Will Climb for Junk Food

Yesterday Rainbow and I drove up to Santa Barbara to climb at Lizard's Mouth. It took us over 2 hours to get there and about 4 hours to get back home. We were sitting in the car longer than we climbed. There was a horrible accident on the 405 south and the traffic was backed up from the valley. I'm very fortunate to have a friend like Rainbow who I can sit in the car with in standstill traffic for hours and still like her at the end of a long, exhausting day. No matter what the situation is, we always find something to laugh about. We kept ourselves busy talking about the most random things, listening to music and eating everything we had in the car. I don't know where all the food came from but we had popcorn, Airheads, corn nuts (they were at least organic and from the homeopathic store) and a bag of skittles. If you ever get stuck in the middle of nowhere Rainbow is the person to be with.

Bouldering was a little tough. Problems I have tried before I couldn't finish. This is a result of not training and climbing. I have only been out once this summer and before that maybe 3-4 times this year. There was a time in my life when I was climbing outside every weekend and traveling to climb new crags. It was exciting for a while, but at some point I burnt out and lost any sense of enjoyment. I would always be injured, my fingers were constantly in pain and some part of my body always hurt. Not that it's any different now, but at least there are other things that make my body hurt and not just one sole activity. Climbing for me became about the difficulty rating than it was about having fun. My whole world revolved around climbing and felt so much pressure to climb hard. These days I don't climb as hard and don't feel as much pressure and actually enjoy it. The only downside is being a coach of a competitive climbing team and not being in the frame of mind to train and push the kids makes it difficult. I'm often reminded of this theory called 'balance' and just as often as I am reminded of it, I miss the mark.

** photo was our view from Lizard's Mouth