Getting Our Feet Wet

     While we were still living in Colorado, Wilbur and I often speculated about what kite surfing was going to be like in Florida.  Even though Wilbur is far more advanced than I am, we are both very new to the sport and the east coast of Florida was definitely going to be foreign waters for us.  So we made up a short list of rules we were to follow in order to keep ourselves (and others near us) safe and sound.  They were as follows:

Rule #1 - Talk to the locals.  You always want to get the local beta for an area such as tide and current info, hazard info like sandbars or oyster shells or what access issues might occur (like migrating birds).  
Rule #2 - Never kite in the Atlantic Ocean.  Until we are more skilled, we decided it best to stick to bayside or river kiting.
Rule #3 - Never be the first or the last kiter in the water.

And while we truly did try to stay true to rule one (we called a shop but they apparently don't open on Sundays.  Is that a Southern thing?), we flagrantly broke rules two  and three yesterday with wanton disregard for self preservation.

     It all had to do with the wind.  When we first got here nigh two weeks ago, the wind was deliciously blowing consistently out of the south east.  However, we could not enjoy the conditions because Wilbur had to work and I had to look for a place for us to live.  By the time we were able to don our gay apparel and venture out, the wind had switched directions and was coming straight out of the west.  No bueno for the east coast.  I looked at a map and determined that if I got blown straight off shore from Jacksonville, with a little luck, I might make landfall in Bermuda.  The chances are pretty slim though, so I'll stick to avoiding a west wind.

     However, this week, the wind changed and with it our luck.  Monday afternoon brought 13-15 knots with a lovely SE cross onshore breeze at Huguenot Memorial Park, which is on the Atlantic Ocean.  Rule #2 - broken.  We loaded up and headed out with eager anticipation, feeling sure that other area kiters would be out to take advantage of such fortuitous winds during one of the worst wind months for the area.  We were wrong.

We had the beach to ourselves

     But everything seemed to be safe as long as we didn't go too far out so...Rule #3 - broken.   We proceeded to set up on an empty beach at the apex of high tide and marveled at how much room there was.  The last time we set up to kite surf was on a beach in St. Lucia that was about the width of a gnat's ass at low tide.  High tide meant you were trampling on the vegetation surrounding the beach which made me cringe for the poor defenseless plants.  So far, the local conditions were looking pretty durn good.

     Somehow, it was decided that I would go first.  I bravely charged into the water with the sole intent of body dragging, which is just dragging yourself through the water with your kite and not using the board at all.  However, my small scope of experience did not include kiting in an ocean with breaking waves tossing me all about and I soon swallowed enough water to make Charybdis jealous.  Defeated, I came back in and let Wilbur go out.

He had some trouble at the start.

But then...

He made it look easy.

     Easy enough that I was chomping at the bit to get back out with my board.  It didn't go so well.  The waves tumbled and spun me so much that I could barely get the board on my feet.  On the few times that I actually did get set up, another wave would come through and spin me backwards.  Keep in mind that during all this confusion, I was attached to a kite that a fellow kiter once told me to regard as a constantly loaded weapon.  Plus, my right ear was filled to overflowing with water.  I tried to remember what I had learned in the past and the number one thing is not to panic.  This is supposed to be fun, right?  I soon settled down enough to realize that I could use the pull of the kite to brace myself against the oncoming waves, even if I wasn't ready to water start.  Once I got that technique down, I was able to give some good attempts at water starting.  And while I was never successful, I learned some valuable lessons on kiting in the ocean.  Soon, I will be on top of the waves instead of slicing through them with my face.

I approached the waves fearlessly with confidence.

And spent the rest of my time making rooster tails with my face.

Wilbur hates cold water.  Full wetsuits make the water temp perfect.    

I thought this little couple was so sweet and was sure that they were mates for life and  were a  perfect romantically sweet representation of Wilbur and I in the kingdom of animals...

...until I saw this.  How the hell are those two birds ever supposed to find each other in this mess?  

Huge ships are constantly coming in and out of Mayport and I feel like applauding every time I see one.  

In Colorado, you'd need a forest fire to get these kinds of colors.  

     

Repost - East Bound and Down

According to most people I've talked to, I will be plunging off the edge of the world at the end of February, which is to say I'm moving to Florida.  And yes, I'm aware that the only thing to boulder there are alligators.  My husband and I are moving by choice, I do not have a job waiting for me there (there'll be a homemade cookie waiting for anyone that can put in a good word for me in the Jacksonville area), and I am truly wondering how much I will miss Colorado.  I have of course made friends I will never forget and had experiences that seem incomparable.  But due to the condition of my feet, my interests have changed over the years and Colorado no longer offers what I feel like I need out of life.  I am hoping that Florida does.  Let me expound.

