CYCLES

(Photo: Fresh off the MoPac with 20.4 miles under our belts and awesome helmet hair)

"Yeah, I get by with a little help from my friends."

Fighting a cold for most of the week, I decided to bail on my long-anticipated return to Shelf Road for what can only be described as a climbing and beer extravaganza. It was hard to let go of the dream, particularly after scoring a freakishly good deal on a sleeping bag earlier in the summer and amassing my own gear. My maternal instincts directed inward, I decided that the trip (however fun) would be too much. I didn't want to get sicker on the road, or experience sleeping in a tent with lows hovering in the 30s when I just didn't feel good. Whiny? Probably. But when you've got a comps portfolio to work on, a demanding teaching schedule, and three major projects looming above your head, it pays to be cautious. I can't afford to get so sick I have to delay deadlines.

By Friday night, I was feeling much better and decided to try to round up a group for a ride out to Eagle, Nebraska on the MoPac trail. Three of my friends joined me, and I think we couldn't have asked for a better day. WIth the high hovering at 65, with a crisp fall breeze to our backs (except one brutal stretch two miles outside of Eagle when the wind was angry and in our face), and with great joy, we tackled the trail.

Since moving in June, I've been a real bike commuter. I barrel down busy streets like a bike messenger wannabe. I wear my cycling clothes to handle weather and pack my work outfits in a saddle bag. It's easy for me to rack up 15 - 20 miles of riding each week as I work and play. On the weekends, I like to take on a long ride to clear out the cobwebs. I usually listen to music while mulling my week, thinking through difficulties of the heart, and just enjoying the simple act of moving and breathing.

Until this weekend, riding has always been a solitary, meditative act for me. On occasion, my son would join and we'd ride out on the MoPac so he could tell me stories. He moved to California a month ago, and I miss him. This, now that I think about it, is probably what urged me to ask my friends to go on a ride. It's all too easy for me to remain comfortably within my own insular existence, to do my own thing and go my own way. I'm glad I didn't do that this weekend.

I've been feeling a bit disappointed in the workings of my own body lately. My metabolism has slowed, making weight loss difficult. Turning forty, it turns out, is like hitting a caloric brick wall. Just this month, I added circuit training to my weekly routine three times each week to increase my activity while building muscle - muscles that will (Lord willing) burn fuel. When I woke Saturday, I tried to push this frustration from my mind. I was marginally successful.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't missing the Colorado crew and the climbing opportunity. Since my first trip to Shelf, I've wanted to go back just to prove I could top a rock route and enjoy the view. I also miss the Boulder gang very much - I think about them every day. Getting out with Lincoln friends helped to assuage my feelings of disappointment that I didn't go to Colorado. As we loaded bikes into the back of a truck, as we all joked and teased each other, it felt good to be with my Lincoln crew, to be together doing something outside of our bimonthly beer binges.

Out on the trail, riding the crushed gravel trail covered in fallen leaves, the scent of fall aroused my senses. I love the smoky, earthy tones of autumn, the crisp air, and the colors that seem to burst forth from tired trees and trail-side plants. As we rushed past thistles topped with cotton and farmers' fields turned to golden rest, it felt damn good to be alive. Though two-thirds of the route to Eagle is a steady uphill grade that burns the thighs, I was still grinning like a village idiot. As I pedaled, I found my thoughts wandering through my memories; through the years before I discovered just how fantastic my Trek I named Old Blue is, and how much fuller my life has been since I shambled into the bike store and laid down some cash.

Life on a bike, I think, takes me back as it brings me forward. That's why I like it. I'm at once the best parts of childhood and my grown-up life, wheels turning, spokes shining, pedals moving ... it's glorious, this biking thing.

After we descended upon the bustling main drag of Eagle, we stood in front of the One Eyed Dog bar and ate our snacks. I chomped down a Kashi bar and a navel orange. A friend ate some yogurt and an apple. We rehydrated then made the mad ten-mile rush back to the trail head. As I rode ahead, I felt the weeks of commuting had paid off. I wasn't overly tired. I didn't feel as though I wanted to give up, either. Instead, I felt very efficient and relaxed - cycling nirvana.



