit of blame on me... but who know´s what is to come. I have always been a rather worried person, so my tendency is to fear for the worse, which is stupid, I know, but I wish some of my Buddhist calmness would stay in moments when it´s actually needed.

Being at home is fun, admitted, but all I wish for right now is this freaking cold to pass, I so need to climb again. It´s the only thing that takes my mind of whatever is troubling me, so not being able to focus all my frustration on some boulders and therefore channeling the energy into something positive is freaking me out.

Off to the vet with the dog and the cat...rabis shot´s are due...

Out...hopefully my next post will be positive again!

Pictures of 2009

 









Well, it´s hard. There are sooo many...but I´ll try...2009´s finest and most meaningful to me...

Restrospective: 2009

Well, seems like another year is coming closer to its end. I have to say that it has turned to be an amazing year on the whole, especially the second half of the year with my Intercultural Proj. stay in San Francisco was just rad. I remember sitting in front of my laptop about 355 days ago, super annoyed because a Zillertal trip had just been cancelled and I had been looking forward to it. I remember writing that this was hopefully not the direction things were intending to take and for a while, it seemed as if they wanted to. My original plan of visiting San Francisco at the end of February came to an abrupt end when I found out that I wouldn´t get a work permit and would have to finance the whole trip on my own. I fell ill with my seasonal cold that persistently stayed for over 4 weeks and when I finally managed to get outside again, climbing for some reason wouldn´t click as much as I would have liked it to be.

Some day in early April, I managed to send a boulder problem at Saalachtal, which really felt good...and at the same time didn´t. My elbow was in pain. I had developed a severe tendonitis as a result of intensive campus boarding over the past months and had foolishly ignored the pains. Not to speak of the fact that I never streched. I guess I was meant to be taught a lesson by my body, had to quit climbing again and underwent some serious treatment involving dicolfenac injections, electro magnetic therapy and pysiotherapeutic streching excerices. After a seemingly endless time, I was able to climb again and the elbow started to give me less and less pain. I was fortunate enough to be able to play truant at university and went to Frankenjura, still the best place to climb in Germany, with my friend Verena. We had a fun time, despite slight irritations about my climbing holiday expectancies being different for her´s and I also got to climb with my brother for some time, which was really cool. It was a much needed break, considering that university wasn´t fun at all, my English didactics teacher seriously had no social skills whatsovever (we all hated her guts) and the rest wasn´t too much fun either.

I was just counting down the days for my rescheduled US visit, went through the weekly routine relatively uninspired and wrapped things up handing in my paper for didactics, being annoyed with Rosenheim´s Open Bouldering Comp (tons of kids cheated their way past my teen teamers and weren´t punished at all, on the contrary, the ripped the goodies) and the miserable weather than still had me waiting for my first day of outdoor swimming by the middle of July.

Well, the rest was a tale of sound and fury! Hopped on a plane, met the nicest people I have ever met...Damian and Jeffie...it´s amazing how life goes. You have had just another avarage year, meeting uninspiring people, going through the daily chores of paying the bills and trying to keep your account halfway balanced...and then you step out of the plane...Thanks is such an inadequate word!

My time in San Francisco really felt like a much deserved holiday. I travelled and climbed, my elbow stopped hurting completely, I slowly got back in shape, saw bears and sea lions, a Great White Shark, went diving and hiked the beautiful Sierra. I met Emily, Brian and Belle, Austin, Wes, Betty, Chris, Ben, Annie, Jeffie´s amazing parents and all of a sudden I knew this was gonna be a good rest of the year. 

When I left and came home, I found everything had changed for the better! My lil bro was and is psyched on bouldering and climbing again and has eyed another 5.14b project...so much for that!My relationship with my landlord that was shit nasty especially the beginning of the year has changed much for the better, people are beginning to climb the boulders I put up next to my village and finally, something is happening. 

I can´t wait for what next year brings. I don´t know. But, quoting one of my favorite quotes,

" whatever tomorrow brings, I´ll be there, with open arms and open eyes".