I recently asked several climbers in the gym why they climb.  What do you get out of this?  Why do you keep coming back?  I got some great answers:

I climb for the adventure.

It gives me a rush.

My body craves the movement.

I am not myself without climbing.

It makes my back look good.

I don't want to let my climbing buddy down.

And possibly my favorite -

Women.

We are all motivated by different things - health, adrenaline, spirituality, ego, peer pressure.  But there's got to be some connection we all have that keeps us doing a sport that hurts like hell, is super boring to watch, and generally gives you more days of failure than success.  I don't know what that connection is.  It is the difference between people who come in the gym for an intro lesson, climb once or twice more, then never come again versus the people who come in for their first time, say nothing, but leave with what I can only describe as an aura.  It's nothing but cliché after that - something clicked, she got bit by the climbing bug, he got a case of climbing fever, etc.  All the clumsy expressions amount to one thing - another climber has been added to our mix.

So while I can't answer what unites us all, I can answer what my motivation to climb has been.  For me, it's all about being able to overcome fear.  I moved to Colorado from the south as a weak, asthmatic musician with a few profoundly awkward athletic experiences under my belt (I scored a goal for the opposing soccer team once).  As if moving to Boulder and being surrounded by the most physically active people I'd ever seen wasn't scary enough, one day I was asked to go climbing in Boulder Canyon.  I took to it like paisley to a bedspread.  I finally found something that not only my mind but my then puny body could conquer.  I stuck with routes for years, but once I started to shun ropes for crash pads, I discovered that I could put myself in far more fearful situations through bouldering than I could on a rope.  Top roping was the gateway drug that eventually led to my full blown addiction to top outs.  Thuggy top outs, high ball top outs, techy slab top outs, I loved them all.  I loved them because I was terrified of them, but each one I completed brought me the enormous satisfaction of using my fear to succeed instead letting it dictate my life.

Of course, the down side is when I didn't succeed, I fell.  A lot.  And the falls have taken their toll on my feet.  But that craving for fear that climbing created in me is still wanting to be fed.  I think it was this part of me that eventually attracted me to kiting.

I have spent the majority of my hours of kiting truly frightened. The strength of a power kite is awe inspiring and intimidating.  Furthermore, seeing as how I have never snowboarded, wake boarded, or even done anything that requires going fast with your feet strapped to a plank for that matter, kiting is a sport I should have no business getting in to.  And yet, here I am, relishing the fear kiting produces in me and determined to overcome it.  Just like climbing did for me 17 years ago.  And now it's time to move to a place where I can focus on kiting.

Hence the move to Florida.  I plan on throwing myself at kitesurfing with the same obsessive flair that I attacked climbing with.  And while I will never stop climbing, it may take a backseat for a little while.  The important thing is that I will never quit searching for new challenges and never give in to my fears.

Rylan will be taking over the blog from now on and will continue to furnish you with interesting tidbits to keep you entertained and informed.  Rocknamy is signing off.   Keep trying hard and stop chasing your dreams - live them instead.

Repost - By the Seat of My Pants

g for 17 years.  In that time, I've done many routes and problems all over the country which I'm proud of.  But when I think about what defines me as a climber, it isn't my hardest and scariest sends but rather how many times I've been able to thoroughly and completely embarrass myself while climbing.  And for a reason I think I can explain, these moments are all centered around the butt of my pants.

I'll go in chronological order.  About 8 years ago, I went bouldering at Emerald Lake in RMNP with my then boyfriend/now husband (let's call him Wilbur).  We had separate projects at separate boulders, so after we warmed up, I took off to another boulder with three other guys that wanted to work on the same problem.  After some effort I finally sent and had started the slightly tall but very easy top out when I heard one of the guys below say "Um, you have a hole in your pants."  Now, I was aware of the fact that I had a pin prick of a hole on one cheek of the butt of my pants.  Assuming that this was what they were talking about, I yelled down at them that I was aware of the hole and that I wasn't worried about it.  Afterwards, I went back to Wilbur, let him know that I had triumphed over the boulder problem, and we packed up and headed out for the long hike followed by the long drive home.  Once we arrived at home, I took my pants off to take a shower and finally saw the hole the guy was talking about.