The day itself was full of laughter and smiles. We ate together at a local pizzeria, then headed to my house so the gang could meet Scooter, my 9-week old kitten and P'UP mascot. When everyone had gone and I was alone in my apartment with Scooter purring on my lap, I felt very lucky. Somehow, despite all my poor choices, I've ended up with good friends in two states. And though a part of me still wished I'd gone to climb in Colorado, it was the selfish part - the one who wants everything right away, in an instant. There will be other trips, other climbs. I miss those special people, but even as I do I know they would have been very proud of me had they seen the gang and I on the trail, living our lives, in and on cycles.

DROPPING JAWS

“You’re going to get so much action in this place!” Kate exclaimed as we moved yet another wave of boxes into my new apartment. Her enthusiasm and foresight, I suspect, were symptomatic of exhaustion.

“Ooh baby,” I said, “Welcome to my swingin’ bachelorette pad. You know, ‘ho’ + use equals house.”

And it’s jokes like that, I think, that serve as an inoculation to prevent social interaction with the opposite sex. I am as immune to dating as I am to small pox, mumps, measles, and polio. Good thing, I suppose, since all of these afflictions are kind of a bummer and can sometimes be fatal.

(I know - a good woman doesn’t make such jests. Let’s just call that last one part of a mounting body of evidence, shall we?)

Over the weekend, while at a bar to wish “bon voyage” to two climbing friends before their trip to Europe, a man crossed the room to join our group. He had that sharp, middle-management suck-up veneer and was a bit too man-tan for Nebraska. His clothes were too “crisp.” His haircut too groomed. He reminded me of the standard issue middle-aged man from Florida, someone who wears golf clothes all weekend while oogling younger women from behind mirrored aviator glasses.

This man we’ll call David (because that’s what he asked me to call him) made a lot of eye contact with me as I sat with my friends. As every Cosmo girl knows, men who look you in the eye for prolonged periods of time (longer than two seconds) and point their torsos in your direction are demonstrating classic attraction symptoms. The secret to wooing, the (s)experts claim, is giving good eye and where you point your chest.

His baby blues were saying something. The thing is, though, I wasn’t sure exactly what. Things were getting lost in translation. There seemed to be a note of urgency, like the hopeful glance a husband gives a wife when it’s definitely time to leave a dreadful party. But there also seemed to be a contemplative pause, which I attributed to either a minor stroke or his response to the waitress’ short skirt and tight tank top.

While I tried to decipher his eye code, I noticed his lips were moving. I focused. I squinted. It seemed he was asking me for directions and I, the ever polite Midwesternite, got up to help.

“So you’re lost?” I asked, setting my pint on the table.

David smiled. “Not anymore.”

He was indeed from out of town. He worked for an internationally known excavation equipment company. He seemed like a very nice man who loved his work – we talked about our shared enthusiasm for our careers. It was a grown-up and lively conversation. An hour later, he said he wanted to spend some time with me while he was in town. I gave him my number and we made plans for dinner the following night.

The exchange seemed natural (unlike his tan). I wasn’t nervous or uncomfortable. I didn’t invite him to my ho + use, either. David, a couple years my senior, seemed like the perpetual bachelor. But he was closer to my age than my ex, didn’t seem like a serial killer, and was genuine in his interest in having dinner with me.

Twenty-two hours later, dressed up and waiting for my phone to ring, my gut instinct foretold the unforgivable: I’d been stood up.

As I washed my face and readied for bed, I thought about all the good-natured pressure I’ve received to get “Out There and meet people.” Why do those who claim to love me foist this absurd notion in my direction? Don’t they remember how brutal the dating scene is? Have they forgotten how awful waiting for the phone to ring feels, or how deep rejection can seep into one’s bones? Don’t they remember the indignity of being stood up for dinner and having to eat the Plan B bowl of Top Ramen? Oh, the humanity! Oh, the horror! Oh, the sodium!

I wish I could report the dastardly stand-up didn’t make me sad, that I lived up to my middle name and powered through my disappointment. But by the end of the night, I was curled into a pathetic mass of quivering inquiry. I often tell my students that life is process, that lessons await us everywhere. So I wondered what Life was trying to teach me, and then asked God to smite David’s golf swing.

