So I’m learning how to shoot video with my 7D. Here’s the first snippet of footage that I’ve shot: Daren working “Up Yonder” at Red River Gorge a few weeks ago. Sorry, no tripod, and a tad overexposed. I haven’t had a chance to run it through any filters or anything like that yet. Enjoy! (clicky for Vimeo link)
Chuck Palahiuk got it right – “with insomnia, you’re never really asleep, and you’re never really awake”. People who have never dealt with insomnia couldn’t possibly understand how debilitating it is for the roughly 15% of adult Canadians who suffer from it.
Let me clear some misconceptions – if once in a while, you don’t get a good night’s sleep, you don’t have insomnia. You’re likely a perfectly normal (at least in the context of sleep) person and in most cases it’s just some external factors that prevented you from sleeping well that night. Insomnia ranges from transient to chronic, with periods lasting from a few days to a few years. Imagine how crappy you feel when you don’t sleep well one night – now imagine feeling like that day after day after day. Thankfully for me, I’d hardly describe my symptoms as chronic, but for most of my adult life, I’ve dealt with periods lasting anywhere from a few days to a month at a time. I grown to envy people who can hit a pillow and be snoring in under five minutes. Five minutes would be a miracle for me most nights, fifteen minutes would be down right impressive, and half an hour would be an average “good” night for me. A bad night, I could go to bed around 11pm, and still be rolling around trying to sleep at 2 or 3 in the morning, then from 3 to 7 in the morning, I’ll alternate between being asleep and being awake but it feels more like a mushy blend of both rather than one extreme or the other. Its like a screen saver on a computer screen: the monitor is still on and awake, but it’s not really doing anything particularly useful. Its not really saving an appreciable amount of energy, and it’s not at all being productive. Sometimes, like on my flight back from my recent trip to Vegas, I just decide to accept that was going to be in a semi-conscious state the rest of the night, and make the most of it – in this case, I threw on my iPod with and M83 album, and closed my eyes, and just tried to relax… a nice soothing soundtrack to distract me from the neverending stream of thoughts in my mind.
Before I elaborate on that, lets take a look at my lifestyle: I don’t drink a lot of alcohol, I do enjoy a drink here and there, but never to to get drunk (and to anyone who believes that alcohol is good for putting you to sleep, you’re terribly mistaken. It’s good for making you sleepy, but it’ll be an interrupted, dehydrated sleep). I don’t drink coffee at all, and in general I try to avoid caffeine. I love green tea, but have decaf whenever there’s a choice. Nutrition is important to me – I try to eat well, and I don’t eat out that often, and I try to have a good macronutrient balance in my meals. I take multivitamins and a B50 complex. I exercise regularly, which means that 6 days a week I’ll be either at the gym, playing volleyball, or in case you haven’t guessed… rock climbing. If I’m feeling particularly sore, or have some free time, I’ll throw a yoga session in there as well. I don’t have a stressful job – there are times that are more stressful than others, but most of the time I’m able to separate my work and personal life, and I rarely work more than 40 hours a week. You would think that at the end of the day, I could go home, lay down, and pass out.
So why doens’t it happen?
Back from my tangent – my mind never seems to shut off, and I’m a firm believer that in order to sleep, your mind, body, and spirit (for lack of a better word) have to be at peace. The visual imagery, the semi-conscious thoughts, the spatial awareness that leads to distraction of light and noise – it all masses together in a chaotic stream of distractions that enter my head and never leave. Ever had a song stuck in your head? Its kind of like that – whatever the last song I hear is, it’ll get stuck in my head until it gets replaced with something else. And even in a complete void of sights and sounds, I’ll latch on to something, real or imaginary and analyze it to death. An active mind won’t let the body get any rest.
Sleeping is an art. To some people it’s just a natural gift (cherish it!). To others it’s something that needs to be carefully orchestrated. Sadly the orchestration itself has to be an subconscious process, because if you’re anything like me, and you’re completely aware that you’re trying to sleep, your mind will focus on trying to sleep, rather than voiding itself of thought in order to encourage sleep. It’s a vicious cycle (which reminds me of the saying, “In order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion”). The good news however is that when things become routine, they become subconscious processes. Its the same reason you can be tired, but drive home perfectly safely, stop at every traffic light, signal at every turn, but upon arriving home, have absolutely no recollection of the drive itself. The act of driving somewhere is a very deliberate process, and similarly we (people who suffer from insomnia) need to train ourselves to become so good at tricking our minds into shutting down that we’re not even remotely aware that we’re doing it. People are creatures of habit, and for insomniacs, having a nightly decompression routine is vital to encouraging sleep.
