Anticipation

My upcoming trip to South Africa is easily the most eagerly anticipated trip of my life, climbing or otherwise. Its been over a year since I first started planning it, and more than three years since I first started day dreaming about making the journey.

Over the years I've often thought about following a regular training regimen for climbing, but a lack of discipline and my desire to spend my time on real stone has kept me from spending more than a week or two on any given program. Only with the Rocklands trip in mind, was I able to buckle down and spend six weeks on a Paul Barraza's training program. As a result, I feel like I'm in the best bouldering shape of my life and, right or wrong, I expect a payoff in the form of many coveted boulders.

My goals for this trip are pretty general at this point, but they are important. Most importantly I want to have a 'full' travel experience. I want new experiences, new faces, and unexpected things to cross my path. I want to see penguins, I want to learn something about South African history, and I want to eat white rhino like a great white hunter!

As far as climbing goals go...I want to climb a bunch of classics and I want to climb some harder stuff too. I'd really like to find a testpiece that will challenge me more than any boulder problem has before AND I'd like to climb it. A tall order, I know, but this may be a once in a lifetime experience so I want it all and more.

I'll do my best to update this blog when I can. There have been times in my life when I couldn't travel or climb as much as I'd have liked, during those times it was the climbing blogs of people like Sock Hands, Jamie Emerson, and others that kept me motivated for the times when I could. I'll do my best to pay it forward, as saying goes, for those of you who are stuck in a cube, broke, or injured and unable to travel this summer.

For those of you that have or will be making the pilgrimage this summer, I'll see you in Africa!

-Justin