Vedauwoo Vedauwho?

Man do I miss Colorado. It was so nice having climbing partners and so many phenomenal areas to climb so close! Vedauwoo Wyoming was only a short 2 hour drive it was potential for just a day trip, which I ended up doing to send Eds crack, but can also be made into a nice long weekend with free beautiful camping. I must admit offwidthing is my guilty pleasure and the voo always seems to humble me every time I go. Roughly 90% of the routes are 5.7 however non of them are actually 5.7. Non the less I love the Voo! All I have to remember it now are old tape gloves, videos, and pictures. Enjoy



Naomi

Bouldering Competition Round Two

Man did the month and a half of freedom go fast! Life has been crazy moving to San Francisco and starting a full time job. So I will now proceed to update my blog with all the exciting things I did before I started a job. After that though I will try to update more frequently probably with depressing blogs about how I hate the city its not close enough to Yosemite and I'm wasting away in a office and the occasionally I made it out climbing or surfing YAY!
To the point, I competed in my second bouldering competition at the GoPro Mountain games back on June 9th! The wall was outside on the main lawn so it tended to gather a lot of watchers. Fortunately or unfortunately it was raining and probably below freezing so we gathered no crowd but we also froze are buts off and our hands. This was a little different from my first competition for several reasons. First, I trained zero percent and probably spent about one day in the gym in the past 3 months before this competition. Second, it was two and a half hours long and really sand bagged. Last, it was outside and freezing cold and wet and raining.

Non the less I went out and tried my best and sucked pretty bad only scored about 2100 points in the first 2 hours and 20 minutes. I then sent number 19 which was an intermediate route even though I was only registered for rec [because I had climbed very little in the gym and had low confidence in my abilities]. This bumped me up to 4000 points! Did I mention I sent this route in the last 5 minutes of the competition, would have got pretty close to dead last if I hadn't finished that route.
Link to Results: http://www.mountaingames.com/media/201125/2014%20gpmg%20citizen%20climbing%202.PDF

Overall it was a really solid day and I can't wait to go back next year. This time I won't do rec and I'll try and climb a little indoors before hand!

Climbing love always!
Naomi

Looking Towards the Future

As many of you know I'm in the big bad scary city of San Francisco doing that Software Engineer thing. This is exactly how I imagined my life progressing. You graduate high school, you make a decision on a life long career and you study that in college, you graduate college and you get a job, you do that for the rest of your life and anything that brings you joy is just a hobby. I guess now that I see this as a reality I want to change it. Everything in life has a flow chart a list of things you need to check off before progressing to the next step. In high school and college its classes you need to make it to the next year and to get a diploma. But I feel like I am at the last step and I have nothing left to work for. Maybe a promotion in a few years but is that really the next step? I think not. I've been considering going back for my PHD but that will only buy me a little more time before falling back into the life long grind of the working world.

So I've come to a conclusion. Do what you love. Everyone says it but no one ever does it. Often times what you love doesn't pay the bills. Don't get me wrong I love programming but I also love art and running and climbing. In my ideal world I could combine all 4 and make a living off of it! However I am currently locked into a 2 year contract in San Francisco and after those two years up I have several roads I hope to pursue all of which don't include staying on a 9 to 6 grind.

To be honest I've been doing a lot of reading from the North American Accident Reports and the Falcons guide self rescue book.What I would really like to be a part of is SAR [Search and Rescue]. It is crazy how much there is to learn and the amount of people out there who don't know enough. A specific quote from the 2012 edition sticks out to me. A man who had been rescued in Yosemite said "It's great to climb in the Valley. No matter how much trouble you get into you can just dial 911 for YOSAR.". So if you have an information on how to get prepared or involved in SAR I am all ears!

Till next time,
Naomi

Turkey Rocks: Gobble Gobble

I've been doing a lot of climbing and trying to document it all. I'm working on a big video but as a side project trying to make individual videos for each trip. Just music and climbing nothing too complicated for this one. Enjoy this video from my last trip to the South Platte.


Turkey Rocks in Motion from Plasterer on Vimeo.

Naomi

Painting Progression

I must admit patience is not my strong suit. I like results, and I like things getting done fast. Thus painting can be a struggle at times. I want the painting done and I want to get it done with in a reasonable amount of time, and at a certain point I just give up and call it good. I drew up the Bridger Jacks while I was in Indian Creek back in March but still haven't gotten around to painting them. The current goal is to take a time lapse of the painting of the Bridger Jacks. Until that day here is a quick time lapse from an Indian painting I finished yesterday.


Painting Progression from Plasterer on Vimeo.

Enjoy
Naomi

The Real Crag Dogs of Colorado

On the rare occasion Lopi gets to be off leash at the crag, he likes to take full advantage of his time. Mainly because cragging can be just kind of boring at times. Here is a short video of how he generally likes to spend his time. Translated by me.


The Real Crag Dogs of Colorado from Plasterer on Vimeo.

Cheers
Naomi

Tape Gloves: Being Sentimental and Reminiscent

Though I am no artist, I spent a few years doing recycled art. I absolutely loved it and even had a few of my pieces in shows! Naturally this leads me to keep things, that most people would throw away, in hopes of turning it into art some day. Needless to say, my latest hording of "trash" led to this sweet wall montage.

I had been holding on to all of my old tape gloves from my bigger climbing trips. The nice thing is that I took some mediocre pictures from all of those trips as well. So I printed out an 8x10 picture from each of the trips that I used those gloves for and then framed everything. I think it turned out pretty cool. Much different from some of my other recycled art pieces being a little more sentimental and reminiscent than art. But to think you make those gloves every time you take a trip spend a good thirty minutes getting them just right and covering all the "danger" areas. Sometimes they rip and sometimes you bleed on them and sometimes you have to do some hefty repairs mid day. And most everyone just throws them away after the trip. In my opinion the tape gloves are the most memorable thing to take away from a trip, even more so than a picture. Maybe its the gash you got on your finger in that super tight finger crack that bled all over your gloves or the sharp hand crack that just wore straight through the knuckles on your gloves. Your tape gloves tell a story much deeper than one picture can capture.

-Naomi