Thursday, March 19, 2009

Raku.

A superlative dining experience. Here you can see Pilar about to feed her Raku habit. It's worse than coke.

Inside, your bleached chopsticks (the one weakness, but where have you ever not encountered bleached chopsticks?*) are wrapped with a cute logo.

Emily ordered the agedashi tofu, the best I've ever had. It came topped with scallions and ikura. I especially liked the tongue-shaped dab of spicy sauce on the lip of the bowl.

Pilar went for the grilled mackerel. It's deboned so you can rip right into the bubbled flesh like the vulture you are. Comes with a shredded turnip or radish, I forget which, but the waitress recommended adding some soy sauce to the white stuff and it was delicioso.

No dessert because I had to cut out to catch a redeye flight to the east coast.

*Now that I think about it, a Korean places do offer metal chopsticks, which is pretty cool. That way, if somebody tries to poison me, I'll know because the metal will change color if it touches poison. That's the origin of metal chopsticks. OK, I made that up.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

I got nothin.

I want to report climbing on Thursday with SM at the Front Corridor in the Sandstone Quarry.
Tried Monster Skank 5.13b and Sunsplash 5.13b. Got bitch slapped on both.
We only made to the 3rd or 4th bolt on either route. Sunsplash I strongly suspect is a drilled route. It looks blank from the ground and utterly impossible, but when you get on it, suddenly you're sinking up to your second knuckle into deep two-finger pockets. I've been on drilled routes elsewhere and it was a similar feeling. Despite the apparent manufacturing, it was a lot of fun with good movement, and SM said it reminded him of The Equalizer 5.13a at Charleston.

While ascending Sunsplash, SM ripped a gaseous cloud of noxiousness over my belaying head. I nearly passed out and almost let go of the rope. Fortunately the gri-gri would have saved him if I were to have passed out. It must have been a relaxation of the rectal sphincter due to blood sugar redirection to the parts of his body straining to stay on the wall. Completely understandable. I believe this happens to runners when they shit themselves during a marathon. I've witnessed this also when boulderers try really really hard on a move. I guess if you squeeze in one place, you must relax another. Since your ass is not holding the rock, your body must say, "OK, you can relax" and then the squeeze fart occurs. There must be a word for this. Taking a cue from shart, might I propose "squart"?

In order to atone for lack of photos (it's hard with two people... it seems at least three is required for climbing photography/video) I'm posting some stuff from the end of the Hueco trip where we lost our minds from too much volcanic porphyry, tamales, and caffeine.

I don't know how M convinced us to do this...
My favorite picture of the trip...
Random photo of one of my coworkers as we wandered around Madison Avenue in search of ramen noodles.

Black Corridor... so crowded.

Shawn successfully toproped Texas Lite Sweet 5.11b. I needed a couple tries to get the crux. It's a steep slab with tiny holds. At the crux Shawn uses a hold that's barely in existence. After spending way too much time discussing whether it's 5.11b or not, in hindsight, I could see it since it's a slab. I mean, 5.11b slab is bound to be frickin hard for techniqueless gym monkey boulderers. The odd part is the way it's bolted... it doesn't seem to correspond to the route. So we're not totally sure how Texas Lite Sweet was originally designed. In any case, neither of us has ever seen chalk on the line that goes straight to the chains. Now there is. That sounds like a boast, but I actually regret leaving traces there. It would be much cooler to do it and leave not one molecule of magnesium carbonate on the sandstone.

Monday, March 2, 2009

From the numinous to the tenebrous.

This reprobate weather cancelled my flight back to Vegas. Feeling lugubrious in NJ, which is how you are supposed to feel in NJ, I cobbled together this video which spans from Texas to New York, with the Garden State making an appearance via the midtown Dover express line. The dream of Hueco dissolves into the muddy hues of a northeast wintry mix. The only thing warm out here are my friends, some of whom make brief appearances. OK, enough of this deleterious bathos and pitiful kvetching. At the end of the video we visit Spiderman. Then the night melted into a reddish haze of ramen noodles, hand made gyoza, sapporo, hendrick's gin, and jameson's irish whiskey. Following this immolation of liver and brain, I awoke in new jersey with nothing left but a spleen and some simulacra... there was talk of Obama, neat, blood drinking, guillotines, Kilimanjaro, ganja, bosses, limos, beeotches, shee-its, pussy, puree, Woolloomooloo, spears, nicotine, sleepy eyes, audits, nicotine, slickness, this one's on the house...