Don’t you worry your little faces off. I’ve been around. Some might say that I am omnipresent.

But in all seriousness, I’ve been given real engineering work so all of my time to write greatness has been stuffed into a proverbial corner (after work and on the weekends).

“Ok, so, um, that’s plenty enough time to write.”

Touche.

However, I’ve fallen in love with a new sport: rock climbing.

I won’t sit here and tell you how amazing I am. That part is already obviously obvious. But I have gotten pretty good at it in a short amount of time.

In this video, I am doing what is called “crack climbing”. Awesome, eh? However, I’m not 100% dude-brah on the climbing lingo so I’m not sure that it is officially crack climbing since I use holdsoutside of the crack. I do stick my hands and fingers in the crack quite a bit though.

*crickets* *crickets*

Moving on…

This isn’t a marked route. I just saw it and thought, “yeah, this is gonna be awesome.” In my very amateurish understanding of route difficulty, I would rate it a 5.10b or 5.10c, using the fact that I can do marked 5.10a’s fairly easily now.

Item of note: majestical calves can be spotted several times throughout the video.

Wonderful wasn’t it?

We were at Vertical Endeavors in St. Paul for about 5 hours so it’s not like that was the first or last route I did that day. We did spend some time in the bouldering cave as well.

In this very short clip, you can see the two things I’m working on. As I was pulling these videos off my camera, I was deleting all the really bad, failed attempts. Then I was like, “Oh sh!t! I should have kept these to show how I progressed on these routes!” Dratz.

So, the V3 isn’t too bad once you get “the trick” down. After that, it’s just finger strength, which I don’t have enough of. Yet. (For reference, bouldering routes go up to V9 or V11 at this gym. A V3 is definitely for intermediate n00bs like myself.)

Then, the V0 was just for fun. The one that I can do with no feet was taken down for repairs on the wall. On this one, you will see a bunch (3) of partial 1-arm pull-ups. I actually made it all the way to the last hold once, but of course, I didn’t have the camera on. I know, I know, “pics or it didn’t happen.” Whateves…

And that’s where I’ve been. Well, there, and I was bored yesterday so I made myself a landing page. What do you think of it?

DavidSandel.com

What have y’all been up to? Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!

.

.



Don’t Miss Your Chance

I was stuck in Corporate America for 9 years. I was miserable.

Then I took control.

You can too, and it starts right here.