Well the main thing to happen over the last two weeks was me being an idiot. A very big idiot. But we’ll get to that shortly…
To be honest there isn’t much to report about mid-week going ons. I’ve been to work, I’ve swam, I’ve climbed. That’s about it really. All the swimming and climbing seem to be having some effect as I’m losing weight and seem to be getting stronger which is good. Less good is my inability to find anyone to go away climbing with. I’m itching to get outside again.
As I couldn’t find anyone to go climbing outside with last weekend I decided to go hiking 2-3 hours away from Lawrence. I left on Friday evening, arrived, slept and spent the next day hiking at two different state parks. The first (Wilson Lake) I would rate towards the bottom of the hikes I’ve been on in Kansas (photos). It had a couple of nice views but not much else. After that I went to Mushroom Rock State Park which is tiny but has some pretty cool rock features (photos). There was even a couple bouldering on one of the “mushrooms”. Well worth the short detour to see.
Kanapolis was all a little more exciting (photos). The hike started down a valley with some reasonably cool rock formations with the path winding between these and the stream in the valley. Although the path was reasonably overgrown it was still enjoyable. At the end of that section I crossed a stream through knee deep water and hike several more miles through quite varied terrain (at least by Kansas standards). At the end of the hike I had to cross the same stream again except here it was much wider and almost up to my crotch which made it fun to say the least.
Done with hiking I headed back to my campsite. My plan was to spend the night then head back to Lawrence Sunday morning for some lead climbing at Ibex on Sunday. As it was too windy at my campsite to enjoyably cook I decided to drive back that evening and get some food on the way. However not long after I got some food my car gave up on me in quite spectacular style. It would appear to have run out of oil. Not sure if it had a leak or I just hadn’t checked it enough, either way the (very) intermittently on warning light should have given the game away. However the dash electronics have never been 100% and as it was only very intermittent I decided to sort it when I got back to Lawrence. I AM AN IDIOT.
I called the recovery service provided through my car insurance but they would only tow me 15 miles which left me stranded in a motel in Abilene for the night. Abilene is nearly two hours from Lawrence and is reasonably small with no taxis or the like. So next morning I tried to work out how I was going to get out of Abilene. This was much easier said than done. After a long time trying to work out my options and speaking to various people I had a plan. This involved ordering a taxi to come and get me from a bigger town nearby (expensive), and waiting nearly 6 hours for a greyhound bus. While waiting for the bus I, thankfully, managed to arrange a lift from Topeka to Lawrence which meant I’d be getting home about 9:30 rather than in the small hours having gone via Kansas City. So after a lot of faffing I was finally back home.
I rented a car on the Tuesday and got my stuff back from my car on the Wednesday. I eventually managed to sort out getting my car “repaired”, where by repaired I mean new (old) engine. This would probably work out cheaper than a new car of a similar standard and is certainly less hassle even if it won’t be ready for a couple of weeks which means I’ll have to rent a car again for my Yellowstone trip.
Yesterday I went for a short hike near Lawrence and did not a lot else. It was all through quite boring woods so no photos. Today my plan was to go climbing outdoors with a lady I’d briefly met at the climbing club meeting on Thursday. Just after I left to pick her up I got a text questioning the weather. After some more texts and a phone call we decided not to go. I’m still uncertain whether this was the right decision as it came out nice later but the weather websites suggest it didn’t come out nice where we were heading to gone midday so it might have been the correct decision given that it was a two and a half hour drive each way. Still hasn’t dealt with my need to get outside however. Oh well at least there’s been fairly definite discussion of an Arkansas trip next weekend.
So, instead of heading outdoors, I headed to the climbing wall to enter their bouldering comp. I was told to enter the intermediate category. This was definitely the correct category as I got several of the problems in this category but did mean I had no chance of winning as there were several much better climbers than me in the same category. Did managed to win a couple of T-shirts and a climbing pass as a door “prize” so wasn’t all bad. “Prize” is in quotes as they had so many prizes everyone that entered got something!
The bouldering comp and my recent climbing form both suggest that my attempts to get better are being some what effective although I’m interested to see how I perform outdoors. Can’t think of anything else worth saying so so that’s it for this post.