Our original plan was to climb in Las Vegas prior to going to LA, but it was raining when we woke up in Las Vegas, so back on the road it was. The Dana Point portion of the trip was primarily about visiting family so I don’t have many super interesting stories to tell. Lisa’s sister Erin is doing great, and she has an adorable son that’s about 10 months old.
I also had the pleasure of going to an apple store while I was there. They always put the apple stores in the most trendy malls in any city. Do only yuppies use Macs? Why wasn’t I warned about this? This is something nobody told be about.
I can’t help but feel way out of place, mixed with inadequacy in these hipster malls. Especially when my clothing was chosen for climbing purposes and the beaches and jungles of Central America. It’s not the stores themselves that are so bad, except for the price tags, but the stores I must pass by in order to reach the Apple Stores; the Gap, Steve Madden Footwear, various diamond shopes, other trendy things I’ve blocked from my consciousness… I think these places were created for people with too much money and no passions or hobbies. The are for these specail people, like trophy wives, who find enjoyment in spending way too much money on things they don’t really need. It’s like another world that doesn’t exist in Ouray. It is in fact it is a world that doesn’t exists in Ouray. I have all the cool clothes it takes be live in Ouray; the latest in schoeller and gor tex fabrics, gloves that keep my hands dry, an arsenal of ice climbing equipment, and they all work together to bring out the colors in my eyes!
I feel a bit like a dirty hippie at trendy shopping malls in Southern California. Maybe I just didn’t bring the proper clothes, nor spend enough time primping myself to fit in.
I can’t help but envision myself working at an apple store. I think I’m qualified. I know about as much as these “genius’” as so they are called at the Apple stores. I just don’t have all the spare parts and tools to fix the machines myself. Now when it comes to web design, few can hold a candle to me, but fixing computers is not an area I specialize in (despite what some clients or family members my sometimes believe). I think I would find having to explain the same subjects and concepts over and over to people who may never understand tiresome.
“Yes there are little people that live inside the computer,” I will tell them. “They look like those gnome creatures that people put in their gardens. It is them that took your files. You’re going to have to communicate directly with them.”
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Our beach workout: sets of 40, 30, 20, 10 of burpess (a push up followed by a jump), lunges, and sit – ups. That ends up being 100 of each excersize.
We were watching Erin’s son Sebastian for the day, so getting out of the house was more troublesome than usual, usual meaning epic for our family. Getting focused was a challenge as I was already frazzled. Burpees in the soft sand kind of suck! The movement, just digs a hole in the sand, and thus you must either constantly keeping moving, or somehow adjust accordingly. The sand smelt of seagull excrement, and so putting my nose to the sand in the push up really wasn’t that nice. I ended up betraying the novelty of working out on the beach, and retreated to the grass in the park along it. Maybe working out on the beach is better in photos than in real life.