Work backwards. Ideally we should all be getting about 7-8 hours of sleep. So if you need to be awake by 7am, don’t schedule your days to end at midnight, and then expect to fall asleep immediately. Give yourself 30-60 minutes to ease yourself into it – have some sort of regular and predictable routine to start. Read a book, watch some light hearted tv (nothing that’s going to make you think too hard), have a warm cup of some sleep-friendly herbal tea. Just make sure that you’re not in bed when you do so. In order for your routine to work, there needs to be a distinct progression from decompression time to sleeping time. The mind needs to interpret that when you go to bed, it’s because you’re going to sleep. I’ve been doing this for the past week and I have to say, I haven’t slept this well in months. The other important thing to remember is that once you start feeling sleepy, don’t try to stretch out that extra chapter, or watch another epside of whatever… you’ll lose your window of opportunity. Just as sleep occurs in cycles, I believe that opportunities to fall asleep come in cycles as well. If you feel sleepy, if you start to nod off early, embrace it. The biggest mistake that I regularly make is not calling it a night when I feel tired… maybe I’m just in denial that I’m getting old!
That’s all for me for now, but I’ll hopefully remember to revisit this post one day with some more thoughts.
It feels like i’ve been waiting all my life for this to arrive.
In a market dominated by energy drinks, iChill promises to deliver the exact opposite. And why not, it’s just melatonin, valerian root, and some other goodies in a convenient (and probably overpriced) package. I’m not sure if it’s come to Canada yet, but I’ll definitely be checking it out next week when I return to the hideousness that is Vegas.
Today we mourn the loss of a dear old friend, the old Toronto Climbing Academy. Its a sad day indeed. We’ll all shed a tear as we head there tonight for one last send-fest. Tomorrow we’ll all shed some more tears, along with fresh skin, from the gritty, sandpaper-like walls of the new location (complete with dozens of leadable routes!). We’re pretty lucky to have so many fantastic climbing gyms in the GTA, and i’ve been fortunate enough to meet some great people along the way.
On a related note, if you’re in Toronto the weekend of the 26th to 28th, check out the Banff Mountain Film Festival. It’s guaranteed to impress, inspire, and leave you wondering why you’re sitting on your computer reading some obscure blog, while others are out there living their dreams.
Wake up at 3am… load up the car with plenty of warm clothes, charged camera batteries and a fresh memory card. Drive. Miss an exit. Take a U-Turn. Back on the right track. Drive some more. Miss another exit. Take another U-Turn. Back on the right track again. Drive some more. Get frustrated that a truck in front of you is driving too slow for you to enjoy the twists and turns of the ascent. Realize that you’re driving a rented Cobalt and that you’d probably break it if pushed it (but don’t worry, you’ll probably break it later in the trip anyway… more on that another time). Pass through a cloud layer. Arrive at the summit of Haleakala – 3055M (10,023 ft).
What’s unique about Maui’s Haleakala is that it’s one of the few places in the world that you can drive from sea level to over 3,000M without leaving the comfort of an exceptionally well paved road (and an exceptionally “meh” Chevy Cobalt). By the time we got to the summit it was about 5:15 AM. Plenty of time to enjoy a quick snack, bundle up, and stake out a good spot to watch an absolutely spectacular sunrise. A thick hoody and my trusty softshell were all I had… I mean, it’s Maui, how cold could it get? Well, apparently temperatures at the summit often dip below freezing, not to mention wind strong enough to make a tripod somewhat useless on my very non-aerodynamic camera.
For anyone looking to make the trip (which I highly recommend), there are two very easily accessible places to see the sunrise, the summit, and the vistor’s centre. The summit is a very short drive or a 15 minute(?) hike up from the vistor’s centre and has a glass walled hut that you can take shelter from the cold in. There are parking lots at both locations, although space up at the summit is limited.
The best weather to watch the sunrise at Haleakala is often when it’s crappy at sea level. The glow of the cloud layer turns a rather uninteresting rising ball of light into a pretty incredible sight. We were also lucky enough to catch the moon low on the horizon shorly before the sunrise, which put a big smile on my face!
