Dr_Flash_Amazing

The advice about really looking the rig over and getting the most thorough understanding of EVERY ASPECT of it you can is golden. Knowing how many draws you need but not thinking about possible sequences will not help you much. Look over the route thoroughly and honestly assess where the crux is, prepare yourself mentally for it being hard, and then examine the shit out of it, looking especially for sucker holds. Chances are there will be some, and every sucker that got on the route before you chalked them up, and then fell off. So identify that kind of thing, and resist the temptation to follow those holds when you get up there, since the sucker holds are usually better than the actual holds you're supposed to use. Get psyched and focused on success; work through all the moves in your head as best you can; think about clip stances, rests, and a potential sequence through the business, as well as envisioning clipping the chains. Follow-through, grasshopper. There's a fine line here between getting psyched and mentally prepared, and piling too much pressure on and hosing yourself, so relax. Just know that you're going to give it your best go, and whatever happens, happens, but this will be rooted in the knowledge that you have the route as figured out as you can, so you have a good chance of success. The fact is, while a lot of this stuff can help you up your success rate, onsighting often comes down to luck, too. Sometimes there will be some subtle, funky-ass body position required to do a move, or the sequence will be completely counterintuitive and it takes a lot of goes to even figure it out. But sometimes the shit just clicks, and of course trying a lot of these handy suggestions will up your chances of getting lucky. While not out at the crags, try doing laps on as hard of routes as you can manage at the gym, and work on climbing through your pump. Being pumped has a big mental component to it, which has to do with your brain noticing the major lactic acid flood in your muscles and doing what it can to stop whatever is causing the flood, in this case climbing. Hence you start breathing shallowly or not at all, you start getting tense, sketchy, or scared, your footwork goes to shit ... basically everything you DON'T want happening when you're already pumped. So the first thing you can do when you're doing laps (bouldering traverses are good too, if you can clear a swath through the mob) is focus on how you're feeling. When you feel the pump coming on, notice what else is happening, and take steps to consciously counteract the negative effects. Focus on breathing regularly and deeply; if you have to tell yourself out loud to breathe, do it; if you have to breathe loudly so you know you're breathing, do it; if you need your belayer to remind you to breathe, by all means have him do so. Remind yourself to relax; you're not in danger, so you don't need to be scared or start tensing up or being sketchy, you need to relax and focus on your climbing, on your footwork, on calmly and controlledly getting to the next rest. When you calmly and controlledly get to that rest, continue focusing on all those things. Find the best body position, try using different grips to find the most relaxed one, breathe slow and deep, get a good shake out, scope the next few moves. You'll soon find that you can really control the degree to which being pumped effects you, and you'll find that you can do a lot more climbing than you thought when you're pumped -- getting pumped does NOT automatically mean you're finished. Start easy with the laps routine, and find a good route or routes to use for your laps. Dr. Flash Amazing is a fan of picking something moderately challenging to climb up, then using all holds to climb down, but you can mix it up however. Sometimes you feel like a champ and can be near your limit up and down, but it's best to find the right balance between keeping yourself working and being able to keep going. If you're getting sapped, switch from a taped route to using all holds, and mix in the occasional hard move or two, getting a good rest on a jug, then busting a couple of crimps or whatever, then resting again. It's all about learning what you can do, and how to recover on a route. You shouldn't be using routes that are at your limit for this, in other words, and you should be on terrain that allows you to focus on staying in control, rather than on whether you can even do the moves. So what's the next potential onsight?

Jackpot!

"The important thing to consider, when establishing a new route, is that the bolts are placed close together." - 'AmazingCo, Inc. Rock Climbing Information Omnibus' Vol. 17, p. 192 (c 2001, AmazingCo Publishing, Biloxi, MS)

BADA-BING!

"Oh! Makin' my mind sloowww that's why I don't fuck with tha big four-oh, bro, I gots ta maintaaaiiinnn" etc. etc.

