Conner William Martin

I just returned from a quick tour de Iowa to visit the new nephew, as well as all the rest of the family. He has been named Conner William. A fine looking little man and his brother seems very excited to have him around. As we can see from this photo, he was not entertained reading "Adventures of Mitch."

A New Nephew

The great news of the weekend was that my sister and her husband had their second baby boy on Sunday. He was a healthy 9 lbs, 4oz and 21 inches and change from tip to tail (if my short sporadic memory is serving me well today.) The photo is of nephew #1, holding nephew #3.......nephew #2 is on the other side of the family. I will keep you posted on the name, as that is still under lock and key. I am heading to Iowa to visit the new family member on Tuesday and can't wait to meet the new little dude. What an exciting way bring in the spring.

A trip to the mountains

I spent last week in Colorado visiting my college climbing partner and friend, Trent. Trent and I have enjoyed a lot of adventures together over the years since meeting at the University of Northern Iowa and always find a way to have fun. This was not our most ambitious or extreme trip over the years, but a day in the mountains with friends is always memorable.

We spent a day climbing into Loch Vale and Taylor Peak in beautiful Rocky Mountain National Park. Our objective was to summit Taylor Peak, but that didn't quite happen. We had trouble finding our route, the snow was super wet and warm and I just plain got tired. We enjoyed a beautiful winter trip into Sky Pond (picutured below in the photo) and climbed about 1000 feet or so of steep snow. In the photo that trent took, I am the speck sitting in the snow on the slope. The slope was steep and our footing was crappy causing for me to elect to go down after climbing to about 12,000 feet above sea level.

Ironically, when we got back to the car and the map after 8 hours of hiking and climbing, we were not on the route we thought and likely would not have been able to climb out of the gulley we were climbing. I guess you live and learn and in then end come back safe, smiling and tired.

We enjoyed a number of non-celebratory beers and chicken wings while reminiscing and planning "the next big adventure." The great thing about climbing is that it is only as enjoyable and the people you do it with. Good times!

Winter.....better late than never!

The week started with plans to travel back to Cedar Falls, IA for some obligations and to visit family. Enter, winter storm 2007. Minnesota got blasted by a pretty good storm leaving about 12 inches in my yard over the weekend. That killed the driving plans on friday and left an open weekend at home. It's refreshing to know that it actually does snow still in the great state of Minnesota, as the past few months have been pretty discouraging. I love the snow, and really feel that if you are going to live somewhere with winter that it should be embraced. It's hard to see the skis, snowshoes and ice climbing gear sit in the closet while I stare aimlessly at the dead grass in my yard. I was happy to shovel the snow and even made a huge pile in the yard to dig a snow shelter. I thought it might be fun to dig a snow cave and sleep in it one night.......I will keep you posted on those plans.

On the bad news front: I went into work to set some bouldering routes on the climbing wall in my office saturday. While climbing, I seem to have suffered a significant tendon injury to my left ring finger. I have injured fingers before, but this one was accompanied by a pop, a sign that is not good from what I have read. The problem with tendon injuries is that they take a long time to heal. In my case, I also get tortured by people climbing all around me every day while I hang out with my gimp hand and talk to them. I will probably make a trip to the doctor on this one as the pain seems to be significant. Grrrr.

Back to good news! The wife and I headed out today to enjoy the fresh snow at a nature preserve near our house. The Dodge Nature Center is a great natural area right in the middle of West Saint Paul....(WSP to the local homies). They have a lot of trails through wetlands, woods and prairie that make you feel like you are a lot farther from the city than you actually are. We enjoyed a great snowshoe hike enjoying making fresh tracks on the trail and enjoying the trees dusted with last nights snow. We were even treated to several deer running through the woods.

The Climbing Competiton

This past Saturday I hosted the annual climbing competition at the U of MN. It's a lot of work but always in the end extremely rewarding. It's great to get to spend time with all of the climbing wall staff and work together to put on a great event that all of the climbers we see everyday get to enjoy. I guess it really is the reason why climbing creeps into you and never leaves. Is it the people that are fun to be around, or the activity that keeps you wanting more? Probably a little of both, but climbing is only as fun as the people you are doing it with. In my case, those are almost always good people. Jevidon, as always, was Johnny on the spot with the camera, so click to link to his gallery from the competition.

Climbing seems to breed some type of pack animal mentality. As long as we are together, we feel pretty normal. Put one of us out in the open and we are just obsessed weirdos covered in chalk with abnormally strong hands, good balance and absolutely no fashion sense (my wife dresses me). In the spirit of climbing, some observations I have made in my years enjoying the sport. You might be a climber if:

• You know how to open a beer bottle with a carabiner.
• You don't twist the cap off of beer in fear of damaging the skin on your fingertips for tomorrow's bouldering session
• You own belts, or other clothing accessories, made of retired climbing gear.
• You trim your nails more often than your wife, girlfriend or mother
• You don't have any money for new climbing shoes, but always drink micro brew
• You can name 5 buildings in your neighborhood that would be great to climb
• You've climbed a building before
• You've contemplated how you could build a climbing wall in your rental apartment
• You regularly feel the need to hang from door frames
• You've been asked if Cliffhanger is a good movie more than ten times
• You hate the movie Cliffhanger
• You could kick an eagle scouts ass in a knot tying contest

In other news, we seem to have broken the twenty some days without the temperature getting above freezing, and now it looks like warm weather that will ruin the skiing and ice climbing. Yeah for global warming (smell the sarcasm, please).

The Great Wisconsin Adventure

This weekends journey led me to the great state of Wisconsin. In true Wisconsin fashion there was a lot of beer, meat and cheese (hell yeah). We went to a Gaelic Storm concert on friday night for a fun show as always, even though it was in a theatre. If you haven't heard them, get on it because they're awesome. I was given a Bret Favre doll made of cheddar cheese, and made a trip to the Miller Brewing company. For those of you who know me, this was a major pilgrimage, as well as an educational adventure. When the video shown at the beginning of the tour ended and I was moved to start clapping. Nobody else did, but they might not be as dedicated.

Over there at the joint founded by Fred Miller in 1855, they are currently cranking out 2,000 cans of golden delicious beer per minute on two lines (that's 4,000 cans a minute for the not so little Einsteins out there). 500,000 cases of beer each year are sent out into the world from the hard working folks of Miller....amen. It's a free tour, with a little bit of sampling afterwards, beers that I have had probably a million times, but they always taste better coming straight from the source.

On the way back from the brewery we stopped at Whistling Striats golf course(it was home to the 2004 PGA Championship). It's absolutely incredible, even covered with snow. The clubhouse and locker rooms are clearly for people living on a whole different planet than most of us.

Kudos to the Gottsacker clan that hosted us for the weekend. Those Wisconsin folks can host a major throwdown! To sum up the weekend in one visual: Think about soaking some cheese in beer, wrapping it with sausage, frying it, and then eating it with Brett Favre at a dive bar on the corner you arrived at on a snowmobile while trying to hunt something! On Wisconsin! Schweet!

Super Boulder I

It was a cold weekend with a high of 3 degrees and a low of -14. Most of the weekend was spent in the negative numbers. It wasn't too cold to cancel the Super Boulder! I had about 10 friends over for some friendly competition on the climbing wall in my garage (which is heated.) We ate, drank and climbed while watching the big game. A great combination, except for maybe the eating and climbing, which we found don't go well together. We were lucky enough to have some of Luke's homebrewed IPA which was great. Eric N (climbing left) took home the bragging rights and much fun was had by all. Justin took some sweet photos, as always, and you can see more of Super Boulder by clicking the images on the left to link to Justin's photo gallery.