It’s been a while, but tonight I finally tried something new: rock climbing. More specifically, I took a belay course at the Boulder Rock Club, that included a little rock climbing. Brenda got into rock climbing about a year and a half ago, and at the time I had no interest in joining her. I was riding my bike around while she was hanging from tiny little pieces of plastic bolted to the climbing walls in the gym (and later, from chinks in the rocks of Eldorado Canyon), and that was fine with me; she had her hobby, and I had mine. Once she started her classes last year, Brenda absolutely fell in love with the challenges: the physical challenges as well as the mental puzzle-solving challenges that go with the territory. Still, I just thought rock climbing wasn’t for me. I’m too heavy, too klutzy, too weak. Too outta shape.

And then I saw some climbing movie, and everything changed. I want to do that, I thought. And so tonight I made the first tiny baby step towards becoming a rock climber, by signing up for the Wednesday night “Belay Basics” class taught at the Boulder Rock Club.

I showed up at the Boulder Rock Club after work tonight and met Joe, my instructor. Turns out I was the only person signed up this week, so I got one-on-one instruction for the whole lesson! He gave me some shoes and a harness; I thanked him for the gear and realized that he could have handed me a pair of Crocs and a garden hose and I would have thought I was properly equipped. I would spend the next hour or so becoming familiar with these pieces of equipment as well as the belay device, a simple piece of aluminum with a cable attached to it that allows the belayer (the dude on the ground) to stop a fall easily.

Joe gave me a tour of the place, a large complex of several rooms with ceilings over twenty feet high, with ropes everywhere, and all manner of hardbodies—men and women who could totally kick my ass—hanging from the ropes like they lived there, and others doing Spider Man impersonations all over the climbing walls. I was intimidated. But then we went upstairs to what apparently is the beginner room. A few nine year-olds were wandering around and doing their OWN best Spider Man impersonations. I was intimidated, again.

But no matter, I was simply here to learn to belay, this requires one’s feet on the ground. Baby steps.

Joe taught me the basics of checking your harness, how to tie the knots one needs, and the basics of belay jargon before he set off on his merry way up the wall, providing a real-live belay experience for me. Some pointers ensued, and after a few more runs up and down the wall, he said to undo the belay device and he handed me the other end of the rope and the next thing I knew I was standing in front of the wall and I hear someone going “OK give it a try, why don’t you follow the blue tape, that’s a 5.6 route, nice and easy.” It was Joe, and he was talking to me.

Right. Wait, what? Step on these little things?! Well shit, the nine year-old is halfway up the goddamned thing, so I guess I’d better get moving…

Next thing I know I’m at the top, and for lack of a better thing to do I tapped the bar at the top of the climb and then Joe said something and then apparently I needed some training to descend too. (I was trying to go down the way I came up, sort-of like descending a ladder, but you’re supposed to lower your butt stick your legs straight out, and enjoy the ride down.)

After riding a slide down to the lower floor, we looked for some more free ropes to continue the lesson. There were none free in the back room, so we headed toward the front, that room by the entrance. By now I had been all over the joint, and I had a decent idea of the lay of the land: we were now in the inner sanctum. The walls here often splayed away far from the vertical, the muscles on the climbers here were ripped. Chalk dust coated everything and everyone, and they all seemed to be in some sort of zone.

Joe set us up out of the way and I got some more practice belaying, lots of belaying. Taking up slack, braking the rope to arrest Joe’s falls, etc. I was getting pretty comfy with all of that. And then he decided I should try another climb. In the inner sanctum.

By now I had sort-of gone into a trance of my own, the end result of being exposed to so many senses and experiences all at once. So, up I went, following the brown tape. Encouraging words from Joe in a couple spots, and… tap. Twenty feet up, I start the ride down, looking at my neighbors hanging from their own ropes, and I smile.

Sensing we are wearing out our welcome, Joe retreats us to the back room again, where we find a free line this time. A harder route still. I finally run into a dead-end. I fall off the wall trying to work it out. Joe lowers me and shows me a couple things (after all, this was supposed to be a belay class, but since I’m the only student, I get some free climbing tips in the bargain). I try again, and this time I get past that first hurdle, and past a few more, but I never make it to the top. I am done for the night, tired, but really happy. I take a look around from fifteen feet up, and glide down.

I have to go back in a couple days to do a belay test with another instructor to make sure I remember everything, but then I can rent some shoes and a harness and start climbing!

Tonight was one of those nights I truly felt lucky to live in Boulder. Tonight, at the fabulous Boulder Theater, the Reel Rock Tour kicked off to a packed house, and Brenda, Leslie, and I were there.

