Gadget’s Airstream Chronicles

Once again, 55 inside the Airstream currently. It will warm up, it always does.

The blog is behind once again, but I’ll catch it up quickly now.

Thursday (yes, a little behind) I took another ride to Phoenix. I’ll know the results in a few weeks. Nothing like suspense. Actually, I could do without suspense thank you very much.

Thursday afternoon I went for a short climb with Andy & Brooke once again. We headed into the Dells, looking for something new to do. We’d checked out 3 waterfront climbs several weeks ago, and decided to try those out. Right on the water there’s a 5.8 (I think it’s harder than that), a 5.10, and 5.11.

Andy worked these climbs out pretty well.  Personally, I wasn’t a fan and felt awkward on this rock.  But that’s me.  Brooke got further along as well.  But Thursday’s climbing was Andy’s day.  Way to go!

I will say that I wouldn’t recommend the waterfront climbs at the Granite Dells.  There are plenty of other climbs that you can do there.  Brooke literally pulled pieces of rock away, and as Andy climbed a good deal of debris fell down to the ground with each move.  A flakey climb, that’s for sure!

Friday morning I met up with Brooke & Andy once again.  This time we were doing a bike ride near Granite Basin.  The approach came from outside the park, and gave me a new view of the mountain.  If I had more time to stop I would have shot more photos below the mountain.  I’ll return again, as I saw some very pretty scenes worth shooting.

We headed up to an old set of ruins.  Very interesting.  Not much remains of the ruins, but you can tell someone lived there quite a while ago.  Someone still lives nearby as well (large McMansions on the next ridge over).  An interesting scene!

I cut the ride short after a weird fall.  Bloodied my knee and really wrenched my ankle good.  Stopping hard in soft sand is not advisable.  Ah well, these things happen.

Thursday and Friday covered.  That leaves yesterday……whew!

Saturday morning I awoke to blue sky out my window.  I’d heard rain overnight, but figured it was done.  We’d be heading out to the Promised Land to give a 5.7 a whirl.

Once I pulled myself out of bed I took a look around outside.  Suddenly gray, and sprinkling.  Then a down pour.  No climbing for the morning.

As it turned out the entire day was all about rain.  Downpours, small rivers going by my trailer, some wild winds, the works.  The Airstream didn’t float away, and I remained safe, dry, and relatively warm inside!  All good.

So, yesterday was an indoor “rain day”.  What can you do on a day like that?  How about re-watch the series “Heroes” in preparation for the new season.  It’s the only show I follow now, and I haven’t watched it on TV.  Rather, I’d downloaded it from ITunes.

As an aside, did you know Apple & NBC had a falling out?  The new season won’t be downloadable from ITunes.  Great, just great.  The ITunes downloads are very convenient for me.  I’ll have to work out a new system, but I’m very disappointed in Apple and NBC.  Work out the finance issues guys……

So, yesterday was nice.  Cooking a big meal in the trailer, reviewing a fun series, and letting my poor ankle (still hurts) rest a little more.  Guess no climbing was ok after all.

There we go, all caught up!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 7:14 am and is filed under Arizona, Climbing AZ, Notes from Gadget.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.