Jerry – Chris' Site

San Diego and Climbing!

Ugh. I can’t believe that it’s already Oct 20th! Where is this year going!??!

This weekend was another busy busy weekend! Friday night was a dinner party. Our first one in a while. It was just Steve, Jason and I for a while, then these two girls showed up. The one girl was fun, the other was scary and smoked. Gross. We had lots of fun though and it was good to catch up with Steve again. Ended up playing Phase 10 till like midnight and then went home.

Saturday morning I got up early and ran some errands then met up with Jason and Vince for breakfast then drove down to Santa Ana. Met up with this guy Dustin and then carpooled down to Solana Beach to this delicious pizza place called Pizza Port. I’ve been there a few times before and Love that place! 🙂 From there we drove through the beach cities and headed into San Diego. Went to Balboa park and walked around a bit, had a few drinks and then saw this play called “The Women” which was hilarious! After that we went to some huge Hotel and had more drinks then tried to make the 6:30 train back but JUST missed it so we ended up having dinner down there and then catching the 8:30 train back. Which was hilarious! The woman kept yelling at us and being all bitchy.

Sunday morning I got up and headed out climbing. It was just Jerry and I and he didn’t even climb at all. So I did 3 hours of climbing. I was EXHAUSTED by the time I got home and my fingers are still hurting from all of it. Got home about noon and did some stuff around the house and then called Kris, he and I went shopping at the Thirft stores for his halloween costume then hit up the Apple store where I orgasmed all over the new MacBook Pros. From there we went to Fry’s and I was expecting to just buy a new external hard drive because mine was filled up, but they had a 1TB Terastation for sale $350! So I bought that because I’ve been wanting one FOREVER! Brought that home and then went grocery shopping and made dinner for Kris and I and then watched some scary movie.

So that was basically the weekend. Lots of crazyness and lots of fun!

IdyllWild & Tahquitz

A lot happened this weekend, it was an excellent weekend up to the very end, where things took a horrible horrible change.

I got off work on Friday and headed home, grabbed my wallet which I had forgot that morning and then ran off to REI where I purchased a new Sleeping bag! It’s a 0 degree 750 fill down bag @ $100 off the normal price, so I just grabbed it up! I have been needing a new bag for a while, so it was time to get one! After that I headed to Trader Joe’s and loaded up on food, then back home where Justin came over and we hung out and watched Soldier’s Girl while I packed for the trip. It was a pretty good movie.

Saturday morning I got up early and found Tuxedo was throwing up again. He’s done this in the past where he eats and then pukes it all back up, so I wasn’t too concerned. Went out and got the last few things that I needed for the trip that morning and came home, put the cats in the bathroom so that he wouldn’t throw up all over the house while I was gone and then packed up the car.

We headed out about 8am that morning to get to Idyllwild. The drive was great, no problems or anything on the way up there for us. Though we did pass a pretty bad accident in which a motorcycle guy got killed. We got to Idyllwild and checked out the camp site, but we couldn’t check in yet so we went on this little scenic route hike that was nice and short. About half way back to the car though, it started HAILING on us! CRAZY! That went on for about 20 minutes while we rushed back to the car. Got back there and it stopped so we headed back to camp, got everything setup and then headed into town for some lunch. While we were eating it started POURING down rain for about an hour while we were hanging out there. Once it finally cleared up we headed back to the camp site and ran into George and Jason on the way there.

Packed up and organized everything for the next morning and then headed back to the site, ate dinner and hit the sack. That was a pretty bad night for sleeping, lots of snoring, tossing and turning and a very very flat mattress. Got up at 5am Sunday and we headed out. The hike up to the base of Tahquitz was killer, but we made it there in good time. However, we then could NOT find the start of the two climbs we were doing, so we wasted over an hour looking for those. Didn’t get started climbing till 9am! My group made it up the first pitch no problems, it was a really interesting climb up to there. While we were waiting for Jerry to get up, Meghan asked about what exactly happened between Const and I, she even specified she wanted details, which was odd. I gave her a very brief overview of what happened, at least as I see it. I didn’t really think it was appropriate to go into the real details with her.

Jerry started up on the next pitch and wasn’t exactly sure where to go, so he made a jog right and got caught around a tree. Found out that wasn’t the right way to go but he had already placed a device, so he just headed up. Got up to a spot where he found the route, but it was much harder then they were expecting. He placed another device and started the climb. At this point Meghan and I decided we had to get him out from around that damn tree. So I extend my anchor and climb out to where the first device was placed and pull it out then climb back to the station. Meghan and I do a quick belayer switch so that he was being belayed from the correct side of the tree now instead of the rope being wrapped around the tree. We completed that JUST in time too because less then a minute later Jerry took a nasty fall and landed upside down on the ledge. He laid there for a few minutes and then tried the climb again.

