Amazing dishes, each one a visual and flavorful masterpiece. It's my favorite place in Vegas. Bouchon is amazing but I personally prefer the raku style of numerous small and varied dishes, reminiscent of spanish tapas. 
This cold appetizer was ridunculous! Several of my favorite things all together: a poached egg, salmon roe (ikura), and sea urchin (uni). Ovum, sperm, gonads. Of course it's delicious. At $7 it's definitely a bargain.
Checked out Matt's woody (no, not that one)... for lack of a title/brand, I'm dubbing it "The Classroom" because you go there to... - wait for it - to get schooled. Horrible joke, but it sort of works since Matt is a teacher. A friend of his was able to drill real rock holds which provided an interesting experience. For one thing, the real rock holds were much cooler to the touch temperature-wise than the plastic holds. I don't know how it's possible but there's definitely a difference when grabbing a piece of real rock. There are close-ups of the real rock holds at his website. Maybe there's a difference because there's a liminal amount of flex and give in the plastic holds that doesn't happen with stone. 
A dyno. I know it's not really climbing, but I can't help it.
Sunday my old crew visited the magnum area in the gunks for some conglomerate bouldering. Warmed up on some zeros on the back side of the Magnum boulder. Above is a tallish slab. Hope those crystals don't break under the weight of your toes.
V5 Resurrection - sent. Very nice movement here with varied holds. The best part is the bump to crimp with your left toe naturally latching a toehook without you having to think about it. I know - talking about a cool move with no accompanying photo is totally rookie. Sorry about that.
Small note on the etymology of "poo-pah": I hear the individual that named this problem was hanging around some prostitutes somewhere in Queens (a perfectly respectable activity) and one of them referred to another as a "puta", which is spanish for prostitute. However, since this boulderer did not know spanish, he heard it as "Poo-pah", which must have made an impression on him since he decided to name a boulder problem after the word. Anyway, from what I saw, Resurrection and Poo-pah were the best of the area in that grade range. Although next time I want to try the overhanging boulder by Resurrection with the heinous sloping topout where all the v9 or v10s lay. There's also the arete/prow facing Resurrection ("Henry's Arete") which is apparently much harder than it looks at V8, and has been known to pop unprepped tendons. Needless to say, we left that guy alone. We concluded the day by flailing on the v5 "Old Gringo" on the front of the magnum boulder, all the while succumbing to poor technique, greasy holds and battalions of mosquitos.
Back in Flagstaff for dinner, Pilar noticed that practically every establishment in town is "voted the best [fill in the blank] of Flagstaff!" But it's such a small town, there's only one of each anyway. Of course you're the best if you're the only one. Trying to get past the self-promoting best-of buzz, I found a website called http://www.hottieandthefatso.com/ (kudos for that title). They are two flagstaff locals that rate restaurants. I enjoyed their reviews, as they were straightforward and honest. At any rate, they said the best restaurant was a german restaurant called the Matterhorn. Intrigued, we went. It was excellent. How can you go wrong with a pork chop, a fried egg, and anchovies? (answer: you can't). Guess I shoulda taken the photo before chomping on the potato pancake.
The Optimator on tap was quality; it was like thomas hardy without the super thick caramel aftertaste.
Returning to the hotel with nothing to do, we drank and blew bubbles.
But it didn't matter because I didn't get it. Stymied by the crux foot cut, my screams from trying to hold the foot cut echoed through the draw for a good second. Undaunted by my fledgling core strength and terrible campus abilities, I hurled myself at it from the start over and over again. I can't figure out how people (shorter women?) put a left heel hook into the starting hold. It looks super positive that way, but I just can't get my foot in that shit.
Afterwards, we went into town and had so-so tacos at locos tacos or tacos locos or something like that. I fucked up and ordered a "Grand Canyon raspberry wheat beer." What the fuck was I thinking? Then Pilar ordered what tasted like an alcohol free margarita. In fact, it had such a paltry effect on the spaniard, she promptly drove to an Albertson's supermarket, purchased a bottle of Freixenet champagne, and started swigging directly from the bottle in what she termed was an effort to "get totally fucked up."
We finally convinced Shawn to visit Robbers' Roost at Mt. Charleston. In true SM fashion, he immediately eyed the hardest stuff and said, "I wanna do that." Or maybe it was more of a pointing gesture followed by, "That. Me climb. Hard." I just realized his initials also stand for sado-masochism. Huh. So we set up basecamp with all new and shiny products: rei lawn chair, new stick clip, even a Bose speaker for the ipod.Contortionist Corner 5.12c from Hotel Sierra on Vimeo.
I like JB's shot because it accurately depicts the steepness. I was able to hangdog through it, but it cost me as my tricep became so exercised at the end, it wouldn't stop twitching until 3am that evening. I wish I knew the biochemistry behind that, as it's probably lack of something like potassium or magnesium or sodium. I foolishly thought my quadruple espresso from Starbux would tide me over. Speaking of JB, he did a marvelous job on an 11b or c on the opposite wall although sadly no footage. And that despite the bright Bufon soccer jersey!
Below, superboy gazes into the empty space that awaits.
Onward to onanism... it's almost dialectical. We start off with self pleasuring, evolve to mutual, and end with total rejection. Good stuff.
"Bush is Satan." Now that's deep.
"Yup... another turd.." Can't argue with or mock that one. Must be a universal truth.
Wonderstuff attempts. from Hotel Sierra on Vimeo.
Matt was kind enough to introduce Masa, Satoshi, and me to this “new” area. New to us at least. It was recently featured in Rock & Ice and bigupproductions’ Tis the Season. Anywho, it’s quality rock, kinda tall, with flat landings. When we arrived we encountered a dozen or so friendly cadets from the West Point rock climbing club. We climbed with them a little while before moving on. Below Linda works a V4. Unusual for this area (gunks) to find a nice overhanging moderate with friendly holds and good movement.
Masa on the crux of a pretty neat V4 slab.
Below, Nicholas Cage on the V7. 
The black flies and mosquitos love his blood as well. He’s better than bug spray. Just stand next to him, and all the airborne bloodsuckers flock to him leaving you unscathed. Must be something he eats. Of course the V7 was right above a pool of stagnant water filled with mosquito larvae. Matt sent on his 2nd try. Unfortunately I didn’t get video of the send. I only got his pre-send slip-up followed by his patented rapid fire cussing. V8 failure … This was my favorite problem of the day. Naturally- because I couldn’t do any of the moves. But it appeared to require a decent amount of core tension. There’s a cool undercling move on a sliver of granite that looks transparent and ready to snap off with no warning. Somebody better not break that off before I get on it again.
V5 (redpoint) … Masa uses the calf hook. When the heel just isn’t enough.
At the end of the day Eric’s girlfriend showed up. She’s super strong. They have a gigantic Nemo chalkbag. What’s Nemo up to?
34 point bouldering day and I’m not sore… plus I never send above V5 away from home. Although I’m in NYC/NJ so frequently it doesn’t feel like a road trip. I mean I know every inch of the NY thruway from NJ to New Paltz. It almost feels like home. Did my cocktail of bacon, eggs, pancakes, double espressos, creatine, and sudafed work? I would be tempted instead to downgrade everything by 3 but then MS might piledrive me…
