The boys are back in town...yea...it had to be a music title...

Well, 9000 miles (give or take) and 20 states later, we are back in New York. We arrived in Yonkers at 3:30 this morning after 15 hours of driving straight from Florida (that was a bit rough...). We passed out in my living room and got up this morning to deal with my mess of a truck. Let's just say it was an undertaking, and I will probably be finding random items in there for the next month or so...

We hung out for a little while and then I drove Alex back to his place in the Bronx (this is the first time I have been more than 120 ft away from him in over a month...and that was only when one of us was at the top of a climb...). We both have a lot of unpacking and reorganizing to do to say the least...

Thanks to everybody who let us crash at their place or shower along the way (that's you Kat, Natalia, and James...)...it was nice being able to feel clean every once in a while...and to have something soft to sleep on (I don't know if I will be able to sleep on a bed anymore...).

Also, special thanks to the Wal-Mart corporation for allowing us to sleep in a countless number of their parking lots and use their...err...facilities (I don't know if I will be able to go to the bathroom anymore without Alex in the stall next to me trying his damnedest to make me as uncomfortable as possible).

I don't think I am alone in saying that this was the experience of a lifetime and we both had a blast...honestly, I can't believe it is over already...I fell like it went by so quickly...

But, that said, we are both glad to be back home where we can see our friends and family whom we haven't seen in a month and change (give me a call and let me know if you want to do something...).

I hope you enjoyed following our trip, and, if you are interested, feel free to keep checking back with us...we are expecting to have a great ice climbing season, and plan on posting about all of our future endeavors on this blog. Well...hopefully we will see you around now that we are back in NY...talk to you soon.

Just letting you know we aren't dead...

Well, I guess we haven't blogged in a little while...we didn't have any cool climbing pics/stories, so we haven't been very motivated to do so.

Quick recap of our journey thus far:

Tuesday: went to the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg, TN and drove into Nashville to see the Preds beat the Yotes (hockey...because I know nobody knows...) 3-0 (sick seats for $50...I would have been so far away for $50 at the Garden...). We met two locals at the game and went out to a pretty cool bar with them afterwards...good day.

Wednesday: driving...that is all...Nashville to Eustis, Fl where Alex's friend Kat and her family have graciously allowed us to stay through the weekend (I haven't showered this much in a really long time...I feel soooo clean). Thanks for the hospitality Kat.

Thursday: Thursday was Kat's birthday (happy birthday Kat). Alex and I slept in a bit and then we went out to lunch with Kat (Hibatchi) where the trend of me finishing Kat's meals started and has yet to cease (she wants me to be fat and I don't know why...). After that the three of us went to check out a local climbing gym. It was a bit small, but it was pretty cool. I felt really strong after this month of climbing...Alex and I bumbled up our first 5.12 (needless to say...we did a bit of hanging and re-evaluating...but we got to the top)...and I onsighted a whole slew of boulder problems that some of the local boulderer's seemed to be struggling with (we are pretty stocked to gauge our improvements at our local climbing spots like the gym and the gunks) .

Friday: Kat wanted to go Sky-diving for her birthday, so she and Alex went (I am still nursing a bit of a bum knee from a fall earlier in the trip...so I decided to sit it out thinking the landing might not be great for me and not wanting to ruin my ice climbing season...). They had a great time and I got some pictures/videos of them coming down. We went to a restaurant that let's you make your own pancakes...I had peanutbutter and bananas in mine...tastes exactly like you would think...like wonderful...Alex tried to get a little creative (he tried to make the little mermaid)...let's just say he doesn't have a future in pancake art. Then we rented Alice in Wonderland and watched it...pretty good stuff.

Well I guess that brings us to today...today Kat is having a birthday party at her place, and I think we will be spending the better part of the day getting ready for that...

Music:...err...I forget...

Quote of the day:

At the pancake place.

Larry : "What doesn't kill you, may give you explosive diarrhea"
Alex : "That is definitely the quote of the day"

Not much else to say (as if I didn't say enough already)...Monday we are heading back North and we should be home midweek (did you miss us?) barring any adventures/brainstorms. See you soon...

Can you overdose on climbing?

Its kind of weird climbing here in Tennessee because it feels like we are back home. Overcast, breezy...with a sharp chill in the air, in the middle of the woods...not a desert, and the rock is similar to that back in the Northeast. The only difference is the accents... no one can understand me and we have a hard time understanding the locals. I guess not too many New Yorkers pass through here to climb since even the local climber who passes by and says hello is taken aback by our "hi, how's it going?".

