PRO TIPS.

Ok, this is probably a bit weird but it works lots for me, so I'll try and share what comes also from a discussion on The Forum of Forums, UKB.

Talking about testosterone levels and performance, it came up that someone indulges to the practice of masturbation before a climbing or bouldering session, because of the raise in the hormone that could make you perform better. Don't do it. In the words of Big Malc, "Sex makes you strong, wanks make you weak" or something along that, but you got the sense.

Well this is my advice: when you happen to have sex (you are free to chose the gender but it must be human) before bouldering, let's say the night before, the morning before, go straight to the boulders. Don't shower, don't clean yourself (unless you seem to be coming out of an XXX movie), don't shave. Use the same undies. You have to keep the love with you while you'll be bouldering, especially the perfume of your partner. Yes, rejoice in that perfume, feel it over and over, let the memories of the love itself slide under your conscience and drive you up the boulder.

Then, at home after the inevitable success, glow in the glory of your accomplishment and, if man, seduce your partner with pride; if woman, just do the same.

The following day go again and crush. Then make love, then crush.

Here you go.

THOUGHTS, REWARDS, ENVY AND SOMETHING ELSE.

I've been far too brief in my last post. I had just arrived home and was facing a very very hard week, the desire to get some sleep was too strong.

As said, I and Andrea went to the Dolomites, playing our chances to have some good weather: the forecast was for dry skies on saturday, with maybe even some sun, and a sunny sunday until noon, then rain.

The psyche was filling the car, as if two rucksacks, two ropes and three crashpads weren't enough. The plan was to do a classic, trad multipitch route on saturday morning and some bouldering on saturday afternoon and sunday morning, and miraculously, it's just what happened.

I was very very nervous before starting the route, because there was nothing in place and we had to navigate the big wall above us. We did it. I did it too, leading four of the seven pitches and topping out with the biggest smile on earth. Climbing IV+ far above gear is very very satisfying for me now. Starving, we raced down the slope and devoured a kilo of apple strudel, then it was pulling time. I wanted to go to Sella Pass to finish one problem, but my very clever friend suggested we stay there, at Falzarego Pass, because we were running a bit late. The scenery is amazing, and I really really enjoyed everything. It's a very small area, with some good climbing, in my case represented by steep, steep boulders with holes and crimps and burly moves. I almost warmed up and then climbed two problems under a seeping roof, with absurd (for me) german names, a 7a+ and a 7b. Then I wanted to check one problem from monster puller Martin Moser, which was far too intimidating for me, so I set my eyes on a nearby nameless 7c. I was raging, unable to rest. I tried so many sequences on a five moves problem!!! Anyway, I don't know how, I did it. Oh wait, I know how: not letting go.

Huge dinner and loads of wine, aspirine.

Sunday we went to Sella Pass and Città dei Sassi. The problem I wanted to do is still beyond my limits and I was scared also, because it overhangs over a deep hole between the rocks, and I didn't feel secure neither for me nor for my friend Andrea. So I tried the problem to its left (hey Eric, do you remember it? It was supposed to be 7b+ and we couldn't move... Do you know why? because it's 8a...), because I was thinking I could do it. And I was right.

So I'm holding onto the holds, fighting, then latching the jug, Andrea says "I don't tell you anything more now", and I'm on top breathless, Andrea is waiting for my shout but I can't, I don't want, these mountains don't deserve shouts, I just sit there, I breathe the sun the cold, the clouds, the crimps, the pain everything is in me now.

But no envy. No desire: for one moment I'm fulfilled, I'm right, I'm rewarded, I'm not alone.

Then I get down, and the world turns again into a struggle, into a devouring desire, into an endless search for more.

I love it.

I thank myself for my foolishness.

Share my fucking joy.

CRUSHING, CRUSHING AND CRUSHING.

I just crushed. That's all I did.

TEACHING, PUMPING, CLIMBING.

Ok, so I started, and almost finished, given it's thursday, my first week of teaching practice. With reference to an older post, I dare to say that in these days the world has seemed being full of coherence. Needless to say, I'm very happy about that.

It's nice to teach italian to beutiful foreign girls, and it's nice for me to teach anyway: it's always been the love of my life. I always dreamt about becoming a university professor: why I didn't put myself into doing it after my first degree in law, I don't know. Something was lost along the way and now it's too late.

