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Ten of us met up in the Red River Gorge, KY over memorial day weekend (five rode down in the front of our truck to save on gas!). Ieva got home from Greenland, slept for a few hours, and then Eriks, Doug, Tess, Ieva and I piled into the truck and started driving.

We totally lucked out on weather — it rained like hell on the way down, and then it was blue skies for every day that we were there. Perfect temperatures, too; not too hot or humid.

When we showed up at Miguel’s Pizza on Saturday night, and it was loaded! I’ve never seen Miguel’s that busy, and after talking with him the next day, neither had he. The parking lot was jammed, with everyone double-, triple-, and quadruple-parked. Even all of the aisles were full. At least 20 cars couldn’t fit in at all, and were lined up along the side of the road. There was a new climbing film premier that night, followed by a pretty big raging party. I briefly woke up in the middle of the night as the truck cap filled with the light of a wax bomb (they seem to be turning into a Miguel’s tradition).

The next day, we somehow managed to avoid the crowds. We wound up at Funk Rock City on Sunday, and there was hardly anyone else there. What a fantastic crag — there are great sport and trad routes there — and we practically had it all to ourselves!

This was a really cool crowd to go climbing with. We also had Bowers, Michael and Sharmishtha, and Lauren and Nate (who I hadn’t met before that weekend). Lots of hanging out, goofing around.

I was also pretty psyched to finally land my first small jumps while on a slackline. I had worked on them last season without any success. Miguel’s has a really good “trick” line that’s doubled 1-inch webbing, sewn together, set low, and pulled super tight. I’m going to have to set up a second line like it in the backyard.

A lot of people got to push themselves on this trip — there were a few first leads and first falls, all of which went really well. We had a really good atmosphere going that was pretty condusive to progress (and fun). Ieva, Eriks and I got to stay until Wednesday. It’s only been a few months since our last long road trip, and I’m already dying for another one. Hopefully it won’t be too far off. At any rate, I only have two more weeks until the race, and then it’s back to devoting all my free time to climbing again!

Our two fantastic friends Michael and Sharmishtha got married this weekend. It was one of the best weddings I’ve ever been to. It was a great location, laid back, and so many of our climbing friends were there. The party basically lasted from Friday night until Sunday night. We also got to hang out with Sharmishtha’s family, who came over from India and England. They were a blast.

I can’t believe how much activity got packed into those few days. I feel like I fit in more quality time with my friends than I’ve gotten all year. This was actually Michael and Sharmishtha’s second wedding — they’ve already had one in India. By popular demand, they had the U.S. version too.

Congratulations, lovebirds! Here are some of the pictures that I took. Sharmishtha’s cousin Amlan took a lot of really nice pictures of the whole event. I’ll probably be able to get a copy of his shots later and post some of them here as well.

Two weeks ago Ieva got an out-of-the-blue offer to go to Greenland for a week. Eric Post, a professor at Penn State, does research up there and needed someone to go along on this trip to, well, basically just carry heavy loads.

She left on Saturday, the day of Michael and Sharmishtha’s wedding. She was really bummed that she had to miss the ceremony itself (and the partying!), but she did get to hang out quite a bit for the rest of the day.

She doesn’t really know a whole lot more about the trip, since it was such short notice. She probably only talked with the members of the other group for about an hour total before leaving. In any case, we bought a new digital camera for the occasion, and I’m sure she’ll have lots to tell when she gets back. I got an email from her this morning that said that she’s tired, but doing great. She got to ride in the cockpit for a while, which is really nice considering that the flight is on a C-130 (military cargo plane), so the atmosphere everywhere else in the plane is less than stellar, so I’m told.

In any case, here are some interesting links that I found while I was trying to dig up any information beforehand that I could:

• Here’s a satellite photo of where she’s flying into. Note the runway in the center of the photo. Drag on the picture to see the edge of the Greenland ice cap, several screenfulls to the right. Zoom out gradually to see where this is in Greenland (or where Greenland is at all, for the geography-impaired). Very cool.
• Here’s a political map of where she’s flying into. The tiny town is also known as Kangerlussuaq.
• Here’s the home page for Eric Post, the professor who’s sending Ieva on this trip. Those same caribou antlers that are in the photo on his home page wound up in Ieva’s possession on the first day of buck season in State College. She got to carry them to App House from our apartment and tell passers-by that they were from the buck that she shot that day. Very impressive.
• Here are the best weather forecasts that I could find for Kangerlussuaq. Note that there’s no civil/nautical/astronomical twighlight listed, since she’s above the arctic circle. Neat.
• Here is someone’s weather station info in Kangerlussuaq (I just keep copying and pasting this name) for up-to-the-minute weather info.
• Here’s a picture of the town of Kangerlussuaq.
• Here’s a really cool picture of the edge of the ice cap.

I’ll let you know when I hear more from her, but I suspect that we won’t hear much until she gets back!

I was riding my bike to Rothrock for a run this afternoon, when I realized that there was a big black bear right at the next turn! Then I saw that there were two tiny cubs with her! After a brief moment, they went into a small stream’s gully and I was forced to consider, “do I really want to start stalking a mother bear and her cubs?”