Sounds like one of Dr. Flash Amazing's early postings. To Mr. Distel: To the half-assed haters:

Hello? Maple Canyon, anyone? Maple is tops for summertime Utah sports climbing. AF stays cooler than downtown SLC, but Maple is actually comfortable, and the climbing is fun, fun, FUN. For a slew of long, excellent .10s, the Orangutan wall is great, although sorta sunny. Great string of fun stuff from .9 to .11c in the Maple Corridor (think that's the name). Mega-fun long .12s at the Minimum Crag, with some fun but somewhat loose warmups (.9-.10+) at the Zen Garden in the same area. Bring your helmet; sometimes the cobbles like to jump out of the wall, but it's 99% solid.

Word. Is clipping a bunch of draws all that difficult? No (well, if the holds are shitty enough ... but that's not the point). But climbing at your limit between all those draws is always damn hard, and that's where goods are at.

I always thought if you want to change the world then you have to start with yourself so if the heads of state want to end terrorism they should go ahead and kill themselves!

"I witnessed a charming act of kindness at that particular establishment: After beating a uniformed military officer silly, a huge hairy cranked-out logger was kind enough to put the guys missing teeth into his front pocket of his bloodstained dress whites so that when consciousness found him, he would find his teeth." And when you decked me you left me knocked out on the floor I came to bloodied up but you weren't around I picked my teeth off the ground like they'd been there before - Alk3, "Bloodied Up"

Ah, apparently one of our contestants has chosen to opt out of macabre disposal at the hands of the DFAIBCU and go for the AmazingCo, Inc. Witness Protection/Indentured Servitude Program. A wise choice, Grasshopper. Enjoy your new life in Brazil! When your 14-hour shift mixing resin for plastic holds wraps up, sometimes they'll let you out of the factory to swim in the ocean before the evening shift! DFA will put in a good word for you, but the overseers down there are barely under AmazingCo's control, so don't get your hopes up.

Hey, that was a figgity-fine weekend. It was great to see completed projects on Sunday: - Major overhaul/upgrade of the trail and belay areas at Shipwreck, including a lot of work on the trail to the upper part of the crag - Epic restructuring in Aggro gully, with major improvements in the trail over to The Chickening, and the trail up to the main part of the Aggro Wall - Re-installation and addition of ca. 20 steps from the Phoenix (the toilet, not the buttress) up to Morning Glory - Completion of the Great Wall of Morning Glory, and the associated stairs and terracing. Kick ass. - New stairs up to the Peanut, and general trail sprucing - MisterE's proj, above -- it's about time the Chain Reaction Death Zone was remedied (perhaps you've noticed that if you walk from West to East past Chain, you have about a 50/50 chance of slipping and falling on your ass, due to some strange loose gravel/gravitational vortex The free coffee and loot were great in the a.m., and the Deschutes suds and monster burritos were a fab combo to finish the day off. And of course the slides 'n' raffle 'n' auction were great, as always, and complete with a touching Ranger Dave farewell this year. While it was nice to meet, briefly, Mr. MisterE and Mr. AlpinFox, they, as well as the loose-lipped [H]explorer, will be missed. Tragically but predictably, their zeal for discovering and disclosing Dr. Flash Amazing's true identity will have led, by now, to their having met with tragic "accidents" courtesy of the DFA Identity Breach Containment Unit, which is part of AmazingCo Inc.'s secretive Black Ops Bureau. Sadly, despite repeated black helicopter buzzings, flagrant tailings, mail theft, blackmail, and direct warnings and threats, the trio could not resist continuing to toe the line between boldness and stupidity, eventually falling face-first onto the latter side of that line, and reaping the bitter rewards of their folly. Obituaries, eulogies, grievances, and requests for remains can be sent to: AmazingCo, Inc. Attn: Disappeared Persons Public Relations Front 13 Amazing Place, Ste. 999 Aurora, IL 60507

No thanks to Hex-humping, wanna-be Woodward-and-Bernstein, bean-spiller [H]explorer. Not to mention, the Hexin' Texan wasn't even at the Karate Wall as advertised, hosing DFA's chance to scam a TR on Sunday aft'. Phooey! Gracias por nada, gringo.

Cool, we'll stop by and give a shoutout if we see ya.