While getting back home from the center today, I got a phone call from one of the 80 (!!!) notary firms I sent my CV to last monday. They asked me a few information, and during the phone call all I could think was "I don't want to do this now, now I want to teach italian". It's clearly the dawn of something new again, priorities are shifting, new things are entering the stage.

I'm also into my second week of pumping iron. I have passed to routines of 4 sets of 6 reps, with a massive increase in weights, obvioulsy, cutting down the reps. DOMS are still very present but much lesser. Anyway lifting weights is still boring.

I had asked The Guru also some dead hanging routines to be put into the program: he set them, but amazingly I am not performing them, preferring to simply boulder. I am very happy about this, because I feel I'm climbing more to my desires, and even if my wrist hinders my sending, I can still pull down. On holds or sequences that don't hurt I think I'm climbing at my best: I am comfortably doing yellow and red problems (the scale is white, green, blue, yellow, red), but I'm mostly pleased to be climbing with feet on, body tension, precise moves. I'm clearly still loaded with some power (very little to be true) but using it at its best makes me feel I have plenty.

What more? Tomorrow I and Andrea leave for the Dolomites. With a precarious forecast we will aim to a couple of classic multipitch routes and some serious pulling on steep limestone boulders. Unfinished business awaits.

TWO DAYS

I'm happy to finally feel some soreness in my forearms, instead of just gym induced DOMS. I managed to score two days of good climbing, one in Sasso the other one in Lagoni: in both cases my long long drives were rewarded by a beautiful, strong wind blowing, making the rock feeling not greasy as it could be in this very hot summer. So I was very pleased to finally crank some. I have to say that I felt quite powerful, as long as my wrist doesn't hurt, but still I climb very very carefully, which naturally hinders hard performances: every time I have to slap to something with right hand I pause, reflect, and then I try to go static and adjust, trying to put pressure on the hold very gradually to notice even the slightest pain. It's a very difficult way of climbing, and it totally takes all the concentration and focus off from the problem, but it's good because I'm staying on my feet and getting some climbing, which is always good.

Again I was alone in both places, and again in Lagoni I was shocked by how messed up grades can be there. I think, and I say so with the greatest respect, admiration and friendship for him, that everything opened by Caminati and his posse is undergraded. Probably being able to crush holdless 8b's and 8b+'s in Font, makes him a bit too comfortable on 8a's with actual holds to be pulled. There's one problem that I wanted to try (and do sooner or later) called "Viaggio Astrale", Font 8a (it's featured here http://www.mentana104.it/video/viaggio.htm ).

It's the extended version of a Font 6b+ traverse. Before trying the crux moves, I thought "Let's get the easy bit wired as a warm up". Blimey, I couldn't do it. I think the easy traverse is at least Font 7a. Mind: ten minutes before I had done a short 7a+ in a few tries, and later I flashed another 7a+.

Anyway, I'm happy that I can climb for a couple of days without major pain with the wrist and I hope this is the start of a renewed period of absolute brutality.

THE TRINITY

I want to tell you what drives my attention lately, let's say in the last 15 years, apart from training and bouldering.

It's tits.

I am crazy for them and I worship women for that. It's something beyond me, how they get my eyes locked on them everywhere, and I dare to say without being falsely modest, that I am a gourmet. The joy I feel when I am blessed by the sight of a beautiful breast moving with grace with the girl he belongs to, really makes me smile.

Could it be a sign of God's existence? Definitely not, for at least two reasons: first there are, sadly, also horrid breasts, and second I can't touch all of the beautiful ones. Should God exist, we would live in a world full of perfect tits of all forms and dimensions, and they all would be free for everyone. Amen.

Anyway, I'm sure you will think "Hey I want to know what his likes are, maybe I can help him find some joy!" - the second sentence only applies to women - and I will tell you.

I like all what's beautiful.

I would like to have the writing ability of a Kafka, or Dovstoevskij, or Proust to describe all the form, shapes and movements that I love in breasts. Some may remind you the gentle hills of Tuscany, inviting you for a nap in the summer afternoon hot; some others may be like alpine peaks, nervous and shaky; some others powerful like a muscle car, calling for fast and furious acting.

