Seven months later...

Seven months into fatherhood, just past my 40th birthday, and still loving life every bit as much as last time I posted here.  Honestly I meant to get back on here sooner, but was just waiting for something big to write about, when mostly life has just been made up of a million little things.  With both Emily and me home for the summer, we tried to get out and around as much as possible as we adjusted to moving as a family, but we also spent a ton of time just reading and relaxing on the deck.  Little girl loves looking at trees!

We did do a little bit of traveling too.  On top of a couple drives to Ohio, we booked a semi-last minute flight out to Colorado in August to catch up with friends and family.  The flight went way better than we had anticipated, and the unexpected opportunity to spend time in the mountains was incredibly energizing for me.

Since then we've pretty much been local, just enjoying the fun of the Fall season, and getting to watch the baby take everything in for the first time.  Now that she's started daycare and Em is back to work, it feels like we're starting to figure out what normal is again.  Not that normal ever stays the same from one day to the next.

My climbing has started to pick up a little more now that our new routines are settling in, but mostly I'm still climbing just once a week to keep my movement from getting too rusty, relying on a good workout cycle at home to keep me strong.  In what little time I've gotten on rock though, I feel even stronger than I did in the Spring despite the less optimal weather.  At the end of September when temps actually dipped down into the 60s, I made a quick trip up to Gretna to see if I could finally finish Equilateral.  After warming up on the upper half, it took me a few tries to dial in the first couple moves, but overall the climb felt fantastic.  It was cool to see that the incut edges of the Tension Flash board I've been using had toughened my skin enough to keep me from slicing my tips open on the first crimp, and all of my home workouts have made me way better at holding body tension.

The morning of my 40th birthday, I got up to Rocks State Park to finally take a shot at Moby Dick.  That one's been near the top of my list for a long time, but by the time I started to feel strong enough to work it, my years of lower back issues made me think that it was never going to happen.  Even though I didn't stick "the move" that day, it felt damn good just to be out there trying it, especially as I started a new decade.  Yesterday I went back again and made a little progress.  After all last year of just trying to tick off as many climbs as I could from my list, I have to admit it feels good to be projecting something again.  I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the process of figuring out all of the subtleties that make each move go from feeling impossible to effortless.  It might be a while before this one feels effortless though!

In other news, I've taken on the chair position of the Baltimore chapter of the American Alpine Club.  I'm still feeling my way around a bit, but I have a couple events in mind, and have been slowly getting things off the ground.  If you're an AAC member in Maryland and have any interest in getting more active, whether helping with tabling, event planning, social media, or anything else that fits your strengths, let me know and I'd love to have you aboard.

Okay, considering the fact that I first started writing this three months ago, I'm going to go ahead and post it before anything else distracts me.  Til next time!