Monthly Archives: October 2013

Oct22

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Saturday, 05-Oct-13

Climbing at Redrock in Glouchester

A simple adventure for a relaxed Sunday – my friend Gaku and I went to Redrocks, a climbing spot a bit outside of Gloucester.

Daniel and I had been here once before, after I’d heard some rumors of it being awesome from the NUHOC climbers.  The guide showed a few pretty interesting sport/trad routes, and so we met in the parking lot, racked up, and headed onto the trail that wound beside the highway and into the woods.

When we found the climbs… dang!  The rock here was almost identical to the rock in Joshua Tree – a type of very rough Granite that shoes just love to stick to.  But unlike Joshua Tree, Redrocks has been polished by countless New England winters… leaving the rock very interesting, but a bit more challenging to find grip on.

The climbs:

Pink Floyd Crag

  • “Animals / Wish you were here” – 5.5 or 5.7? – We set up two small pitches to the far right of this wall – taking a few runs on some rather interesting layback-style vertical cracks.  Gaku and myself both worked a few different moves for a bit, just moving the anchors around.
  • “Unnamed Bolted Face” – 5.10b – This is my bane, and my challenge.  The problem is that I can’t even figure out what move needs to be made… The first few are fun and simple, though quite committing, but by the second bolt you’re basically just stuck in a blank face, with some small cracks far away… staring…

Main Crag

  • Zipper – 5.5 – this is the definition of a layback / crack climb.  Perfect and beautiful and fun, though a bit easy.  I’d love to lead it, but not convinced that gear would hold since the flake is so thin.
  • ??? – 5.7? – this was a perfect crack / dihedral climb that I had led while climbing with Daniel… but had taken a strange / inefficient route up.  This gave me a chance to try it again, which led to a very fun and clean climb.  Not sure why I didn’t do it this way in the first place…
Oct21

Trying out Bostonian Yoga

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Friday, 04-Oct-13

Prana Power Yoga

 

Yoga is one of those things that I’ve been meaning to try out.  So, on the 4th of October of the year 2013, I went to my first Yoga class.

It was held in Central Square, so parking the bike was a bit concerning… especially since the homeless guy next to me kept trying to convince me that I should go buy him some booze from the liquor store next door… Sure, he was offering to give me $1 for it, but I think I’m good without, thank you very much.

Once the bike was parked I met up with Terese and headed inside to get changed and ready.  Honestly, there isn’t much of a story to my first yoga class… it was pretty straight forward.  It was a “power yoga” class, which I learned means “cardio in a slightly-warm room, doing poses that sound like what I’d hear in a movie with yoga in it”.  It was cool, and they used phrases like “become a tree” and “upward facing dog into downward facing dog”.  We didn’t even have a teacher, we instead had a “yoga guide” to aid us in our journey for the evening.

Yeah… I enjoyed it, but I don’t think that I’ll be heading back to this particular place.  It’s the same problem that I have with just joining a gym – I don’t like working out.  I like activities and movement, but not repetitive motions for the pure goal of working out.

Oct3

At Worlds End

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At Worlds End

Sunday, 29-Sep-13

 

I’m at the end of the world.

I mean, obviously not literally, because I’m pretty sure that I’ll be at my desk come tomorrow morning, working on cleaning up some Solidworks models. But location-wise I happen to be at a Mass State park called World’s End, sitting and writing this entry while I organize photos from the previous weekend.

This weekend was fun, and a bit slow. Yesterday was climbing (Ed Note: see “Quincy in September”), but it was very low-key, just myself and two random NUHOCers who needed a ride to the quarries. I had debated driving down to visit a friend last night, but since I never heard back I stuck with the time-honored tradition of my time in Cambridge, and instead went to a diner for breakfast.

After a rather excellent stack of pancakes and eggs and bacon and everything else delicious, I stopped by a small used book store where a guide to New England caught my eye, which then flowed through the pages until I noted a small blurb about a place called “World’s End”.

A name like that can’t be passed up.

So here I am – sitting by the ocean, enjoying the sun on my neck and the waves at my feet. It’s cold, but that “New England Autumn” cold that I really enjoy. It’s cold enough that I notice that the weather is changing, but it’s not so cold that the sun can’t keep me warm. And since there’s maybe two clouds in the sky, hiding off the near horizon, the sun is always on me.

To be honest, this is much more of a family park than a really hiking-oriented place… but that’s not really a bad thing. Today doesn’t call for a really intense hike; instead it’s looking for a good place to relax, stretch my legs, and get some writing done.

So I sit and write, walk and think, and take a few pictures before heading back to the clamor of the city.