It’s not that the guy had swept me off my feet or even that I had been hoping for more than dinner – I’m a realist. I’ve met myself. I know my gifts are often lethal blows to blossoming romance. What bothered me, what really had me against the cerebral ropes, is that I hadn’t gone out of my way to court this kind of experience. I hadn’t gone to the bar to find a hook-up. I wasn’t trolling for dudes. I wasn’t even wearing my good underwear. I’m chaste for fuck’s sake.

In fact, when I had left the house I was content with my life, perhaps even happy, and filling my hours with all kinds of normal, happy things. It’s only been since my move to the new place that I’ve been able to look the world in the eye again – my recovery from last fall's (and my truest) interest in love (and the rejection of it) has been slow.

I thought I was doing well, really making headway with my heart. Certain songs weren’t suffocating me with sudden, inescapable melancholia. I was able to hang out with my merry band of marrieds and cutely coupled without feeling like Uno Royale, their simple and single sidekick; a matronly mascot serving to remind them they were lucky to have someone. This seemed like progress.

Then David McManTan showed up, tossed me a few compliments like Chief Martin Brody tossing chum, and when I surfaced he scurried the poop deck. Though I recognized his cowardice, I also recognized something I’d been avoiding.




For months now, I’ve been working (and perhaps overworking) a poem …

A woman shows a man her treasure, a collection of cobalt sapphires, fiery rubies, glistening emeralds, and twinkling diamonds. “These are my gifts,” she says. “These I will share with you.”

Looking upon her generosity, all he feels is the weight of the stone.

As she explains how beauty is exacted by compression, he senses his own suffocation.

As she shares the facets of her interests, he’s blinded by the glare.

As he walks quietly into the dawn she stares at the gems waking with first light, their colors deepening in holy hues. Aching with joy, she calls to him, longing to show him the illumination.

But he is already too far away. Her voice stirs nothing but the birds in the trees.

She waits.

She sits with her gems so long she too feels their weight.

She sits looking at their glistening colors until she too becomes blind to their beauty.

Without vision, heavy with contemplation, she gathers her stones and buries them again – for real this time.

I know: It’s a total bummer poem. My point: Mr. McManTan popped up into my life just long enough to remind me that I had buried my gems. What a bastard. So now what? Hell if I know. Date an archeologist? Buy a shovel? Bite tourists until someone sends Richard Dreyfuss and the sheriff? Pray there are no sequels?

I suppose I’ll just do the only thing I can: Take it to the wall and sort it out later.

THERE'S AN END (RIGHT BEFORE A BEGINNING)

I took this photo while biking the MoPac trail, not too far from Eagle, Nebraska. A storm rolled in on top of us, so my son and I sought shelter in a lean-to built by Boy Scout troop 49 to wait out the front. Watching the rain, feeling the miles as a dull ache in my legs, I stared at the horizon. My son, eating canned chicken with robust zeal, told me his own Scout stories while I considered the weight of my existence.

As much as I write about life, all I really know is this: Beginnings only follow endings. I’m packing up my university apartment, ending a semester of teaching, and coming to terms with one of my kid’s decision to launch herself into a complicated life on her own. There’s a lot to do, a lot to keep me busy, and I’m feeling a bit too isolated. But this is the nature of endings; this is just how life works.

I did find an apartment, a beautiful 930 square foot craftsmen place with mahogany woodwork, double French-doors, and a refurbished galley kitchen perfect for me. Come June 1, I will live in a place less expensive but far more beautiful. I will live in my first apartment ever sought just for me. I didn’t have to choose it for its schools or neighborhood. I didn’t have to consider the number of bedrooms or the color of its carpet (kids are hell on carpeting).

Instead, I spent several days searching for the sort of place that felt like me. As an academic working with spatiality and cognition, issues of place/space intrigue me. I knew, for example, that wherever I lived I would experience some shifts in both my thinking and my self-perception so it was important to find someplace that felt at home even without furniture.

After four days, I found it. It felt so good there I didn’t want to leave. Maybe it was the French doors. Maybe it was the natural light and all the windows. Maybe it was all the greenery in the neighborhood, or the fact the landlord said, “Feel free to put plants on the balcony, to hang flowers.” Or maybe it was the fact that the kitchen was painted a beautiful shade of grey and had brand-new everything.

