Neel Parikh

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.

It’s been a pretty miserable summer here in Toronto, and pretty much everywhere else on the east coast. It’s either raining or hot and humid, not really ideal conditions for doing anything but sitting at home with a cold drink watching videos of Dani Andrada doing pinky pullups, or completely owning Picacho (9b+?).. i swear, the man should just change his name to The Hulk.

Whenever the weather lets up a bit, I’ve been heading down to The Glen for some bouldering, where I’ve been working on a neat little cave problem with my buddy Daren. I’m not really much of a boulderer, but the Glen is nice and shady, so on those hot humid days, it’s so much better than a sun baked crag. That being said, I still haven’t made it up to Lion’s Head this summer, what a shame. I am on the other hand absolutely frikin’ stoked about Rocktoberfest down in Red River Gorge. It was an absolute blast last year, and I will kick you in the left nut if you try to stop me from going this year. Day 1 last year went something like this:

Friday, 9am: Wake up. Decide to skip work to get a bit of rest for the long drive ahead…. try going back to sleep… fail. Get up, pack up stuff.

12pm: Have some food… harass John and Justin to get off work early so we can hit the road. They both agree, and we decide to head out at 3pm.

3pm: Get to John’s place, tip toe through hairballs and other indistinguishable floor ornaments (for lack of better word). Pack up car, call Justin. Find out that Justin’s stuck at work. Try to sleep… fail… again.

8pm: Meet Justin at Bar Burrito. Declare that they should be ranked somewhere above taco bell, but somewhere below “recommended eating”. (see notes on Transitive Properties of Inequalities“)

12:30am: Cross the US border at Detroit, drive through some shady neighbourhoods while trying to link back onto I-75. Realize that going for burritos immediately prior to sitting in a car with Justin is an olfactory nightmare.

4:30am: Hand off driving to Justin. Try to sleep… fail… again.

6:30am: Pull into Miguel’s Pizza. Try to sleep… fail… sigh.

7am: Breakfast

8am: Hiking up Roadside Attraction.

9am: At the top of my first route ready to clean anchors. Look at my harness, no draws, no atc.

9:03am: Guy on the route next to me tosses me an ATC and a sling. Thanks, random guy on route next to me… Game on!

9:06am: On the ground again. time for another 5 hour energy drink

The rest of the weekend just got better and better with a great party, bouldering comp, free schwag, clinics, a screening of the Sharp End, and a whole bunch of money going toward the RRG Climbers Coalition. Be there, or be somewhere else. But be warned, if you’re somewhere else, you’re missing out.

“… total commitment. Execution. Perfection.” That’s what freesoloing means to Alex Honnold. Here’s an interview with Honnold from last year. The man has balls of steel – I don’t even know where to begin. Take a look at the caption on the picture at the top of the article. If you need inspiration and motivation, that’s where you get it… when you’re struggling on a multipitch 5.10d crack, and all of a sudden, Alex Honnold sneaks up behind you at a belay station… “Hey, I’m Alex, I don’t have a rope.. all I have is this chalk bag, some protein bars, and oh yah, my balls of steel, do you mind if I pass you?”. Not exactly verbatim, but you get the point. Forget being ridiculously physically strong, I’d love to have that kind of mental strength. That’s right, I want Alex’s balls (of steel). There, i said it.

Here’s a pretty cool video of the man in action at Indian Creek.

…. is hopefully the final nail in the coffin. Yep, that’s right folks, there’s no a straight to DVD Prison Break Movie.  When Prison Break first went on the air (a few agonizing years ago), I was a fan. I looked forward to Monday nights to see what kind of clever trickery Michael Scofield was up to. But with contingency plan after contingency plan, and being convinced that a run of the mill engineer was a combination electronics specialist, plumbing specialist, structure specialist, network specialist, weapons specialist, and bulletproof master of disguise (that’s right, if you’re on the top 10 most wanted, all you need to do is wear a hat and nobody will be the wiser*), I decided to throw in the towel. What a horrible horrible show. And what kills me is that even after I decided to throw in the towel, I still kept watching. I was pot committed, I couldn’t accept the sunken cost of the countless hours I spent watching a show that was in a downward spiral after the first 5 episodes. So that, I finished the series.

Now if you haven’t already watched the finale that aired a few months ago, don’t. Consider yourself lucky, and go on with your life knowing you’ll have an extra hour to enjoy your life. Go for a jog, climb some rocks, hug a tree, do whatever it is that makes you happy, and keep reading so I can “spoil” the ending for you. So yah, they wrap everything up neatly, but had 15 minutes of airtime left… so what do they do? they kill off the main character off screen and have a shot of everyone visiting his grave 4 years later. Horray. Fan-frikin-tastic. I figured THAT was the nail in the coffin of the show. With Michael dead, they couldn’t POSSIBLY revive the franchise. (Could they?) We will never have to (albeit voluntarily) suffer through another episode of Prison Break ever again. I was ecstatic. Until about 4 hours ago when I was driving home, listening to the radio, and heard that there’s now a Prison Break movie intended to fill the gap in the 4 years between when everything got wrapped up into a neat little package and when Michael dies of some sort of brain tumour. Hopefully its something more than their monkeys on typewriters spit out for the last 5 seasons…

“Michael, we have to get you to a hospital”…. “everything will be alright Sarah, I promise” … repeat as necessary, create cover page titled “Prison Break Script”, hit print, sell to Fox. Speaking which apparently the character with the least dialogue in Family Guy now has his own spinoff show. I present to you, the Cleveland Show.

