A week to forget...

Sitting on my laptop and hacking away at the keyboard, the week feels fucked up. To begin with positive things, the Diclofenac injections and the whole lotta Diclofenac that enters my body orally seem to get the better of the inflamation in my elbow. Pains on a retreat! That much is positive. The rest isn`t. The wheather seriously sucked the whole week, the kid training groups were not really inspiring either, the whole country is absolutely freaking out about pig influenza and finally, my landlord has taken up his bastardly habit of locking the washing room again-which means that I have to ask all the time.

The whole flu issue is kinda interesting, though. With the economic crisis going on, it was about damn time something popped up that will scare the shit out of everybody and keep people halfway quiet. If you´re worried about getting pig influenza, you`re less likely to start social upheaval. I guess...In the end, I`m now waiting for my laundry, don`t have a clean towel left but fortunately some clean underwear, so I think I can go to sleep like a civilized person.

I hope the next week will be better. Hopefully my arm will be cured and I´ll be able to climb again. I seriously cannot take being without climbing for more than a week. I get into a mood that I don`t like. Kinda edgy and bitchy...

Dropping out. Gotta clean this flat. Would like to listen to Metallica full on. Can´t do it on account of the stupid old thing living the floor under me. She`ld raise hell. 

Enough emo epicing. Big up and be a man. Resolutions for the coming week:

Don`t shave and appear to my boring English didactics lesson on Thursday looking completely savage!

Onsight a couple of 7a+ routes to get my arms going. Have a blast on my proj. and link the crux boulder passage. Get wasted with Verena after that. She´ll have to drive me home!

Find a sick wall to bolt.  

If all those come true, at least next week will be a blast again.

Out!

Injured!

Damn it. The past week has been a major bummer. I have seriously learned something that I always pretended to know: never climb with pain. Ever since I campused a lot previous to my flu in February I have been dealing with slight pains in my left elbow. Now it`s time to fully cure that inflamation. Of course it takes longer now than if I had given it time to cure after the first pains. 

After being thoroughly frustrated at the gym Tuesday last week...sorry to Verena for bitching around like a fucking bastard...I went to my Doc on Wednesday and my golfer`s elbow has been in intensive treatment since. The kids in my training group of course realized the needle marks from the Diclofenac injections and asked me if I had become a drug addict. With the weather being perfect and me being in desperate need to climb after 4 weeks of flu related break, the whole thing feels fucked up! 

The weekend subsequently was queer too. I hiked to the Hochgern on Saturday which was great after some emo epicing on Friday evening. Sunday I spent looking for a wall to bolt, which resulted in the most dangerous thing I have done in my life. I order to get to the wall I wanted to check out I foolishly decided to climb a steep bank/wall with shit rock, a couple of tree roots to hold to and a lot of slippery dirt. I also underestimated the height of that thing. Resting in the middle and catching my breath I realized that I was soloing a chossy wall with no option to downclimb and a 100% chance of dying if I slipped. The whole thing is kinda like in the middle of nowwhere...that`s the deal when you`re roaming to find something new...and if I had fallen and still be able to cry for help, nobody would have heard my cries. 

I made it. No fall. Desperate trust in a couple of tree roots, some solid looking rock and a final high step on a dubious foothold gained me the trunk of a young and very green tree at the top of the wall. Lot´s of leaves on that tree. It was in the bloom of life. Therefore, I felt immensely relieved grabbing it. Damn it. I´ll never ever climb that wall again. The biggest chosspile I ever did. Not to mention the wall I checked out. Looked nice from the distance from where I spotted it but with a closer look...

In the end, I got lost on the Schnappen. I found a path and followed it. It was probably an ancient hunter`s path, always close to the steep flanks of the Schnappen. When I found a halfway good looking gully that was looking like the most natural way to the valley, I scrambled down, almost fell and slipped when I crossed the slippery grass flank to get to the gully and then kinda liked Sam-Frodoed my way to the valley. Schnappen seriously is a place where you can get in a hell of a mess. I wish I had had a rope. 