Whatever it was or is, I’m moving in a couple of weeks to an eight-unit brick apartment built in the 1920s that’s a short walk from my oldest daughter’s little yellow house, a grocery store, and the coolest little Mexican bakery I’ve ever seen. My familial-centered day-to-day existence is changing into a single lady life. As sad as I am about the ending, I am equally happy at the prospects of my beginning. I’m too far into the journey to turn back, and there’s some difficult stuff ahead.

I’ve wondered if I’m at the crux of my life itself …

I’ve channeled a lot of my feelings into climbing. This week, I topped out a 5.7+ with a tricky backward slant at the crux that I had been projecting, and then topped out a new 5.7 with an overhang. I’ve started working with the fingerboards, learning to “hang” because I can’t quite do a pull-up. In short, I’ve started to think of my own development as a climber instead of just being happy I could get UP at all. As one of my fellow climbers said to me, “You’ve not a noob anymore, Rogers.”

I certainly don’t feel like a noob. My oldest daughter is getting married in two weeks, and that alone can make you feel far from new. She and her fiancé are excited and happy as we plan our BBQ celebration, their trip to the courthouse for a secular wedding, and navigate their entry into the next phase of their lives. He’s 28 to her 22, but you’d never know it. They’re in love all over again, and just last month they discovered they would be parents before Christmas. They’re a couple of grinning dopes.

With moving and their marriage comes a whole lot of change. Some things will stay the same. I’ll still bike to work and back every day – no matter the weather this year. I will still shop at Open Harvest, stop in at Le Quartier - the French bakery - on my way back from Eagle on the MoPac, and take Sunday coffee at Indigo Bridge Books in the Haymarket. I’ll still go with the boys (my son and son-in-law) to the batting cages on the weekends to work out the psychological kinks. And I’ll still climb three days a week – thank goodness.

What I won’t be doing, which seems really foreign and nonsensical to me, is living with another’s needs positioned as equal to or even greater than, my own. And that, I have to admit, is an intimidating yet exciting proposition - sort of like that 5.8 on the north wall at our Rec that I have been eyeing the way a woman gives a man the once over in a crowded bar.

All I do know is that I'll be climbing to keep myself together.

FAMILY TIES

(PHOTO: E.F.R. tying in B-rad)


Sharing my enthusiasm for climbing is the best part of P’UP, the best part of climbing itself. Today was one of those damn fine climbing days, mostly because I brought Brad, my future son-in-law, to the wall. While we tied in, my daughter Christina snapped off some photos before heading upstairs to run her miles on the treadmill.

She’s not ready, she says, to try climbing again but I think B-rad and I will win her over eventually. That’s our sinister plan, anyway.

B-rad just moved back to Lincoln from Milwaukee, and he’s already caught the climbing bug, that viral infection that makes you want to part with your hard-earned cash to buy equipment, chalk, and the most expensive shoes you’ll ever wear for just one purpose. It’s only a matter of time before he’s hanging out at Moose’s Tooth, or surfing the Web for hot deals on climbing gear, otherwise known as "rock porn."

(PHOTO: B-rad, a.k.a. "Slim," reaching the top of the 5.6)


The best part: B-rad’s a natural climber. He on-sighted all the routes he tried, including the 5.7 on the incline, “Jews for Jesus” (I don't name these routes, by the way) and the 5.6 “11 Year Hiatus” (named after, I'm guessing, the term for a break in geographical strata, usually measured by stratagraphists in hiatus "years"). Both routes challenged me, but B-rad knocked ‘em out and tonight was just his second climbing adventure. His climbing virginity was handed over to the gods in Madison, Wisconsin the night I broke my foot last year. So I’m thinking he’ll be reaching that 5.9 transition in the near future.

(PHOTO: B-rad, clearly enjoying his climbing night)

(PHOTO: E.F.R. working the 5.7 "Jews for Jesus")

I had a few victories tonight, myself. I nearly on-sighted that 5.7 on the incline, and this made me feel really good about both my climbing and my healing foot. I made it up and over the arch without much effort, and felt as if my body was beginning to develop a sense of climbing intuition. My moves didn’t feel forced or negotiated until I hit what I considered the crux of the route – and this nearly brought tears to my googly eyes.