This time he made it about 20 feet higher, but hadn’t been placing enough devices. He was just about ready to get over this hard section when he lost it again and this time fell a good 30-40 feet, landed upside down again and cut up his forehead pretty badly, he was bleeding like crazy so we talked him into just coming down. We rapped off the wall and met Kris and Mok at the bottom. Hiked out and went to get coffee and rehash the day and share some stories. I was very sad that we didn’t make it to the top of the climb, but it’s good that Jerry didn’t keep trying to push himself because I think he would have gotten hurt a lot worse.

They all left that night and Kris, Mok and I headed back to the camp site, got some chicken and drinks. We made some great dinner, a great peach cobbler and sat around the camp fire telling stories and talking for a long time. Kris and I slept out by the camp fire and I slept like a rock! The stars were so pretty and just as we were laying down to go to bed we saw a shooting start across the sky.

Woke up about 6:30 Monday morning and we putzed around the campsite and got ready for the day, we headed out to climb up to Suicide rock about 9ish. It was a great hike and we moved pretty fast up there and of course the views up there are just amazing and so well worth it! It brought back so many memories though of last year and everything that’s happened.

Headed back to LA around 12:30 or so. Got home by 3 and walked into my apartment. This is where all the mess starts… Kris needs to use the bathroom and I tell him that it’s probably a horrible mess because I had put the cats in there. I open the door and Moo comes flying out, I walk in farther and see Tux half in/out of the litter box. I figure I had just caught him in the middle of business or something and give him a second, but he doesn’t move. So I walk over there and touch him and he’s stiff. At this point I start freaking out… Thank god that Kris and Mok were there. They really helped out so much. They took care of everything for me and made sure I was ok before they left. I just can’t get that image out of my head though of seeing him there like that. I wish I hadn’t left this weekend. He must have just had a heart attack or something though. I dunno, it was so weird last night being there and not having him lay between my legs. I’m going to miss him so much.

I did some laundry, took care of all the camping gear, geotagged the photos from this weekend, gave Moo a bath and caught up on some TV and then Kris called and invited me over for dinner and some wine. I headed over there and we got CPK and came back to his place and he had made a little note and put it around the neck of this bottle of wine that I really like and gave it to me. We ended up drinking two other bottles and watching some more Heroes and just talking till like 10ish. He’s such a great guy. This weekend overall has made me really care about him a lot more and getting those feelings of “more then friends”. But he and I have talked about that in the past and since he’s only here for a short time things probably wouldn’t work out. So we’re just friends and what not. But I can tell he’s going to be a great friend!

Pictures from the weekend are here.

Apple, You Are Losing Me!

Another crazy busy week/weekend! Let’s see. Thursday I had a date, which went pretty good. The guy is Latino and a little different, but we had fun. Went to dinner, talked about random things, had a bottle of wine and watched a movie. He was a nice guy, but probably a bit to immature for me still. We’re going to hang out again on Tuesday, but he’ll probably end up just being friends if anything.

Friday I was at work and did a full day of work. Left at 4:30 and stopped by the Apple Store. STILL no fucking iPhone! Very annoying. I wrote a nasty letter to Steve Jobs. Jerk! Left the Apple store a little after 5 and receive an email from the Boss…

Can you make sure that the subject laptop is configured with Produce Pro and MS Office 2003? Please leave the administrative codes and laptop and charger on Mac’s desk by end of the day tomorrow (Saturday). Mac will pick up the laptop on his way to the airport on Sunday AM. I understand it may not have been clear to you that Mac’s laptop was needed by Sunday AM. Your support is appreciated.

Umm, excuse me! You have been talking about this whole laptop switch around for WEEKS. NEVER ONCE! NEVER! Did you ever say that the laptop which was replaced by a new one was going to Peru! And NEVER ONCE did you say that it needed to be COMPLETED by Sunday.

Let’s step back for a second. Weeks ago, we ordered 4 new laptops. ONE of them was for Peru, the other three for internal people. I got them all and ONE of the people getting a new Laptop had an OLD one. He was supposed to bring the old one in for me LAST MONDAY so that I could transfer all his shit onto the new one. He didn’t bring it to me till 11am on FRIDAY! When he handed it to me, he never ONCE mentioned anything about it needed to go to Peru on Sunday! UGH! So I called the boss and reamed him a new one! I was VERY annoyed. He kept saying that he had left it in this other guys hands to let me know, blah blah blah. NO YOU were the one managing this laptop change, YOU should have told me that this was going to happen. Then I go on to bitch about how this is NOT an emergency etc. UGH!

