I’ll admit it: I’ve got a small head. As a result, I’ve spent the past few years bouncing between glasses that slide down the bridge of my nose, frames that feel like a loose, dead handshake, and cheapos bought shamefully from the children’s aisle. So, when Julbo asked me to pick one pair of mountaineering glasses to test, I chose the Neve, a pair of glasses designed with Alti-Spectron X6 lenses for small heads, and, yes, women.
Tommy Caldwell’s testpiece at The Monastery, Grand Ol’ Oprey (5.14), which went unrepeated for nine years, gets an ascent by Andy Raether. An Alpinist TV exclusive.
Just finished unloading the mini van after 8,000 miles of driving. Sorting through all our dirty camping gear, unpaid bills, scraps of paper with e-mail addresses of new friends–and all the DVDs I smuggled across the border–has been a good reflection on the Higher Ground experience.
Artist and climber Emilie Lee recently held an exhibition of her art journals for the premier opening of the Rostel Gallery in Dunsmuir, CA. Some of her rich collages were first published in Issue 6 (Spring 2004) as “The Dumpster Diaries,” a colorful slice of Lee’s climbing adventures and the “dirtbag culture.” In Lee’s words: “These journals are an intimate portrait of my life, which not only captures a pivotal era in my development as an artist, but also a passing season which has shaped a generation of climbers.”
Last night, I had that cliche dream. I sat meekly in a large class on a subject I knew nothing about. But there at the front of the room stood Sam Findley, my college Latin professor. Prancing before us in the same worn purple corduroys, he drilled his victims on obscure declensions. Be educated, or be embarrassed. Endless rows of ethereal students dutifully raised their hands and spoke in tongues, their selfsame, bland faces repeated ad infinitum as if reflected in two mirrors. His glee fueled by our mundane failures, Findley was hastily scribbling “um, us, urum, utus, utilius” and other such nonsense on the blackboard.
So, I have this journal. OK, it’s more like a diary, containing all the things that a little girl’s diary might have: romances and crushes, heartaches, and the occasional “I hate that bitch!” I’ve filled it with days of shopping for shoes and the latest fashion trends. I’ve described dream vacations I wanted to take to places like France and Argentina. Heck, I even described my first time, and how beautiful it was.