The Reel Rock Tour is a traveling film festival celebrating rock climbing, in the extreme. Good god, it was fucking amazing. The only thing better than the photography was the amazing skill and daring of the people in the films. Well, that and the rocks; the rocks were amazing. From Eldorado Canyon—right here in Boulder—to Yosemite to Chamonix, France, these places served as playmates to people who tested their limits; their drive, determination, balls and boobs, as they climbed, slept on, and B.A.S.E. jumped off of some of the most amazing fucking rocks on the planet. It was awesome.

In case you didn’t know, Boulder Colorado is kind of a hotbed for rock climbing. More importantly, in case you didn’t know, Brenda (my wife) is really into rock climbing. I reveled when Brenda took a rock climbing course at the Boulder Rock Club, and enjoyed her stories every time she came back from the gym, and especially when she came back from Eldorado Canyon on a climbing adventure with her classmates from the gym.

So when I saw this film festival advertised, I jumped at the chance to check it out, and I ended up being totally sold on the idea of rock climbing.

By the time the feature event rolled, I was totally engrossed; the beautifully brilliant mountainous landscape projected on the screen was wonderful to look at, but then the reflected light from the screen revealed an amazing thing: the Boulder Theater was totally packed. Every seat was full, and people were sitting in the aisles and standing in the stairwells, to catch a glimpse of these amazing athletes groping their way up the most impossible of routes.

The alpine hikers were my faves, but there were so many characters both in front of and behind the lens that you just wanted to be your best friends, and the fact that half of them were in the audience watching the show (and occasionally tossing out swag, including climbing legend and Rob’s girlfriend Beth Rodden’s husband Tommy Caldwell tossing out shit like ten feet from us) just added to the drama.

All in all, a good night. I am so going to try rock climbing now!!

Ahh, Boulder. Scott Carpenter Park, just around the corner from our house, has a public municipal swimming pool that keeps the kids cool all summer. Now that summer is over, the pool is officially closed for the season—to people. Boulder being dog-crazy Boulder, that does not mean the pool is yet closed for good to all creatures, though. No, after a de-clorination process last week, the pool was officially open to dogs starting this weekend and extending to next weekend. Yeah (woof)!

Naturally, upon hearing of this insanity, we made plans to participate.

We arrived at the pool parking lot Saturday afternoon—surrounded by vehicles with filthy pickup beds and festooned with decals like “my Border Collie is smarter than your honors high school student”—and headed into the melee. Once inside the gate, we paid our five bucks, took Hoop’s leash off, and the games began. Now, Hooper loves to swim in the reservoir by the East Boulder Dog Park, but that has a sandy beach and a nice gradual slope into the water; this is where he learned to swim. But this pool business, all concrete and with an abrupt transition from land to water, well, this took a second to adjust to. Seriously, like, a second.

Watching the dynamics involved with roughly forty dogs running around, all overloaded with the sensory stimuli of having an entire human public pool at their disposal, was thrilling, amusing and hysterical. A co-worker appeared, with his wife and their dog Winnie. They were trying to get Winnie to get over her fear of jumping into the water. With Hooper obviously over his fear of jumping off the pool coping, we decided to see if we could tackle the diving boards.

There were a couple of dogs over by the diving boards who were seemingly chanelling Greg Lougainis, showing no fear of the bobbing board or of leaping off the end. One dog actually pushed off the end of the board so well that he managed to get the board to bounce a few times after he departed. It sounded really professional, the “boing—splash, boing, boing”. I figured Hooper would be a natural, but he displayed a lot of anxiety about jumping off the end. He happily jumped up on the board, and would follow me out to the edge if I showed him the ball, but no matter how I threw the ball into the pool, he just couldn’t be enticed to jump off the end. You ask me, he’s just showing everyone how smart he is. But the pool is open for dog swims next weekend too, and I think I’m gonna bring him back for one more try at diving before winter arrives. All in all, it was a great day and it was fun to watch Hooper take in the newness of the entire experience.

Last night, my friend Leslie & I went to see Cake play at the Chatauqua Auditorium, as the title of this post suggests. Cake is another one of those bands that thrived when I was in musical denial during the ’90s and early ’00s, but I guess I discovered them for myself a few years ago. I love their sound, their lyrics and their “whatever” attitude. Their lyrics touch on so many of my cares and beliefs that it’s uncanny. They mock music groupies in “Rock & Roll Lifestyle” (and interestingly they probably hurt their own t-shirt sales in the process; read the lyrics, you’ll see what I mean), the insanity of war in “I Bombed Korea”, and, in what is probably my favorite Cake song from a lyrical/message standpoint, “Tougher than it is”:

Well there is no such thing as you It doesn’t matter what you do
The more you try to qualify
The more it all will pass you by
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Well the more you try to shake the cat
The more the thing will bite and scratch
Its best I think to leave its fur and to listen to its silky purr
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Well there is no such thing as you
It doesn’t matter what you do
The more you try to qualify
The more it all will pass you by
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is
Some people like to make life a little tougher than it is

Sadly, they did not do “Tougher…” last night, but they rolled out a lot of the faves, including a great rip at “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” for the encore, with a rousing crowd participation for the “na-na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na-NA-nas”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ridden home from work with my iPod blasting that tune, rolling into the twists and turns of the Skunk Creek bike path singing the “na-nas” out loud, so it was fun to do it along with a few hundred other fans in the auditorium last night.