So anyways, after that Kris and I went Kayaking for about 2 hours. We got out there and just sat in the water for about 30 minutes watching the sunset. It was sooooo gorgeous! Once the sun was past the horizon, we paddled back and got back to his place about 8. Showered and then headed up to my office to pick up the laptop shit, found a REALLY great Persian place around the corner and ate dinner there then came back and we drank while I reformatted the laptop’s hard drive.

ALSO, with the laptop. I found 14 GIGS of straight porn on there. I have no idea what I should do with this information! LOL

Kris and I parted ways about 2am, but I couldn’t sleep at all, probably from all the caffeine in the pop we were drinking! So I laid in bed and chatted on the phone with this guy. He was nice, and really hot (in his pics), but sounds REALLY girly! I think I got to sleep about 4 am… And then my alarm went off at 6am, then the neighbors started talking really loudly and playing guitar about 6:45am, then someone knocked on my door about 7ish and then my phone rang at 7:30. I decided that the world was against my sleeping, so I got up, ran around and did some shit and then called Kris about 9. We went furniture shopping, I spent $300 at REI on climbing gear and we dropped off the laptop at the office. Did some other random shit and got home about 2:30, took a quick nap, showered and the picked Kris up again. We headed out to the LA Arboretum to meet up with Sirin and her mom. We ate dinner at the Arboretum, had some wine and then Kris and I went and walked around. It was right at sunset so the place was absolutely beautiful, and technically everything was “Off Limits” and closed, so we were the only ones walking around the gardens!

The concert was pretty good. The last two songs were not my favorites, but the rest of the songs were just amazing! And they had this really good pianist/violin player named Ayke Agus! She was amazing! Got home from that about 11:30 and crashed!

Sunday I got up at 5am and headed out to Rock Climbing. We did more lead climbing this week and did some pretty easy/difficult stuff. Most of the route was 5.5/5.4 so not to bad. The first 20 feet was even a class 4 (which means “a fire escape without hand rails”). Anyways, Jerry and I were climbing and then Jason, JoErick and George on the other one. Jerry and I would climb up to a belay station and then wait for the rest of the guys. At the first station we had about 2 inches of ledge to stand on and for some reason it took them nearly an hour to get up to it, so I was standing there on just my tip-toes the whole time. We had a really great time climbing, the last bit of the climb was nearly a 5.10 and Jerry took a pretty good lead climb fall and went probably 10-15 feet down. I was belaying him and got ripped off my feet and slammed into the rock wall. Thankfully I got my feet out in front of me fast enough and broke off a chunk of rock where my feet hit! It was funny after it happened because I remember seeing out of the side of my eyes everyone else on the belay station grabbing for my harness!

Once we got off there we headed out to Charlie Browns again for lunch. I had this HUGE BBQ sandwich that had Pork, Chicken and Tri-Tip on it! Delicious! I love that place! We also discussed more the next few weeks and since Tahquitz is in Idyllwild, I decided to just make it a long weekend up there. So I booked a camping site up there and sent out a group request. We’ll see how many people reply! I hope we can get enough people to go. It’s Labor day weekend, so I realize a lot of people will be busy/out of town. But I just took the chance.

Got home about 4:30, showered, did a load of laundry, vacuumed, did the dishes and then Kris and I went grocery shopping, came back to my place and watched a few episodes of Rome. Very good stuff.

And that was my crazy busy weekend! 🙂

PS. That laptop that I worked so much on fixing… Still sitting on the guy’s fucking desk!

Birds of Prey

What a weekend! It all started out with one crazy ass dinner party on Friday night. Jason made delicious Meat balls and stuff so Kris and I headed over there and we ate, drank three bottles of wine and a bottle of Crown Royal! Delicious! Such a fun night

Got up the next morning and headed out to the Birds of Prey area out by Mojave. Amazing! We met up with George, Jason, Jimmy, JoEric, and Jerry. Had dinner at this really cute little place in Mojave and then headed out to the area.

We got lost on the way. You take all these dirt back roads which aren’t marked at all. Eventually had to spread out to try and find the right road. We found one road that we thought was it, so took it for a ways. Got to the rocks, but the wrong side. My car couldn’t handle the rest of the road so we parked it and then piled into the other two cars.

The road was a MESS!! There were LOTS of times where we had two or three wheels on the ground. Lot of sharp angles and what not! Tons of fun! Sadly BOTH vehicles got flat tires so we had to change those. Ended up in the wrong place and had to backtrack through the river bed to get to where we were going. Like I said, crazy ass driving! 🙂

Got there and setup a couple climbs and then hung out for dark. Once the moon started coming up we went out and did a the climbs at night in the moon light! Absolutely gorgeous! Jerry kept having to yell at everyone to turn off their flashlights though. I don’t get it. The moon was casting SHADOWS! Why would you even have your light on at all?! It was an amazing experience.

We went to bed about midnight and all slept out under the starts.