It wasn't a hole.  It was a rift in the space-time continuum.  The seam adjoining the back of my waistband with the crotch of my pants was completely blown.  I easily fit my head through it.  And all I could think of was my cavalier response to my spotters acknowledgment of the situation and what a dummy I must have sounded like.  I showed Wilbur, we laughed, and I wrote it off as a one time incidence.  I was wrong about the rate of recurrence.

The next incident happened at the Satellite boulders in Boulder.  I had gone to try to finish a nasty little problem called Re-Entry Burn.  I have put in over 100 attempts on this pile to date and, due to my recent foot surgery, I will most likely never send.  *pause for a moment of bittersweet reflection*  Anyway, once again, Wilbur wanted to work on a different problem so I ambled over to my project and found three guys working on it.  I asked if I could join them and promptly got to work at getting shut down.  After about an hour of enthusiastic attempts and asking them for power spots, I conceded yet another day of failure on the four move problem and headed back over to Wilbur.  He took a look at the back of my pants for some reason and said, "What in the hell have you been doing??!!"

I looked at him with wide-eyed innocence. "What do you mean?"

"Your pants look like you've been mauled by a bear."

He was right, this wasn't an ordinary hole.  It really did look like a vicious three clawed predator had taken a swipe at my butt.  My immediate reaction was fury.  I yelled over at the guys I had just been climbing with on the other side of the Flesh Fest boulder.

"Why didn't you tell me my pants were blown out?"

A single sheepish reply, "We thought you knew."

Uh huh.  I had just spent an hour making these strangers feel keenly uncomfortable while power spotting me with my fanny in their faces.  The rest of that day involved me feebly trying to climb with a jacket tied around my waist.  Needless to say, there would be no sending for your courageous author that day.  My thoughts on the hike out were filled with wonder as to how I managed a repeat performance of the RMNP incident.  The one time occurrence was sadly turning into my shtick.

The last episode of my butt baring escapades happened a few years ago at Area D at Mt. Evans.  It was so exhausting just getting in and out of Area D that the details have become a little fuzzy to me.  In a nutshell, it was discovered that yet again, I managed to rip a colossal hole in the butt of my pants.  There weren't many people there that day, so I tried to bravely forge on ahead with trying to climb at that altitude with a drafty derriere.  But while working the top out of the problem I wanted to send, my friend Jackie walked around the boulder at the precise moment when I was milking a sweet high heel hook and caught a glimpse of naked cheek.  All I remember was her saying something to the effect of, "Sheez, Amy, seriously?"  It was so cold that I couldn't think of sacrificing one of my jackets to my cause of modesty.  Instead, I made Wilbur go behind a boulder with me and give me his underwear for the rest of the day.  (Coincidentally, he climbed strong that day.  Correlation?)

I know what you're thinking now.  What on earth does this idiot do to blow out the butt of her climbing pants so frequently?  After much deliberation, I believe the answer is in the fact that I am the world's suckiest hiker.  I'm so bad I could win awards at inept hiking. Any trail or boulder in a talus field approaching a decline of more than 5 degrees has me scooting on my butt like a dog with worms.   I have no shame when it comes to a good rump descent on a hike out.  I truly believe I was born devoid of quads, and I have sprained both ankles so many times that muppet ankles have more stability than mine.  When you have these adversities working against you, you either scoot on your butt, thereby distressing the fabric of your pants, or wear a helmet and shoulder pads on every approach.  And while I would rock the shoulder pads, I don't look good in a helmet.

So there you have it.  I am a boulderer that has a propensity for mooning people because I possess the leg strength of Kermit the Frog.  I also have an aversion to foods that come in basic geometric shapes, but I'll save that last nugget of info for another time.

The preponderance of television

We have been sans television for exactly two weeks.  We donated the old cathode tube dinosaur that we owned when we moved so we actually don't own a TV right now.  And even though we only turn the thing on at night, usually during dinner, it feels like I'm missing a vital organ.  We will hopefully be rectifying this situation soon, and even though I can't wait to resume my daily intake of trash reality TV, sports and sci-fi, I will enter the doors of Best Buy with hesitation and trepidation.  


I have a theory.  I think TV scrambles your brains like so many eggs.  My scientific terminology is lacking, but I unequivocally sleep better if I do not partake in a television session before going to bed.  My theory stems from three trips in particular that I have taken over the past three years during which I slept the sweet sleep of the gods.  Two were week long camping trips in Canada and one was a two week jaunt to St. Lucia.  

