The comeback kid

Where'd he go? Where'd who go?

This blog disappeared because so did my climbing. I think you know the score by now - my finger broke - taking with it my dignity, my will to live and my sense of perspective. Not necessarily in that order.

However, since my finger has started to improve so has my general mood, and my appetite for blogging. I was going to write a big moany blog post about my injury, and how it was all Ben Moon's fault, but I thought you should all read this instead.

Actually being injured was sort of a blessing. Let's play a game where we divide myself into two people. We'll call them 'Ego' and 'The tiny part of me remaining', or 'Bob' - because it's shorter. Ego hated being injured. He kept reading about other people crushing hard routes, or getting stuck into epic seiges and Ego was just as childishly pissed about this as you might imagine. Meanwhile, Bob was having a whale of a time: climbing 5.9s in the desert sun in California, using massive jugs with two fingers in Riglos and remembering how good easy trad climbing is.

Bob having a good old time in Riglos

It's been great going tradding again, and it's massively re-inforced my respect for heros like Bransby and McHaffie who are good at it. I have a head made of jelly, which doesn't help. However I am also old and cunning, and this has got me up some classics that I've wanted to do for a long time. For example - check out the gear I found on Ninth Life below - a setup that makes it better protected than the 7b to the right...

Upside down pecker (with nose moulded with Sugru) and some tied together nut keys. Bomber!

However, now the finger is getting better and it's time to put fun behind me for a little while and get back to being savage. I'm so excited! My level is truly shocking, but improving fast. In the space of a few weeks I've gone from failing on 8a's to being as strong as Alex Barrows (i.e failing on 8a+'s). The best bit is getting to try really hard again. It sounds stupid but I've missed being pumped so much.

I don't know how to end this blog post, so I'm just going to stop. Hello again.