It also appears that 70’s metal/rock is the thing to cover these days, because just as the Eels covered “Zep’s “Good Times, Bad Times” at the show I saw a couple months ago, Cake covered Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” last night. Good choice, fair execution, I thought.

Brenda is fully into 12-hour days at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival already (two weeks in), and so even though we bought the tickets together a few weeks ago, she begged off at the last minute so she could get some well-deserved couch time. I’m glad Leslie was willing to tag along and check out the show, and to show me where the hell the auditorium was in the first place.

The Chatauqua Auditorium is a nice venue, a semi-open arena with good acoustics and a great location at the base of the Flatirons. It also turns out that you can get a decent listen of the show just outside the place, and if you get there early enough, you can plop a blanket down on the grass just outside the seating area and not only listen to the show but even see the show. I’ve made a mental note of that for next time.

All in all a great night in Boulder.

Ever since Brenda & I moved to Boulder there has been one glaring omission from our daily lives, and that is settling down to read a good local newspaper. Back in Jersey, the Star Ledger was an excellent paper that originated from the local county where we last lived in that state. We got great reporting and writing, on everything from the international to the very local. The sports page was phenomenal. Molly Ivins’ column was printed regularly, and we had almost no use for the New York Times and its holier-than-thou masthead font (and pricing).

Here in Boulder, we have the Daily Camera.

Now, being a Boulder newspaper, the Camera boasts some interesting and fun features that definitely pander to the local culture. There is a “trail dogs of the week” section, where reader-submitted photos of their dogs out on the many local trails are featured; there is a rock climbing column, as well as what has to be the highest percentage of sports section coverage devoted to cycling and running in all their forms. And of course the letters to the editor section—replete with outlandish requests and complaints from both ends of the liberal-conservative continuum—never fails to entertain. But the editing of this newspaper has been sub-par from day one, and pretty much every single day I can spot at least a couple of grammatical and spelling errors in what is supposed to be a professional newspaper, and one of the articles in today’s business section encapsulates this dilemma so well I just had to share the first paragraph:

Camera’s Circulation Falls By Alicia Wallace, Camera Business Writer

New statistics show circulation at major US newspapers continued to tumble, and the Camera does not appears to be immune to the trend.

‘nuff said? Thought so.

Last night I went to see the Eels at the Fox Theatre in Boulder. It was my first concert in about ten years! The last concert I intentionally went to was to see Bluetip at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey (which was great).

Once again, as I did when I went to see Bluetip, I went alone; Brenda hates going to shows, and I kind of do too, these days. For a kid who used to see a minimum of three bands a weekend from junior year of high school though college, my last couple decades seem pretty pathetic by comparison, but I have my reasons. I’m an old fart who doesn’t like people and crowds, as well as most new music. So naturally I’m not a fixture at clubs anymore, but the Eels drew me out of the house.

Thanks to my friend and former co-worker, I was introduced to the Eels a few years ago, back in New York. Led by Mark Oliver Everett, son of some sort of quantum physicist genius, the Eels have been inventing new music for the last decade and a half. Their music is alternately haunting, rocking, sad, happy, and always inspiring.

This year’s iteration of the Eels features Mark Everett (a.k.a. “E”) and a dude simply known as “The Chet”. Not Chet, The Chet. They both took turns playing instruments as diverse as the guitar, the piano, drums, xylophone, saw (serious), and others. They even shared a drum solo:

The show was very fun, tight and entertaining. Standing room only, I was tapping my toes and bobbing my head in the aisle at what is now my favorite venue ever. The Fox Theatre is a tiny venue; it feels like you’re having a band come over to your house to jam in your living room. And the Eels are known for their covers, and this tour did not disappoint. This year the cover of choice is Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times”, and E and The Chet rocked it as hard as Zep ever did. The Chet was playing a very cool Gibson Les Paul with a tremolo bar, and you can enjoy a segment of the cover here:

A great night of music and fun. Rode my bike home from the show in the rain, drunk, bombing down the hill along Colorado Avenue. Gotta love it.

This is cool. What we got here is the last remnants of the 8” of snow that dumped on Boulder yesterday. The Colorado sun came out in force today, melting most of the white stuff; the final traces are hanging tough here in the shadow cast by the ballfield fence, all nice and neat in a line, while Hooper and Lulu watch in despair as Jeannie and the other woman walk away with their dogs Joplin and Kyla:

Just goes to show you what a little shading can do in terms of reducing the amount of direct beam solar radiation that affects a given area.