The top of The Chief in Squamish, BC

Lots of leisure time in St. Lu

In all cases, I never turned on a television and if I walked by one, I didn't watch it for more than a few minutes.  On all three trips, I reasoned that my unencumbered slumber was due to the increased amount of exercise I was getting (climbing, golfing, kitesurfing, etc.).  However, our latest move to Florida have involved two weeks of sitting in cars, sitting at the computer, sitting at restaurants and fighting to work in a modest amount of exercise each day.  And yet, I have never slept better.  I'm pretty sure I would medal at a sleeping contest.  The only common thread between all the periods of the best sleep in my life is the absence of television.


My conclusion is therefore that the dizzying effects of quick editing and the rapid and constant intake of information screws up my sleep pattern.  Even so, I hear from a reliable source that this American Idol season is the best ever and I am looking forward to charging ahead towards ownership of a mega sized flat screen television courtesy of all the wonderful wedding donations made to our Best Buy card.  



Quick Hits:
http://fitlode.com/2010/09/19/computers-can-interfere-with-sleep/
http://www.goodsleepsite.com/articles/television.html
http://www.healthnews.com/en/Categories/AlertsUpdates/Electronic%20Overload%20Causing%20Static%20Sleep%20Interference.aspx

Happy Trails, Colorado

Wilbur and I have done it, we have bid adieu to Colorado.  

After three days of butt cramped driving with one blissful day of rest at my parents house in Tupelo (we even woke up to the smell of bacon, twice), we arrived in Florida, and it is not the Florida I remembered from my youth.   There are swamps and marshes and endless vistas of trees and, as far as I know in my little world consisting of our hotel room and our plants, no beach.  

From left - Jolly, Edgar and Oscar.  Not pictured - Tanqui and Pickle.

At least, we haven't had time to even go and see if there's a beach.  Google maps says there is, so I'll trust it for now, even though it has let me down in the past.

Our wondrous move to Florida has so far been filled with nothing but Wilbur working from the hotel and me trying to find us a place to live.  This did not go as easy as planned.  We quickly learned that approximately 98% of houses listed as for rent are, in my opinion, inhospitable.  Some were vacated and filthy, some were still occupied and filthy, others asked an exorbitant amount of money because you might have been able to the the Atlantic if you scaled a 200' ladder and used binoculars to boot.  Seeing as how we only had the 6' x 12' U-Haul trailer with every ounce of our life's belongings in it for one week, we were getting desperate to find a place and unload our contents onto Florida soil.  

The disgorged contents of our U-Haul.

We finally struck paydirt last night.  Wilbur found a house right down the street from the hotel we are holed up in.  The pictures on the website looked amazing, so I called the owner, Jun Li.  He turned out to be a very pleasant and cordial fellow that we took to immediately.  His wife's name is Annie Lu, and we got along like peas in a pod from the moment we met.  His house was immaculate and absolutely every thing we have been looking for.  Most importantly, only the master bedroom closet has any carpet in it, the rest of the house having Brazilian Koa wood and tile.  It has more rooms than we can furnish, but we're working on that.  Mom and Dad have graciously stored lots of furniture for us in Tupelo, we just have to figure out how to get it down to us.  I may be venturing back up in a Budget truck next week, but it will be worth every spine jolting bump in the road.  The fun never ends.

Front of the house

The nature preserve behind the house

Quick hits:

Dab - Florida's license plates look like the side of the jug of Tropicana orange juice that my Mom served us from for breakfast last week.  I will try to hang on to my Colorado 10th Mountain Division plates for as long as possible.

Dab - This soft water is turning my already long showers into intolerable prune fests.  And I still come out feeling like a new born eel.  Uck.

Fab - As of right now, humidity rocks.  The humidity makes a strong wind feel gentle, caressing even. It does wonders for my hair and skin.  Like!

Fab - The people are extremely nice.  So far.

Here are some more pictures from our day in Tupelo:

My Mom showing how well the cups they are giving us will match the scenery in Florida.   Good thing, we smashed our dinnerware on the way down.

My first knick knack!  Proud!

My niece, Paris.  Or if you like, Peep.  

My nephew, Carden.

Me and Meredith showing the donkey who's boss.

I learned a few things in Colorado.  

Victory is ours.

He's gonna ride that donkey donkey.

Flower blossom