The 101st Use for the Internet

As annoying as I find the Blue Mountain cards you get for every little occasion, I was actually charmed (at least temporarily) by the new (to me) animated cards that you get to put your face on the card and they animate. Even more so when I found out that you can put not only your face on there, but the face of your loved ones. To top it off you can pick the worst photos of your loved ones that they have ever taken and put them in there without their consent (and then post it on the internet). Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Highway Yangshuo

After driving back and forth to the different climbing areas for the past 3 weeks I have developed a pretty good understanding of the workings of the highways in rural China. I've been either taking mini-buses, riding bikes or taking motorcycle taxis up to an hour out of Yangshau.

In the states traffic has such hard a fast rules. Each driver has their own lane; bikers have their own lane; pedestrians even have a lane to call their own (sidewalk). If you veer outside of your lane there are immediate consequences: you're either going to get a ticket, hit somebody, or at the very least piss somebody off.



In China there still seems to be the three lane system (lets say six to cover an entire road- and to be entirely clear here, I mean: 1) shoulder- 2) biker lane- 3) driving lane - 4) driving lane - 5) bikers lane and 6) shoulder). However in the Chinese system any one vehicle seems to feel entitled to use up to four of these lanes on a need based basis. To explain this point, lets say you have some one walking in lane 1, motorcycle in 2, car in 3, and an oncoming motorcycle in 4- and a giant (and I mean enormous) truck behind the car decides he needs to be in front. Also let me make a point here that faster traffic always thinks it needs to be in front. There is no getting stuck, there is just pushing ahead until you more or less force the other vehicles out of the way. The standard procedure is for the truck to hold on his horn and partially swerve out into oncoming traffic. This has the effect of getting the car to push over the motorcycle who pushes over the pedestrian and forces the oncoming motorcycle to go over to the shoulder. There are no yellow lines here. Usually accidents wil happen when 5 of the lanes are already full and someone goes for a pass. Here is some hair-raising video of what it is like driving in Yangshuo.

The O.C. Disorder

If you've known me for little over 10 minutes, it's probably pretty easy to pick up that I'm about as OCD as you can get without requiring medication. Actually, maybe I do require medication, but I've never been diagnosed. I think when I decided to eat vegetable stew for 3 meals a day / 7 days a week for 3 years of my twenties, I became resigned to the idea that obsession would have more pull over my life than common sense. When I went out to set the world distance record for handbiking (non-amputee division), that theory would be solidified all the more. So it should come as no surprise that given enough free time, good weather, and lack of distractions, climbing would overtake my life. Oddly enough, I don't even come close to having enough talent to set any climbing records; in fact I feel like I'm barely grazing the edge of climbing mediocrity.

When I came to China last year with my friends Marshall and Josh, it was a much more balanced trip of climbing and discovering the culture. We visited local hot spots, went out hiking, tourist caves, meat-dog farms and the like. This year I'm pretty much climbing every day. You're supposed to climb 2 days on, 1 day off; however if you don't care how poorly you're climbing or how mangled your fingers get, you really don't have to stop. Climbing every day will decrease your performance and in turn make you an overall worse climber. And thus the constant struggle I seem to face with athletics and OCD. I guess it comes down to what your goals are; climbing well or keeping a smile on your face by just being out there. Here is a video of one of the projects I worked on while in Yangshuo.