(PHOTO: E.F.R. sweatin' after the "11 Year Hiatus")

I’ve also lost my self-consciousness, thankfully, and no longer feel as if I’m wasting a belay’s time if I have to take a moment to collect my thoughts or rest before pressing on. This might have something to do with the fact I’ve come down two dress sizes since joining Weight Watchers, and have brought my BMI down nearly 3 points in just three weeks.

Or, it could just be that confidence comes with practice. The true origin of this progress matters not to me. It’s the climbing that feeds my soul, so I’m even more excited about the upcoming trip to Shelf Road than I was last week. With just over a month to train, I’m hopeful to be confident in my attempts at more difficult routes before April 10.

(PHOTO: E.F.R. checking to see if her feet were still there)

Considering the week I’ve had, one with all kinds of unexpected difficulties and challenges, tonight felt all the more special. As I sit here, listening to Tom Petty and counting my blessings, I’m thinking climbing might be the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Whatever wrongs life tosses at me are righted the moment I take hold of the wall, the moment I’m off the ground. As Tom Petty sings, “I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got no wings” and I’m taking life one move at a time.

SPREADING THE VIRUS

It's been a great two weeks for P'UP. Not only have I started projecting a 5.8 Steph Laudenklos (profiled here) named, "Erica's Song," I have had the pleasure of sharing my enthusiasm for climbing with several of my students.

Tana and Rachel, both students in my "Writing and Communities" course, took up my open invitation to try climbing. I didn't have my camera with me when Tana, a former gymnast, got her climb on. She ascended four routes wearing tennis shoes, and despite the struggle, found herself in love with the sport. She got her certification and is now a regular at the wall. Rachel came to the wall just this Tuesday.

Rachel, a former HS athlete and power-lifter, showed up this week to give climbing a try. Nervous and edgy, she faced down some old fears.



"When I was a kid," she said, "my sisters could climb trees and I was too scared. I can't believe I'm doing this."

As Josh tied her in, she beamed with both fear and intrigue.



"I don't know if I can do this," she said.

"Honey, if I can, you can," I replied.

Rachel blazed a rainbow path up the wall, as Josh offered beta to keep her going. At times, she claimed, "I can't do this," and we replied, "Yes you can!" (Oh, who knew Obama would become a prophet?)



As she ascended, and with just a third of the route left, her arms and hands began to shake. "I can't do it!" she wailed.

"Just sit back and take a rest," Josh suggested. "Shake out your arms for a minute."



After a thirty-seconds of shaking out her arms and self-empowerment, she took on the rest of that wall. She hit that last hold and touched the bar above the route.



Victorious and in disbelief, she came on down. As Josh untied the danish with cheese, Rachel beamed. Her energy and self-respect resonated.



"I can't believe it!" she said, grinning. "That was hard!" she said with a big smile.

As we talked afterward, she looked down at her hands.

"You know," she said, "when I was power-lifting, I thought callouses were the coolest thing for a girl to have."

She seemed to be seeing a forgotten self as she looked to her palms. I smiled.

"This is so awesome."

"Yeah, you did a great job. Are you coming back?"

"Oh yeah!"

Just last night, two of my freshmen students, Travis and Bill, showed up to climb. Travis had a tough time of it, but he's coming back. Bill, a student returning home to Delaware at the end of this semester to attend a university there, won't be. However, he thinks he may have to take up climbing at home, on his beloved East Coast.

After the young men had climbed around and discovered it was harder than it looked, they too were smiling. As they took off their harnesses and rushed to get back to a study group, they too seemed to vibrate with excitement.

"You coming back, Travis?" I asked, smiling.

"Definitely."

In the past couple of weeks, I've seen how enthusiasm is contagious. I've watched young women who had forgotten or set aside their athletic lives, reconnect with a part of themselves. I've watched young men learn that there's something valuable about the process, the struggle, climbing represents. This process reflects my teaching of process as a pedagogical tool. What I valued most, I think, in the moments I spent with students, is the ability to point to a tangible, physical process and explain how it replicates or affirms the intellectual process I've been trying to help them to understand all semester.

It was beautiful to me, that connection between the mental and the physical. I think that's what keeps me coming back to the wall, too.