The new week has continued to start like shit. I woke up super early. Gulped down the coffee. Got things packed for university. Rushed out to get my bus...and then felt something wet on my ass. The orange juice in my backpack was leaking. I sprinted up to my flat, rescued my laptop from my flooded backpack and swore a lot. There goes my grammar course. I´ll have to apologize. 

Hoping the week will get better. The weather forecast is crap, though. Some fools managed to set pig influenza virus free in a swiss train. The container the virus was kept in blew! Everybody is freaking! There`s gonna be a pandemie! I seriously wonder...there are so many things that get me freaked out and this totally leaves me cold hearted...

On a final note, Bayern Munich sacked coach Jürgen Klinsman yesterday. Big Mistake! Good for me still, since the result of their games gravely affects my landlord`s mood. He hated Klinsman`s guts and blamed him for the bad results, almost exclusively so to speak. His mood is gonna be better now, so I might be able to borrow a car once my elbow is cured. The future is what we think of it to be. Climbing undoubtly helps me think positive, I will have to learn to keep my Zen Mind in moments of stress. There is no practice unless you have had practice under strain. There is no real calm unless you have kept it safe under attack from outside. 

It´s been a while

It´s been a while since I last wrote something. The past weeks have been really annoying, since my brother`s visit I have been down with the flu.

Now that the flu is finally gone, I will shortly resume a winter of superlatives. We had tons of snow and I didn`t ski once due to a knee injury. Fucked up luck on the big scale.

To the present: I am finally able to climb again. Since the spring has finally set in -the sun is finally shining- me and Verena took advantage of that and went to Kochel, an area famous for stiff grades and being very...mhmm, different. You either like it or hate it. I like it. We spent the day at the Celtic wall and it was perfect, the grades are sandbags -which I like- and the climbing is really my style...big moves, athletic. You have to  be strong if you wanna send anything in Kochel.

The day after that, that is the day before Easter Sunday, I went to the Zellerwand where I warmed up sending the beautiful Workoholic onsight -35 metres of perfection, at least if we`re talking Zellerwand terms- and then turned to La Princessa Negra. I cleaned the whole project again and throughly, put some chalk on the holds and had a go after getting properly warmed up on Saubär (the lower part up to the crux, Saubär completely will be my proj. after sending the princess). I can say that it is a really amazing and good line, despite the shittalking from a lot of envious bastards. Wait until you see my next strike, bitches! You´re gonna drop your jaws.

The crux had me making Sharma sounds pretty soon. I stuck the move before the crux move, which leaves me with two moves unsolved. After those two there is a moderate shake out with medium holds and crap footholds. The key to success will be to use it the day I link the crux.

Hopefully more to come soon. The season has finally started. The summer has come. 

See a chance in adversity...

I`m not going to the US! The reason is as simple and as annoying as it can get: I don`t get a work permit. Since the Bridges Rock Gym guys offered me a super amazingly well paid job, checking in at 1600 Dollars a month, the job would have had  to be open to application for Americans at least 100 days before. Which of course it wasn`t. I can say that I was pissed at first. 

There is however no point in wasting my days being angry and frustrated. The Bridges guys were really amazing and offered me to come in August and that`s super nice and cool. People are willing to let me stay at their place. Thanks to all them for the amazing ammount of support I have received already, I can`t wait to meet those people in person. May the sun shine on the opening of your gym. Greatness lies in the heart.

In every disappointment lies a chance. I`m not frustrated right now, I´m super pysched! The good weather came over night and I will test my strenght soon on La Princessa Negra, my super hard and great and nice and...and...:) project. It will beyond doubt be one of the most amazing and great lines I´ve ever done once I have sent it. I can also say without being to daring that it will be the hardest thing I´ve done sofar.

I´m going out now to do some running. After that I´ll head to Munich, where I´ll spent the evening bouldering in the High East. Verena is getting stronger again and being super critical with herself as always not realizing that she is already able of sending 7c/5.12d if only she manages to find a proj. suiting her style. I guess I have to do some ego pushing:)

I`m feeling done...

