Jetsettin' to the Beach

As a child of the early 80s, you really had 2 choices:  bad English new wave music like the Smiths, the Cure, and Duran Duran ... OR ... the new wave of British heavy metal like Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, and Iron Maiden.  For anyone who knows me it should be obvious that I chose the later, even rocking some long stringy hair (all pictures of this have been destroyed!).  Over the years I've managed to see all of my old heroes in concert with one notable exception:  Iron Maiden.  I'd pretty much given up on ever seeing them as despite a busy worldwide touring schedule, Bruce and the boys never seem to come to America anywhere near Atlanta.  Imagine my surprise when after a long and trying day Theresa surprised me with tickets to see them in Ft. Lauderdale.  I was psyched! 



We flew down early Saturday morning and headed to the beach.

We wandered up and down the beach and grabbed lunch, spotting several Iron Maiden t-shirts among the beachgoers.  The ever-present Florida clouds rolled in for the afternoon so we headed to the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida.  We were pretty impressed with the casino, much better than the Hard Rock outside Tampa that we visited several years ago.  After a few quick hours of poker we scurried back to our hotel for a dip in the pool and a shower.  I have to mention the hotel, the Sheraton Suites in Plantation.  It's a beautiful hotel with really nice, spacious suites for a good price.  Here's the odd part, it's attached to an abandoned mall!  I don't mean a strip mall, either, I mean a full-on 2 story shopping mall right out of zombie movies (seems to be a trend where we stay!).

The anchor store:  Zombies are Us

The Food Court has seen better days.  The cars are parked for the hotel

That night the show was awesome, well worth the years I had spent waiting to see them.  Theresa did an awesome job getting great seats where we could watch the ever-changing sets and backdrops, a hallmark of Iron Maiden's stage show.  Bruce Dickinson still sounds great despite being on the plus side of 50 and all the guys had great energy and put on quite the spectacle.

Rockin' the Trooper, one of the show's highlights

Eddie joins the band on stage

After the show we had a minor epic getting a cab but eventually Theresa flagged one down and we headed back to the Hard Rock.  It was jumping on Friday night when we arrived and still going fairly strong at 3:30AM when we caught a cab back to the Sheraton (aka Zombieland).

The next morning we needed to complete our beach experience with some good seafood.  We headed to Tark's, a local seafood dive with great food.  Everything tasted fresh and awesome and we ate way too much.

I think we ate everything fried on the menu

After lunch we had time for a couple of hours of beach fun before sprinting to the airport.  A super fun, super hectic weekend that packed a lot in to a short period of time.  Thanks Chief!

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I found some random pictures that I'll post here for lack of a better place. ;)

Labs are high energy, right?

Bourbon and I relaxing on Christmas morning

The girls' handiwork.  That phonebook never had a chance

A New York State of Mind

It's been far too long since my last post, my apologies.  I'll try to recap the last couple of months as quickly as possible and then talk about recent happenings.

After getting back from Mexico I felt tired and beat up, needing a rest physically and mentally.  I took a few weeks off in January and then started climbing again, almost entirely in the gym except for a half day in Vegas.  Work got very busy in a good way as I was asked to participate in a very large scientific collaboration.  That work is still ongoing and should yield some very interesting results.  Work also got busy in not such a good way, taking a lot of my time and leaving me mentally drained from dealing with political issues.  Hopefully the worst part of this has passed but we shall see how things play out in the near future.

In early March we had spring break and I headed to the Red.  The weather apparently didn't get the memo about it being spring as we had rain, sleet, and snow in the span of a week.  Lots of routes were wet which, combined with the trying weather, made the trip less than successful.  On a positive note, Vinod flew in halfway through the trip and as always we had a great time.  We visited some walls we'd never before ventured to (Long Wall, The Zoo) and made the best of the conditions.

Once I got home from the Red I climbed some outside and some in the gym but my motivation was extremely low.  Most of the time it felt like I was going climbing because that's what I normally do on the weekend, instead of being excited to go outside and go climbing.  The fact that I wasn't climbing very well (too much training time devoted to endurance, not enough to power) certainly didn't help my psyche. 

In mid-March I tried a route I've been meaning to get on for years, Unshackled the Movie, a 13c at the Unshackled cliff at Little River.  This was during a weekend camping trip that Theresa and I took with the girls that was super fun and very relaxing.   The route went okay, not particular well and I wasn't super stoked to return and started working on it seriously.  However, a week later some folks from the gym wanted a tour of Unshackled so we headed out there.  While I didn't climb particularly well, I had a blast hanging out with the guys and enjoying rock climbing for the first time in a while.  I'm still not sure why I had so much fun that day but it definitely energized me to climb again and to return to Unshackled. 

After that trip I began trying Unshackled the Movie in earnest, making the drive a few times and slowly piecing the route together.  I finally managed to put it together, redpointing it on I think my 14th try.  This leads to the somewhat cryptic title of this post.  A while back Theresa and I were chatting and she asked me when I was going to climb 5.14.  I laughed and replied never.  I went as far as to say that if I ever climbed 13c we'd go on a non-climbing vacation.  We joked about it, saying we'd head to New York City for a long weekend of eating and drinking if I ever got serious and did a route of that grade.  Well, look what happened!  I guess we're off to NYC, the city that never sleeps, we just need to figure out a weekend that works.  I'm really looking forward to this for two reasons.  The first is simple, I love New York.  The city is truly one of the great cities of the world and features world class food and drinks at many price points.  The second reason is more personal.  I want to use the trip to say thanks to Theresa for always supporting me, always being there with an encouraging word or belaying in cold conditions when I couldn't find anyone else when I'm sure she had other thing she'd much rather do.  Her selflessness clearly shows how much she loves me and I want to use this trip to show how much I love and appreciate her for everything she does for me.

Okay, enough sappiness!  How about some pictures?

Artistic Attempt from Calico Basin in Red Rocks

Ryan exiting Movie Star in Unshackled.

Ryan sticking the traverse move on Unshackled, one of the routes cruxes

The author on a fine spring day

The author setting up for the traverse.

A small reward for sending, a good local beer.