So after dumping my bike and carefully trotting over to the gully, I couldn’t see any sign of them. I wasn’t really looking too hard, since I couldn’t see very well into the gully despite being right on the edge of it. I didn’t want to surprise them. After a while, I began to think that they were probably gone. When I turned around to look back towards the bike, they were coming out of the gully just 100 feet away. After the mother spent some time looking back and forth at me and the cubs, they started walking across the field, and then broke out into a full run. I took as many pictures as my little camera could (it’s slow), while still admiring the scene outside the camera. The mother bear was gorgeous — she had a nice shiny black coat that shimmered in the sunlight. She waited at the edge of the woods for the little fuzzy cubs to catch up to her, and then they disappeared into the brush.

I was really excited, since I’ve been running in Rothrock for years, waiting to see a bear. What luck! It’s totally paid off to always carry a small camera on runs. Great, now I’m probably going to feel like I should start carrying the SLR…

Be sure to check out all of the pictures here.

I’m just getting around to posting some pictures from an awesome afternoon that we had at the quarry. Both Eriks (Ieva’s brother) and Kathleen (Jim’s special lady) were in town. Perfect weather, good routes, good food afterwards. Jim also got us to go do some of the routes next to the water, below the Flake. The rock is really high quality there! Very compact. This picture is of Jim on a new line. Click on it to go to the gallery.

Just out of curiosity, I took a look at the satellite photos for the Mohican 100 compared to Rothrock State Forest:

Mohican 100 course	Rothrock State Forest

They're both at the same scale. It looks like the mountains aren't going to be nearly as big. I know that this thing's in Ohio, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. There's 11,000 feet of elevation gain over the whole thing, which is about 69% as hilly as the R3 trail in Rothrock.

I also took a look at the handful of pictures that they have on the Mohican 100 website, and none of the trails look very rough or very steep compared to Rothrock, either.

Who knows, maybe the terrain will turn out to be easier than what I've been training on.

If it sounds like I'm obsessing a little at this point, it's because I'm obsessing a lot.

The Mohican 100 is on June 18th and 19th. I'm already committed, and I've even reserved the hotel rooms. The training has been going pretty well. The long runs are still hard (I don't think they'll ever get easy), but my times are pretty good, and I usually get through them OK. I guess things are going about as well as they can be. No injuries.

The usual week revolves around the long run on Saturday — I'll bike to Rothrock, then do a 30-40 mile run, then bike home. Sometimes they go great. Sometimes they go shitty. The rest of the week invoves maybe a couple other runs, but mainly biking to just get cardio time in without adding any more impact.

Today's run was interesting. Lots of rain, pretty cold. I didn't take the camera, since I knew I'd be soaked most of the time. This week is a little bit of a break, since I've been feeling a little rough around the edges. I had Ieva pick me up a few miles early since I was starting to get blisters from running in wet socks the whole time. I still got 27 miles in, though.

The weather's been incredible around here for the past month, though. Ieva and I have been trying to get out as much as possible to enjoy it. We've gotten out climbing quite a bit, which is really nice. It's starting to feel familiar again! I'll post some pictures from the climbing in a little bit. For now, here are some of the better pictures from the last month of running.

Ieva got us out to the Bellefonte quarry today after work, ending a long stretch of non-climbing. Neither of us had tied into a rope since the end of the road trip in November.

Man, it was a perfect evening, and the climbing actually felt good for both of us. Ieva's super motivated this season! Sheesh. We warmed up on the right side of the Beginner Wall, and then Ieva wanted to get on one of the routes on the French Wall. Someone added some new graffiti to the base, but it didn't affect any of the key holds (shhhh, don't tell them, or they'll come back). Neither of us led it clean, but that route felt good too.

I'm amazed we were able to leave work at 5, dig out a mass of climbing gear that hadn't been touched in a few months, and still fit in 3 routes well before dark.

Earlier today Ieva was checking out airfare on priceline. I guess she found two tickets to Virgin Gorda for $83 each round trip. They would have left tomorrow. We couldn't go, since she absolutely can't miss Amy's baby shower, but it's good to know that that sort of stuff is floating around. How cool would it be to come home from work to find out that you're going to Virgin Gorda tomorrow?! If you haven't seen them yet, you have to check out Bowers's pictures from his trip to Virgin Gorda with Kathleen. Oh man, that place looks incredible. I never would have thought of going there if he hadn't told us about it. He sure can pick the locations…

Jim, Michael, and Sharmishtha came over to finish off the first section of the home wall that we started a couple weeks ago. Michael and I actually found a matress while we were out getting beer. It only blew off the top of his car once.

Same as last time, there's a lot of images, since the camera was set to go off once every few minutes. Just select the "slideshow" option in the upper right of the gallery screen, and set the delay to 1 or 2 seconds for the time-lapse effect.

The strange glamour picture that shows up partway through is something that we found when we tore down the enclosure around the water meter to make more room. The thing's truly odd. I might save it for Klophaus. I know he'd love it.

Here are the pictures.

The past few days have finally started to feel more like Spring, which is really good, since I need to get off my ass and start running a lot more if I want to do well in the Mohican 100 in June… At least the runs are starting to feel really good. Bike to Rothrock, do a run, bike home. They're starting to feel pretty easy, so it's time to bump up the mileage.

The trails in Rothrock are finally starting to thaw out a little. Lots of ice still, some skating rinks, and some mud, but they're getting to be pretty good. First day this season wearing shorts, and not neoprene!

I'm loving having a small camera to take along on the runs this season. It's a nice distraction while you're out there. You almost always see something really cool along the way. The highlight today was seeing four hawks within the space of a mile, including one that flew really close (no pictures, though).

Anyway, here are the pictures from today, which came out pretty well. Now on to setting up the slackline in the backyard!