I`m feeling done. Flat. Spanked. 

I have been setting routes for the past three days and even though I have set a few of the best I ever set, I realized today that I need a break. After setting a moderate 7b today I tried the route and got super pumped...my forearms hurt like hell!

I just need to chill out...

I seriously wanna get outta this place for some time. 

Too many days to Frisco...

A Moment in Time

Barack Obama`s inaugural speech is already past. Throughout the past years, throughout the times I have been interested in politics and common interests rather than just my own little world, ever since I have realized that simple minded egoism is the manifesto of stupidity, I have never heard a better speech.

I listened to Martin Luther King`s "I Have A Dream" speech a couple of days ago. It`s a speech students of English and American culture listen to for various reasons. As a student, I had to listen to it years ago already. There is however a quality in it that keeps drawing me back to it, that keeps me, even though I have never felt segregation or even slightly suffered any disadvantages in my life except those self inflicted draws my heart to it. In it shines a hope and inspiring belief in the world and every single man`s and woman`s possibilities if only stupidity and cynism can be overcome. 

Barack Obama`s speech he held as 44th president of the US is one that`s carven out of the same wood. It was full of determination, of power and intelligence. There are a few amazing speeches in the history of mankind and listening to them makes you shiver in a way. In some cases, the shivering just means that you acknowledge the quality of the speech but in the same way realize the demonic mind behind it, as it`s the case with Goebbels`s speech of 1944 in which he proclaimed total war. In other cases, the shivering means something much more positive: emotional connection on account of agreement. This is the case with Barack Obama`s speech. 

I have listened to it a couple of times now and somehow I wish I could have been there. Somehow I wish to have been a member of those witnessing that moment. I have a feeling deep inside that it might be a historic moment. Even though it was just another 20 minutes that passed physically speaking exactly as fast or slow as those I spent waiting for my train yesterday, the feel historic. They have a quality I can only paraphrase, in a hundred years from now on, children might get taught that in a time of global crisis a man made a historic speech, setting out an agenda for what terms itself the free world.

Barack Obama is a young man, compared to many politicians. Yet is it a stereotype to think that wisdom comes with age, the abilitiy to see things clearly is not dependent on age. After eight lost years under the Bush presidency, after Guantanamo, water boarding, Abu Ghoreib and the Kyoto accord disaster, after eight years in which is was pretty easy to have faith in your political leaders as long as you considered the poor Americans and the fool they suffered from, the US finally have a president with charisma and intelligence again. 

A message has been sent. If the world hears it and responds in an according way, it could be that 20 minutes make it a better place.

2009 goes on...

Even though it started like crap, 2009 didn`t turn out to be so bad after all. I´m finally feeling in shape again and things look pretty good climbing wise. 

I´m super psyched now for my Intercultural Proj. which is gonna be an absolute blast of a time. For those of you who want to check where I´m gonna work, check

http://www.bridgesrockgym.com/

all that I can say is that those guys are really amazing and kind and super welcoming and...

I`ve spent the past weeks doing a lot of work basically, in order to avoid being broke in the US which would be a serious bummer and would put me in the embarrasing position of somebody having to call for help in Germany, kinda "please fill my bank account"-wise. So I`ve been busy setting routes in Munich and Rosenheim and given more top-rope courses that I would normally like. Fortunatly I have been able to get an amazing replacement coach for my Wednesday climbing group. Stony is a really cool and fun person and climbs really well, we went bouldering last week and three hours passed like a whirlwind. The kids like him and he`ll also be able to handle the wilder ones of the bunch, so I don`t have to worry about the kids, which is a good thing. I really like a few of them and it would have been a pity if they had felt pushed to quit climbing just because my replacement would have been some jerk rambling on about bouldering being not climbing but something you do if you`re afraid of heights. 

The weather forecast for the weekend sound pretty good, so I hope that me and Verena will be able to head to Kochel for some outdoor action. 

Just because I´m thinking of it: if you want a good laugh, check youtube for Jeff Dunham! Bubba J. and Achmed the dead Terrorist are my personal favorites...

Take care!