This is a keen insight, and a good point. Following this logical arc, we find our boy Don Rumsfeld stepping up to issue the formal apology, which was originally requested of Bush. Clearly a copout. Take care of the apology to silence some of the outcry, and send out someone other than the Prez to take some of the heat. Bush's rep remains less tarnished, and he can always kick Rummy to the curb come election time if things look iffy. Suave move by that coldblooded Texan motherfucker.

If you try to use a comma in place of a semicolon, you get the dreaded comma splice. This is the horrific condition of two wholly independent clauses, free and perfectly capable of standing on their own, separated by a flimsy comma. If, however, you still find the semicolon too loathsome to use, you may use a conjunction (?), such as: for, and, nor, but, or, so, yet (these can be remembered by the useful acronym FANBOYS -- thanks Mr. McBain!); or simply split the beast into two separate sentences, like a linguistic tapeworm or something. Solid!

Duh ... that would be scandalous, cowardly, persona-plageurism! Dr. Flash Amazing is the legal holder of the Third Person Patent, and any person caught using said device without the express written consent of the good Doctor would feel the pants-pissing fear brought on by a swift, lockjaw attack from the AmazingCo, Inc. Legal Affairs and Litigation Warfare Bureau (Not to be Fucked With!). Bes' believe dat, mon.

See you there, Hexplorer! Where you gonna be climbing on Sunday?

Except for the stuff in between, which sounds like a bunch of hex-humping trad BS. In order to be true, it would need to be emended to read thusly: "You."

Or maybe this "Cairns" would be wandering up 5.13s in some shoes that actually allowed him to feel the rock? KA-BOING!

This is on 8a.nu's main page: "BEAL has drawn four (4) new Test pilot winners. These are the guys that BEAL will send a rope to. Luke Distelhorst - USA, Sylvaine Deville - France, Andrew Sweeney - USA and Jimmy Andersson - Sweden." What the hell are you gonna do with a rope, pebble-scrapper?

A few general thoughts here, on shoes: - True, you don't need them cripplingly tight. A lot of newer shoes, and not just the ones that are all banana-lasted, have a more shaped fit that gives you lotsa performance that's not dependent on toe-folding, as it used to be. Look for a cambered sole (i.e. viewed in profile, the shoe will have an arched shape). - Just because most beginners get shoehorned into super-stiff board-lasted things doesn't mean you necessarily should. There is a lot to be said for being able to feel what's under your feet, and going with a more shaped shoe that is more sensitive will allow you to get good edging performance and feel what's going on under your toes. DFA surmises that a lot of beginner shoe abuse stems from the fact that, in board-lasted shoes with 5mm rubber soles, you can't feel a damn thing. - The Sportiva Mythos, while a favorite of crack climbers, has all the support of a pair of socks -- if you're gonna be doing much face climbing, keep this in mind, as they may not be the best choice. Also, while they are a bit more sensitive than stiffer shoes, they are also dead flat, which means you'll have to resort to sizing down for performance. - If one pair of shoes gives you a huge difference in fit between feet, try a different pair of the same model, as sometimes rock shoes are quirkily sized due to hand construction or a factory mix-up or something. Or, if your dogs are just mismatched, try a company like Evolv, which does split-size pairs. - For sure try on lots of brands and models. A lot of people find that their feet fit best in a certain brand of shoe, e.g. those of us with normal feet that fit in La Sportivas vs. those of us with mutant feet who prefer the ghastly fit of 5.10s or Tenayas. (A little joke. Ha ha.) You're going to be spending a lot of time in your shoes and a lot of money on them, and there's tons of models out there, so try on lots. You might even look into buying a couple pair of cheaper shoes, such as some of Sportiva's newer price-point models, Mad Rocks, or one of the Eastern European brands. This way you might get two different types of shoes, so you can experiment with them on different terrain and see what works best, and have more options if terrain dictates it, without spending a whole lot more than you'd spend on one pair of more pricey models. Happy climbing!

Why not? Those guys are all fuckin' dumb! Give a man a fancy calculator and some spreadsheets and catalogs and he thinks he's hot shit on a stick ... fehhh.