There is so much to climb and so little time to climb in Little Rock City. Today was our second day climbing, albeit it cut short due to rain...well thats the excuse we used...I mean....we have climbed in snow and rain in the recent past....it was more like our bodies rejecting a dose of the rock, so we called it a day a little sooner than we normally would. It's hard to take pictures when there is only 2 of us (anyone want to come out and play photographer?) so we haven't been able to take that many shots of us climbing, but we're doing what we can. Many of the routes are low enough to the ground that we don't need a spotter unless there's a sketchy landing...well what used to be sketchy in the beginning of the trip has become the norm and our definition of sketchy and bad holds has evolved along this trip. Tomorrow is a rest day so we are going to check out the Jack Daniel's distillery in nearby Lynchburg, TN. After that we are shooting up to Nashville to catch a hockey game between the Predators and Coyotes

We are definitely looking forward to relaxing in Florida, although I am told it is currently "cold" in Florida. It'll be a much needed break from the rock, sleeping on crash pads, using public restrooms, and everything else that goes along with travelling across the country on the cheap.

Now for tunes:
Jimi Hendrix -Live at Woodstock
Megadeth - The System Has Failed

Quote of the Day:
.....unfortunately our brains are too fried from climbing to remember any quotes...if there were any....today was pretty uneventful in comparison to other days (quote-wise)....but the night is young...

Scenic shots of Little Rock City...

That's me at LRC...

Alex solving some problems at Little Rock City...

Back in the Eastern Time Zone...

Last time we spoke, we were heading to Chattanooga....well, we made it here late last night...around 3 AM or so....so tired.

Unfortunately, we messed up...The New York Rangers (I am a huge hockey fan if you weren't aware) were playing in Nashville last night...we didn't realize that until we were 3 hours out of Nashville with 1 hour until puck drop. Needless to say....I was flipping...certainly a bit of poor planning on our part. In order to try to ameliorate my fury, Alex suggested that we find a bar to watch the game in...after all, we were in Tennessee...and there were no other sports (that we knew of) on last night...hockey must be playing.

Well, we got to Buffalo Wild Wings about 15 minutes after puck drop. There were two college football games, a basketball game, a tennis game, and two TV's dedicated to an in house video poker game...Do the Predators have any fans?...pshh...not in Jackson, Tennessee. Alex saw that I was about to bug out, so he asked the waitress to put the game on for us instead of the Tennis game that nobody was watching. Well, it took them about 20 minutes to figure out what channel the game was on (it was the first time someone had asked for a hockey game at that Buffalo Wild Wings), but we got to watch the better part of a 2-1 Rangers shootout win (yea we did...). Even Alex was getting into it....kind of...

Now that I am done with my rant...back to climbing.

It's a pretty cool little spot called Little Rock City (one of the stops on Triple Crown Bouldering Competition). The boulder field is actually just off of a golf course. The owners allow climbers to use the boulders as long as they register, pay $3 each (not bad, considering our usual climbing spot in NY costs $15 each plus $5 parking...), and follow some pretty lenient rules. The boulders certainly aren't as high as in Bishop or Hueco, and the routes are definitely graded a bit easier out here. Nonetheless, the rock quality is good, there is a good mix of hold types, and the routes are pretty fun to climb. After going through some pains to find a guide book (the first two places we navigated to via GPS did not exist...pretty sweet), we got a couple hours of sick climbing in...all in all a successful day.

Music...o boy...there is a lot (not listed chronologically):

The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour

Billy Idol - Greatest Hits

Black Sabbath - Technical Ecstasy

Collective Soul - 2005-From the Ground Up

Creed - My Own Prison

Disturbed - Believe

Faith No More - The Best Of
Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape

Korn - Korn

Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti (also the name of a cool multi-pitch route that we will be climbing next time we are in Red Rocks)

Metallica - Load

No-Man - Dry Cleaning Ray

Pearl Jam - Ten

Rage Against The Machine - Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Mother's Milk

The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

System of a Down - Mezmerize

Talking Heads - Little Creatures

Tool - Undertow

Yes - The Yes Album (this was a request from Joe Cas...didn't think Alex would oblige, but he surprised me...)

That's it....for music...told you it was a lot (Tennessee is really far from Vegas)...

Quote of the day...o boy...:

Let me preface this by saying that we had just woken up in the back of the truck, in the middle of a very crowded rest stop...the window of the truck was cracked to prevent condensation:

Alex - "I put icy hot on the inside of one of your articles of clothing last night...you have to tell me which one." (he did not really do this...we both knew that prior to the events which follow...)

Larry - "does being a dick come naturally to you?...you just open your mouth and out spurts dickery..."

Alex - "O yea?.... (at the top of his lungs....) RAAAAPE....RAAAAAPE...RAAAPE...I saw it in your eyes...HE'S IN HERE...WITH THE RED HAT ON!!!...Good luck going outside now...."

Larry - (curled up in a ball and hidden in his sleeping bag laughing uncontrollably)..."What just happened?"

I must really hate myself to spend as much time as I do with him...nah....he's not that bad...

Well, I am exhausted and I need to figure out how to stop my fingers from bleeding so I can climb again tomorrow....

Pictures to follow tomorrow...when we have some...

Talk to you soon...if Alex doesn't get me arrested for rape...