One thing is absolutely crucial, and can make everything perfect or wasted: the tits have to be 100% coherent with the girl they belong to, and I don't mean just physically coherent, I mean deeply, globally coherent, like the Solar System coherence: a coherence that simply has to be. Finding that coherence when it's hidden and you feel lost, is a great pleasure, a mission, a reward. Again I lack words to perfectly tell what I mean, but I'm sure you get the idea every time you see a girl with a breast that seems to belong to someone else. It doesn't necessarily have to be a fake breast, sometimes nature and DNA are curious, it can simply be something out of place. When it happens, as you try to shift your eyes and attention from the bulgy forms up to the face of the girl to get the full picture, everything loses its meaning, something is lost forever and the only joy will be in the perennial memory of the moment you saw those perfect things, before realizing incoherence and chaos were liying behind them.

So my friends, go around the world in search of beautiful, perfectly coherent tits everywhere, and when you find them never let them go until the only thing you can actually think is "My job here is done, let's search happiness somewhere else, let's donate happiness somewhere else."

STARTING POINT

Just yesterday I wrote that I wasn't prepared to find myself alone on the path of the climbing addict, and that I didn't even want to find myself alone.

These are sentences that have little interest if measured with reality.

Whatever the look of things may be, I am already on that path, alone. I feel it so clearly. Whether I was left behind, or I raced forward it's too early to tell, the only thing that's sure is that I can hear no more friendly paces crushing the leaves around me. There's no one, no good, no evil.

Am I lost? I don't know. I have for sure to find my starting point, before heading in any direction.

HERE WE GO AGAIN

When I think about it, it shocks me how little I've been climbing in the past 8 months.

I have been busy drinking and partying for the last days, and now, with my body covered by a horrid patina of freshly alcohol induced fat, I feel very depressed, and at the same time ready to start back again.

Last week's tests made me confident, at least on the finger strength side. Still wonder about pure power: when at the gym with Tom and Rich I could still do three one armers on a good campusboard rung - at the end of the session - and although it was one month ago, and I've been out injured since, I don't think it's all disappeared.

At least I could climb in good style, that means something.

Anyway it's boiling here lately, and I heard the gym is just not climbable: fueled by on mighty post from 8b monster Paul B (http://thecrippledclimber.blogspot.com/2008/07/gym-rant-2.html) I thought I'll start a serious weights program. The Guru was immediately contacted and things are up to be started on Monday. Overall power is the name of the game, the idea is finding myself ripped as during past winter but twice the size and three times stronger. Ok, maybe just three times stronger. I'm quite excited about this it's been ages since I did some weights to train power. I'm also very curious to find the magic formula in which an increase in lean muscle (and therefore in body weight) will produce such gains in power that will overcompensate the bulking. I think, if I take, say, three kilos it will be around 5% of my total weight, but if those three kilos of muscle will give me even just 6% more power, the maths is on my side. We will see.

Very very hard times on "normal life" front lately.

Being again without a job and some money doesn't help the feeling of being deprived of something. I lately wrote that I need to climb more. That's what it is: I need it, I don't just want it. How did I found out?

Because I found myself feeling something that never was part of my charachter: Envy. I was reading some friends' scorecards on 8a.shit and I was just envious, because they were climbing things that I'm longing for, and I can't. Why can't I? Because I'm scared to take all the responsibility that this would imply. I got to the conclusion that the path of the climbaholic is a narrow path on which there's room just for one. I'm not ready to find myself alone on that path, neither I want so.

I want to give my girlfriend everything she deserves from our love, and I'm struggling at this now. We still haven't found a formula good enough to make ourselves 100% happy. Maybe we are at 99% now, but even if so, we have to do better.

This may seem so selfish to read, and I'm not blaming anyone. Love is a hard thing to carry on, it takes dedication and spontaneity at the same time. My girlfriend woul like me to start some climbing related business, she thinks it's the only thing that could make me truly happy, and I know she's right. I just need another job to have my back covered financially.

I want to get rid of the envy. Envy is a horrible feeling, it means judging others, it means thinking that others are just more lucky than yourself, and that they reap rewards that are bigger than their efforts. It means thinking "I am better than they are but I am unlucky", it means, briefly, to be a whiny bastard who refuses to take his responsibilities for his actions.

That's why I feel so bad now.