* If you typically wear a hat all the time anyway, not wearing a hat would probably work better. And I’ve always said, if dying your hair black** and stealing the identity of a guy named Desmondo Jose Ruiz*** worked for Harrison Ford, it can work for you.

** If your hair is already black, try a different colour.

*** If by some unfortunate circumstance, your name actually is Desm…. nevermind, you get the idea.

Ah wine gums, I forgot how good you are.

That is all.

So both of you guys who read this blog have probably noticed that I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been sick in bed for the past few days, long story short, it’s most likely strep, and man does it suck to not be able to enjoy food without excruciating pain.  On the plus side it’s given me the opportunity to assemble some “Swedish” modular furniture (made in China, no doubt). I’ve had a love an hate relationship with Ikea since I moved in to my condo. I love the fact that I can get stuff that looks decent and is cheap. I hate the fact that it’s cheap. Okay, let me elaborate on that – it’s cheaply made. It looks fantastic, until you get close and realize that it’s just laminated MDF (if you’re lucky), but more likely particle board.  For some reason, laminate is all the rage, the bee’s knees, the successor to sliced bread, and I can’t understand why… in most casts it’s a picture of real wood printed onto a friggin sticker, then stuck to the scraps of wood that are left behind on the factory floor. hooo-ray. At least I know that it’s only temporary, and that when I can afford the kinda stuff I really want, I can always sell my LACK Coffee table to some 1st year arts student so s/he’ll have more money to buy baked beans and ramen.  If you manage to not destroy your Asian-made Swedish furniture by sliding dishes across it too many times (read: three), it’s always got good resale value. On the other hand, buy a good piece of furniture, and it’ll last you forever… but you’ll never get your money back if you get sick of it.

Check out Environment Furniture – they’ve got some super-sweet stuff, and I was stoked on their Santos Coffee Table until I found out that they had more than 100% markup in Canada. I was told by the snooty saleslady that it could be mine for a paltry $1700 + taxes. yah.. right. eat me. twice. seriously. It’s nice, perhaps even 21 times nicer than the LACK. But unless they’re willing to share some of the crack that they’re smoking, I think I’ll put my drink back down on my laminated particle board and get back to watching Burn Notice.

Not much to say today except, check it out: Spirit Sentient Evolved Clothing – sweet designs, wicked material, and created by Mr. Fonceca himself.

… another tick that is, for Will Stanhope – this time it’s the 5th Ascent of the Cobra Crack. I was up there last week and got to catch the man in action taking a couple runs at it, some valiant attempts, but to no avail. Well Sonnie Trotter posted a couple days ago that Will finally sent it – so congrats to you Will! Even with fingers torn to shreds, he can still send like the best of them. It’s like watching an artist paint. ..ahem.. an artist with bloody flappers packed full of chalk.

I don’t think I’ll ever climb the world’s hardest 5.14 trad lines, or even be the
world’s fastest table boulderer, but it’s just awesome and incredibly inspiring to watch these guys do what they do best – if anything, I’ll give me that extra push to put in another session on the hangboard, and to stop worrying about falling 10 feet on some bolts… after watching a 30 foot whipper on a sketchy umbrellaed cam placement. yikes.

A couple days ago a message appeared in my Facebook inbox.  Climbers Micah Dash and Johnny Copp had gone missing from Mt. Edgar, China along with Sender Film’s Wade Johnson who was filming a new piece. Donations were being accepted to help in the Search and Rescue, and immediate there was a huge outpour of support from the community.

From Adventurefilm.org’s blog:

• At midnight last night, a notoriously impoverished local climber – and good friend of the team – showed up at search headquarters, threw his passport on the table and said that for the first time in his life he has two thousand dollars to his name, and he wants to spend it on a flight to Chengdu to be one of the first Americans on the ground to help out with the search.
• This morning at 9 AM, a guiding client of Micah’s wired $25,000 to search headquarters to make sure the search did not slow down due to a financial bog-down.
• Companies who compete with the sponsors of these athletes are paying for their own athletes with Chinese visas to get to get to China as quickly as possible.
• People have offered up the 65,000 frequent flyer miles needed on United to get to China.
• Senators have pressured the Chinese embassy to expedite visas for American search volunteers.

It’s so incredible to see a community get together under times of stress, but it saddens me to hear that the bodies of both Johnny Copp, and Wade Johnson have been found, burried by an avalanche. Blizzard conditions are hampering the search efforts, but here’s hoping for the safe return of Micah. I have never met any of them personally, but this event has resonated across the climbing community. As my own personal tribute, I’ll be throwing my copy of The Sharp End and having a drink in their honour. Rest in Peace.