As I project the 5.8 (made it past the bouldering line last night), and negotiate stemming on that projected "Cold Hands" 5.7, I'm learning to respect my body in new ways. I'm not as weak or awkward as I once believed. I'm getting stronger. I'm beginning to understand my potential as a human being.

My love for climbing is infectious, I believe, and helping others to catch the virus has become an example of prophetic love. I am a teacher of self-appreciation, of self-centered exploration with community-wide implications. Climbing is helping me to name all of the methods I use in the classroom, and those methods are bleeding into the work I do at the wall. Someday, I hope to be a climbing writer, the sort who takes off all summer to write of rock and daydreaming, of the earth and humanity.

Until then, I'll keep training at the rec, sharing all of myself I can, and marveling at this truth: Sharing your enthusiasm and self-confidence helps others to do the same. It draws them out of themselves and back in again, as they reconnect with parts of their soul they thought they had lost. It's the best kind of inquiry, and it's beautiful to watch.

If I were to send you, dear reader, a postcard it would read, "Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here."

But I'd really mean it. Some things you have to see for yourself. And man, you should see the human beauty I'm seeing at the wall every day.

ROCKIN' THE POETRY WORLD

You know, I'm not just a climbing novice.

But I've got big news: The Split This Rock Poetry Festival has invited yours truly to present a panel with colleagues. The festival is in Washington, D.C. and it looks like it's going to be a smashing good time. Split This Rock is, at its heart, an anti-war event aimed at reclaiming language and our collective potential. Poets from all over the country come to this festival that is a mixture between an academic conference (with workshops and presenters) and a public protest (such as the march to Lafayette Park across from the White House).

The organization is supported by grants, and this year it will be filming a documentary about the festival itself. For now, you can see videos on YouTube, such as this one:



For the 2010 Split This Rock Festival, I will be presenting with Madeline Wiseman and Aimee Adellard titled, "Fatty Girls, Imaginary Cocks, and Vaginas Built Like Bookstores: A Workshop on Writing the Activist Body." We're thinking the title alone got us into the festival, but we're planning on helping other poets who want to take their interior poetic lives into the public in hopes of affecting social change.



In this sense, I'm taking on work people like Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg sponsored during Vietnam, and did in the later years of their careers, long after the Beats were considered history. I've been thinking about this more and more as I consider the curricula goals for my section of the workshop, as well as how this speaking out and up work will fortify me as a writer, poet, and climber.

I've also been thinking about how sacred Lafayette Park is as a site for democratic activity. It is the ground in Washington where activists of all sorts demonstrate, and where, I'm sure, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI gather photographs and documentation of those who show up to exercise their First Amendment rights.

But I've been thinking about Ferlinghetti's book, Poetry As Insurgent Art, and these lines in particular:

"The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it."


"Words can save you where guns can't."


It's not that I've always been a peace activist, or even a poet. It's not that I've always picked up my democratic responsibilities as a citizen of the United States. It's not even that I've always believed in the power and reach of my own words. I've never been to the East Coast. I've never been to Washington. It has always been a mythical place, something I've seen on television and wondered if it existed at all. I'm just a woman learning to live, write, and climb and seeing where that takes her.

The airline ticket alone is going to be around $350. The hotel rates are staggering, even if William Shatner asks on Priceline.com, "Who's ready to take a ride on the deal stallion?" Democracy, it seems, will come at a cost - as it always must, I suppose.

So for the next few months I'm going to enter every poetry contest offering a kitty I can. I'm going to have to step-up my efforts at fundraising, and I'm thinking about a bake sale (however quirky it may seem). This may become an "E.F.R. Goes to Washington" sort of thing, and I'll admit this: I've thought of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington more than once since receiving my invitation to the festival.



I'm pretty sure Jimmy Stewart didn't go there to yell, "Vagina!" at people, but still ...

As a poet, this is a pretty big deal. I'm taking my work far from Nebraska, way out into the public sphere, and doing that work in a very respected poetry festival among celebrated poets. And I'm thinking of women and men who have gone before me, of those people I respect who have taken the risk to say out loud what their soul needed to say. I'm humbled and excited, intimidated and encouraged.

