I've decided to write a blog post every time I finish a book while I'm on this trip. A couple of thoughts on the book, and then what I've been doing. Book Report and Trip Report.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
This is a throwback to a time when science fiction was young. The idea here is that Martians, full fledged two legged, nuance cultured, enlightened beings with telepathic powers. This is the kind of thing you'd have to be a ten year old to even consider writing, and I mean that in a good way. If you can get past the conceit, this book is a stunner. Shortly, you come to realize this isn't so much about Martian culture, as it is about the culture at the time. It speaks most notably to racism and civil rights, class warfare, ideological warfare and censorship, nuclear warfare, and a dusting of anti-McCarthyism. For the little boy in me, I loved the Martians. They were cool as hell, doing crazy stuff and killing it all the time. The more demanding side of me enjoyed that Bradbury was just using this ridiculous construct (and entertaining) construct to comment on the time in which he lived.
My mom recently moved to Minnesota, and it's been great having her there. We spent thanksgiving together, and occasionally, I have chance to go up to her house, an hour away, to carry something heavy, or fix something, or the like, which is an easy way to feel like a useful human being. We got to talking about the holidays this year (my birthday's next week), and thought it would be fun to spend them together, for the first time in a few years. So I asked her to come along with me to Arkansas, thinking that that was kind of unlikely. She said sure, we left on Thursday morning at about 630, and, after 11.5 hours of driving, and 1 hour of rests, we got in around 700 at night.
I thought once we got here that she would walk up once to see what the boulders looked like, and then head back to the cabin for reading and needle-stuff, but she had a good time climbing over scree, and moving over creeks, and watching me and others climb. Undettered by the exhausting day of climbing yesterday, she says she's up for another day of it, so pretty soon we are headed again to look for good boulders.
I did a few v4 and under problems yesterday, and worked Glass Bowl, my v10 project, for maybe an hour. I managed to do the last couple of moves, and almost linked it from after the crux to the finish (what I couldn't do last year, even though what most people think is the "crux" was not that bad for me). So I suppose I should be happy about that. After finishing exams, and still having two assignments left after I was done with exams (!!!), and then driving 12 hours, I'd say it's good that I even tried the problem, and better that I managed to do a couple of the moves. Wish me luck today. I'm still not sure what I want to climb. I found yesterday that I have to carry all four of my pads up to Glass Bowl to make it safe enough for me to feel comfortable really going for it. So that's kind of extreme. I feel like Christain Core carrying six vertical feet of foam down to Gioia. Hopefully I find something exciting to work on.
Happy Sean's birthday week. I'll check in again when I finish The Bean Trees.
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