Thursday, December 6, 2012

STICKERS!


The first batch of official Rock Cricket stickers have gotten here!  We had 250 printed up and want to get them out to people, out to places, etc.  If you know any of us personally you can just ask us for some and hope that they're on us.  Otherwise, drop a line to ryan@rockcricket.com with your name and address and I'll ship a couple out to you. For FREE!

-Ryan

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Dah Gone Uh - A Yankee's Perspective

I've never watched movies around a campfire, let alone while schwilling margaritas in a coffee mug. That is, until I went to Alabama.  Our adventure would have been a very different story if we were to have not met Terry.

The dude had a banjo tattooed on his knee, as well as a moon on one nip and a sun on the other - things he showed us the first night we hung out.  He cooked some damn good food too.  Never did I have boiled peanuts, fried green tomatoes, or "gormet" hotdogs (hotdogs with bbq sauce cooked on a fire, he said the sauce was homemade and that he just reused the Piggly Wiggly sauce bottle..debatable) on a climbing trip.  Uncle Terry was a good guy to have an in with, although getting his little revolver pointed at you right when you woke up could be a little unnerving at best - he meant no harm.

We picked up a bunch of sweet new vocabulary too.  Add these to the dictionary, I mean "Dinictionary":

Dah Gone Uh - an extremely useful filler expression, use it like "um".
Hugger - we know them as coozies up here.
Annarchiologist - what you call an Anarchist when you can't remember/pronounce the word.

We were in true dirtbag form.  Our campsite had so much spilt food and swisch that it was infested with a swarm of bees from day one.  They almost were like pets.  Only once was anyone stung (Alex), despite our swatting, yelling, etc.  We had another "nature experience" with a coon that Terry claimed to weigh 70 pounds.  Every night we left our food out.  And every night that damn thieving coon bastard ran off with some sort of grain product..bread, tortillas, oatmeal.  The following mornings were met with talk of learning our lesson, putting the food in the car - but we never did, against better judgement.  When I told Terry my thoughts on training our friends the bees to kill the perpetrator he responded with..

"Last time a Yankee tried to tame a southern bee, he ended up dead..took him to the coon's lair."

Knowing that the swarm was on the side of the enemy, we forgot about the plan.  There were other bees up on Chandler Mountain, or should I say B's.  We had reverted to primal grunting and chest pounding when in the presence of a female, any female.  I apologize to any that actually caught on to our antics.  There was some pretty low brow humor thrown down around the campfire, some that we should all forget.  Some we definitely should remember.

Uncle Terry
Swisch was almost as much of a part of the trip as was the climbing.  It's a wonder how we managed to get up around six almost every day to make use of the crisp morning temps.  One memorable incident involved a post session draining of a bottle in less than half an hour.  I've never had a stranger request concerning whiskey than Dawson asking me to pour some in a plastic water bottle half full of wine..at eight in the morning.  Clearly things went downhill from there.  I thought I'd be a great slackliner with the inebriation and all, "lost" my boots (next to the slackline), and proceeded to think I could wear PBR boxes as shoes into the liquor store.  I don't know what makes less sense - the preceding actions or Dawson letting Terry drive his car to said establishment.

I can't wait to get back down South.  Horse Pens will always have a special place in my heart.  Rocktown and LRC were also both pretty sweet too.  Even though I'm just a dumb Yankee, I can appreciate Dixie's charm.

-Ryan

Road Trips

Our young friend Kyle has written a little something up about our trip down south, a first for him.  I present it to you unedited and unabridged.  Let him know what you think..

-Ryan

"Road Trips"
by Kyle Owens

There comes a time when every climber entertains the idea of leaving the home crag and venturing out in search of new rock. This doesn’t mean hitting up bird’s eye view on Bing and scouring every forest within an hour radius for any potential of a new and possibly non-scoured chossy boulder or hitting up mountain project soaking up beta on new developments and asking for a tour. In the language of “dirt-bag” a climbing trip means packing your sedan to the brim with gear, wooks, and then strapping pads to the roof; knowing that you’re now that guy that no one wants to drive behind because that pad looks like it’s going to fly off your roof into traffic. Anyways, the first step to assembling a climbing trip is to pick the kind of rock and the style of climbing you’re into; once this is done, you will have a destination or perhaps even a tick list of regional crags to hit up on the way. Once, you’ve got a place in mind, it’s time to choose the crew. This crew should be your buddies that you’re always crushing both rock and schwish with. Trust me on this one the crew is crucial, I’ve heard of backpacking trips when the crew isn’t that great and more often than not, a misadventure will be the end result of a division in the crew. Packing isn’t necessarily a crucial aspect of climbing trips. To take a trip in true dirt-bag manner means to only pack shit you’ll use. The following necessities are listed in order of necessity for a great climbing trip: shoes, pads, schwish, chalk, a tent (for each guy don’t try to cram into one, nobody will think you’re straight), sleeping bags, food, two pairs of boxers, and one pair of clothes. The last part of a climbing trip that I’m going to cover is the ride. Make sure that the car has loose change for tolls, I know somebody that throws a handful of change on the floor whenever they get a new car so they don’t get screwed at a toll booth; pretty smart. Never stop in North Jersey to eat either, especially if there’s over three hours left until the destination. Keep your eyes open for ‘squatch educate yourself on their habits and calls so that you can properly identify one if you see it, plus those fuckers are known to get hit by cars. Often you’ll find yourself looking into the woods off the highway as scouring can any visible rock can be a habit. Just remember that the roc you see in those woods off of “Route Whatever” is rock that is hours and hours away from home and there’s better rock ahead of you, so just enjoy its presence though leave that developing to the locals. The best way to take a trip is by passing out somewhere around Jersey, only wake up for gas stops, and let the others drive. If you’re not going to sleep, stay up and bullshit with whoever’s driving and definitely make sure that the driver is not lost so that when you realize you’re lost the car isn’t halfway home like in Dumb and Dumber. Enjoy the trip, enjoy the new rock, mingle with the locals, maybe meet some bees, whatever, a climbing trip is as good as you make it.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Photopost: Southeastern B'Corral

HP40, ALHP40, ALHP40, ALHP40, ALHP40, ALHP40, AL
HP40, ALHP40, ALHP40, ALHP40, ALHP40, ALHP40, AL
HP40, ALHP40, ALHP40, ALRocktown, GARocktown, GARocktown, GA
Little Rock City, TNLittle Rock City, TN


The Rock Cricket crew just returned from a foray into the great Southeastern bouldering trifecta - Horse Pens 40, Alabama / Rocktown, GA / Little Rock City, TN. I'm sure there will be many posts documenting our trip, but to kick it off I'll drop some images to set the scene. This will also be the first of many "Photoposts" to come. Enjoy.

***Note: All photos came from either Andy or Kyle's cameras, they took the majority of the shots, but some were undoubtedly taken by others in the group. We will never know for sure due to swisch consumption and/or B deprivation.  In future posts we'll add photo creds.

Also, I want to say that our good friend Alex was with us but because he was behind the camera a good portion of the trip due to injury (not climbing..well, sort of) there are no pictures of him. Sorry bud.

Eventually we hope to improve the quality of pictures in upcoming installments. The template is also a work in progress.  The thumbnails will redirect you to the individual photos at Flickr (from there you can see the description-who, what, how hard, etc.), I don't know if that can be changed.  Just click back to get to the site.  And if you're wondering "NS" means no send, but the shot was nice so we kept it.  Bare with us.

-Ryan