Bee Buddies

Back to second mountain...sent two problems, a V2 and finally sent that damn V3 sloper problem that has been driving me crazy...when i was moving around trying to get stuff set to send a rather high problem i spent the next few minutes running from one of these little/big fellas....damn bees wont leave me alone.

Also, i spent some time trying to start to figure out two other V3 problems. Neither of which went today, hopefully the next time i go it will be less wet so i can get a better grip on the one roof crack V3 i was trying today.

That's All Folks.

AHHHH RAIN

Just a quick rant. It has rained how many of last 2 weeks....like 12 days....and now i get two nice days, thankfully i got to go climbing atleast once.....now it's calling for a chance of rain for the next 5 days......

It really wouldn't bother me that much...except i have my summer top on my jeep so i get wet every day on my way to work, and that my friends.... is VERY annoying. That and it takes me 10 minutes to get in my jeep and start driving....

Damn rain!!!

I wanna go climbing this weekend...anyone up if the weather will hold out.

2nd Mountain became a 2nd Home

I do love election day. No school in Hardy County, definitely nice. So what did I do w/ it you may be wondering.

Well it stated by getting up at 8AM and cleaning up to drive to the high school. There i spent 2 hours helping the baseball coach get his field ready for a game today at 3:30. When i got there i started the day by using a sponge and a bucket to clean the puddles off the infield with a few other people. While i was doing this a man came and put 8ft fans from a chicken house on each side of the infield. Now this was something that i never thought i would have seen. Chicken house fans on a baseball field......well now i have...After about an hour of sponging the field dry, i spent the next bunch of time raking the dirt so that more of it had surface that was in contact w/ the air from the fans.

After this fun, I was off to the wonderful land for lovers (aka Virginia) to do some bouldering. I started with a nice little 3 move warm-up problem...and from there moved over to a nice V2. I sent it very easily, in fact i felt it was too easy so i spent the next 45 minutes trying to send it using different hold and eliminating the nice big jugs. Upon trying to do this, it seemed too hard for V2. After finding out what the guide says for that problem i realized it was the easier of the two sets of beta. When i got home i looked at the guide a little closer and it turns out i was trying to do a V8 variation.

I'll skip right the exciting end...i was working a nice V3 sloper problem, and managed to take a chunk of skin out of my one pinky, so that pretty much killed my day. Although i did walk down to start working on this one V5 problem i want to send. When i was looking over the problem i also looked at the top-out just in case i got that far, though i probably wouldn't have. While studying the last moves i saw a bee's nest that was the size of a golf ball, but had a big hole in the bottom and looked like it was old (from last year) then about 10 seconds later a BIG, NASTY, MEAN white-faced hornet flew up to the over sized hole and crawled right on into that nest i thought was dead. When i saw this little fella i grabbed my shit and ran.

Thus ending my day.

Change of Pace

To change it up a little...how about I let you know how things have been going in the classroom as a student and as an educator.

As a student I have been taking classes at Marshall University...as of now I have completed 12 graduate credit hours, and I have yet to learn one thing that is of any use to me in the actual classroom. In fact, the last class I took (Assessment in Education) I spent many aggravated nights trying to figure out which country my professor learned English. At one point, she told me I did something wrong when I had 3 choices used to answer 5 questions ("A" was used twice, "B" twice, and "C" once). She said I was wrong because the book says "Each choice may be used once, more than once, or not at all." Now in my world, this means that I did it correctly, i only choose not to have an answer unused. Which was preceded by the qualifier "or" meaning I don't have to use that option at all. In my professors eyes I was supposed to have a choice used once, another used more than once, and the last not used at all.

see the stupidity that I have to deal with in the bass-ackward land called West Virginia.

In the world of teaching, it has been a good spring semester, and as of now I only have 16 days left with seniors and a few more days w/ the other students. It was weird, I had a student teacher for Chemistry, so I didn't have to teach that class, and only had to teach Physical Science and Environment Science. I thought this was great because I had time to do what I needed to get better settled into teaching. Over the semester I kinda got into a funk and was bored with it....then I started teaching my chemistry class again, and a great deal of enjoyment came back into teaching. So if teaching one chemistry class makes me happy this year, next year is gonna be really nice when I have two chemistry classes in the fall, and one in the spring.

As for the students this spring, it has been nice, they know who I am and I'm learning who more of them are. It is definitely something that I really enjoy being here in this small town.

Have a good one.

Fan-Friggin-Tastic

Last night after a long day in the classroom, I took off for an overnight trip to second mountain. Bounced up the final mile of off-road like conditions in jeep around 7PM. Given my late departure, I was prepared for some serious night bouldering; I had a head-lamp, lantern, food, and some beers. To my dismay when I got to the rocks and started to set up shop, I realized my lantern didn't work (stupid battery powered lamps). Didn't matter that much I was still there and wanted to get some climbing in. That night i took on some simple V0 and V0+'s to warm up for the Couch Boulder.

Once I hit this monster couch shaped boulder it got real serious real fast (it kinda reminded me of the giant couch on the on Ghallager Show). I started my buisness here with the V2 Punji Sticks. A short, overhanging 3 move problem. Doesn't sound too bad until you see the landing. It was a raised rock platform with other rocks the size of pillows (but not soft and fluffy like) strewn about and quickly sloping away from the problem. A slip at the top would surely do some serious damage. To avoid this painful beginning to the weekend I made it a point to send the problem in short order (2 tries). On the backside of this i tried two other problems a V2 (Sex Appeal) and a V4 (Italian Gelato) neither of these problems fell that night. They were both very friction dependent and on a humid evening that just wasn't going to happen. After this I just meandered around for a while looking for other cool problems but didn't find anything that inspired me at that hour.

The next morning it was back to work. I started my day at Melissa's Wall on a V0 and V0+ again; the V0 was kind of a scary highball. After this I made my way back to the Satellite boulder, where I found myself again in the "Unnamed roof problem" V4. I spent a few minutes working out the last 2 moves to make sure I could stick them, sat down and sent that rig. Lucky for you who have been reading this (if anyone has) now there is video of what I was trying to describe. ENJOY!




After this I spent some time starting to work out a nearby V3 and V5 both of which were kinda greasy from the moisture in the air. I'll hopefully get these some day when it's a little less humid.

Later.