Got up at 5:30 Sunday morning and started climbing again. Did some really great climbs. I sadly only got to do one climb because my ankle was hurting me. WE climbed for about 6 hours and then loaded up the cars and headed back to Mojave where we had lunch again and then headed back to LA.

This was one amazing trip! I cannot wait for the Whitney and Santa Cruz islands trips.

You can download our tracks with picture overlay here:
Birds of Prey Rock Climbing

Fullsize Picture gallery is here.

Weekend Recap…

Ok, So I am on the plane now and thought I would take some time to write about the weekend.

Lets see, I really didn’t do to much during the week. I went to the gym with Dustin one day and no gym the rest of the week. Iw as pretty lazy. Friday I went out with Sirin and Christian to this place in downtown LA called Seven Grand. It’s a whiskey bar that Guerrilla Gay bar was hosting at. Tons and tons of fun! We hung out and talked and played pool and what not. Matt was there and I tried buying him a drink, but he declined. How sad! 🙁 OH well.

Drove back to my place after that and the three of us drank the bottle of wine that Constantine and I brought back from Austria. It was not very good. Christian spent the night and Saturday morning I drove him home and then was getting my car washed when I got the first of many bad news phone calls during the weekend. I had planned to hang out with a bunch of people and go to a gallery opening that night, but I cancelled all those plans and just ended up sitting at home all day reading and doing random computer stuff and debating about what I should do.

Sunday I got up and went rock climbing. It was just me and Jerry setting up so that was fun. We talked a lot and he taught me some interesting stuff. Jenny and Megan showed up and some other guy. We all did some rock climbing on three different climbs. I made it to the top of two of them and then failed on the last one. The last one is called Birdshit crack and I have yet to make it up that one. There’s this weird move you are doing because you’re coming out of this crack and have to turn and get yourself up somehow. Anyways, it’s hard to explian, but I just can’t keep my footing on it. Very annoying.

Had a great time rock climbing, but I got two calls during that with more bad news. After climbing we went up and had a picnic up on this mountian thing and just chatted and stuff. Lots of fun!

Drove home after that, called Constantine on my way home and of course he didn’t answer. I was debating about what to do and ended up just calling my boss and he said to go home and work from there. So I bought the tickets and then freaked out because my flight left at 5am Monday morning and this was 5pm Sunday night. So I had to arrange someone to take care of the cats and drive me to the airport and I had to pack everything. What a mess. I was freaking out.

My friend Rob came over and we hung out for like 45 minutes and watched some TV and caught up. It was relaxing to have him chill with me. He’s very laid back and cool.

Called Constantine again and left another message about me being in Houston on Monday for 3 hours and seeing if he wanted to have coffee or something.

He called back a little later and we talked. I was very angry with him and with everything else that’s going on and called him an asshole. As soon as it came out I felt so horrible. I wish I could have taken it back, rewind the tape…I didn’t know what to do. We talked about a lot of random things. Sounds like he’s having a great time in Houston, sounds like he’s moving on and forgetting about me and all the great times we had together. When I got back from Lone Pine….(stop me if I wrote about this already??) anyways, I noticed that someone from houston opera house and Halliburton had both spent a LARGE amount of time reading EVERY entry about Constantine and I all the way back to when we first met. I find this very very strange, why are they reading about all this a month after it happened. Why are they spending so much time going back and reading about everything that’s happened… I don’t get it. He said he knew they had done it. Sirin has her theory, but I am guessing that’s not the case.

Anyways… Being in Houston, being so close and yet so far away from him. In the short month I feel like we’ve already grown so far apart. I’m moving on very well, but with all this shit going on, I just want him back. I want to hear his voice and have him comfort me. After readin “Call me by your name”. I keep hoping that he’ll show up in Iowa, we’ll see each other from across the room, run into each other’s arms and kiss and swing each other around and be so happy (ala the wedding scene). I kept hoping while I was waiting in Houston that he would show up at the gate and say. “I’m comging with you”. I know that he won’t, but I need support right now, I could really use someone to lean on. To cry on his shoulder, to hold him and have it feel like everything will be ok. I wish he could be there in Iowa, to sit in the hot tub, watch the sky and talk about my grandpa with me.

My crying has been so random lately. I just can’t stop it. It’s very annoying.

On a funny note. There is this spanish couple in the seat infront of me on this flight, they have lunch on this flight (amazing!) anyways, they don’t speak ANY English, the flight attendant was aksing everyone if they knew how to say “Turkey” or “Ham” in spanish. No one knew. She had chicken, beef and fish on her little translation card, but no Turkey or beef. Anyways she started making farm sounds. It was really funny. Then they answered by mimicing the sounds. Very entertaining. lol. On the flight from LAX to Houston, I had the whole exit row to myself. That was very nice. 🙂