TICINO

Every morning, when I go out to get to work, I, as every righteous man should, give a kiss to my sleeping girlfriend. She generally says something like "See you later, love", and I go out happy. This morning, though, she said "See you in Lugano".
And I got out happy.

WILL POWER

I got back from the gym on tuesday night with a very very sore back, due to multiple and violent swings out from a hard move under the 60° wall (that currently is my second home, the third being the 45° wall). Despite the pain, after one rest day I wanted to train, so I went to the gym, that, to make things easier, was closed for the setting of the next comp, to be held this saturday. Luckily, being an abitueè I was let in, with the warning "you can only campus". Just a few months ago this would have meant heaven to me, but in my pursuit of perfection on rock today it wasn't enough. I'm doing lots of specific training on the walls, instead of fingerboarding, one arming, or campusing. I do that all, but while climbing, that is. So tonight I think I touched not more than 15 holds, and still I managed a great, powerful session. Tomorrow I think I will just deadhang briefly, if my fingers allow me, and then saturday morning I will leave with fellow pullers, basketball players sized, Luca and Filippo, towards Varazze, the mythical land of Core's problems. Gabriele Moroni, Font 8b+ and sport 9a climber, commented this way about Core's testpiece "Gioia", Font 8c: "One should need steel fingers for that". Incidentally he's a climber who's said to have steel fingers. Anyway, I'm going, and I'm going, as usual, big. One single target. One single mission. One only satisfying result.

Obviously my target isn't "Gioia" but there are no pictures of it...

ON THE MOVE AGAIN

I haven't posted much lately, firstly because of my pc failure, and secondly because to be honest I don't have much to say.
One thing is that I just started my second load week, so I'm back to the gym four days per week, doing loads of system boarding, which is very strenuous and very pleasing. I am climbing well, and I'm very happy that friends climbers notice it.
I wanted to start the new training phase with some success to drive me, so two weeks ago I went to Sasso to give a go to OOS sit start. I gave it five goes in a row, each time getting to the last move, the precarious dyno to the arete. I didn't fall on any other move. Each try I was getting to the last hard move, and I also got the arete, but my right foot slipped from the heel hook placement and I was on the ground. Failure has never had such a sweet taste.
Thinking about it, I am often posting about being happy about failing, because I am failing with very good sensations, feeling strong, and such bullshit. Now it's time to be hapy about success. Obviously I need to succeed on something to be happy about success. This weekend there's a big comp at the gym here, but being it also a bank holiday I hope that the weather stops menacing to destroy our planet every day so that I can deliver my white ass on top of some (hopefully hard) boulder problem on real rock.
Last but not least, I finally understood why bouldering is so hard: because it's a search for perfection, it's the search to perfectly fit a human being into a medium that's not made for him.