Thanksgiving Week

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

We are having an entertaining stay in Austin for the holiday week.

Dylan did great on the drive out, even napping when we asked him to on the second day.

Our first day out here Linda and I headed to Riemer's Ranch to do some climbing with Matt and Katie (who is almost 6 months pregnant) and Thu and Natalie. I was experiencing an "I hate Riemer's" day, climbing like crap and in general not enjoying the activity though I did have a good time hanging out with friends. Katie nearly sent her second 5.11 ever, before she got pregnant she had only climbed 5.10, so the bigger she gets the harder she climbs, go figure, Linda could not climb after about 4 months. Linda worked out the moves on Learning to Crawl, which is a pretty stiff 5.12c with lots of powerful moves and no real rests. Matt finally laid to rest Super Cruiser 5.13b which he probably got on the first day he climbed at Riemer's maybe 3 years ago and claimed it was easy and would go down any try, well 3 years later and countless tries it finally did.

On Tuesday I did a 200km permanent, which was basically a combination of 2 local rides. One, the dam loop is largely in town with a handful of big (for Texas) climbs and the other, the Fitzhugh full on Flog is an out and back to Johnson City (home of Lyndon B.), called a flog because of the endless rolling hills.

On Wednesday, Thu got off work early and we headed out to the crag which is on land that he and Nat own, Flat Creek. Dylan and Noah had a great time playing naked in the creek and sharing food. The adults had a good time pulling on some steep rock and Linda worked out the moves on Scapegoat 5.12b and basically did it with 1 hang on her second try to lead the route. Thu came quite close to finishing off the 5.13b he has been working for the last few months and Nat got some good beta for the crux section of the route she has been working on. I on-sighted Amnesia 5.13a and Carl's Route 5.12c, it is always interesting finishing routes at Flat since there are no anchors. You have to mantle and top out, then rest and reverse the mantle and drop. We will probably be headed to Flat again tomorrow, hopefully, and with cooler weather.

Today is a big Thanksgiving party at Linda's sisters house with family and their friends. Since just about everything is closed today I got to make blue cheese hamburgers for everyone for lunch. I think we finished 6 pounds of meat, but there may have been 15 people.

I have some photos of the kids playing in the creek and Linda climbing that I will try to get up once I can downsize them.