Poseidon’s Projects

The eagle has left.

Look who’s here!

I’m officially taking a small break from jump rope. My calves have been continually sore for quite a while. As with all exercise it is important to take breaks. So I will back to jumping rope on Monday of next week.

Speaking of breaks, I took about 3 weeks off of climbing. One, it costs quite a bit to climb and things are tight in the Maine household right now. Two, my left elbow has been bugging me again. However, I did go climbing outside and I went to a new gym during this 3 week break. I guess by break what I actually mean is I stopped going to my usual gym for 3 weeks on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But my elbow has gotten a little better so I’m going to slowly return to climbing again. This time I’m going to try and take it easy for real this time. I went back last night and had a lot of fun climbing again.

I’m very excited about finally getting Kana into the gym this Friday. Since we didn’t go on Sunday, Kana promised she would go on Friday. I hope she will be able to keep her promise.

Ribs turned out okay I thought. Kana loved them. I’m not sure if I’ll make them again though because I like ribs a little drier. Let’s say this, I like my ribs grilled, not pressure cooked. I think the next recipe we will try is a lamb curry.

Yeah! I think it may actually be 338. But I can’t be for certain. I have this thing where I’m sometimes count the 60’s or the 80’s twice. So I’ll be jumping and I’ll go 60, 61, 62, … 69, 60, 61, 62, 63, … then I realize what I did and start counting from 70. So who knows. But I know for sure I at least did 328.

Kana and I didn’t go climbing yesterday. Instead I made waffles for breakfast, I did four loads of laundry (Kana hung everything to dry), and then we went to Costco.

Tonight (Monday) for dinner, I’m making ribs in a certain infamous electric pressure cooker, baked potatoes, and corn on the cob. I will takes some pictures tonight. Hopefully everything turns out delicious!

I recently went climbing outside.

No. Not here. This is actually a historical site. I’m really glad that I didn’t just jump on these stones and start climbing. Especially since while I was taking these pictures, a bicycle cop rode by as he was on patrol. I probably would have been yelled at.

No. Not here either. This is actually a huge wall on a fairly steep street. I think this might have been an okay area to climb at, except it is a residential area. I’m not sure some home owners want look out their window to see someone coming up over the edge of their lawn. That would be pretty surprising. And it wouldn’t take the police very long to get there because I noticed that at the top of this hill is a police station. So no climbing here.

Just as an aside, there is a subset of climbing called “Urban Climbing.” Basically what this means is that people who live in urban areas and don’t have access to rocks will climb buildings, bridges, walls, ravines, and basically any structure that you could imagine can be climbed. In Tokyo, they have lots of stone walls. Now I image there are some areas where you could probably climb, like under bridges and what not, but I’m not so sure about residential areas and historical sites. So for the time being I’m going to stick to gyms and my occasional adventures outside.

Like this one. Here I am at Mitake. Mitake is in the Okutama area that I wrote about previously. It is one of the more famous areas for bouldering in Japan and it has one of the most famous problems in Japan. Here I am trying to start the “Ninja Repeller.” Unfortunately I never got very far. The group I was with did move around a lot and we got to climb a lot of different areas. It was a lot of fun. The day we went was a little rainy so basically we had the place to ourselves. I was told that on a nice day, there is usually a 15 minute wait to try and get on the Ninja Repeller and that the ground is just covered with mats. We were able to climb all we wanted. Unfortunately the rock was a little wet and made climbing extremely difficult. But the other areas we climbed at were all dry.

Kana and I also did a little climbing in Nagano over a holiday in May called “Golden Week.” This is another famous area for climbing called “Mt. Ogawa.” There are camp grounds at the site and hundreds of people there. All of them had come to climb. It was crazy. I had never seen so many climbers at one time in all my life. I think the 5 day weekend had something to do with it, but nevertheless, it was extremely crowded. Kana and I came to do a little climbing and then we went back home. Here is Kana “pretending” that she is climbing.

Isn’t she cute?