Performance poetry, embodying the activist poet, teaching others to let the words seep into their bones and perform instead of recite a poem ... all of this is spinning in my head as I write today. Or as Peter Gabriel sings: "Ill be a big noise with all the big boys ..." (Seriously, watch this old video ... it so fits my story!)



As exciting as this new challenge is, you have to know that I'm already trying to figure out how to find climbing opportunities in the D.C. metro area. I'm looking at Earth Trek's facility in Rockville, MD (a quick train ride from D.C.), and SportRock in Alexandria, VA. The latter is in the middle of a remodeling project to make it more competitive with Earth Trek's gyms, so I'm thinking I should check both of them out in order to write a fair and balanced review.

I love this justification, of course, because that gives me license to monkey about in the name of P'UP.

I'm thinking too about the ways in which climbing is shaping my approach to writing and public performance of that writing. I don't know if I'll get the chance to climb in D.C. or not, but I do know that when I take the stage or give my workshop, all I've learned through climbing about patience, personal achievement, and moxie will be with me. I'm thinking, too, that I might shoot a documentary myself ... more on that later.

EPIC(UREAN) FAIL

(PHOTO: New computer cam tries to capture my Cheshire Grin. Unfortunately, bad cake had paralyzed my mouth).

I had hoped to post a new recipe for a whole-wheat apple spice cake today.

Unfortunately, my first attempt is now a brick of healthy fodder on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator. It looks good, but something went awry in the preparation.

Maybe I’ve created a muffin recipe – a stay-with-you-all-day muffin. Maybe, well, maybe one shouldn’t try to use all whole-wheat flour instead of a flour blend. Whatever the case may be, it’s clear to me now that I’m no “Ace of Cakes.”

All I know is that a cake isn’t supposed to remind you of bran flakes, or roll on your tongue like Ready-Mix in a cement mixer. Cake isn’t supposed to dehydrate your face.

I may have just invented a cure for acne. On my second bite, when my mouth went bong-dry, I felt a pull from deep within my pores. I’ve had a glass of milk and two glasses of water since my first 2 by 2 inch square of apple spice disaster.

Drinking that much liquid after a piece of this epicurean experiment was like pulling the rip-cord on a life raft.

Despite this culinary misdeed, I’ve had an awesome day. I met Ryann and Schnook at the wall this afternoon, and enjoyed a couple of good hours of climbing and belaying. I knew it was time to quit while ascending my last climb of the day, when I forgot I had feet. It was as if I were dragging myself up the wall, sort of like when a dog hustles her hindquarters across shag carpet.

It wasn’t pretty.

A good fifteen feet after the bouldering line, my feet flailed about like flags flapping in the breeze. I looked down to Ryann, and yelled just one word:

“Dinner!”

We packed up and headed for our bikes. It was a delicious fall evening, crackling with excitement as Husker Nation scurried about campus in preparation for the showdown with Oklahoma. It was dark out, and I realized then that I had forgotten my halogen lamps. Stupid Daylight Savings time.

Riding hard, passing football fans and drunk idiots, I welcomed the chilled November night into my lungs. Two weeks ago I began the “step-down” smoking cessation program my doctor recommended. I can already feel a difference in my body and my mind. Even so, habitual self-destruction is harder to give up than one might think.

Addiction, even to something as pedestrian as nicotine, shapes and distorts who you are. It's difficult to imagine you and your life without it. It's difficult to admit you're entitled to good things, like love, or life. It's even more challenging to face down your inadequacies and self-destructive nature in a public sphere, with your life "Out There" for anyone to see.

P'UP, though, isn't some narcissistic endeavor. It is not so much a projector of my life as it is a microscope. Even the small things, stuff that doesn't seem related to climbing at all, is beneath the scope of the project. So here I am, thinking about all the years I wasted five minutes at a time, smoking to calm the uncertain beast that is, when matching my feet and plotting my approach, humbled and silent.

All my disappointments, the hurt, all those times I didn't get what I needed ... they all get left on the ground, stamped out and discarded, like a cigarette. I love that. So two weeks in to the new cessation program I’m making progress. Nov. 30 is the “no butts, baby, it’s-all-over-but-the-cryin’ deadline.

But it ain’t gonna be a walk in the park, and it definitely won’t be a piece of cake. Thank God.