What’s rather unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on how you want to interpret it), is that after sunrise, most visitors drive back down the volcano, have an IHOP breakfast, and sit on a beach working on their melanoma the rest of the day. An easy 4km hike down the aptly named Sliding Sands Trail into the crater (and a frustrating 4km hike back up), is definitely worth it. The crater’s landscape is littered with sand, boulders, and giant cinder cones which make you feel like you’re on a completely different planet. I think in total we only descended maybe 500M vertical, but the loose sand and scree made the hike back up daunting despite the relatively low grade. I guess I’m just out of shape! I’ve said it so many times before, but I really need to start doing some cardio – I’ll put that on my NY’s Resolutions list.
For those if you who found the Bacon Flowchart a tad bit gluttonous, i present to you a lower-calorie alternative, Bacon Flavoured Envelopes.
Yah i don’t get it either.
Back from Red River Gorge, which, although tonnes of fun, was a bit of a bust personally. We only got 3 days of basically “warmup” climbing in before the rain took over, and by the 2nd day, my right ring finger was a swollen red throbbing mess. A few days of ice, a few bottles of advil later, and the decision was made that there’ll be no more climbing for me for a while, at least nothing steep or crimpy. That does however lead to a pleasant part of RRG – I got to get on some easy trad pitches including my first lead on gear. While it was easy enough to solo, building up confidence in gear is a pretty gradual progression. I dropped about 4 grades from my sport redpointing max for my first lead, and threw on my trusty helmet. I guess these things come with practice, but there’s something unnerving about looking down at your harness to find the piece of gear you want to place, then noticing how far you’ve run out on nothing more than a red C3. A million things went through my head “i suck at hand jams”, “i wonder if i’m going to blow this foot placement”, “do i need a purple C4 or a green?”, “when is the Arrested Development moving coming out?” … oh Tobias, i <3 you. There's a whole new world of opportunity open now, and I'm excited to get on as many trad routes as I can. It's like learning how to climb all over again!
Rocktoberfest itself was a blast as usual, and I can't say enough good things about it. This year's Reel Rock Tour screening was BigUp’s Progression, which has set new standards for ANY climbing movie. Incredible cinematography, awesome soundtrack, and, of course, phenomenal climbing sequences from Sharma, Caldwell, Usobiaga, and the wonderchild Ondra. If you haven’t seen this, why are you sitting around reading this… go watch Progression!
. . . and what kind of people would we be if we bailed early from RRG due to bad weather without an impromptu detour to Chicago for some of Gino’s East’s famous deep dish pizza. terrible people, terrible people. that’s right. i said it.
So I’m back from Denmark and London and catching up on some work (yes I do work from time to time) and relaxing a little before hitting up Red River Gorge in Kentucky for Rocktoberfest! I’ve been itching to head back to the Red since last Rocktoberfest ’08, which was so much fun it should be illegal. Unfortunately last month my left ring finger decided I needed a break from climbing, as evidenced by a tendon and/or ligament that won’t let me crimp anymore. I took about 3 weeks off climbing, and then yesterday, thinking that everything was better, I did a single open handed pull-up on my hangboard. Much to my dismay, it appears that I still have some healing to do. It’s a good thing there’s so may jug hauls at the Red to keep me occupied. I suppose I should still take a bottle of Advil, just in case!
I also splurged a bit at a fantastic little store in Waterloo called Adventure Guide. The result was a set of BD Cams, Nuts, Hexes, and a new Bluewater 9.7mm rope. Hopefully I’ll make some good use of them on some easy trad climbs down in the Red.
I’m currently in Denmark for a few days for some business and thought i’d share a couple pictures I snapped outside my hotel in Skanderborg yesterday morning. Enjoy!
Jordan Harbour is a hidden gem near St. Catherines; not so much for the climbing, which is quite honestly put, very mediocre, but more for the sheer cool factor of climbing the ruins of a bridge built in the 1800s. The route descriptions we read before heading out gave a whole new meaning to the word “sandbagged”. There are a few interesting looking routes in the remains of the first and second arches, but the bricks seem to have disintegrated into a sandy mess, rendering all amount of chalk and brute force jug pulling completely useless. Beyond the arches lie a series of stone towers that rise out of a murky field of gigantic grass like tombstones. Giant bolted tombstones. These, thankfully, were much more pleasant to climb, primarily because the holds didn’t disintegrate on contact. Only one of the towers is really accessible by foot, as the other bolted tower sits in a swap that is probably only accessible by boat. All said and done, apart from a couple of bored teenagers throwing firecrackers off the bridge and smoking their grandmothers cigarettes, it was a fun afternoon of climbing and a pretty neat expedition in general.