P.S.
The bits of snow missing in the foreground were eaten by Hooper. No shading device could have prevented that.

OK, I know it’s been a while. Here is what’s on my mind:

• When you own a dog, you clean more than ever, and yet your place is generally messier.
• It’s snowing on the high peaks. Winter is just about here. While I like the look of the mountains with the snow on them, I’m dreading the thought of a winter like we had last year here in Boulder.
• The Colorado Rockies (baseball club) are absolutely tearing it up, and they remind me of the Phillies of 1993, another team of lower-paid gamers who ended up playing like a team instead of a collection of overpaid egos. I’ll be rooting for a National League team this year in the World Series.
• Speaking of baseball, I would love to see the Red Sox fold like the bunch of pussies that they are. They should already be declared the losers of the ALCS simply for Manny Ramirez’s bullshit posturing when he hit that home run last night. Sorry, I just fucking hate that guy. Actually, I’m not sorry. He is a douchebag.
• Speaking of baseball, who’s idea was it to have Dane Cook do ads for major league baseball!? I truly believe I’d rather watch Carrot Top try and generate enthusiasm for the game than this no-talent ass wipe.
• I got a new camera; just wait ‘till you see the incredible pictures.
• I saw my sister and my brother-in-law.
• Things are generally good.

Yeah so last week I wrote a post that purported to be about a cool cruiser bike, but was really a platform for me to bitch about a local bike ride that I felt had fallen into a sad display of Boulder elitism. I railed against these people and their policy of requiring costumes and cruisers on the ride. Since that time, some of the people I was complaining about found my little rant, and posted some seemingly witty retorts; what they really did was show their true colors. Meanwhile, several other bastions of the true spirit of the ride emailed me off-line and showed me the seamy underbelly of the Boulder bikeride/cruiser/chill/hangout groove, and as you might expect, it ain’t pretty.

In the process, I got my shit straightened out. The good news is, the cruiser ride is dead. The better news is, the ride(s) live on.

Here’s the thing: The so-called “Boulder Cruiser Ride”, or “Happy Thursday Ride”, or whatever you want to call it, had exploded in popularity last year and a lot of the people who showed up were wasted college- and high school-kids who were only there to get fucked up (just like the rest of us). But there were too many of them and they kinda sucked at riding and they kinda had no appreciation for bikes, so they sorta sucked and had to go. I agree. But it became the opinion of some of the regulars that anyone showing up for the ride without a cruiser bike, or not in costume — a silly, silly habit of some of the regulars — should not be allowed to ride. Which I disagreed with. I said as much on the happy_thursday Yahoo list — that purported to be the mouthpiece for the ride but is in fact an odd collection of people that I have long since unsubscribed to — and got slammed for saying so. So I quietly bailed from the whole sad thing.

And then last week I saw a cool cruiser on a website while surfing one night and blogged about it, and I guess my little post devolved into a rant about the shitty attitude of what I perceived to be the consensus of the “Boulder Cruiser Ride” attendants. Turns out the ride was ruined by a bunch of hypocritical assholes who drive their SUVs in to Boulder from outlying towns to ride, and have taken over the long-standing ride tradition to serve their own egos and idiotic goals, ultimately leading to the ride being published in the local newspaper and the attendant rise in attendance which led to the problems that led to its demise. And I got flamed for complaining about that.

The best thing about all of that is that some of the very best people involved in the old Boulder Cruiser Ride have contacted me off-list and explained how my off-the-handle rant was out of line; it’s a good reason to have a website and an opinion. I’ve learned that with regard to the so-called “Happy Thursday Ride”, a few bad apples have fucked the entire batch.

The Boulder Cruiser Ride is no longer, but it’s all good, as we say. There are now several factions of people riding bikes around Boulder on Thursday nights; some of them are into bikes and bike culture, and some of them are egomaniacs with agendas — and there are loads of people in between. So I plan on venturing out this week and enjoying the benefits of evolution. I already know where the cool ride leaves from.

I must have one of these“Boulder Cruiser Bikeride” jerkoffs who have taken their little (formerly large) ride underground (sort-of) and excluded all people who show up on non-cruiser bikes or not in costume (and, let’s face it, costumes are, like, totally stupid, even on Halloween).

I realize I have not given sufficient back story on the Boulder Cruiser Ride, but I guess those assholes never gave me enough good times to do so. And now you have to have a cruiser and a costume to be allowed into their little drum circle, so I guess I’ll never get enough material to fill you in. Suffice to say, the Boulder Cruiser Ride has become another bad example of Boulder Elitism, and I now live to hurl insults at the entire rolling jerkoff assemblage. (They’re not all bad, as it turns out.)

Meanwhile, I am still accepting donations for an Ellsworth “The Ride” cruiser, so I can cruise in non-pretentious glee.